Muffit and Tatum love to play. Sometimes Tatum overdoes it and Muffit wants to go hide, though…
But if Muffit hides in the crate, Tatum just follows him in!
Give that girl a cigarette!
May 2008Monthly Archives
WW – Can’t Stop Playing
Got Hurt Doing Agility?
I haven’t blogged about my sprained ankle in a while.. I sprained it last year, and made it worse back in October 2007 at an agility trial. It was so bad I couldn’t walk on it for a couple of days. No, interestingly enough, my husband has a sprained ankle, he did it when we were camping. Ugh! And it’s nasty swollen, I hope it goes down soon.
Agility can be considered a contact sport sometimes, and humans and dogs alike can get hurt. Though I’d rather it be me hurt than my dogs, of course. But either way, sometimes we need Wound Care to patch ourselves up!
DHPHomeDelivery.com provides the superior quality and customer care that we all need if we are hurt and need to be patched up!
Crate Games!
Just another agility picture from the trial. It’s a bit dark, but it’s a very cute cocker spaniel, don’t you think?
I wanted to blog a bit about Susan Garrett’s Crate Games. A friend of mine bought the DVD last weekend and I must admit, I’m impressed. She was not so impressed. But one of her dogs, a little shy (okay a lot shy) runs into her crate too much already, and she finds it annoying!
I probably can’t really get the point across in this blog post, but the idea is to get your dog to really love the crate. High levels of reinforcement inside the crate, and lots of treats for when the dog chooses to go into the crate. It can even be clicker trained, I bet. As soon as the dog is in the crate, click/treat.
So I set up Tatum last night and we started crate games. She doesn’t run much for me. She’ll bite me in the butt and play with me… but when we are outside training she doesn’t quite run with me. So I’m hoping this will speed her up and get her enthused. She is pretty speedy about getting onto her mat, so I’m hoping this will transfer to her crate too.
First step is, basically, to feed her in the crate a lot. And to open the door… wait a sec, then if she doesn’t move, feed again. High value treats. If she moves to get out, door closes, no treat. We did this and it was fun and she was really getting the idea.
Then there’s the Yer In Yer Out game. Don’t do these back to back though! I release her out of the crate (she only comes out on a release cue) and then I stand and wait and ignore her, and when she goes back into the crate she gets praise and a treat. I could even click here, but it wasn’t really necessary because she was getting it and going back into the crate.
We will be working on more complex crate games over the next few weeks. I do hope it helps her speed! Collies are not really known for speed, so we are gonna work on this.
Agility Makes me Burn
Hehe, I have to laugh at my own title. 
Well, it’s true, when I’m out in the sun at agility trials my face tends to sunburn. So do my hands, arms, and the part in my hair. I guess I need a shampoo that contains sunscreen for my hair, does one exist? Guess I should look it up. I usually just wear a baseball cap.
If I put regular sunscreen on my face and I sweat, it runs into my eyes. It’s awful. Not only because I wear contacts, but it just stings even if my contacts are out. So I need special facial sunscreen that won’t melt with my sweat and run into my eyes.
Looks like Screen, Inc. has some great new sunscreen’s I’m going to check out, and they concentrate on the face. And they are natural and safe. Perfect for agility! I hate sunburns. I want to keep my skin as young and healthy as possible!
Sunday Agility with Levi
Well we had fun at agility again today. This is a picture of a Boston Terrier that I caught in the Tire. I actually brought my camera with and sat and took quite a few pictures. It was fun. You can see the rest of them on my flickr set if you are interested. As I write this they are still uploading, so it might be a while until they are all there.
I’m dead tired. Again. As usual. Levi did great again, too. But, he didn’t weave for me again. I even tried to slow him down and set him up for the weaves… but nope, he didn’t. I didn’t get these runs on video today, though. But he didn’t get the entry either run, and then once he was in, he did some but popped out half way through. *sigh* Someday we will get his MXP and MJP… hopefully. One Q a weekend is gonna make it take a while, though!
But we have fun anyway. I love this collie boy, and we have done a lot together and will keep doing so until Levi doesn’t want to any more. Hopefully it will be a while before that happens!
Answering Services for the Dogs
I have been known to do the occasional collie rescue here in Utah. I do love the collies, and have four of my own. All smoothies. And when I was more involved in rescue, I thought it’d be great to have an Answering Service that would help take calls for when people call and they are interested in adopting a collie or two.
Answering Services can come in super handy. There are some that work with rescues, and if you have multiple people doing rescue in your group, they can all access the messages and make call backs when people call in. There are costs involved, though, so the rescues would need the time and service donated in order for it to really be affordable.
MAP Communications provides a great answering service, and can help out in lots of ways. I don’t know if they work with rescues, but maybe they do. I should go and check it out. Because it just never hurts to ask!
Levi’s Agility Runs Today
Here is Levi’s first agility run from today. It’s his Excellent B Preferred Jumpers with Weaves run. My collie boy has such a good time doing agility… even thought he’s eight, he’s still having a good time. This is his clean run and I’m so very proud he got the weaves!
As you can see he did great, got his weave entry after the tunnel and finished them all. I was proud of him and we celebrated afterwards. On Friday he didn’t quite weave the first day… ran by them, but on the second run he gave them a try. I brought him back, was excited with him, and he finished them all. I think that helped his confidence for his first run today.
He now has 3 runs towards his MJP. He needs 7 more. He has 5 runs towards his MXP, and needs 5 more. Man these Masters titles are taking us a long time. But that’s okay, Levi is doing great and we are having a good time.
This run he also did great, but he didn’t Qualify. And if you watch his weaves.. you’ll see him bump the second poll. My obedience and agility instructor was telling me (she was watching, yay) that maybe Levi is entering the weaves too fast and he’s not able to control his movement around the second poll. (The reason he pulled out half way through is because he spotted the tunnel, and broke for it. LOL. I saw when his eyes spotted it and he focused on, silly boy. He prefers to weave when there is no obstacle after.. he likes to weave into nothing.)
I have never worked speed into the entry with him. Teaching him to collect. He is very long bodied, and will span up to four polls at a time when he weaves. And if he doesn’t collect and set himself up at the right speed, he might be going in too fast!
My collie boy going too fast? Wow! We’ve had weave problems as long as we’ve done agility. Because of me, of course. And in the last couple years I have really worked at de-stressing them. Well now, maybe it’s something else! Maybe it’s not stress! Maybe it’s something we can really work on!
So tomorrow I’m going to play with this, give him an ‘easy’ as he approaches them, see if that might help. Hrm… and we’ll see about doing some training for that entry. too.
Levi did great today and I was very proud of him. I love doing agility with my collie boy. He is such a great boy, and I adore him, and I do hope we have some good years left!
A Day at Agility Makes Tired Dogs
Well, I took three dogs to agility today. Levi, who ran two runs and did great! I’ll get a video of him posted after I rip it off my DVD camcorder and upload it to YouTube. I was very proud of him. He did great both runs today and weaved on his Jumpers course, the first run. Got the entry, all the polls, and Qd! I was thrilled. He’s such a good boy. He did his think, on his standard run, where he got the entry but then skipped the next poll. I’ll show you in the videos in my next post. I didn’t see any other collies run, Levi was the only agility collie again!
Muffit did really well, too! He is such a good boy. I think I’m getting a handle on what I need to do with him. We’ve only had him for three months, so even though he’s five years old (about) he’s had rotten training… well, no training, and so I’ll need to fix him. He does need to be exposed to the environments, but I do want to keep him under threshold. Where my tent is at the trial, we are far enough away so he can be quiet in his covered crate. And when I take him out, I can walk far from the other dogs, and wait until he gives me some attention. Then lots of treats and praise. And no rewarding hyper or frantic behavior. I think we will be getting a good handle on this soon. Someday I’ll take him with to some cheap hotels when we go travel. Now Muffit is happily sleeping next to me on the couch, he is very tired!
And then, of course, there was Tatum. She is my baby doll princess girl. She is also dead tired. She did great again today, even more confident. We did some mat work by the agility ring. We went inside to where they were doing conformation and obedience. She was a little shy and nervous towards the end of the day when she was getting tired, but in the morning she leapt out of the car and was excited for the day.
It was a good trial, the courses were hard, but okay. The weather was actually fairly warm… not too windy. Got a bit cold once in a while, but was okay. Hopefully it won’t rain or snow tomorrow, dangit. It usually is nasty weather at this trial, so since it’s not raining or snowing or blowing freezing cold wind is just a good thing!
One more day tomorrow. I’ll see about Levi’s weaves again, maybe he’ll get one more!
