The 24th of July this year seemed pretty mellow to me. Like I mentioned in the earlier post, they didn’t start off with the usual explosions at 6:00am, and the biggest celebrations seemed to be taking place in the next town over, not here. So, pretty much till 10:00pm it was just another day around here.

At 10:00pm we did start hearing some of the fireworks shows starting, but they seemed quieter than usual too. Rogue would hear them go off and run barking at the door like she thought someone was here, but it wasn’t like a panicky thing. Twist was similar. Penny on the other hand, seemed to content to lay on our bed. That is unusual for her! Her normal reaction when anything worries her is to get as close to myself or my husband as possible and then the whining and crying begins. Neither happened last night. She seemed like “ho hum, the young dogs are barking again.” It was great!

I can’t really say whether I think the Melatonin was responsible or if it was just a suprisingly quiet celebration around us last night, but either way, I’m happy and so are the dogs!

I can’t believe my ears! Usually our 24th of July starts off with some kind of canon being set off at 6:00 am to celebrate the holiday. It’s usually not so much of a celebration in the house though, since Penny thinks that the noise means that we’re under some sort of attack. LOL Well, this morning I didn’t even wake up till 6:30, and neither did any of the dogs, which means that for whatever reason…they didn’t set off the canon! Yay!!!

I know there will be fireworks this evening and later on tonight, so I’ll write more later to see if the Melatonin has any calming effects on Penny then, but so far the 24th is starting off great!

Thanks so much to our friends over at www.itsthedogslife.com for giving this award to us! What a nice way to start the day.

The Rules for Passing on the Award:

1. Pick five blogs that you consider deserve this award for creativity, design, and interesting material and also contribute to the blogger community regardless of language.
2. Each award has to have the name of the author and a link to his/her blog to be visited.
3. Each award winner has to show the award and put the name and link to the blog that has given him/her the award itself.
4. Award winners and the one who has given the prize have to show the link of the Arte-y-Pico blog so everyone will know the origin of the award. http://arteypico.blogspot.com/
5. In compliance with said rules, the award winner must show these rules.

I’m hoping that I am doing this right because I’m pretty new at this whole thing. LOL I’d like to pass along this award to

Tatum: www.tatumtot.com

Ace: www.thatmutt.com

Rift: www.kiwidogs.livejournal.com

Junior: www.juniorbabee.blogspot.com

Dylan: www.myspoileddogs.blogspot.com

This month has been anything but ideal for training. I think for one thing, it’s just been crazy busy around here. We had a convention the first weekend, a three day agility trial the next and the agility/obedience/herding demos the next weekend. Add to that the shock I felt over losing Jessie, and well…you pretty much get the picture. I’ve just felt tired physically and emotionally, and I haven’t had the motivation that I needed to train.

Fortunately, this week has slowed down considerably and I’m feeling more rested. So, I decided that it would be a good time to set some new training goals. I’ve been really impressed with our friends over at www.thatmutt.com They’ve been doing “30 day challenges” that we’ve been watching with interest. It has inspired me to try something similar in August.

My goal for August is: train with the dogs in 4 different locations and observe and record their ability to work in different environments. There isn’t going to be anything specific that the dogs will have to achieve. It will be more of a challenge of my ability to observe what is challenging in the new environment to each dog, and work to overcome it.

The reason I chose this challenge for us is that we can be successful just by attempting it. Sometimes I tend to set goals that frustrate both myself and the dogs because they are too big. I want this to be enjoyable for all of us. I also chose this because one of the biggest obstacles for the rescues to deal with is working in new places. As you know from prior posts Rogue and Raven both struggle with stress in trial settings. For Twist, new environments hold soo many distractions that it is difficult for him to focus on the task at hand. I really think that if I improve my skills in reading what they are telling me, our training will improve.

I’m excited for August to come now…

 Ahhh! It’s been a long day, but a good one. For the first time this week, I feel tired, but in a good way. I’ve been tired all week, (exhausted really), but more from emotional stress and the sleep I’ve been getting hasn’t been very restful. I feel alot better today…like a big weight is off my shoulders. I don’t really know why, but I’m grateful.

We went down to Cedar City today to the Iron County Dog Days. Earlier in the week I had about talked myself out of going, but I’m glad I changed my mind! They had agility, rally obedience, flyball, herding and freestyle dancing demos today. Zoe, Twist, Raven and Rogue got to go and be in a couple of the demos. I had every intention of getting some pictures, but I just didn’t have time, so you’ll just have to use your imagination.

Rogue was really nervous at this arena. Besides being a new site for her, there was a loudspeaker system hooked up that they kept using that freaked her out. I had really hoped that she would feel comfortable enough to participate in the agility demo, but it just wasn’t going to happen. That’s o.k. though, because we had a chance to work on some simple tasks outside the agility ring for a while (like targeting a lid, and fetching her jackpot bag), and after an hour or so had passed she was able to go in the ring and run some agility. So, it may not have been part of the actual demo, but she did successfully run a small course in a new place! Yay! She even gave me a few sassy barks, like at home. LOL

Zoe loves to run agility anywhere and she likes it even more when there’s a crowd of people to cheer for her, so she was totally in her element! Raven did a nice job at the agility demo today too! I was thrilled that I didn’t see any of the stress signals that she’s been exhibiting lately in a ring. She was happy and focused. Woohoo!

Twist and Raven both did a bit of Rally Obedience. They both worked well. I took Twist through the course off-leash and he did beautifully. Raven is still on-leash. Her heelwork isn’t anywhere near being ready for off-leash yet, but she managed all the stations in an advanced course, so that’s super.

Then Twist got to be in the herding demo. Honestly, it wasn’t his best day. Goofy boy! I think partly because it was such a large area, and then partly because of the heat this afternoon, he started to lose interest as we were trying to pen the sheep. He did get them through the two back fence panels and through the Y-shoot in the middle of the arena first though. Mac, (our Border Collie friend), came to our rescue and penned the sheep for us! Thanks Mac.

Anyway, it was a fun day and I’m looking forward to a great night’s sleep.

This post doesn’t have a thing to do with my dogs or training or rescue or anything else. Now that I have that out of the way…a nestful of baby birds has finally hatched!

It all started several weeks ago, when the cutest little birds built their mud nest in the shed right above where we park our car. The car has looked like we’ve been parking it under a tree ever since. LOL Neither of us wanted to disturb the nest until the babies hatched and flew away. So, we’ve just been waiting, and waiting…Well, they’ve finally started popping their heads above the edge of the nest. Woohoo! My best count is that there are 4 babies. I know, you can only see 3 of them in the pictures that I took. I just couldn’t get them to pose for me like the dogs do.

Here’s some pictures that I snapped of them earlier today.

I love their little, or maybe I should say BIG mouths! Maybe that’s because they remind me of Rogue! See the resemblance?

Well, I figured that we all needed to get out of the house for a while yesterday. So, we drove up by my parents house and went to the lake. It’s not the most beautiful lake in the world, but it sure feels good on a hot day! Penny and Lucy waded right in as usual, with the Shelties getting their feet wet on the shore. LOL Silly Shelties! Actually Zoe, Twist and Raven all eventually waded in up a little past their bellies, which is pretty deep for them. Rogue just couldn’t be convinced that she needed more than a a few inches of water herself. Here’s some pictures of Penny swimming to fetch a stick. She’s my best swimmer!

Raven even thought that maybe the stick was in the water as a test of her “touch” skills, so she made sure that I saw her give it a “touch” with her nose. Pretty funny.

It’s raining right now. I personally love the rain. In fact the only downside that I can see about the rain is that the agility field is dirt and it’s not covered. So…if we get too much rain at once, we’ll have a mudhole out there. Yuck! I don’t think we’re going to get that much today though. Just a nice shower to cool things down a bit and make the air smell terrific!

The problem is that along with the rain today we are getting plenty of thunder. Penny HATES thunder and fireworks! I was reading not too long ago about the use of Melatonin for dogs with thunderstorm phobias. I happened to get some a while back, but I haven’t had a chance to try it out on Penny till today.

So far, I’m not seeing a whole lot of difference in her reaction. She doesn’t have some of the severe reactions to the thunder that I’ve read about, like crashing through doors or windows or anything like that. But she does show alot of signs of stress. She generally starts panting and pacing and she’ll whine alot. When she’s really over her threshold, she has jumped into the shower (while I was in it). LOL Poor girl. She likes to be really close to my husband or myself and sometimes she won’t calm down till both of us are home. Right now she is lying at my feet while I’m typing.

Has anyone tried Melatonin for this sort of thing, and if so…what have you observed? I’m going to keep watching and hopefully we’ll see some reduction in anxiety level.

Jessie came to us back in 2001. I was working very actively with the all-breed rescue in our area at that time and we were pulling dogs from the local county animal shelter for a Super Adoption event. We actually thought that Aussie Rescue would be willing to take Jessie in, but when we contacted them, they were didn’t have any space…especially for an adult dog over 5 years. After only a couple of days, my husband decided that Jessie had found her permanent home with us and that she wouldn’t be going to Super Adoption after all.

Jessie always gave 110% in whatever she was doing! I don’t think she ever did anything half-heartedly. That’s one of the things I will always admire about her. I have been going through some old pictures and found few favorites that make me smile!

The house just isn’t the same without you here! You will be missed Jessie!

Well, I don’t feel like writing tonight, but maybe I’ll feel better when I get it on paper. This weekend while I was at the agility trial with Zoe…Jessie got sick. My husband called on Sat. morning and left a message telling me that he thought Jessie was dying. My heart sank. I felt helpless knowing that she wasn’t doing well, and I wasn’t there to help her. Those thoughts hung over an otherwise wonderful weekend like a big ominous black cloud.

I got back Sunday to find her very listless, having trouble standing up and walking and refusing to eat. Jessie is normally one of the first in the crew to jump up and start barking at new noises, and she always is right at my heels inside the house or out. To see her just laying there not interested in much of anything…(even to company coming over), was aweful! My husband had described her as seeming disoriented, but I think she just felt so bad she wasn’t interested in anything going on around her.

Since we are in a rural area, there are no emergency vets, you just have to wait it out till Monday morning. I took her in first thing this morning and had bloodwork done. The results showed that she was having major liver problems. The vet said that it was likely that she’d lived for years with less than 100% liver function and that with age it’s just manifesting itself now. I was given the option to try to treat it, which he felt might have extended her life another couple of months, or put her to sleep.

I know many people may think that we made the wrong decision, but I couldn’t justify a couple months of likely reduced quality of life just because I want her to be here longer. I sat with her in my arms as she peacefully went to sleep this evening.