Here’s a few pictures that I managed to get last night while we were doing chores. These are the two calves. Actually I think one is a heifer and one is a calf, but I guess it doesn’t matter anyway. Rogue was just fascinated by them, and they were pretty curious about her too. I had trouble getting a good shot of the two of them trying to figure each other out. LOL
Then I got a couple pretty cute shots of Raven with her sister Hannah. I always think that Hannah has such a sweet face! It’s interesting to me to see how different the two of them are physically, (Hannah is the chubby girl on the right). I can’t convince my parents that Hannah’s too heavy for her own good, in fact they always joke around that my dogs have to live on starvation rations! LOL Even though they aren’t alike in body build anymore, they sure are similar in personality! I think Raven would be thrilled to death if I just decided to let her live with my parents on the farm. They look pretty happy together don’t they?
I’m spending this weekend taking care of my parents animals and house while they are in CA. It’s basically a little small family farm. They’ve got a few cows, some dairy goats, chickens, dogs, and cats. It’s nice because it’s out of town, really quiet and pretty out there. Plus, I took all that fleece that’s been sitting here and I’ve been making up toys in the evening.
As for the chores. The cows are easy. All I have to do is feed and water them. The goats on the other hand, have to be milked. I don’t mind milking the goats really. What’s bad is that neither of the does that need to be milked like strangers and that’s definitely what they consider me to be! So, I have to spend quite a bit of time in the pen just getting them to settle down enough that I can get within arms length to grab their collars and lead them into the milkroom. Peggy, the oldest doe, really tweeked my finger when she darted away from me the first night. LOL The goat kids are nice and friendly this year though, and I love watching them play on their little teeter/totter. They are so acrobatic!
Chickens make me a bit nervous. We had a rooster growing up that would attack me, so I’m still not 100% confident around them. Fortunately none of the chickens my parents have now are mean, in fact they have one that lets me pet her when I go to collect the eggs. There’s one that seems to be staying in a little nest box in the milkroom too, but I didn’t feel any eggs under her, so I don’t know what she’s thinking!
That only leaves the dogs and cats. I love their dogs. My mom and dad have Raven’s littermate, Hannah. She’s a cutie! Course, she’s quite a bit fatter than Raven and has no training, but she’s still a cutie. Then they have Midge, Smokey, Winnie and Sadie. LOL Rogue and Zoe came with me on Friday night and spent all day with me up there yesterday. Zoe loves all the room to run and explore. When I go up tonight, I might take Raven and Rogue so Raven can play with Hannah.
Anyway, it’s been an interesting weekend and it’ll be nice to get back home and into the regular routine again after they get home Monday night. I’ll try to get some pictures later today when I go back there.
Well, yesterday was Penny’s big day! We drove to Salt Lake and she got to do her video for the commercial. It was lots of fun, and lots of work too. I am so proud of her! We were both exhausted by the time we were done. LOL
She was able to do several of the behaviors that they asked for, which is super since we’ve only had part of a week to work on them. She did her “roll over”, “speak”, “fetch the newspaper”, “fetch the slipper” and just plain “look adorable”! Then they asked for several things that we just couldn’t do, but that’s my fault. When Penny was a puppy I didn’t know to train individual pieces of a bigger behavior, I just lumped them all together for an end result and hoped it would work! So now, separating out pieces is much harder for her.
For example…she can fetch a newspaper when you throw it out and she’ll bring it back to you. But, when they said can she stop midway back to you and just sit and hold the newspaper, it didn’t make sense to her. She just ran back with the newspaper and then when I said to “sit” midway, she was like: “ok”, and she sat, but not with the newspaper in her mouth. LOL Poor Penny, I’m sure she couldn’t figure out why I was changing all the rules to an old game all of a sudden. Oh, and they asked that I try to stay out of the camera’s way, and I didn’t seem to be able to do that very well either.
All in all though, I think we both enjoyed the day alot!
With the crazy pace of the last few days it is always a nice break to just be able to take the dogs for a walk in one of their favorite places. I loved this picture, even though I could only get 5 of the 7 dogs in the picture at once! They had a great time and so did Randy and I. Couldn’t have asked for nicer weather and better way to end up with 7 happy dogs. 
It’s about time! I’m pretty sure that is what Penny’s been thinking the last few days. Usually the majority of my time and energy is spent with the younger dogs. I hate to admit it, but it’s the truth. The older dogs just don’t demand the attention like the younger ones do. It’s one of the huge drawbacks to having as many dogs in our family as we do. So, it’s a real change of pace for me to be working with Penny as much as I have the last few days. It’s jogged my memory for how funny she can be when she’s learning new things too!
If you read my last post though you’ll know that Penny was being considered as one of several dogs to star in a dog food commercial. So, we’ve been brushing up on her tricks, and that reminds me, we need to do some literal brushing on her too! LOL We got the call today that we need to go to Salt Lake this Wed. to shoot her part of the commercial. I guess they’ll video her for an hour or so doing different tricks and then use what they like. I guess?! I don’t really have the slightest clue, but we’re pretty excited!
I’ll post about how it goes when we get home…
Last week we got a message from a friend whose friend was looking for dogs to star in a tv commercial for a well known pet food. They wanted a dog that didn’t look purebred. Well…if Penny doesn’t fit that description, I don’t know who does! LOL We sent her pictures in and they loved her face! Who wouldn’t? Anyway, we haven’t heard for sure, but in the meantime we are supposed to work on some tricks that they want the dogs to be able to perform.
One was to be able to fetch a newspaper. Well, Penny loves to fetch balls, but to be honest we don’t even get a daily newspaper here, and I’ve never asked her to fetch one. Her first attempt she ran out to the newspaper and sniffed it like: “Hey! This isn’t my ball!”. So I got her all hyped up and threw it out again and that time she ran out and grabbed that newspaper like an old pro. She did such a good job and was having so much fun that we ended up tugging the newspaper to death and I had to clean up shredded newspaper off the lawn when we were done. It was a blast.
We are working on her sit, down, roll-over, speak, go to a mat. She knows all these things already, but when I taught her tricks years ago, I never taught her to do them at a distance. Now we need to almost re-learn the same old tricks adding a little distance at a time. I think Penny’s having such fun that I may try teaching her a few new tricks too! Anyone have any fun tricks that they would suggest?
Well, I really don’t feel much like posting about the agility trial today…but I’m going to anyway. It was rainy and windy pretty much the whole drive to the trial this morning. Rogue wasn’t very thrilled about even going anywhere this morning. It was definitely one of the mornings that makes you question your sanity for paying money to get up so early and then go run around a course in bad weather.
Rogue was stressed right away, which drops my confidence and mood. It’s one of the things that I would like to fix most about myself. To date though, it’s not something that I have had success changing. Ughhh! Poor Rogue is not only hampered by her own temperment, but by me too 
We walked around the site for quite a while and we both started to relax. She even got to the point where she was doing the practice jump with a group of kids closeby watching. I thought maybe things were turning around. In the past, if she could keep focus and do the practice jump, we’ve been ok. Well, today it wasn’t. She did come off the start line, but only did the first jump. That was all she could do today.
I’m overwhelmed, I don’t know how else to explain it. I spin and spin in my head about ways to help Rogue overcome her anxieties. I even dream about it at night. Sometimes it really feels like I’ve taken on more than I can handle with Rogue. I wonder if I’ll ever be able to help her. Then I worry that her training is taking so much out of me that it isn’t fair to my other dogs. Today is one of those days.
The last two days have been kinda rainy and windy here. Not exactly the kind of weather that entices me to work with the dogs much outside. I know…I’m a wimp. So after Rogue and did our relaxation work in the morning in somewhat of a drizzle of rain, I decided that we’d just play inside for the evening. I haven’t played with the spoons in a while, so I pulled them out of our training bag. The dogs love playing with the spoons! Our obedience instructor suggested that I work with Rogue on spoons since it’s a good way to get her thinking.
It’s simple to play. I just put a dab of peanut butter or squeeze cheese on one of the spoons and then set them all out upside-down for the dogs, (sometimes in a scattered pile & sometimes in straight lines). Then I send the dog to the spoons and tell them to “find mine”. Then they sniff through the spoons till they find the one that has the food on it. It’s one of the first steps towards doing articles in Obedience. I’d love to be able to get one of my dogs into Utility level…maybe someday! In the meantime, it was a great way to spend a few minutes together.
