Tag Archives: Layla

Layla Update

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So, we went back up to my friend’s house to train today. I was hoping to see if we would have a repeat of last week, or if she’d be back to her normal self. So, same building, same people as last week, and just as I was hoping…the same little girl stopped by after school to visit with the dogs. The good news is that today, Layla was much more focused. She was still very, very noise sensitive today, but she was eager to work. It was a huge improvement over last week. :-)

There was one little incident that was pretty unexpected. One of the Malinois puppies, grabbed the string on the helium balloon that was serving as a distraction on the edge of the area where we were training. The puppy took off running as fast as she could with her prize, but then the string tangled around a hind leg and then she spooked. Ugh! She was darting around the building with the balloon “chasing” her. With Layla being sound sensitive, she was a little spooked. Fortunately, both Layla and the puppy were confident enough to investigate the balloon after a while. So, I don’t think any permanent damage was done. My friend said that she thinks Layla is probably just going through a stage where we need to take it easy and not work on anything new, just work on maintaining things that she’s already confident about.

These puppies are sure making training days more lively. I sure am glad they are past that really wild, chewing and biting stage. No protective clothing is necessary anymore. LOL The last male in the litter is flying out to his new home on Sat. I get to ride along to take him to the airport. He’s going to a great home, I’m really happy for him.

Baffled

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The other day I went up to a friend’s place to train with the dogs. We usually get together about once a week, so there really wasn’t anything out of the ordinary when we went up there. Layla has been going to this place to train for about a year and a half now. So I certainly wasn’t prepared for what happened.

She started out a little distracted, but nothing too bad. We did a little heeling, (it wasn’t great), so then I took a break and had her do some scent work and then we went back to do a bit more heeling. Just about then, a young neighbor girl stopped by to say hi to the dogs. Normally Layla is the most outgoing Sheltie I have. She just adores meeting new people, including kids of all ages. She does what we call her “happy feet” dance because she gets so excited to meet people. Well, I waited until she settled down just a minute and then I told her that she could go say hi to this little girl. She started to walk up to her, and then she got all weird, like she was totally unsure about this girl.

This little girl isn’t your typical kid. She adores the dogs and is really good with them. I asked her to sit down on the ground and I sat down close by and she offered Layla treats. I have to say that I was horrified to see Layla acting like Rogue used to. She would slink up slowly and stretch herself out to see about the treats, but she didn’t want anything to do with the girl. It was so out of character! I felt aweful. It took me right back to all the time I’d spent with Rogue. Even after all the books I read, all the trainers I worked with, the seminars I attended and vets we saw, I was never able to figure out how to help Rogue. Well, I shouldn’t say that we couldn’t help her, I think I did help, but certainly not to degree that I hoped. :-(

Anyway, I have to say that both my friend and I were totally baffled by Layla’s reaction to this little girl. Neither of us have ever seen Layla act like this. I just hope it was some fluke thing and that it won’t happen again. She was fine when we came home, and I haven’t seen anything in behavior that seems out of character since then. I am curious to see if she reacts the same way on another day if we can get the little girl to come back.

So Far, So Good

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It’s shaping up to be a great week in lots of ways! :-) For one, the weather is getting better. Walks for the last two days have been really nice. Today I only wore a fleece jacket and midway through the walk, I took it off. This is the first day this year that I’ve be able to be outside in a t-shirt! Woohoo!

My husband’s new job is going really well too. I guess the employee that he replaced did nothing, so everyone is absolutely thrilled that something is finally getting done. One of the first things that the principal of the school said she’d like to see happen is to have the tv taken out of what is now my husband’s office. Apparently the old head custodian just sat in there and watched tv instead of working. Can you imagine?! I can’t, and neither could my husband. He took the tv that day. Anyway, the schedule is working well too. He’s got lots more time in the afternoon now. He keeps talking about trying to lose weight, so I asked him if he wanted to join us on our walk today, but he said he’d done enough walking at work. I think that he’d rather just find some miraculous weight loss products that didn’t require exercise and eating well. Wouldn’t we all? LOL

I’m still working on Layla’s contacts and weaves. I need to get started back up on her jump work too. (Maybe next week) I’m also thinking about entering her in the Utah Sheltie Specialty in Rally the first part of May, so I guess I better dig up some sample courses and see what we need to work on. Tomorrow we are supposed to go train with my friend that had the litter of Malinois puppies. Training should be returning to normal now that she’s down to the puppies that she’s keeping for herself.

Walking in the Wind

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Well, things didn’t go exactly like I had planned. Instead of getting up early when my husband went to work, I tossed and turned all night listening to the wind blowing in yet another storm. Well, that’s not entirely true. I did get up, for a few minutes, and then I went back to my nice warm bed for a while. LOL In the end, I did get up earlier than normal, but it took me a while to convince myself that the wind wasn’t going to stop and that if we were going for a walk we’d better go.

I’m sure that any neighbors who might have seen us, have now confirmed in their minds that I am really the crazy dog lady. The wind blew so hard at points during the walk that Layla couldn’t walk very straight. LOL Course, that’s not saying much, since she’s such a tiny thing. The funny thing was that even though the weather was aweful, we all had a great time. I don’t think any of us will need any hgh releasers to make us feel good. Amazing how good you feel naturally after a long walk with two of your best friends. :-)

The wind is still blowing tonight, and we’re supposed to get snow again. If it’s not too bad, I’ll try to remember how much fun we had today and get back out there tomorrow. Maybe I’ll even get the camera out and take some pictures of where we’re walking.

Training Update

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I was reading one of my favorite blogs Team Small Dog, well, actually I think it was a FaceBook post, (either way I guess it doesn’t matter). Anyway, she said…”would like to update you about all the agility we’ve been doing lately. Insert moment of silence here.” She totally cracks me up! That pretty much sums up my training with the dogs here this week.

I really don’t even know where the week has gone. The only thing I can think of that I’ve done that counts as training would be taking Layla and Dare down to Parowan with me last Sunday for agility. Dare didn’t do anything but go along for the ride, so I guess really only Layla got in some training. Oh well, I really can’t say that I was sitting around just wasting my time shopping for new door mats or anything, I was just really busy. Just seems like every day this last week had me running in one direction or another and overall I didn’t accomplish much.

Hopefully we’ll get back on track starting today. This afternoon I’m going to take a couple of the dogs to my friend’s place to train a bit, while she has her beginning obedience class going on, for distractions. Then since the schedule around here is going to be different with my husband getting up early for work starting Monday…Woohoo!…I think it is a good idea to sit down and figure out a better schedule for myself with the medical coding course and training the dogs, and everything else that has to fit into the week. I’ll let you know what I come up with. :-)

Slow Motion Video of Layla’s A-Frame

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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

Contact Training

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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. :-)

Layla’s New Adventure

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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.

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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.

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.

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. :-)