Monthly Archives: February 2010

Little of This, Little of That

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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 today for Layla’s one jump work. The problem was that with all the mud around the edges of the grass, I kept slipping and couldn’t keep up with her to be in the right spot for the run by part of the jump around the clock drill. So, no video for today. Maybe in another day or so it will be better conditions out there.

My husband went out for an interview for a job yesterday. It’s not really an ideal job, but it’s a job. He thinks that the interview went ok, but of course them more time he has to think about it, the more he’s questioning himself. Bleh. Hate how the mind works sometimes! I guess they will be calling for second interviews on Monday, so we’ll know more then. Monday he also has another interview. So, at least there are some possibilities. :-) The other fortunate thing is that we are not in need of any bad credit credit cards. In fact, we don’t have anything on credit cards so that’s a big relief right now.

The other thing that we are tossing around is the possibility of me taking some online courses to get certified to be able to do medical coding and billing. We have a couple friends that have done it and it seems to be a field that is growing right now. So, I am going to be talking to them a bit more in detail about what is involved and the chances that I would be able to find employment working from home once I finished the courses. I don’t have much choice in that regard, since someone needs to be here to run the boarding kennel too.

Anyway, just a little glimpse of what is running through my head right now. :-)

Oh My!!!

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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.

Layla and Dare muddy

Dare muddy

Layla muddy

As you can see, keeping my house clean for the next little while is going to be a real task. LOL It never ceases to amaze me how dirty these two can get. But, they sure do have a good time running and playing out there, so I guess a little clean up is well worth it. :-) In fact it’s not really anything to complain about. It’s not something serious like if someone we knew had Mesothelioma Cancer or something. Today I’m really grateful to have what teeny tiny problems are mine. I’m going to try to keep in mind that these two muddy girls are trying to tell me that spring and warmer weather are just around the corner.

Jump Around the Clock

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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 remember the drill correctly, you are to have the dog jump from all around the clock. So, if you set the dog at 6 you go to 12 on the clock. If you set the dog at 4 you go to 10 etc. The next step would be that you start changing up the distance of dog from the jump and also your distance from the jump to test out their ability to recognize the need to either extend or collect at the jump. I am thinking that we may run into some trouble doing this in the limited space in the barn. We’ll see though. In the meantime, here is the first part of the drill that we’ve done.

Visiting the Puppies

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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 about the furthest thing from my mind, with all the work that I am trying to do with Layla and Dare. But, that having been said, there is just nothing like puppy breath and puppy antics. The puppies are about a month old now, so they are really starting to get to that adorable, fun stage. Well, it’s a fun stage for me, since I don’t have any of the work that comes with trying to keep up with them now. Anyway, I’ll be hoping for no snow in the afternoon and clear roads so I can go play.

Training Dare

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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 Dare’s training to her own blog. Don’t worry, it’s not like we’re not going all the way to medical travel Mexico or anything. I just didn’t want hog all of ResqTails with posts about Dare, (who certainly isn’t a rescue). :-) There will still be posts about Dare on here too, if you don’t want to be bothered with having to check out yet another blog. LOL For those of you that are gluttons for punishment though and that do want to read more about Dare’s training, here is Dares new blog.

More on the Tighter Turn Drill

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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. Thankfully we didn’t need a finger pulse oximeter to help us figure out the solution. LOL Seems that all we needed were some really helpful observations from everyone. Someone mentioned placement of treats, someone else that maybe I was seeing a tighter turn in one direction because she just prefers one side, and finally that she may have been uncomfortable turning towards the wall. I appreciate all the comments, both on and off the blog. I thought about it and figured the easiest one to test first was if it had anything to do with my placement of of the jump near the wall. Guess what? That seemed to be the problem. :-) I moved the jump to a different spot today and she started jumping much tighter to that left side of the jump. Woot, thanks Diana for the observation!

Layla’s Jump Work

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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 the dog or give any signal, just let the dog offer jumping. So, here is a short clip of Layla doing the first exercise.

The second exercise is supposed to help with teaching the dog tighter turns. The handler is to stand on the approach side of the jump. Ideally, the dog is supposed to read this as a cue to collect as they approach the jump and turn tightly back to the handler. I noticed two things when we did this drill. One, Layla isn’t jumping with her head very low. In fact, she looks to me like she jumps with her head really high. I think part of this is because she’s so short. Of course the dog in the video is a Border Collie and so the style of jumping is different all together anyway. Anyway…someone mentioned that maybe if I tossed the reward before she’s done jumping her head might be lower. That makes sense. I will probably try that tomorrow. The other thing that I noticed is that she is turning tighter in one direction than in the other. When I stand to her left side, she is still jumping almost in the center of the jump, then hesitating, and then turning back. I am curious to see if it’s the same tomorrow. Anyway, here is the video of the second exercise.

Training Plans for Layla

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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 goal of getting her weaving. However, once she got the general idea and the weather turned all bad, I lost a bit of focus. Ok, so I lost a lot of focus and motivation. Maybe some nutritional supplements would help. :-P We are limited to a much smaller space in the barn right now, but that’s really no excuse. I got a DVD called “One Jump, Two Jump” by Sandy Rogers a while back. It gives you a lot of exercises to do in limited space to build a good foundation for handling. I’m going to watch it again today and get started with Layla. I’ll try to keep you posted on our progress.

Penny Loves the Snow

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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 out after the storm yesterday, so I thought I’d share.

STEP 1: Bury the head…

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STEP 2: Get the sides involved….

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and the other side….

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STEP 3: Prepare for the shake…

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STEP 4: Shake it! Shake it! Shake it! LOL

Penny snow1

Penny snow2

And then you’re all set. Hope you have as much fun in the snow as Penny does! :-)

Snow….Again

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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.

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and this….

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and this…

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Before the storm was done, we had about 7 inches of really, really wet heavy snow blanketing everything. It warmed up just a bit again in the afternoon and melted part of that down into more of an icy crusted several inches. :-(

Now…it’s snowing again! I’m really so tired of this. I just want warmer weather and no more chiseling poop out of the frozen snow/ice. Is that too much to ask? LOL Apparently it is, if you live in Utah.