Well, the weather look… acceptable. For now. I’m very afraid of driving to Rigby Idaho today, but I’m going to go slow and take my time. So I’ll be gone this weekend to Idaho, and the next weekend to Las Vegas, for agility.
It’s not snowing. But it’s cloudy. Hrm.
I won’t be on the computer much until after I get back from Las Vegas. Bye!
I had obedience class last night. I love that class. 
People ask me why I like obedience so much, and I have to say, it’s because I LOVE my instructor. The class is so much fun, up beat, the dogs have a good time, and I learn so much it’s amazing. Someday maybe I’ll have all this dog knowledge in my brain but until then I just keep absorbing. For as long as I’ve been around dogs, I still have a lot to learn when it comes to training for competition events.
Anyway… so we talked some about drive shaping with Chase. He needs serious drive shaping. Chase gets so high and he doesn’t know how to come down. He’s like a manic human who just spins and spins and doesn’t know what to do about it. Really… if I were a human like that I’d hate it. It’s not about crushing his spirit, or making him not do what he loves to do… instead it’s about teaching him when to be up, and when to be down. And they are both fun and they are both okay. I wish I knew how to be both myself… I wish I had a human trainer.
Anyway, so I got some good ideas on how to help this boy. Like I said before… if I want any hope of competing him in obedience or rally, we have to get his brain to kick in so he’s listening. His drive is dropped. And he can do different things in different places.
When training Chase his drive is always up. Especially in agility and in flyball. And that leeks over to obedience. So now I’ll play with him a bit, get him all riled up, then stop and put my hands on his muzzle. And it works! His tail stops wagging and you can see him calming down. So this is what we are going to practice around agility obstacles. He needs to be able to drop his drive for agility, too.. for the contacts, for the start line, and for just paying attention to me.
I think we are on a good road. I wish I would have started this when I first got him… but I didn’t know of my instructor yet… I didn’t know how great she was. Now I know, and now it will get better. Now we have a game plan.
This is why I’m pulling him from agility. We’ll see how flyball goes, and if we can continue that. I hope so… but shaping his drive is our number one priority right now.
It’s amazing to see and hear about the other dogs who were screaming maniac puppies, and who, with drive shaping, have become full well-rounded dogs. Now that is the plan with Chase, too! He is older (3.5 years about), and he’s a rescue with baggage, but he’s smart, and he has a TON of potential. We’ll get there! We can do this!
And so a question comes to mind. You know humans get more satisfaction when they have structure to what they do. You can go dance and flail your arms about and such every which way, but it’s more satisfying to learn a routine and follow a pattern. You can blow on an instrument or tap on a piano keyboard… but until you learn a song it’s just a bunch of noise, and the song is more satisfying. Are dogs like this? Do they get more satisfaction out of structure? Or do they prefer to just run amok like maniacs and that is good enough for them? I hope they prefer structure.. but I find the question interesting.
I love to try new foods. For sure I do, and I love to find new sites that introduce me to all kinds of foods from all over the world. This is a great site: http://www.marlindaradzi.com/ and has a lot of interesting, and delicious looking, meals on it.
Check out this Crab photo. Very interesting indeed! And believe it or not, I like escargot , even though perhaps I don’t know how to spell it correctly. I am learning!
And I love egg-plant. I have a no-pasta egg-plant dish that I make a lot, following my E2L plan… it’s low cal and low fat and yummy. This is a very cool Egg Plant photo. I’m hoping to grow some in my own yard this summer!
I miss camping. With all the agility trials I’ll be going to this month (and April) and May… camping will be put on hold. We probably won’t make it to our regular spring/fall spot. That is too hot in the summer to go to, and too cold in the winter. But we also have a nice summer/Aug spot in the High Uintahs… 10,000+ feet, where it’s so nice to get out of the heat and let the dogs run around. And so now I’m dreaming of camping, getting out in our little Rockwood Popup trailer we bought just 2 or 3 years ago, and being slept on by the warm sweet dogs (who always get up way too early in the morning).
And so checking out camping sites… and http://www.campingcoop.org/ looks sweet. I’ve already linked it in my sidebar, too, so I can go visit when I’m in need of a camping fix.
We haven’t been camping very much in Nevada, but it sure is close to us. We have been sailing on Lake Mead, though, that was fun. Guess we’ll need to drive over there again next time we drive to Nevada and check out the Hot Springs. And see what those are all about. And we should really try some Jiffy Pop Popcorn… I so remember that when I was a kid, and now I want some again!
One of the funnest things we’ve experienced camping is when the dogs bark at their own echo. LOL. Way too funny. Both down by Little Wildhorse Canyon while we were hiking the narrows (I love it down there), and also Topaz Mountain a few hours south of us. Levi is the best at it… he will bark, then hear his echo, and thinking it was another dog, bark back. That can go on for hours! We’d have to stop him, the dork boy.
Wow check out the picture posted here… Picture. Is that gorgeous or what?
Well, I’m exchanging some links… Look at this fun site! bellclappersgarden.blogspot.com. I love looking at various fun sites and meeting new people.
I also love the color purple! Though my favorite is the blue of a clear summer sky…
Ooooo, why oh why is it so hard to pull a dog from agility? It is so hard. Not only for me, but I’ve listened to other people have it hard, too.
I am going to pull Chase from the May AKC trials. I feel bad doing it, he loves it so much. But we have a focus problem. And contact problems. And tunnel sucking problems. And we need to work on these things before we have much hope of Qing again. He has not Q’d in a while, and so I’m just really throwing my money away.
So I’m going to pull him.
Rally was a joke with him last Friday. It was his first Rally trial, entered him in Novice A. I walked off the course half way through. It was at the same place we do agility.. just did agility last weekend, the DOCNA trial. And once in the ring, he just looked around for the agility obstacles and completely blew me off. Didn’t look at me once. If I have no treats, then there must be something more interesting.
And yes, I’d like to do obedience with him. And I’d like to have more of his focus, and more control, in agility. And I don’t think that is going to happen if he keeps getting reinforced in agility for not paying attention to me.
So… this week I’ll pull him from the May trials. Ugh. It just hurts to do so, but in the long run, it’ll help. It worked for Levi… look at him weave now! I just hope Levi’s weaves hold out through a 3 day trial, then a 4 day trial, two weekends in a row. We will see. If he starts to fall apart, then I’ll only run him in FAST to reinforce the happiness again!
Man, dog stuff is hard. Fun as hell, but hard, too!
OH MY Gosh I”m such a dweeb. My sweet Lucy got her last RA leg for her title on Friday! Woo Hoo! She is so good. She loves Rally… as long as she gets her treats. If only we could get on top of this limp, I could enter her in Rally Excellent. But I want to see if we can figure that out first.
And Levi got his first RA leg.
Tuesday night I didn’t have a fun experience. However, it was not as horrible as I had expected. So that was good. It still wasn’t any fun at all, but wasn’t quite as miserable as I’d feared.
I had a root canal. My Dentist is a nut. He was telling me how much he enjoyed doing root canals. LOL. And he said he hoped I didn’t think he was weird. Well, I did think that was weird! But, he’s a great Dentist and he did an awesome job, and he made sure to get me numb. He was having a hard time getting me completely numb, but he worked at it until it happened. And I was even able to tell him honestly when it hurt. So many times in the past I just don’t, I suck it up… but I figured that was just dumb, and I really needed to say when it hurt. Dental work can just hurt!
So Tuesday night I went home and crashed, then Wednesday morning I woke up and still didn’t feel too hot. We do have the option, here at work, to telecommute one day a week. My regular day will be Thursdays… but I did Wed this week because of the Dentist. And man… how neat is it, getting up, turning on the laptop, and viola, you are at work. Well, I did feed the dogs first, which they were pretty happy about!
I worked for 8 hours (I was a bit late getting up), showered during my lunch break, and then afterwards I was just home. Okay, so I’m going to plan on telecommuting every week now. Well, after my Mar/Apr agility trips are finished. And if I’m not completely needed at work. I feel guilty about working from home, it’s so nice! But my coworkers do it, and so I will too.
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Yippeee!
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You might see a number of odd posts where I link to other people’s sites. These are in hopes of getting links back to here, to get my Alexa and Google PR back up. Since I changed domain names… ugh, I have no ranking anymore. I did forget about all that. Hopefully it’ll come back!
Hardware is such an ever changing industry… memory gets bigger all the time, computers get faster. It’s hard to keep up with it all.
http://www.hardwaregeeks.com/ has a great deal of wonderful information about it all. Articles, reviews, forums, news bits, etc!
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