ResqTails

We went out to play around a bit on the agility equipment last night, and as usual our 12 year old cat K.C. had to come join in the fun. She’s figured out over the years that when we do agility there’s always treats involved. So, depending on which dog is running, (she doesn’t come out when Zoe’s running, but she will with both Raven and Rogue), she will follow us all around the course waiting for treats of her own. LOL She especially likes it when we are working with target lids.

Last night was pretty funny. When I sent Rogue to the table, K.C. was right with us, and as Rogue sat, so did K.C. Maybe there ought to be a synchronized dog/cat team agility. Here’s the pictures. If only I could get K.C. to weave now! LOL

Here’s my favorite picture of the evening. I am trying to get Rogue to really extend over the apex of the A-Frame, and we’ve been using stride regulators to help. Here’s what we’ve got so far. Go Rogue!

A couple of weeks ago I was anxiously awaiting the arrival of two packages before I left to go to the agility trial. One came before I left and one didn’t. The one that did arrive was my new sun shade shelter tent. It’s smaller than my other tent and it’s super easy to setup and take down so I think it’s going to be perfect for trials when I’m traveling without Randy. (Which seems to be most of the time now).

The package that didn’t come was from Clean Run, and had some pvc connectors that I have been looking at to make some simple practice jumps for training at new places, and also this cool toy called a “chase and pull” It looks like a sort of a whip handle attached to a nylon cord with a fleece toy at the end. Supposedly it’s great for building toy drive in dogs that aren’t totally into toys because of the range of movement that you can get with it and it’s also supposed to be great exercise for the same reason.

Well…it got a big thumbs up from Raven. Here’s her picture review.

Here she is checking it out. Then look at how excited she is that it moves! LOL

She figured out right away the chase part of the game, and the tugging part wasn’t too bad either she says.

This was my favorite picture that my husband got of her jumping for the toy! Gotta love that effort!

Unfortunately, Raven seems to be the only one of the crew that is really thrilled with the new toy. Rogue was pretty sure that the pole/handle part of the toy was a stick that I was going to beat her with. Goofy girl. She did interact with the toy a little, but I really have to watch that she doesn’t think the pole is anywhere near her. Lucy thinks that all toys with squeekers are meant to be stolen when no one is watching and taken onto the bed to be de-squeeked. She made one sneaking attempt to take the toy when she thought I wasn’t watching, but to her dismay the dumb thing has a rope attached. LOL She has dissmissed it as one of my stupid tricks to ruin her fun! Twist, Zoe and Penny could really have cared less about the toy. I got a brief chase and tug out of Twist and Zoe, but nothing from Penny. Here’s the pics of Lucy & Rogue.

All in all, the new Chase and Pull toy is not a hit with everyone, but it is definitely a winner in Raven’s opinion.

The 24th of July this year seemed pretty mellow to me. Like I mentioned in the earlier post, they didn’t start off with the usual explosions at 6:00am, and the biggest celebrations seemed to be taking place in the next town over, not here. So, pretty much till 10:00pm it was just another day around here.

At 10:00pm we did start hearing some of the fireworks shows starting, but they seemed quieter than usual too. Rogue would hear them go off and run barking at the door like she thought someone was here, but it wasn’t like a panicky thing. Twist was similar. Penny on the other hand, seemed to content to lay on our bed. That is unusual for her! Her normal reaction when anything worries her is to get as close to myself or my husband as possible and then the whining and crying begins. Neither happened last night. She seemed like “ho hum, the young dogs are barking again.” It was great!

I can’t really say whether I think the Melatonin was responsible or if it was just a suprisingly quiet celebration around us last night, but either way, I’m happy and so are the dogs!

I can’t believe my ears! Usually our 24th of July starts off with some kind of canon being set off at 6:00 am to celebrate the holiday. It’s usually not so much of a celebration in the house though, since Penny thinks that the noise means that we’re under some sort of attack. LOL Well, this morning I didn’t even wake up till 6:30, and neither did any of the dogs, which means that for whatever reason…they didn’t set off the canon! Yay!!!

I know there will be fireworks this evening and later on tonight, so I’ll write more later to see if the Melatonin has any calming effects on Penny then, but so far the 24th is starting off great!

Thanks so much to our friends over at www.itsthedogslife.com for giving this award to us! What a nice way to start the day.

The Rules for Passing on the Award:

1. Pick five blogs that you consider deserve this award for creativity, design, and interesting material and also contribute to the blogger community regardless of language.
2. Each award has to have the name of the author and a link to his/her blog to be visited.
3. Each award winner has to show the award and put the name and link to the blog that has given him/her the award itself.
4. Award winners and the one who has given the prize have to show the link of the Arte-y-Pico blog so everyone will know the origin of the award. http://arteypico.blogspot.com/
5. In compliance with said rules, the award winner must show these rules.

I’m hoping that I am doing this right because I’m pretty new at this whole thing. LOL I’d like to pass along this award to

Tatum: www.tatumtot.com

Ace: www.thatmutt.com

Rift: www.kiwidogs.livejournal.com

Junior: www.juniorbabee.blogspot.com

Dylan: www.myspoileddogs.blogspot.com

This month has been anything but ideal for training. I think for one thing, it’s just been crazy busy around here. We had a convention the first weekend, a three day agility trial the next and the agility/obedience/herding demos the next weekend. Add to that the shock I felt over losing Jessie, and well…you pretty much get the picture. I’ve just felt tired physically and emotionally, and I haven’t had the motivation that I needed to train.

Fortunately, this week has slowed down considerably and I’m feeling more rested. So, I decided that it would be a good time to set some new training goals. I’ve been really impressed with our friends over at www.thatmutt.com They’ve been doing “30 day challenges” that we’ve been watching with interest. It has inspired me to try something similar in August.

My goal for August is: train with the dogs in 4 different locations and observe and record their ability to work in different environments. There isn’t going to be anything specific that the dogs will have to achieve. It will be more of a challenge of my ability to observe what is challenging in the new environment to each dog, and work to overcome it.

The reason I chose this challenge for us is that we can be successful just by attempting it. Sometimes I tend to set goals that frustrate both myself and the dogs because they are too big. I want this to be enjoyable for all of us. I also chose this because one of the biggest obstacles for the rescues to deal with is working in new places. As you know from prior posts Rogue and Raven both struggle with stress in trial settings. For Twist, new environments hold soo many distractions that it is difficult for him to focus on the task at hand. I really think that if I improve my skills in reading what they are telling me, our training will improve.

I’m excited for August to come now…

 Ahhh! It’s been a long day, but a good one. For the first time this week, I feel tired, but in a good way. I’ve been tired all week, (exhausted really), but more from emotional stress and the sleep I’ve been getting hasn’t been very restful. I feel alot better today…like a big weight is off my shoulders. I don’t really know why, but I’m grateful.

We went down to Cedar City today to the Iron County Dog Days. Earlier in the week I had about talked myself out of going, but I’m glad I changed my mind! They had agility, rally obedience, flyball, herding and freestyle dancing demos today. Zoe, Twist, Raven and Rogue got to go and be in a couple of the demos. I had every intention of getting some pictures, but I just didn’t have time, so you’ll just have to use your imagination.

Rogue was really nervous at this arena. Besides being a new site for her, there was a loudspeaker system hooked up that they kept using that freaked her out. I had really hoped that she would feel comfortable enough to participate in the agility demo, but it just wasn’t going to happen. That’s o.k. though, because we had a chance to work on some simple tasks outside the agility ring for a while (like targeting a lid, and fetching her jackpot bag), and after an hour or so had passed she was able to go in the ring and run some agility. So, it may not have been part of the actual demo, but she did successfully run a small course in a new place! Yay! She even gave me a few sassy barks, like at home. LOL

Zoe loves to run agility anywhere and she likes it even more when there’s a crowd of people to cheer for her, so she was totally in her element! Raven did a nice job at the agility demo today too! I was thrilled that I didn’t see any of the stress signals that she’s been exhibiting lately in a ring. She was happy and focused. Woohoo!

Twist and Raven both did a bit of Rally Obedience. They both worked well. I took Twist through the course off-leash and he did beautifully. Raven is still on-leash. Her heelwork isn’t anywhere near being ready for off-leash yet, but she managed all the stations in an advanced course, so that’s super.

Then Twist got to be in the herding demo. Honestly, it wasn’t his best day. Goofy boy! I think partly because it was such a large area, and then partly because of the heat this afternoon, he started to lose interest as we were trying to pen the sheep. He did get them through the two back fence panels and through the Y-shoot in the middle of the arena first though. Mac, (our Border Collie friend), came to our rescue and penned the sheep for us! Thanks Mac.

Anyway, it was a fun day and I’m looking forward to a great night’s sleep.

This post doesn’t have a thing to do with my dogs or training or rescue or anything else. Now that I have that out of the way…a nestful of baby birds has finally hatched!

It all started several weeks ago, when the cutest little birds built their mud nest in the shed right above where we park our car. The car has looked like we’ve been parking it under a tree ever since. LOL Neither of us wanted to disturb the nest until the babies hatched and flew away. So, we’ve just been waiting, and waiting…Well, they’ve finally started popping their heads above the edge of the nest. Woohoo! My best count is that there are 4 babies. I know, you can only see 3 of them in the pictures that I took. I just couldn’t get them to pose for me like the dogs do.

Here’s some pictures that I snapped of them earlier today.

I love their little, or maybe I should say BIG mouths! Maybe that’s because they remind me of Rogue! See the resemblance?

Well, I figured that we all needed to get out of the house for a while yesterday. So, we drove up by my parents house and went to the lake. It’s not the most beautiful lake in the world, but it sure feels good on a hot day! Penny and Lucy waded right in as usual, with the Shelties getting their feet wet on the shore. LOL Silly Shelties! Actually Zoe, Twist and Raven all eventually waded in up a little past their bellies, which is pretty deep for them. Rogue just couldn’t be convinced that she needed more than a a few inches of water herself. Here’s some pictures of Penny swimming to fetch a stick. She’s my best swimmer!

Raven even thought that maybe the stick was in the water as a test of her “touch” skills, so she made sure that I saw her give it a “touch” with her nose. Pretty funny.