I went out yesterday and took another short video clip to show where we’re at with training of Layla’s weaves now. I’ve taken the more visual grid guide things off the poles, except at the entries at both ends. I replaced them with guide wires, and now I’m taking the guide wires down little by little. You’ll see they are attached to one pole each, but no longer forming a complete guide. Next I’ll be taking those down. Hopefully the weather keeps on cooperating long enough that we can get to that point before we get snow again. I’m still working on me being on both sides of the weave poles, and running ahead of her and behind her, but this clip is short and I just don’t have the patience at this point to do all the fancy editing and stuff that a lot of you do with your videos. So, it just shows her going through one time, one way. Oh, and as a little side note, I do see that my stick in the ground weave poles are starting to look like they are about ready to fall over too. I may have to move them if I get some ambition later today. LOL
This week is getting away from me quicker than I expected. LOL We had a really nice weekend! Friday started off with an obedience lesson for Twist and Raven. We have lots and lots to work on before the Utah Sheltie Specialty at the end of April. That’s good though.
Saturday and Sunday we spent at the DOCNA trial. I only had Zoe entered, but then they offered day of trial entries, so I broke down and entered Raven for the last run of the day on Sunday. Zoe had a nice weekend. She was really consistent and Q’d with first place in 8 of the 10 classes that she ran in. The other two were my fault. I got lost and sent her into an offcourse tunnel on one class, and realized it too late to get her turned around, and the other was a class called Strategic Time Gamble, and you make up your own course to accumulate points in the opening time period of 30 seconds. Then they blow a whistle and you have another 10-15 seconds to cross the finish jump. The problem is that you can’t finish too early or too late, it’s more a gamble of whether you can estimate how many obstacles your dog can complete in a certain amount of time, and I suck at that. We crossed the finish jump too soon, and lost the Q. Raven Q’d in her one jumpers run, which should have finished her Beginner’s jumper title.
Zoe did qualify in the North American Challenge Class though, and that is DOCNA’s qualifier for their Championships, so if we decide that we can get away (time and moneywise), we are qualified to go to Prescott, AZ in Oct. for the Western Championships. That would be fun!
The next few days are going to be busy. I am sitting waiting right now for a client to pick up their dog. I hate waiting for people. It seems like that’s what a majority of my time is spent doing with the boarding kennel. Waiting for people to pick-up/drop-off dogs. It wouldn’t be so bad if you could count on them showing up at a specific time, but you just can’t. People tell you that they’ll be there at one time and then show up hours later. It’s very frustrating because it means that you are tied to the house, and can’t leave.
Anyway, in the meantime, today I’m trying to get a packing list together so that I can be ready to leave Friday morning for Salt Lake. Zoe is entered in a DOCNA agility trial this weekend. I was only planning on travelling with Zoe and Layla this time, but there is an obedience ring set-up on Friday if we can get there early enough that would be ideal training for Twist and Raven. So…it’s looking like I’ll be bringing all the Shelties but Rogue this time. She’ll have to stay home with her dad and keep things in line here.
I have a three boarding dogs going home tomorrow, and at least one coming in, and then I have agility class with Zoe and Raven, and somewhere in between that I’d love to get a chance to bathe everybody. It’s not looking real promising though. LOL I almost forgot I have the cats that I’m watching for some friends while they are in Indiana too. All in all, it’s going to be a busy last half of the week, but I think alot of it is going to be spent hurrying up to sit around a wait for people.
I have a little ranting to do…and a little raving too. Bear with me. LOL I got ahold of Dr. Overall and she agreed that it would be appropriate to add amitriptyline to Rogue’s daily meds at this point since we haven’t seen progress with the fluoxitine alone. I spoke with the vet here in Salt Lake today shared her recommendations, and he agreed to call in the prescription.
Here is my rave. The vet in Salt Lake asked me if I’d considered working with a trainer to help Rogue. I’m grateful that I have a vet who obviously realizes that Rogue’s issues need to be addressed by not only medication, but also through training. I wholeheartedly agree that behavior modification is vital. I would never think that medication alone is the answer. I feel very privileged that we found Dr. Overall through Leslie McDevitt and that she has given us protocols of behavioral modification to work through in addition to her recommendations for medication.
However, here’s my rant. I think I literally bristled a little when he made that comment. Long before I decided to go down this avenue of seeking anti-anxiety medication for Rogue, I had been working with her to modify her behavior. I thought that I’d explained what we’ve done with Rogue prior to coming to him. In fact, I think that anyone who knows Rogue…knows the amount of time and effort we’ve put into training. Granted, in hindsight not all the training that we did was helpful. In fact I think some backfired, but I did what I hoped would help. Bleh, I don’t know, it just struck me like he thought that I hadn’t tried any training before. Whatever, that’s my rant for the day!
So…here’s the latest. We’ll start her out adding 10 mg. of Amitriptyline once a day for 10 days and then go to 10 mg. twice daily. I’ll keep everyone posted if we see any changes. Keep hoping for the best…
We don’t seem to making any headway with our work to lessen Rogue’s anxiety or reactivity, even though we’ve adjusted her meds. To recap: 7 weeks of fluoxitine at 1mg dosage which was an error (fortunately on the safe side). Then we changed it to 10mg of fluoxitine daily for two weeks, which made her more aggressive towards the other dogs, and now we are closing in on 5 more weeks at 5 mg. daily. We’ll re-evaluate again at the first of March.
Frustration and impatience. Those two words would describe how I’ve felt about this process with Rogue lately. Well, and then guilt. Probably those three would sum it up. They usually come in that order too. I’ve been reading and re-reading the consult and protocols that we got from Dr. Overall, and this phrase always gets me, “these are the dogs who show you the type of person you can – but never expected – to become.”
When I first read that statement I thought, “yep, living with Rogue will reveal good qualities about us that we didn’t know we had.” How egotistical! LOL What I overlooked was that it was going to reveal many more negative qualities about myself than positive ones as her stress and anxiety wears on me. As we work through this process, I’m beginning to think that it’s more about being willing to see the flaws in your character and being willing to work to overcome them, to become a better person. Just my thoughts for today….
If you look at this blog lately, it looks like we’ve spent the winter sleeping and taking pictures. LOL Admittedly, during the winter, my training seems to take a dive. I have trouble getting motivated to do a whole lot when it’s cold outside. That being said though, we have still been training (at least a little). Fortunately, we have a friend who has a heated indoor building with mats where we can meet to train about once a week. I don’t know what I’d do without her! Another friend of ours has recently acquired an Aussie puppy that’s Layla’s age, so we’ve been driving the 1/2 hour to train together in the heated building.
Which brings me to the title of this post. I’ve been working with Layla on some basics, like “sit”, “down”, “stand”, “here”, “wait”, targeting (both nose and paw touches), walking on leash, etc. I love training the basics again. It gives me a chance to evaluate my training and try to improve my skills. One thing that I know I want to improve this time around is my distance work. I seem to be able to teach the basics, but then I’ve got a hole in my training where I don’t seem to ever teach them to work away from me.
So, I made up a chart that includes the things that we’ve worked on, and then gives me different criteria for the same skills. For instance. “Sit” She is pretty reliable at a close distance 1-2 feet away, but more than that…we need to work on. So, I made small goals of increasing distance to 3-5 feet away and so on. Same goes for changing criteria of training in the house as opposed to training outside in the yard, to training in a new building, to a public park, to a trial site. We’ll see how it goes. I don’t have any doubts that Layla is capable of doing great things, it’s just a matter of me figuring out the best way to work with her to achieve them.
This week is going to be hectic! We’ve got a bunch to squeeze in before we leave on Thurs. to go to Farmington for our first agility trial of the year. It’s a three day trial, but I’ve only entered the first two days. I’m pretty nervous about running with Raven again. It’s been almost a year since she’s trialed. She was getting stressed out at trials so we took so time off competing, tried to concentrate on our training, and did some fun little demo things to try to build her confidence. I guess it’s about time to see if it’s helped her.
Zoe’s pretty steady, so running her doesn’t make me nervous, we just have fun! I’m hoping that Zoe can finally get that last FAST leg that she needs to finish that title. Distance work with Zoe has always been a weak point. LOL
Layla is coming along to just get used to the trial atmosphere. This will be her first trip! I think she’s going to do well, (I hope). She’s a really good little traveler on the short day trips that we’ve taken so far.
Rogue and Twist are going to stay home to keep Penny, Lucy and their dad company for the weekend. I doubt that Rogue will be very happy about being left with him, but I just don’t see any sense in stressing her out more than normal in a trial environment, till we can get her medication regulated. If we can get things figured out for her so that she is comfortable at home then we might start taking her on the road a bit again, but until then we’re just slowing things down for a while.
I’ve decided that sometimes all you can do is shake your head and laugh when things don’t go as planned. As you know, we started Rogue on fluoxitine and alprazolam 7 weeks ago. Well, I wasn’t seeing much improvement in her reactivity and so I contacted Dr. Overall again to update her and see if we needed to make adjustments in her dosage or in the medication itself, or if this was just typical.
Well, come to find out that the dosage that we’ve been giving her of 1 mg. daily of the fluoxitine was wrong. Turns out that was a typo and we should have been giving her at least 5 mg. daily, if not 10 mg. So, after I found that out, I tried to contact the vet here and he’s out of town till next Tuesday. Ughh! At the prompting of my friends at Sheltie Rescue I called the vet’s office again and asked if one of the other atttending vets would consider changing the dosage of the prescription, so that we don’t have to wait till next week. Fortunately, they were nice enough to do that for us, and we’ve picked up the new dosage today.
I’m trying to look at this as a really long ramp-up time on the meds, instead of just viewing the last 7 weeks as being wasted, but I’m only partly convinced. LOL Hopefully in the coming weeks we will have some progress to report. I hope!!!
We finally got snow today. Not that I want snow, I hate winter, but I know we need the moisture. Anyway, before it started snowing today it was the most miserable windy morning, so we decided to stay inside and play where it was warm.
I thought it would be fun to play a game that our friends over at A Dog’s Journey had posted about a while back. I don’t remember what she called the game, but she did a fun video of her dogs playing it and you can find the link to the video at her site: http://adogsjourney.blogspot.com/
It’s pretty simple, you just need a muffin tin, some tennis balls and treats, and you’re ready to play. My dogs have played a few times before, but when we first played the game, I put treats in each of the muffin holes and put the tennis balls on top.
After they’d played a few times, I only put treats in selective muffin holes, and let them dogs use their wonderful sense of smell to find the right ones. It’s fun and easy to play and gives the dogs something to do on a stormy day. Here’s some pictures of the dogs playing…
This is Rogue, patiently waiting till I tell her she can start. Isn’t she a good girl?
Everyone got to play…
Even the foster baby! She is such a smart little girl, figures new things out in no time!!!
She couldn’t figure out why I had to keep taking pictures though…that wasn’t helping her find the treats any faster. LOL
I know, that’s a little weird. Most people dread the weekend coming to an end and heading back to work on Mondays. I used to feel like that when I worked at the dental lab, but since I opened the boarding kennel, my busiest days are usually at the end of the week, and the weekend. So now, I like Mondays because I can regroup, and I have the whole week ahead of me. It’s like a fresh start…
This week I’m going to actually work with Raven and Twist. I know, I’ve been saying that for over a month now, but I’ve been so wrapped up with Rogue that I haven’t done much else. Things are finally settling back down into a routine here and I’m not feeling so overwhelmed, so I think it’s actually got a chance of happening this week. LOL
It’s hard for me to get motivated to train by myself, way too easy to talk myself out of it when I don’t have someone else counting on me to be there. I’ve really been missing my friend that usually keeps me motivated. Her knee has been giving her so much trouble that she had slowed down a quite a bit in her training with her own dogs, but now she’s just had a knee replacement so hopefully she’ll be back up and around soon, without all the pain!
Anyway, yay for Monday, and here’s hoping we have a really great week!
