Well, I thought that earlier in the week my training challenge might be to take Twist to a ring set-up to work on his stays, but my friend changed her mind about going up to the ASCA trial yesterday. Which was fine. I was tired anyway. Then she emailed this morning saying maybe we should go today, but then we both decided against making the drive to Salt Lake this afternoon. It’s such a bummer that the ring set-ups and stuff are 2 1/2 hours away, (one way). Makes it so hard to be motivated to go.

So, I guess you’re just going to have to hear about Dare’s stride regulator work for this week. It’s certainly a challenge. Even though it’s an odd one. So, here’s the challenge. Dare jumps the stride regulator. The problem is that she lands as close to the front of it as possible. So for all intents and purposes it’s pointless. LOL Personally, I’d just bag the whole idea, but the person we are working with on Dare’s jump training said it would be helpful to us if we could get her to use it correctly.

Here’s what we’ve tried this week. She suggested just setting her up a foot or so behind it and going out in front and kneeling with a treat in my hand like a target to try to get her to land further away from the front of the jump. It was kind of successful. Then she said we could also try just having a fun game of fetch over the stride regulator and see if that lengthened out the stride. We tried that too. Next you’ll remember Diana suggested uprights might help. I had tried this earlier, but thought I’d try it again anyway. My mom suggested flipping the stride regulator upside down to present a different picture. Tried that on Friday I think it was. Andrea had suggested striping the stride regulator like a jump bar to see if that visual helped. Tried that tonight.

Here’s what seemed to be true in almost every scenario. If she was set up just behind the stride regulator, and I targeted her out a couple of feet from the front, she did land a little further out in front than before. However, if I put another jump out 4 feet from the stride regulator and targeted past the second jump, she reverted right back to her pattern of jumping and landing her front and rear feet directly in front of the stride regulator rather than splitting the difference of the 4′ between the jumps.

In the case of the fetching over the stride regulator. That was a mixed grab bag of results. Sometimes she looked like she was just striding over it, like you might expect. Other times she jumped it, with a decent amount of distance on the landing side, and once…she came back to me carrying the toy and took off about 7 feet in front of the stride regulator in this huge leap.

Go figure.

I think when the trainer gets back on Monday she’s going to be wishing she had looked for different jobs while she was gone, so she didn’t have to try to figure out what in the world is going on in Dare’s brain as far as jumping is concerned.

One of the interesting things about having the boarding kennel here is the variety of things that people bring along with their pets. I see a huge range of foods, ranging from brands you can get at any grocery store, to exclusive brands you’ve never heard of. I also get to talk to people about supplements and treats and edible dog dental chews.

Sometimes I find myself intrigued by new products and sometimes not so much. One thing I have to admit that I love the idea of is dental chewies that would really give you clean teeth. Honestly, I think I would just love anything that would extend the time between vet visits for dentals. LOL

I wonder about these Nylabone Nubz dental treats. They are supposed to clean teeth, freshen breath, (which is what Raven needs so badly!), reduce plaque and tartar. They have no added sugar, salt, plastic or preservatives and they are Gluten-free.

So, I tend to be a sucker for a sale, and I guess there is a coupon for $3.50 in the Costco monthly coupon book that’s good until the 12th of September. I might have to go take a look, and stop at Costco on my next trip to Salt Lake.

So, this morning I’m chatting with my mom, like I do every morning. It’s a routine for us. I call and check and make sure that they are doing fine at the farm and she asks what plans I have for the day, and then off we go. LOL Well, this morning she was asking about Dare’s jump training, and I was telling her that a friend of ours wanted to see some video of Dare doing some one jump and two jump exercises. In these exercises, she wanted me to switch up the jump heights, and the even if the bar is straight across or not, each repetition. Just to provide a different visual for her to solve in jumping. Our friend said she even hangs odd things off the jumps sometimes, to change things up. Wonder if she’s ever lit up the jump with white led christmas lights? Just kidding!

Anyway, the other trainer that has been helping with our jumping asked that I work with Dare on recognizing the stride regulator as a jump. At this point, Dare seems to be convinced that a stride regulator is an object that you attempt to land your front feet directly in front of, no matter how far away from the next obstacle this places your take-off. Oh, and sometimes, it’s just a springboard for your back feet. Bleh, not ideal. So, yesterday I worked on trying to just get her to lengthen out her stride over the stride regulator by playing fetch back and forth, etc. I had some success, but nothing ground breaking.

So back to my mom…I’m telling her the same thing I’ve just written, and she says, “Why don’t you try flipping the stride regulator over?” It kind of took me by suprise. What an interesting, simple thing to try. Why hadn’t I thought of that? LOL All I’m trying to do is get her to look at the stride regulator in a different manner, and it being upside down would certainly look different. Sometimes my mom just cracks me up. She is so practical, and yet absolutely brilliant at times. Anyway, I can’t wait to give that a try tomorrow. Even if it doesn’t work, I think my mom should get bonus points for a new twist on this exercise.

I seem to struggle to find balance in most areas of my life. I don’t know if that’s true of many of you, or not. I feel like even when I find a nice balance, I don’t keep it long. LOL

In regards to training, I find myself all overwhelmed by Dare’s jump training right now. I really don’t think it would be an exaggeration to say that it’s almost all consuming at times. I think it was Sara that commented that a lot of her readers were up much later than she stays up the other day. Well, I can tell you that I was probably up way past my normal bedtime watching and rewatching and rewatching video of Dare jumping. (And in between, reading other people’s blogs). Before I turn this into a novel about jump training, I’m going to move along. I’ll post more on the details of Dare’s jump work and what’s going on with it on her blog.

As far as achieving a balance with the boarding kennel…My husband was going to look into gates for me, but he hasn’t gotten around to it yet. I have tried to find a little balance even without my plan of making things more formal with the gate by just telling people that pick up times are earlier than I have let them be in the past. Believe it or not, even with all the annoyance it causes me to wait around for people to show up, or worse yet to just have them show up unannounced at odd hours, I still find it nearly impossible to actually set boundaries for them. Too bad a barcode scanner wasn’t the answer to my problems. I’d buy one today.

I haven’t found any balance with the schoolwork yet either. I’m ready to just give up completely on it. I keep thinking if I can’t find time to devote to the schooling, how will I find time to do the work from home, even if I was one of the few people that pass their certification?

Well, that’s enough ranting for tonight. Maybe I’ll try to get to bed before midnight and watch jump videos with fresh eyes in the morning. What a thought! LOL

Here is the video of Twist from the last day of the Obedience trial. Gotta love my dorky boy! One of these days, everything is going to fall into place and we’re going to get that last leg. LOL

Ok, the training challenge this week is related to the Obedience trial Twist, Dare and I went to. It presented itself as a training challenge the first day of the trial, although it’s been lurking in the background for a while, I’m sure.

The beast that has reared it’s ugly head is Twist having issues with the out of site sit stay. I guess it was bound to happen if we got stuck in Open long enough. Seems to happen to most dogs after they compete in that class for very long. The difficult thing is that with it being an out of site exercise, you really can’t see what is causing your dog to go down, if anything. You just leave the ring, and come back after 3 loooong minutes and your dog is lying down. And it seems that once they start doing it, it becomes a pattern quickly. Bleh!

So, the first day of the trial, Twist was extremely distracted even in his regular part of the work. Despite that, he would have qualified, if we had passed the stay groups. Unfortunately, he went down on the sit.

Second day, we did some warm-ups of stays prior to competing, we also did some experimenting with having people come up to him after I told him to sit and stay, and having them try to tell him to down. He was able to ignore them, and remain sitting. When we went in the ring his work was much better than Friday. He was much more focused and on task. I really thought Sat. would be his day. Again he had qualified up to the stay group. Then Twist lost his brain. There was a red merle Aussie that was in line in front of us when we went into the stay group and Twist just decided that that dog was for sure his new best friend. Ugh! No matter what I said, he was pretty much gone. LOL It was not a huge suprise to me when on returning from behind the trailer where we stood out of site, my precious Twist was being held by the ring crew off to the side of the stay group. We were needless to say excused.

So, after the trial yesterday we took the dogs for a walk down on the River parkway and I worked on Sit Stays down there. It’s a pretty difficult environment for Twist, because there are other dogs walking by, skate boarders, bikers, kids, etc. Then this morning at the hotel we worked on Sit Stay in another format. I told him to sit and stay on the bed. That’s a surface the dogs would normally not do a stay on, and are likely to lie down quickly on. Well, he did great. Once we got to the trial site, I looked up the person with the Aussie and we agreed to do a little sit stay prior to going in the ring today. Twist did great again. Yay! Training challenge is seemingly going well. He seems to be getting the point.

We go in the ring, and he is just brilliant. I was so thrilled with him. The only minor bobbles we had were on the first turn in the heeling pattern and on the broad jump. Even with those bobbles, he was in first place with a 192, when we went in for stays. He glanced at the Aussie when we lined up, but I told him to “leave it”, and he did. We put the dogs on a sit, left the ring, and then returned 3 minutes later to find that Twist was the only dog in the stay group to be lying down. What a bummer! The last thing I want to do then is have him do a 5 minute down stay to reinforce that thought even more, but you don’t get a choice. So, we placed the dogs in a down, and again left the ring. I can honestly say that what happened next suprised me. When we returned I fully expected to see Twist lying down comfortably. Instead…we return to find Twist, STANDING in the same spot I’d left him lying down 5 min. earlier. He hadn’t tried to leave or anything, just spent a good portion of the down stay, standing. What a dork! LOL

All I can do is laugh and shake my head at some of the things this boy does. So, I think our training challenge for the week, was a bust. At least I feel like it was a failure. Not only because we weren’t able to fix the issue, but also because I am at a total loss as to what to try next, other than continue what we tried earlier. Who knows…maybe if we try doing stays on the outdoor patio cushions we will eventually fix it long enough for him to get that last CDX leg.

You can probably tell, the server/host “seamless transition” technical junk continues. UGH!!! I see that a couple of posts have disappeared. I’m sure it’s just temporary, but honestly I really don’t understand how everything works. LOL I just like to turn on the computer and have it work. I like to type my post and hit publish and not worry about it again.

Anyway, tomorrow’s going to be a busy day. Nope, I’m not going to be spending it shopping for exercise equipment, like the dip station. Instead, I’m going to run over to my friend’s house to do some Rally in the morning. Then I’ve got to bathe Twist and Dare, and get started packing for the trip to Idaho Falls. There’s been some technical junk with the trial too. Apparently, one judge has had unexpected health problems or something, so the other two judges will be handling everything. This has caused some scheduling changes, and it’s looking like Twist and Dare are supposed to be in different rings at the same time most of the weekend. Ugh! I hate those conflicts. It will be fine though, I’m sure.

I don’t know if I’ll have a chance to post again before I leave, but I’ll take the laptop and hopefully we’ll have internet access so I can give updates on the trial.