Monthly Archives: March 2010

On the Road…Again

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So, this weekend is Twist’s obedience trial. He’s entered on Friday and Saturday. We’ll be back up in Farmington again. Seems like we’ve spent more time in the Salt Lake area than we have at home the last little while. Fortunately, the dogs don’t mind traveling and for the most part neither do I. One of the only things that I don’t like about traveling is trying to eat well. :-P

Last year a friend of mine convinced me to try a diet with her and basically it involved just eating fresh whole foods rather than all the processed refined junk that it so easy and convenient. I felt so much better and I lost about 25 lbs. The problem is that ever since we went to AZ for DOCNA Championships last Oct. though I’ve had a hard time eating right consistently. In the last 6 months I’ve gained back around 5-7 lbs. Sometimes it’s just so tempting to try to find some fad diets that work, but I just don’t think anything but eating right and exercising more works for me. Since this is the last trial for this month until May, I think I’ll be able to get back on track starting next week.

Back to the obedience trial. Twist will be giving Open a try again. He’s such a funny boy. I know that he knows all the exercises, but he’s just so distractable. Hopefully with this being an indoor trial the distractions will be at a minimum and he’ll do great. He can do such nice work when he’s on. I should be able to update everybody tomorrow on how it goes.

Things That Didn’t Go According to the Plan

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Well, here is Zoe’s sassy run from the DOCNA trial. It’s not pretty, I warn you. LOL But, I think it’s fair to say that it’s an even mixture of poor handling and sass. I don’t know how many of you have seen the movie “Up” but my husband says that you wouldn’t want Zoe to have one of the collars that the dogs on that movie had that translated what they were thinking into English when we have a run like this. :-)

Since I’m talking about things that don’t go as planned…I’ll tell you what happened this afternoon. For the last week or so, I’ve thought that something felt odd with my front teeth. They didn’t hurt, but something didn’t feel right. That is absolutely horrifying for someone like me. It’s nearly impossible to think of something that scares me more than having to go to the dentist. You’d think that after I worked in a dental lab for a couple years it would have helped my ridiculously unfounded fears, but it didn’t. I still avoid going like the plague. I’d rather do just about anything, even go shopping for rustic furniture if it would keep me from having to go to the dentist. Well, today I was flossing my teeth and out comes a filling from the backside of the front tooth. Ack! Now I just can’t seem to keep my tongue out of what feels like a crater in the front of my mouth. So, joy of joys…I will be going to the dentist tomorrow. LOL Definitely, NOT PART OF THE PLAN…

Weekend Update

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So, the DOCNA trial on Saturday was great. Zoe started off the day with Jumpers, her favorite. She had a beautiful run. Unfortunately, our video camera wasn’t cooperating and so a friend has the runs on her camera, so I can’t post anything yet. Her Beginner’s Gambler course was next. Again, beautiful. Then Standard, or regular or whatever they call it. LOL It was a train wreck. I ticked Zoe off at the start of the course, giving her a really hard “here” to get her to come in to the dogwalk, rather than the tunnel on the outside. Well, she came in and told me off about the cue. Bleh. That’s never a good sign. So when I did get her on the dogwalk, she just flew across and bailed the contact. I wasn’t going to let that pass, since you can train in the ring in DOCNA. I took her back and we did the dogwalk again. I think that just made her even more ticked off. We did get around the course, but not without several other bobbles and arguing from Zoe. She’s such a brat! I just love her. I’m sure it would really make me angry if it happened all the time, but here and there it just makes me happy that she’s still feeling that sassy at her age.

Anyway, the class to qualify for DOCNA Championships is the North American Challenge. It would have been a really pretty run, except that again on the dogwalk, (maybe a little sass was still left over), she wouldn’t turn off it into the tunnel, instead she jumped back onto the dogwalk first. So that’s a 10 point fault. Fortunately…DOCNA allows up to 12 faults in this class. So, despite our bobble, Zoe will be going to Championships again this year. :-)

The drive up and back both had parts I could have done without. On the way up we saw lots of deer because it was so darn early in the morning. We almost hit one coming into a town. Fortunately, Zoe was in a crate, so she was fine. My friend’s dog was riding loose in the back seat, and she got thrown off the seat, but was still ok. On the way home, we hit snow, and rain and slush and mess. It made for a very tense ride home. I’m definitely going to be grateful for warmer weather and decent road conditions again in the next few months.

My husband is out putting in more resumes today. One is a janitorial position. Not his ideal line of work, but it’s with the school district, so that part is good. He probably won’t be using any Anilox roll brushes for cleaning printing presses, just regular old cleaning. LOL For the rest of the week, a friend of ours has asked him to refinish her cabinets, so that’s a small job to keep him busy.

I’m headed out later today for an obedience lesson with Dare. Should be fun. Hopefully we’ll come away with lots of interesting stuff to share. :-)

Now What?

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This post is more to help me sort out what I need to get done today than anything. I need to bathe both Zoe and Dare this morning. Dremel nails too. I have to boarders being dropped off this morning. Then I need to go back up to my friend’s house and finish helping her clean in preparation for everyone coming in over the weekend to pick up their puppies. :-) I hadn’t planned on a second trip up there, but we just didn’t get as much done yesterday as I had hoped. Had to break into the cleaning time to take the puppies on a little short road trip to see how they handled that experience. They did great by the way! Here’s a couple pictures of the cuties.
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I better stop while I’m ahead. I’ll just keep posting more and more cute puppy pictures if I don’t stop now. Anyway, after I get done up there today, I need to come back home, pack up the car for the DOCNA trial tomorrow. I wish I could say I was looking forward to it more than I am, but I think the busy week is taking it’s toll. I’m going to need to go to some Outer Banks vacation homes to recover after it’s all over. LOL Actually, I can’t say I’m not looking forward to running agility tomorrow…it’s that I’m going with a friend that doesn’t want to drive to Salt Lake tonight, so we are going to have to leave here at 4:30 am tomorrow. Plus it’s supposed to snow again. Do we all sense a theme here? Whenever I need to drive to Salt Lake, it snows. Bleh. Anyway, hopefully the roads are good for us, and I’ll have lots of fun stuff to report when we get back. :-)

Stacy Day

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So, Layla and I had a great day at the Stacy Peadot-Goudy workshop today. We left this morning at 5:30 and it was snowing, again. About 20 miles away from home we got on a road that no one else had driven on yet, including the plows and even though there wasn’t much snow, my little Honda Fit just doesn’t do well. I drove about 40 mph from there on for about the next hour. Needless to say, I would have been thrilled to have been sitting in front of a nice home theater seating rather than out driving on those roads.

Once we got there though, it was well worth the drive. I can’t say that the weather was much better once we got there. I was bundled up, in a t-shirt, knit jacket, a fleece pull-over, and then my heavy winter coat, gloves and I borrowed a hat from a friend. It still wasn’t enough when the wind was blowing. LOL The agility was awesome though. Made sitting in cold well worth it. I was auditing the morning session and then Layla had a working spot this afternoon. We worked on some really fun sequences and all in all, I thought Layla did well. She did great on her weaves the first three runs. Hit the entrances very nicely and weaved all 12 poles no problem. After that, she struggled. I think it’s just that we had to kind of rush through our weave work last fall, and haven’t had much chance to work on it, since winter came. I think she’s got a basic understanding of the weaves, but under stress, they aren’t a strong behavior yet. Just green dog stuff.

Another weak point I knew would show up would be her contacts. When she came up lame, I didn’t have a chance to really solidify what I was doing with the criteria for the end of the contacts. I had intentions of retraining, but again the weather got the best of me.

So, I really want to be able to see some improvement in both areas by the time we have our next Stacy workshop in April. That means that I may have to haul the equipment back out into the field and hope it doesn’t sink into the mud so we can work it. On a good note, I can see where some of the future steps on that Jump training DVD will be helpful in the kind of sequences that we worked today. It’s always nice to see that you might be on the right track with something you’re training. :-)

Busy, Busy Week

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It’s going to be a busy, busy week. Tomorrow I need to dremel nails, brush dogs and make treats for Wednesday!!! Wednesday I am going to Salt Lake for an agility day with Stacy Peardot-Goudy. I’m really excited, but also nervous. Everyone that has been to these mini workshops just raves about how great they are. Then I have to get back home and Thurs. I have a cleaning job, Friday I have to bathe dogs and pack to leave again for the DOCNA trial on Sat. back up in Farmington. It looks like I’ll be racking up the miles on the car this week.

I’ve spent the last few days printing up some things for a some friends of mine. Not on an epson tm-t88iv, or anything, just on my regular printer. It was one of those projects that seemed like a good idea at the time, but once you get started you realize that you’ve taken on something much bigger than you expected. At least I’m pretty much done now, and I hope they like it. :-)

Layla and I got out in the yard today and I finally got the video camera out too. So, here is a really quick video clip of her working on the next step of the Jump Around the Clock drill. It’s called, “run by” if I remember right. The idea is to run with the dog, (no stay or wait required) which should encourage an extended jump style. You do the same thing you did on the previous drills, working the jump from different numbers on the face of the clock. Here is the video. It’s nothing great, but you get the idea.

Anyway, I’ll try to update throughout the week as I have time. If you want to check out what Dare is working on, here’s her latest trick video.

Weddings, Work and Winter

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I had every intention of posting before now, but I’m not really sure where this week has gone. I do know that as far as the update about the work portion of this post goes, I don’t have a whole lot of news. My husband waited all day yesterday for the possible call back for the second interview for the job he interviewed for on Friday. No calls :-( I have mixed emotions about the other interview he did on Monday. It was with Home Depot. In the first interview they said that they only offer any new employee part time work for a period of three months. That definitely isn’t enough for us to live on, so the only way it will work is if it is a small enough amount of work that it doesn’t affect the unemployment. So, of course they have called back, but so far just to check on his availability, not to confirm a job offer. Bleh. Looks like I’ll be starting into the medical coding course in the next couple weeks.

As for the wedding part of the post…we got news that both my niece and my nephew will be getting married. We haven’t received any invitations yet, but we know that my nephews wedding is the 2nd of April. My niece will most likely be married in June sometime. Hard to believe that either of them are old enough to be getting married. Crazy!

And now for the winter part of the post. Everything was drying very nicely and…we all know what I’m going to say next. We got more snow today. We’ll see if we get more overnight, but I sure hope not. I have been working with Layla and Dare out in the yard for the last few days, but I haven’t had a chance to get video. I’d like to say that I will get some soon, but I’ll just have to see. This next week is going to be insanely busy.

More of the Same Craziness

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I’m sure you’re all sick of hearing my crazy ramblings that have nothing to do with the dogs. I’m pretty sick of it myself, but I can’t seem to get away from the spinning in my head lately. It’s definitely a habit that I’d like to get rid of. It’s not so bad that I like to sort through things from every possible angle and then I want to come to a decision. The part of the habit I’d like to change is that when I’m trying to sort through something, sometimes I get stuck and I can’t seem to shut my brain down. I just spin and spin and spin about it in my head. My husband, on the other hand, likes to think about things in his own time and he rarely feels the terrible pressure to come to a decision quickly. So, the longer he takes to get around to thinking about things, the more time I have alone with my crazy thoughts. As a result, the more you’ll probably hear more of the same ramblings from me. Ugh! Sorry!

So, while I wear myself out mentally running through scenarios that haven’t happened yet, and might not ever happen, he is much more productive. He is looking for work, but he’s also just catching up on things around here that need to be done, like an oil change for the car. Or looking into a tune up for the truck. Another day he worked on some cabinets for his mom. The thing I envy most, is that he has the ability to just set aside his thoughts and relax too. I soo wish I could do that. He can just watch some tv, or surf for information about electronics that he’d like to get, or read about random stuff like an Acura Integra, a car we don’t even own. LOL I can do that too, but while I’m doing it, I’m thinking about ten other things. I don’t know…I better watch out, he’ll be ready to send me to the Houston auto repair place for an overhaul on my brain. Anyway, enough rambling for now. I’ll get back to dog training stuff later on today.