Resq TailsThe trials and triumphs of rescued dogs

Here’s what greeted us this morning.  It doesn’t feel too cold though, so I think this will all be gone by this afternoon. The weird part is that I even think it’s a little pretty today. Wow! How’s that for sounding positive? Are we all sure that my husband isn’t having some influence on my thinking.  LOL

Just so you know it’s really still me here, I’m not all that excited about following through with my plans for this morning.  My friend has her basic obedience class this morning, and I told her that I’d bring a dog or two to train off the side of her field, so that I can be used as a slight distraction for her students and they can do the same for me. Sometimes it makes me think I’m crazy to have chosen dog sports as a hobby for myself.  Couldn’t I just be happy with a playstation 3 like so many other people? Then I could stay in my nice warm house, and never leave my couch. Hehe. I don’t think that’s going to happen. I wouldn’t trade a day out training with the dogs!

So, I spent the better part of yesterday trying to figure out how to edit video to play in slow motion. I downloaded a couple programs, couldn’t figure out what I was doing and finally looked again at the program I had, and noticed that it was an option on there, but I’d just overlooked it before. What a dork! Seemed to be a theme yesterday. I was absolutely oblivious. I got the funniest video of Dare training that shows just what I mean.

I did get around to editing Layla’s video from the last couple days into slow motion though too. I think that I really like her striding better with just 2 stride regulators than 3. The slow motion really does help so that you can see things better. Here is that video.

In other news, my husband decided he’d better try to finish up the project for his mom that he was working on. So, he called her to see if he could come down today and install the cabinets. She said no. She hasn’t painted the wall behind where the cabinets go yet. It drives me crazy. She’s been asking him to do this job for a while now, and he didn’t have the time when he was working full time. Now that he has the time, she just keeps coming up with things to stall the progress. I don’t think she’s even thinking that if he does get the part time job at Home Depot it’s going to make it harder for him to come down to install the cabinets and cut out the countertop for her Franke sinks. Oh well, once again, I’m worrying about something that no one else seems to even give a second thought about. You’d think I’d learn, but apparently not. LOL

Today was just weird. It didn’t start out that way though. In fact, this week has been going pretty well really. It all seemed to get weird in the afternoon. I guess it all started about 1:00. I was waiting for a client to come and drop off their dogs. They finally came about 1:30, but when I came in I had huge puddle of water on the kitchen floor. From the soaking wet legs on Raven, I figured that she must have dumped the water, but the weird thing was that the waterer was still upright, so she apparently just dug a couple gallons on water onto the floor. WEIRD!

I let the dogs outside to play for a while in the nice sunny weather, and I went out to clean up the yard about 3:30. This time I was greeted by a totally muddy Raven. Her legs, belly, and even her nose were muddy and gross because she had gotten into the pond that was drained and that has accumulated rain and guck and leaves and disgusting goo over the winter. I thought that was really bizarre too, I mean what in the world is up with her? WEIRD!!

When I let the dogs back into house, I washed Raven’s still muddy legs and then went out to train with Layla and Dare. Well, this time when I came back in, my husband was doing exactly what I had done earlier in the afternoon, he was mopping up a lake of water in the kitchen again. While we were standing there Raven went right back over the waterer and started digging in it. That was just too weird for me. None of our dogs dig in the water. Granted Raven is an odd duck sometimes, but she doesn’t dig in the waterer. Anyway, it occurred to me while I was standing there watching her, that she seemed to be trying to get a drink, but was not able to. Like she was digging at the water out of frustration. I had a thought. I wondered if she was able to move her mouth correctly. So, I offered her a treat. She tried to take it, but there was definitely something wrong. Like her mouth wouldn’t open right. WEIRD!!!

So, by this time it was 6:00 (of course). Nothing like this ever happens during normal business hours. Anyway, I scooped her up, didn’t bother to call the vet, just thought if I drove fast enough, I might still catch someone there. I was in such a hurry that I forgot to grab a leash, and when my phone rang at the vet’s office, I couldn’t answer it. Come to find out, I had my own phone, but had also grabbed my husband’s phone too. Then I didn’t know which one was ringing and couldn’t figure out why it wouldn’t answer when I pushed the buttons. LOL What a dork!

Well, turns out that it was something relatively simple. Thank goodness. It turned out to be a piece of what I think was a cow hoof. It was wedged between a couple of her back molars which kept her from being able to close her mouth. I am so relieved that it wasn’t something more. I can only imagine how uncomfortable she must have been though. Poor girl. While she was sedated, I had them pull another tooth in the front that was loose and had been growing out past all the other teeth. So, Raven is spending a quiet evening recovering tonight, but I imagine she’ll be much happier tomorrow.

In other weird news….my husband finally got a call from Home Depot for a second interview. They told him that they’d like to hire him, he just needed to do their drug test and have a background check. So he agreed, but here’s the weird part. I asked him what position they were offering him for, he didn’t know. I asked him how much they pay, he didn’t know. Am I the only person out there that would ask those things? I mean I understand those aren’t the first question you burst out with in an initial interview maybe, but I think they are certainly reasonable if they offer you a job. LOL I think it’s just WEIRD!!!! Oh, and they only hire part-time for like a three month period. Which I guess is fine, as long as it doesn’t affect the unemployment. Who knows…maybe it will be a good thing to do right now, while he looks for something else.

Anyway, that’s my weird day.

Got the video camera out to see what we’ve got going so far with this running A-Frame. I have 3 stride regulators on the A-Frame in this clip. I’m not sure if I want to adjust the spacing and maybe just try two or not. I want her to have a nice comfortable stride coming down, so that she isn’t likely to bail and so that she is landing well within that contact zone before exiting. Here’s what it looks like so far. Any thoughts, comments?

I can tell you that all this running on my part can’t help but burn off a few calories. LOL I’m really out of shape. Sure is nice to back outside training more though. It was really cold though yesterday, as you can probably tell from the ugly winter coat. It doesn’t matter though, being outside playing with the dogs beats sitting around inside surfing sites that don’t have anything I need…like mens health products extenze.

Anyway, I think I might play around with the number of stride regulators and the spacing just a bit more and see what if I get anything that looks more comfortable to her than what we’ve already got. I’m pleased that she seems to be getting nice speed and is coming all the way down the A-Frame right now though.

It’s so nice to have the equipment back outside again! It is raining on it this morning, but at least we’ve been able to use it for the past two days. My goal is to get a consistent running A-frame with both Layla and Raven. Of course, the retraining with Layla is going much better than it is with Raven. Raven just struggles to run the A-frame with speed and confidence. She wants to pause at the top and then that makes her stutter step, well, it’s just not pretty. The problem has been that when I’ve tried to go ahead and work with that pause and just ask for either a 2o/2o or a 4 on the floor, she pauses, and then runs down a ways and bails. Doesn’t seem to matter what kind of hoop or target or mat I use, I still get this silly bailing off too high with her. So, she’s going back to the running A-frame too now. Layla on the other hand, is doing well. She loves to do anything full speed, so my only challenge right now is figuring out where I want the stride regulators to get the most out of the speed to get her the furthest into the contact zone. I have tried watching her as we’re running, but it’s hard to see while I’m moving. I also asked my husband to help me watch last night, but he wasn’t that much help either. LOL I think I am going to set up the camera and see where her stride is taking her right now, and see if it looks comfortable or not, and then adjust things accordingly. One thing I can say is that with all this running I shouldn’t be needing any quick trim burn and cleanse products in the near future.

As for the dogwalk…I am happy to report that Layla seems to be understanding the 2o/2o position nicely. She was 100% on it yesterday. I let Dare run the dogwalk as well, to see if the work we’ve done over the winter on the board in the barn was still in her head, and it is! She is also doing a good job translating it to the full dogwalk. I’ve been setting a pretty slow pace on the dogwalk, but yesterday I did start to add a bit of speed to increase the criteria. I’m also trying to remember to send them ahead of me, to run alongside them and stop at the contact zone and to run clear past the end of the contact zone without slowing down to give them a clear picture of what I expect of them, regardless of what I’m doing. So far, so good. Let’s just hope this rain doesn’t make things too muddy out there today, and that we’ll be able to train later on today.

Guess what? I was putting the SD card back in my camera and I thought I’d just check and see if I’d erased the video clips off the card, and Twist’s clip showed up. That is really weird because the computer wouldn’t recognize the file and I figured it was just lost altogether. So, I put it back in the computer again, and voila! It recognized it this time. Go figure. So, here is the video of Twist’s second day. The camera did die just before we did the broadjump, so you’ll just have to take my word for it that he did it well.

So, here’s what we’ve been working on this afternoon…..

I think I’m a jumping ahead of myself a bit, and the equipment is probably going to get snowed on a bit because of my impatience, but I couldn’t resist.  The weather is nice today and I want to start retraining Layla and Raven on the A-frame and Layla’s 2o/2o on the dogwalk.  So, my husband, good sport that he is, helped me haul everything back out of the barn and set it up in the field.  It feels so good to look out and not see a big blank open space.  All those bright colors just can’t help but make you feel more cheerful.

I’m really glad to have everything out there all set up so that I can get out of the house and do something other than just debate about whether to try this whole online degree thing or not. I just don’t want to think about having to do school again. LOL But, if I just suck it up and do it, hopefullly I can still find some work from home to help out around here. In the meantime today though, I’m going to head back out and play with the dogs while the sun is shining.

Just thought I’d post some photos from the last month. The first ones are from the first of the month, you might be able to see some of the snow that was still on the trail. After I got home and got to looking at these, I thought it was funny, they kind of remind me of Miley and Guinness’ pictures. I hadn’t even thought of it when I just had Zoe and Dare with me that day. So, here are our copy cat photos. LOL

And then here are some from yesterday. After the obedience trial we took Twist, Dare and Layla for a hike before we drove back home. You can see it was a beautiful, much warmer day! Yay!

We’re back from the Obedience Trial.  We don’t have any Q’s to show for our weekend, but I was thrilled with Twist nonetheless.  On Friday, he did a good job, but he anticipated the drop on recall and so we failed that exercise and NQ’d.  In the out of site stay groups, the dog next to Twist got up and was tried to leave the ring, but Twist held his stays beautifully despite the distraction.  I was really proud of him.  Anyway, here is the video of yesterday exercises.

Today, Twist did a much better job than yesterday on everything, his heeling was better, he got all his finishes and we were sitting on a score of 192 1/2 when we went in for the stays.  Unfortunately, for whatever reason, Twist layed down right away during the out of site sit.    So another NQ for us today.  The out of site down stay was really exciting.  Seriously.  LOL  Right at the end of the 5 minutes, we were all lined up to return to the ring, when the ring exploded into action.  As we came around the corner all I could see was that all the dogs but 2 were up and running around the ring.  So, I guess what happened was that a pigeon had flown down and all through the stays was walking around just outside the ring taunting the dogs.  Right before we came back, the bird actually came into the ring, and then decided to fly.  That was just too much for the dogs closest and they broke to chase it.  When they broke, so did the rest of the line.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it!  Anyway, there were three dogs that were qualifying up to that point, so the judge let them re-test the long down.  One was a friend of mine and her dog passed and Q’d. 

Anyway, my camera malfunctioned today and for whatever reason, my computer is saying that it can’t recognize the files, so I don’t have the video of Twist for today.  If I get it figured out, I’ll post it later.

Today after the Obedience trial at another part of the fairgrounds they had Course a Lure set up. I thought that it would be fun to let the young girls give it a try. Layla had a great time as usual. Course, there’s really not too much that she doesn’t enjoy. Too bad I can’t have more of her energy and zest for life. I wouldn’t need any anti ageing cream if I was like her. Anyway, I was fortunate enough to have someone willing to take still pictures and someone else that I suckered into taking video.

So, here are some of the pictures.

And here’s the video of her first run through the course. She’s so funny. She does the line of little jumps and then thinks that maybe the little lure must have gone back under them, so she had to check to make sure. LOL By the third time she ran the course, she had it figured out though and she ran it in 25 seconds. Those little legs can fly.