Archives: February2010

• Little of This, Little of That

  The thaw continues. Woohoo! Well, except for the mud part. Hopefully a few more days of this and it will start to dry out a bit. Maybe then I can even consider bathing everybody. Till it dries up though, that would be a total waste of time. They just seem to have a never ending ability to find the muddy parts of the yard. There is enough lawn showing through the snow that I couldn’t resist hauling the jump outside [...]

• Oh My!!!

  We all know I’ve been griping for months about the cold and the snow. Well, last week we had a good thaw and it was a horrible muddy mess, but it finally all seemed to be close to drying out when we got hit with that storm that dumped 7 in. of new snow on us. Bleh. Well, once again, it’s warmed up enough to really get things thawing and here’s what greeted me at the front door today. As [...]

• Jump Around the Clock

  The jump training continues. The first video is of Layla doing the tighter turn drill that had me baffled. I think it’s definitely better now that I’ve moved the jump. Here’s a short clip of the new and improved tighter turn drill. LOL The next video is of the Jump Around the Clock drill. We don’t need any industrial hand wheels to do this one. I just need to keep track of our imaginary hands of the clock. If I [...]

• Visiting the Puppies

  If the weather cooperates tomorrow, I’ll get to go visit with my friend’s litter of Malinois puppies. I’ve been trying to get up there once a week to play with and help socialize this litter and the bonus is that I get a little puppy fix at the same time. It sure beats sitting home looking for insurance quotes. Not that I will be looking for another puppy for quite a while! Honestly, the thought of having another puppy is [...]

• Training Dare

  Layla is not the only one around here that is getting some needed direction in her training. I also wanted to get something clear in mind for Dare. So, I found this great training outline by Sue Ailsby called the “Training Levels”. It is a really detailed program to give the dogs a good foundation of skills that are useful in Obedience, Agility and also in general life. Because it is so detailed I decided to move my posting about [...]

• More on the Tighter Turn Drill

  I always get uncomfortable videoing training sessions and posting them. I have to say though…I’m really glad that I’ve been stepping out of my comfort zone and doing it anyway. Yesterday was a perfect example. I came in after training with Layla a bit baffled. If I hadn’t had video, I probably would have still been scratching my head about why I was getting a different response from Layla on one side of the tighter turn drill than the other. [...]

• Layla’s Jump Work

  Layla and I went out today and did the first couple exercises on the DVD “One Jump, Two Jump”. The first exercise went really well. We’ve done it before, so it was more of a refresher for us than anything. The idea is to get the dog comfortable with the jump and to work your way up to full height, while keeping the dog’s head low and having them jump rounded. (I think). The handler is not supposed to lure [...]

• Training Plans for Layla

  Lately I’ve found myself stuck in a rut of just going out to train with the young girls, without much direction in mind. Not the most productive way to train. LOL So, the last week or so, I started really trying to sort out in my head a direction to go with each of the girls. For Layla, I think I’m going to focus more on agility stuff right now. I think I did really well when I had a [...]

• Penny Loves the Snow

  So to balance out my negative view of the weather we’re having, I thought I’d share Penny’s opinion. Penny has always LOVED the snow. As a puppy she would just bury her head in the fresh snow and run! The Penny Snowplow. LOL In more recent years she has changed her style a bit, though she still seems to really love the feel of the snow. Now she likes to roll in the snow. I got some pictures of her [...]

• Snow….Again

  I know you’re probably all sick of hearing me complain about the weather, but brace yourselves because you’re about to hear about it again. Just last weekend when we went to the agility trial I was posting pictures of the dogs running on grass. Granted, it was pretty sad looking grass, and you didn’t want to kneel down because it’s wet where the snow had recently melted, but it was grass! Yesterday, this is what I woke up to. and [...]