August 2009Monthly Archives

Jet and Agility

So I’m very happy to say that Jet seems to love agility! Well we didn’t do much. I took him over the dog walk slowly, with it loaded with treats, and he seemed to really like that. He also ran up the teeter. We held the tipping end so it wouldn’t go down. We’ll do that slowly too. Heck, he’s still a baby. He’s only 18 weeks old! But he’s so smart and he learns so fast. I think I am totally, completely, and utterly sold on this breed. Wow. He’s like an old soul. He’s so smart and calm and he loves to do everything.

He also went through a tunnel and he loved that too. My trainer and friend are developing a wonderful puppy training plan for him. I need to go read over Nancy Gyes blog too, she has a 5 month old puppy she is training.

Jet already knows off (hop off me), boost (jump on me), sit, down, stand… and lots of other things! He also is learning how to stretch on cue… he’s so cute. When he wakes up or comes out of his crate when we are training he stretches, so I tell him ‘Stretch!’ and he does it again right away for a treat!

I just adore him. My other dogs are, I will admit, a bit jealous. But Jet is a puppy and does need more attention than the older dogs. They will be okay, and they still get lots of exercise and time too. Maybe they need some orlando vacations to make them happy… or heck, maybe I need one!

Cynthia

August 31, 2009

Agility, Jet

2 comments

Agility, Jet

A Shopping Weakness

I have a shopping weakness… and it’s related to the dogs. I love to buy dog things and sometimes I just can’t stop myself. And I probably spend too much time looking online for dog things. I have bought Jet a Halloween collar that I’ll blog about when it comes. But quite often I find myself looking at Shop Wiki. And even when I don’t go directly there, it comes up on lots of search results.

Recently I bought Jet a really cute Pets for Peace dog collar and I love it! I need a harness to match… I know I know harnesses are shunned by some. LOL They do have one listed on Shop Wiki Pets and I’m going to be looking around for that darned harness.

My boy is naked right now. Because he just had a bath. And he’s walking on my laptop shelf looking for things to do, I better go give him something fun to do! LOL

Dredges of Humanity

Three Dogs?

So I’ve been thinking lately that dealing with rescue dogs is like dealing with the dredges of humanity. I worked in Welfare for nine and a half years. It wasn’t really all that bad, but I did get burned out, and I did tend to think everyone was like welfare recipients. Many of the people do work hard to get out of the system, but so many are generational welfare recipients that it’s just bad. I don’t know how it is now, I’ve been out of it for over 10 years, but still…

Anyway so dealing in rescue is seeing the crap side of people. We see the dogs who were abused by awful, horrible people. I just play with and snuggle Jet and love him and teach him stuff and I just can’t imagine anyone being mean to a little puppy like him. How awful! How an anyone hit or punish a four month old puppy for just being a puppy! It makes me so mad!

So now that I’m not doing rescue anymore hopefully I’ll start seeing the happier dogs more. And happy dogs come from happy people. Not abusers. If you abuse animals, you most likely will abuse humans too. I’m tired of sticking my head under the quagmire of human filth and abuse and staring at the dogs there. It’s time to face the sun and see all the happy dogs.

I told my husband we needed to buy a trailer or an RV and, when I retire, take a few months and just travel and go to some trials. Maybe go take some orlando vacations in the warm sun. I would love to do that. I still have some years to go, though. But hopefully it’ll happen!

Jet and Layla

Jet has found a new tugging friend. This is Layla and Jet.. Layla belongs to my friend Marie. She’s almost a year old and she’s a great tugger!

I love to see Jet playing tug with another dog. Actually, Chase has played a little bit of tug with him too! But Chase isn’t too sure about it yet. Hopefully none of them will need a Plano dentist for their teeth after tugging! Jet’s puppy teeth will be coming out pretty soon, too.

Jet is doing really well with training. I’m even starting to get him walking through 2 upright weave polls. Why not… it is not going to stress his little body at all to get him walking through 2 upright polls. He love it, too! He is such a good boy and so amazingly smart!

He’s been getting to go out to lots of places, too. I need to post up the video of him playing with kids at Idaho Falls. I love that he loves to play with kids! Since we don’t have any kids I like to borrow all the kids I can!

Sweet Angel Is Getting Old

Angel

Here is our sweet Angel. I can’t help saying Sweet Angel because she is our sweetest dog. She is probably about 13 years old now… and we don’t have low cost health insurance for her. But we do save enough each month so we can take care of her as she needs it as she gets older.

She is doing really well even though she is slowing down quite a bit. She is going up and down the stairs a lot slower than in the past. And she doesn’t like the heat we have been having… okay she never really liked the heat but she likes it even less now.

But she’s happy and loves scratches on the ears and she loves it when she gets ahold of a sock or a shoe and I chase her around. She runs out the dog door to get away. She’s very slow when I chase her but she’s so darn cute we have a good time. I have to run at her speed which is, really, walking slow, instead of running. LOL

We hope she’ll be with us for a lot longer but we hope we have given her a great life. She was a rescue too and came to us with a broken leg. I need to post up a picture from when she has her cast on, poor dear. We adore her.

Chase’s AKC CD

I am so proud of Chase! He did awesome last weekend at the AKC obedience trial. He got his CD in three days! They had three different judges and he qualified all three days! His score was good, too. He had some no-sits which is 3 points off for each. So had he sat every time he would have been in the mid 190s. He got a couple 191s and a 189. I was pretty happy with those scores!

So without even knowing about GMAT prep we were able to pull off that CD. This is his title leg. The other two are on YouTube if you cruise over to my site and watch there.

Tatum is Sequencing

Tatum in a crate

So Tatum is doing great in agility! She really is. She is learning to put obstacles together in sequence. I’m very proud of her. She’s not too sure yet about doing jumps at speed, but she is having fun, her tail is up, and she really loves it. She likes that I run beside her too. At flyball practice she tends to run off… but it’s not as structured as agility is and I don’t run beside her. So we will work at agility more to get her the idea of doing jumps, and other obstacles, in order.

This picture is of her in a dog crate we had set up in the front room. She loves the crates. It was for Jet… but we took it down already becuase Jet just doesn’t need crates. It’s weird, having a puppy that doesn’t need to be in a crate. :p

Anyway back to Tatum. She’s starting to learn front crosses, too. I tried some rear crosses with her but she doesn’t have the commitment to the jumps yet that she needs to learn rear crosses. I need to break it down, too. I tried to do some rear cross training without jumps, but I actually think the jumps make it more clear to her. And I keep the jump bars really low, like 8 inches, just so it gives us something to focus on.

Tatum is so much fun to do agility with. I need to get serious about her weaves. I really think she could be ready to compete by next spring.

Agility, Tatum, Training

Every Day I’m Amazed

Jet and his Toy

Every single day I live with this boy, I’m amazed. Jet is such a great pup. He is so sweet and loving, he loves to snuggle, and… well, I’m not sure if I can really describe how wonderful he is.

He loves to learn. He knows sit, stand and down now. Boost and Off (to jump on me and off me). He lets me look at his teeth and dremel his toenails. He goes potty outside all the time. And he has a very bright and cheerful spirit that makes everyone laugh.

I know I’ve been around rescue dogs for too long. Jet makes eye contact, something the rescue dogs have a hard time doing. He chases me and comes to me all the time… another thing the rescue dogs don’t usually do, becuase they have had bad starts with mean people so coming was a bad thing, not good. He peacefully chews bones. He sleeps on the couch and the bed with me. He is just so sweet and amazing. And he’s so flexible too!

He does chew on a lot of things. He doesn’t quite reach the ceiling fans though, which is good. But he has lots of toys and chew bones that I put in his mouth if he gets something he is not supposed to have. He does love chewing on our wicker foot stool in the basement… but we might just let him chew on that one. LOL It’s expendable. So we don’t worry about it.

I’m going to take him to Chicago in October for the Danish Swedish Farmdog Club of America National Specialty with ARBA. That’ll be fun! I haven’t gotten his ARBA registration yet though… I really need to get that. Or else I probably can’t even enter him. LOL… details! I’m sure it’ll work out though, we still have some time!