September 2008Monthly Archives

Muffit and the Husband

Muffit In The Water 9-19-2008 1-13-09 PM Muffit is such a good sweet boy and he’s coming a long way in his training. His box work is so great for flyball! Of course his behavior still needs some work. Maybe if I join the wine of the month club I can cope with him better! But I just like wine so never mind. LOL.

Anyway, Muffit has a very hard time with impulse control, and just general control, when he gets over stimulated. And he can get over stimulated pretty easily. This picture of him is from the dog park.. he loves the dog park and he does quite well there. He also does good at flyball tournaments and on walks. Where he doesn’t do good is at flyball practice.

So my Husband (he is such a wonderful guy!) helped me out yesterday by bringing Muffit to flyball practice but staying far away. My husband got a little bit too close and Muffit lost his mind and could no longer think, but that’s okay, the more my husband works with Muffit, the more he’ll be able to read Muffit’s body language and know when he is over threshold.

The basic idea is to introduce Muffit to the flyball practice area slowly so as to desensitize him, as well as reward focus towards us humans with the clicker, as much as possible. It’s like when Muffit gets over excited when the leash comes out. He has to learn to control his excitement and sit to put his harness on and his leash on. The same goes for flyball practice. He has to learn to control his excitement and still be able to think and work. Plus, he’ll be happier that way as well. None of us like to be so over excited with anxiety and excitement that we cannot focus and concentrate!

We have four or five years of bad training to over come with this boy, but I have faith, I’m sure we can do it! Muffit is such a lover boy, very snuggly, very loyal. And when he’s more confident, he can be a little brat too. We like confident brats! It tells us the dogs are happy and secure!

Cynthia

September 29, 2008

Muffit, Training

4 comments

Lucy in her Chair

Lucy is such a good girl and she’s doing so well with her Bailey’s Chair. Sometimes she still worries us.. okay, most times we are still worried about her. But she’s gained her weight back and her energy is back up to normal, and we are happy about that. My friend Christy reminded me about her lung calicification yesterday (I’d forgotten about it! So wrapped up in her megaesophagus) and we don’t seem to notice that either but we should keep it in the backs of our minds.

Last night, though, she had a bit of an episode where it sounded like she couldn’t breathe, or something was stuck in her breathing tube. I sat up with her for about fifteen or so minutes until it stopped, ready to head off to the emergency vet if necessary. But then she went back to sleep and seemed okay.

She ate breakfast fine this morning, but just now she seemed to have regurgitated maybe half or a third of it. So we are gonna weight an hour or two to feed her again. Poor girl. You can just tell by looking at her that she isn’t too happy when she is regurgitating, or after. Our collie girl is doing so well, but we do worry about her.

Of course we’d be willing to go into debt for any of our dogs if we had too… hoping the debt collection agencies would understand, but they probably wouldn’t! Bleh.

Cynthia

September 27, 2008

Lucy

10 comments

Health, Lucy, Megaesophagus

Happy Birthday Boys

So Muffit and Chase are pretty lucky boys. Not only do they get a Gotcha Day each, they also get a birthday. It’s a made-up birthday for the dog sports they are in. We usually celebrate both… and this one was the Made-Up-Birthday-Day on September 21!

They didn’t get any Vegas vacations this year… though Chase has been to Vegas and will probably go again! But they did get a Birthday Pizza! It has Chase’s name on it, for being five years old. For the sake of being easy to remember, I made Muffit’s birthday the same day, and the same year as we think he’s about five as well. He was full grown when we fostered him back in December of 2005, but we are just guessing.

Chase got to help his Dad open up the box and cut up the Birthday Pizza. We get these from a local Dog Bakery called Ma and Paws. I don’t think they have a website anymore but the dogs LOVE the treats from there! Chase was pretty eager for his piece of pizza!

Muffit was excited about his too, of course. The pieces are pretty darn big, but that’s okay. My husband cut the thing into eight pieces. So all the dogs got one piece, and then Muffit and Chase got two. Not on the same day, though, since they are big pieces, I think more food than their dinner!

I love this look on Muffit’s face… like, don’t take my pizza away from me! But of course we don’t. And even if we do, he lets us, and we give it back or trade for something else. Because if we don’t, then the dogs won’t want to give anything to us at all. How fun would it be to always be taking the good stuff away? No fun at all!

So the boys were very happy. And Lucy got her piece in the blender with some milk, and then dinner a bit after, so it’d run down her throat easily and she wouldn’t throw it back up, silly girl!

A Trip to the Dog Park

I don’t usually like dog parks… mainly because my dogs don’t do too good at them. But I have to say, some of my dogs don’t do good at them.. but actually, only one doesn’t do good at them anymore. Levi used to be horrible, barking at people, running amok, when he was young. He’s better now though, more mellow and he tires out fairly quickly. yeah.. he’s almost nine so he’s showing a bit of age. Darnit.

These first two pictures are of some dogs we met when there that our dogs wanted to play with. Very handsome and cute indeed!

Anyway, this park, Tanner Park, aka Parley’s Nature Preserve, is awesome. And it’s an official dog park now! It is a gully and it’s about a mile round trip. You go down and walk to a little lake kinda drainage pond at the top, then turn around and head back. The dogs love it, you don’t stand in one place for any length of time.. and to keep moving is much better for the dogs.

Chase and Lucy stayed home, because Chase is the dog that doesn’t like other dogs in his face. And Lucy can’t eat treats anymore. So my husband and I took Tatum, Muffit, Levi and Angel.

Muffit had a great time… he always knows where we are, but he pretends to forget where we are. He doesn’t come back to his name as well as Tatum does (when she’s listening). But I think it’s just because he’s afraid the fun will be over, and it’s not deeply reinforced yet that his name means a yummy treat is in order. He will catch on, I’m sure.

You just can’t get happier dogs than this. This dog park is doggie heaven. We did end up losing Tatum at one point. She forgets about us sometimes. She gets so excited about the other dogs, she tends to ignore us and forget about us and she follows the other dogs. I do think, though, with time she’ll get used to it and listen and watch for us more. She is a good girl and she watches for treats after about the first fifteen minutes of getting all the excitement out of her system.

Tatum just has the happiest darn face when she’s at the dog park. She loves it. She came home and is dead asleep now. She laid right down when she got into the van in her crate. Once she realized it was time to go, she like sighed and was happy that she could relax!

The drive home was restful for them.. and now it’s time to go eat dinner, so I have to wake them up!

Angel, Levi, Muffit, Park, Tatum

All My Dogs Are Perfect

a: being entirely without fault or defect : flawless [a perfect diamond] b: satisfying all requirements : accurate c: corresponding to an ideal standard or abstract concept [a perfect gentleman]

I have just been thinking, lately, that each and every one of my dogs is perfect. Flawless even? I think so. They are who they are, they are themselves. Even their behavior ‘issues’ do not make them flawed. They are like works of abstract art that have no set design. They cannot be judged against any other dog who might know everything and be completely healthy, both physically and mentally, because, like humans, there is no one who is completely healthy and whole. Oh sure, we can come close, so can dogs, but still… we are living beings and that makes us who we are.

I love each of my dogs just as they are. I try to shape their behavior as I can, with training and love, to give them something interesting to do. Of all my dogs, the one I want to shape the most, right now, is Muffit with his issues with other dogs. But still, he is perfect. Flawless. He satisfies all requirements of being a dog, and of being my companion, and he corresponds to an ideal standard. My own.

My dogs are all perfect. In fact, I think the same of most dogs. Sure there are some that are pretty messed up, but still… they are who they are, and in their own way, they are perfect too.

Me, I am not so perfect, especially when I need acne treatments… but fortunately I haven’t needed them for years! But still, I don’t consider myself perfect, flawless… but I do consider myself as having a great deal of value, just for being alive. As I do all living things.

I am an Animal Lover

Oh yes I am!

Your result for The Are you an animal person Test…

Complete Misanthrope

Not only do you love animals, but you HATE people. You wish that humans had never evolved. You might have therianthropic tendencies. You would feel right at home at a PETA or ALF meeting, and would be proud to don a ski mask and break some animals out of the local testing facility. Be careful of that, though- didn’t you see 28 days later?

Take The Are you an animal person Test at HelloQuizzy

The Box

So here is a picture of Chase on the flyball box. He is getting all four feet up on the box, but only because there is a prop in front of the box that pushes him up on it.

I really want to clicker train him to get up there without a prop. His box falls apart at tournaments and he slams it too much with his front, which can cause problems for him when he gets older.

And I’m kinda excited to get Muffit, Chase and Tatum going in flyball. I am just loving it. Even more so… can I admit it? Than agility lately. Maybe I just need a change.

Pfft what a Week

Well, I’m here.. sorta. I’m still recovering from my server’s hard drive failure. I still haven’t gotten all these blog posts restored, but I’m getting close. Then yesterday when I tried to tweak mysql for better performance, I lost database connection for a few hours. I’m glad that worked itself out!

Maybe I shouldn’t count on any IT job search for myself lately. LOL since my server knowledge is extremely limited. Oh well, it’s working again and my backups are better than before.

The dogs are good… I was so excited that Muffit was able to do some box turns at the tournament last weekend! He does so much better at a tournament than at practice. It’s kinda odd, if you ask me. Maybe practice is just too concentrated, where the tournament, people and dogs are more spread out. He will still be a while before he races, but he’s coming along.

Strangely enough my dog things are winding down and I don’t have any competitions lined up for a while. It’s good, I need the break.

Cynthia

September 17, 2008

Daily Posts, Flyball, Muffit

1 comment

Chatter, Flyball, Muffit