Still sorting through old pictures. This one of Penny always baffles me. How did she get the mud all over her head? She absolutely had to have been rolling in it like a little pig. LOL
I’m leaving for the weekend again. Yay, I’m excited, but at the same time I’m tired and as usual I feel pressured for time to get everything done before I leave in the morning. I’m washing clothes, packing, writing this…LOL
Twist, Rogue and I am going to drive to Salt Lake and then meet up with my friend, Cynthia and her two boys, Levi, Chase and I think Tatum too. Gonna be a carful! Then we are driving to Idaho Falls for a 3 day obedience trial. We’re going to camp this time. I’m looking forward to it. I think we’ll have alot of fun. This is our chance for Twist and I to try to finish his CD title. He got his first leg in April (I think), so he only needs two more.
Then when we get back into Salt Lake on Monday, Rogue has another appointment with the holistic vet to determine whether the stuff we’ve been doing is working. So…I will be away from the computer for the next few days, but hopefully we’ll have lots of good news to write about when we get home! 
I ran into a couple of snags in my training challenge this last week. I made two attempts to train in different locations. First, I went out to the shelter to use their parking lot, lobby and area by their livestock pens, but because of poor planning I ran out of time to work with all three dogs. I then went to the county fairgrounds another day and didn’t have the cooperation of the weather, so we got rained out. So…we went back out to the shelter on a second attempt yesterday. Here’s the update.
Time of day: It was about 12:30.
Who was there: I was by myself, with Twist, Raven and Rogue.
Where we trained: Local County Animal Shelter. It has a paved parking lot, several acres of unpaved, undeveloped dirt area back by the livestock pens, and a lobby/waiting area inside the building. The shelter staff was inside the building, but no one else even drove into the parking lot while I was there.
What we worked on: Twist went first. We did some basic heelwork, both on and off leash around the parking lot and outside of the building. We did a couple of recalls, and then we set up a practice jump in the dirt area close to the parking lot. We did several dumbell retrieves over the jump. His heelwork was nice, and his about turns were much better than last time. I think the work on doing 270’s is helping that lag we were getting before. I was really happy because he wasn’t going around the jump on the return trip with the dumbell this time, even though these were my funky practice jumps. Raven went next. We did some on-leash heelwork, a couple of recalls, some signals, and we played around a bit with the jumps too. I was most pleased with her signals. Rogue was last. I let her take her time walking around the grounds for a few minutes to figure out where we were. Then I started her with just doing a little 3 jump sequence. She did fine. She didn’t seem worried about being in a strange place at all really. Since she had really struggled with being inside the lobby the first time we came out to train, I decided to try that again. This time, we didn’t have any of the shelter staff come out to sit with us, it was just Rogue and myself. She was really nervous as soon as we got inside again. I decided that I wouldn’t have any of the staff come sit and talk with us again, I’d just work with her by myself instead. The door makes a funny noise as the wind blows, so that really had her attention. Anytime she would reorient to me, I’d click and treat her. After a few minutes she got relaxed enough to give me a few “hit its” with her paw on my hand, and I called it a day.
Overview: I was really disappointed that there weren’t any people coming in and out of the building or parking lot. I would have liked more distractions like that for Twist and Raven. They both worked really nicely, but I didn’t think that it was much of a challenge for them. Rogue did better than the first time we visited this location, but I also tried to lower my criteria inside the lobby so that she could have more success, and less stress.
Last week I had to order some of the supplements for Rogue online that I couldn’t get aound here. Well, while shopping I got sucked in by the “free shipping” offer and ordered this summer treat making tool at the same time that we really didn’t need, but it looked fun. Anyway, it’s called a “Kool Dogz” ice treat maker.
It’s basically a plastic icecream bucket that you make the frozen treat in. It also includes a metal stand that you can stake into the ground that has a basin for the block of frozen treatcicle to attach to and melt into. You can pretty much freeze anything your dogs like. I guess some things float better and would distribute more evenly as you’re freezing, but pretty much all my stuff ended up in the bottom of the bucket, which was the top of the treatcicle.
So here’s the review from my crew. First, I don’t know what ever possessed me to think that all six dogs could use one pupcicle. Initially several of the dogs were licking it at once to get to the treats.
But…as you can see, it didn’t take Lucy long to make sure that it was all hers. I got tired of that pretty quick, so I had her take a little break to give everyone else a chance. Course, then Penny decided that she’d take over Lucy’s spot, and then, I’d had it! I took the big pupcicle and dropped it onto cement so that everyone could have a piece. That seemed to work much better, and at least all the dogs got something. So, all in all, the whole crew liked the Kool Dogz Ice Treat, but one is not enough if you have multiple dogs!
Well, I can hardly believe that it’s been a week since I took Rogue to the holistic vet to have a chiropractic adjustment and to see about some possible holistic remedies for her anxiety issues. I decided to try to document each day’s reactions to see if we are making any discernable progress. I’ve been giving the flower essences, (mimulus, aspen, along with rescue remedy and ego builder), both morning and night on her food. The Epsom Salts and Salmon Oil supplements I’ve been adding to her dinner meal only.
Saturday: One thing we noticed was that she was hesitant to come to her favorite spot on the couch after I sprayed the flower essences around there. In fact, I finally had to go pick her up and bring her into the room. Once in her normal spot though she seemed relaxed, more than usual. She didn’t jump off to bark at every movement…just lifted her head to check it out and then back to napping. Yay.
Sunday: We went herding in the evening. I gave her an extra drop or two of the Ego Builder mixture an hour before she was going to work. She still didn’t show the same interest in the sheep that she had when she worked them so well on the dirt at the other farm. Ever since they’ve moved to the pasture with the tall grass she’s more concerned with the grass touching her belly and her sides than with the sheep. So, the biggest thing that both my husband and I noticed was that she was more curious about her surroundings. She even left my side for a few minutes to go investigate the pasture grass while a group of us were standing around talking. When she is really overthreshold with her anxiety she just shrinks down and lays as close to me as possible. This was pretty good for her I thought.
Monday: I really can’t say that I noticed a whole lot of difference in her from the way she normally reacts, other than after feeding, especially in the morning…she does seem more calm.
Tuesday: Basically a repeat of Monday.
Wednesday: Again, nothing really noticeable to record. I’m kinda discouraged, but I wonder how much is just a result of my not having time to exercise her and train with her.
Thursday: Agility class in the morning. Her first run was soo slow that it was painful. She did all the obstacles though and picked up speed after that. Two people at class remarked that she seemed calmer to them, and she did walk up to one and licked her fingers. After class I drove out to the county animal shelter to check on dogs for the all breed rescue that I volunteer with. I decided to take Rogue into the lobby with me while I visited with one of the shelter staff. She was extremely stressed there. (Not that I’m surprised, I know she was probably picking up on the yucky vibes from the stressed animals in the shelter). 
I was surprised by the level of her anxiety though. There were times when I’d offer her a treat, just for sitting there with us, and she couldn’t take it. I decided to let her go outside in the parking lot where she felt more comfortable and then come back inside if she chose. This worked much better. I stood at the door, with it propped open. This allowed her to go out and then reorient to me and walk into the lobby on her own. I did that a couple of times and then realized how late it was and had to cut our training short.
Friday: Like I posted earlier, we tried to go to the county fair, but got rained out. For the few minutes that we were there, she did pretty well. This was also an extremely stressful situation. Far from ideal in soo many ways it’s not even funny! There were several new people, she didn’t know crammed under a shade tent, along with 2 new dogs and a kitten. Not to mention the thunder, lightning and rain. She pretty much stayed under the chair I sat in, but she was able to take treats, so she wasn’t as stressed as at the shelter Thurs. which I find interesting. She walked nicely back to the car too, tail up and not acting like she was rushing away from something bad.
So, these are my observations. I can see that in some situations she seems more willing to interact with people, and is a little more curious about her surroundings. This may be due to the flower essences and supplements, but I’m not totally sure. I had really hoped to pair the holistic remedies with training and exercise, but as you can see, for several of the days, I didn’t get any training or exercise done. I hope next week will be better.
We had good intentions today. The county fair is going on and the local county animal shelter was invited to be there today and tomorrow to show some of their adoptable pets. Since I used to work there and I still volunteer with the local all breed rescue in town I figured that I would at least stop by to say hello. Then I thought…hey, this could be one of our new places to train with the dogs for our August training challenge.
This would have been a great idea except for the fact that as I walked out the door with the dogs, we heard a big clap of thunder. We ignored it, and drove to town. Well, when we got there, it had started to sprinkle very lightly. Nothing to pay much attention to though. So, I unloaded Twist and Rogue and we went to sit under the shade tent with the shelter staff. Figured we’d just wait out this little storm. LOL Needless to say from the pictures, we changed our plans and came home.
Here’s the view from my house right now.
The agility field looks like it’s sitting in a lake right now. I didn’t even have time to flip the ends of the tunnel down, so I’m going to have a huge mess to clean up when things dry up enough to walk out there. Oh, and I did I mention that the ceiling in the office has still got a leak.
I was going through old pictures and came across this one of Zoe when she was a puppy. This was the one and only time that I’ve ever tried to dress her in any kind of clothes. She thought I’d lost my mind. She bucked around like a bull at a rodeo to get that sweater off. Look at the size of those ears too! LOL
So in my search for help in training Rogue I seem to be running into alot of conflicting opinions. I’ve always known that there are a million and one different opinions on the best way to train a dog, but I’ve always been able to sort out what I thought was the best option for me and my dogs. I’ve never found myself quite so confused about what to think.
For example:
In dealing with shy dogs it used to be pretty commonly accepted that if you petted or consoled or treated them when they were exhibiting signs of fear that you were rewarding and reinforcing the fear itself. Well, that kind of makes sense to me. However, now it’s being said that because the dog is in such a fearful state of mind, it’s not possible for you to reinforce the fear because they aren’t processing/learning in that frame of mind, (which certainly seems true too), their brain is too busy reacting. Well, that kind of makes sense too. Hmmm…
Another example:
Some people say that at a certain point the dog just needs to work through the fear and find out that nothing bad happens to them, even though it makes them uncomfortable at the time. The other school of thought now is that you should not force the issue, or you will make it worse. They say that the dog should choose for themselves when they are ready to face these fears. I’ve always leaned towards the idea that eventually you have to work through your fears, (as long as they aren’t harmful), whether you want to or not. I don’t honestly see a time when she would choose to face things on her own that she’s learned in the first year and a half of her life to avoid. Course, I’ve never had a dog that has issues like Rogue.
Those are just a few of things that I’ve been trying to sort out lately. I do know that for the first time in my life, I have a dog that needs more than just training to overcome her obstacles. I soo hope that these new Flower Essences and diet supplements we got yesterday help her to be better able to process the training that we’re doing at the same time. If not though, we’ll try something else. We’re not going to give up, and I’m going to enjoy each small bit of progress that we make together. Rescuing a dog is always an interesting journey. I doubt that I’ll ever have another dog that will challenge me quite like her though…
August’s training challege is for me to train with the dogs (specifically Twist, Raven and Rogue), in 4 different locations this month and keep a record of how they reacted in each place. So…here’s our first update.
I didn’t really plan on including Friday in this challenge since I only had Twist and Rogue with me, but I think I’ll write down what we did anyway. I’m going to be as specific as I can about what was going on around us and different things that might have had an impact on how well the dogs responded in the new situation.
Time of Day: We didn’t actually get to the park to meet with our obedience trainer till probably close to 8:30 pm. I don’t think that this would be a time that I would normally choose as optimal for me or the dogs, but it’s what we had to work with on Friday.
Who was there: Cynthia, Levi and our Obedience instructor and Twist and Rogue.
Where we trained: The was a public park. There was a stage pretty close by where we set up to train, and it seemed like they were practicing for a play of some kind. They had music and people speaking into microphones and people sitting in front of the stage as an audience. There weren’t a lot of people walking around, probably because of the time of day, but the crowd by the stage was a pretty big distraction. I only noticed one other dog in the park as we were training with Twist, but it was walking with it’s owner and on a leash. Twist didn’t even seem to see it.
What we worked on: Twist: We walked around the park a bit before we did any training just to let him get an idea of where we were. Then once we had settled in a bit, our obedience instructor called a basic heeling pattern for us on leash and then off leash. He did well, except for his about turns were really wide. I was pretty happy with his focus in general though considering the level of distractions. We also did a couple of recalls, he paused on his first one and I had to give a second command. The next time he did fine. He did a very nice stand for exam, no problems there. We worked for a few minutes on his dumbell retrieve too. It’s coming along nicely. Rogue: I figured she had alot to process just going to a new vet and having a chiropractic adjustment for the first time, besides the fact that it was almost dark by the time we got done training with Twist. There were lights, but they were throwing funky shadows everywhere, so I just took her out and walked her around for a few minutes. She seemed to be doing fine, so then I asked for simple targeting to a lid. The last thing we did was walk in a group with Cynthia, her husband, our obedience instructor and Levi. The purpose was to see if we could get her to walk comfortably between me and another person. She struggled with this…I think part of it was that she was unsure to begin with and then couldn’t see well with the lighting as it was. Considering those two things, she didn’t do too bad. I would like to try it again during the day and see if she doesn’t have any easier time with it.
We had a busy day yesterday. Rogue had an appointment to go visit a vet in Park City for a chiropractic adjustment, and Twist and I had a semi-private lesson with our Obedience trainer afterwards.
Our friends Cynthia and Levi rode up with us and helped us find our way, since we’ve never been to this vet before. Things were running way behind schedule…like an hour and a half or more! So, we took the dogs for a walk around the office. It was pretty, still a few wildflowers blooming. Here’s a quick shot that I got of Rogue and Twist.
Levi went first to show Rogue that it was easy, since this was her first time to ever have an adjustment done. Rogue did pretty well I thought, considering that she really dislikes new people being near her, let alone touch her. She did have a sore spot, between her left front shoulder and elbow. She worked on that spot for quite a while, and we’re supposed to do the same for the next little while.
I also really wanted to talk to the vet about anything that might be able to help Rogue with her anxiety level. She gave us some flower essences to try and I’m supposed to be supplementing her food with Magnesium and Salmon Oil. Then we’re supposed to check back in a few weeks to see if there’s any progress to report. I really hope there is! I would say that 90% of the time, I’m just way overwhelmed by what a challenge Rogue’s issues are for our training and life and general.
It really makes me upset with the person who calls herself a breeder that is producing dogs like Rogue in the first place. I just can’t understand why you would continue allowing dogs with temperments like hers to breed! Then, not only did the family not do a good job in socializing Rogue when she was young, they just gave up on her when she wasn’t a cute puppy anymore! Oh, and the worst part is that once they turned Rogue, (formally known as Bonnie Jean), over to Sheltie Rescue of Utah…they went back to the same breeder and got another dog! Ughhh!!! Rescue can be soo frustrating. Rewarding too, but frustrating.
Anyway, it’s time for me to get off my soapbox, as my husband would say. LOL
