The Family

It’s really not often I get a picture of all six of our dogs. While I was feeding Lucy this morning, most of the dogs were on the couch. So I put the rest up there and snapped a few pictures.

Lucy is in her chair about three times a day now. I really hate her megaesophagus.  I love her, and I want her happy and healthy.  And of course we do everything we can for her.  Our floors are kinda gross now, since she regurgitates still.  But we clean up after her and move on.  She’s a good girl and our special collie. 

The rest of the dogs are good.  Muffit goes hiking with my husband a lot. I don’t post about him much because I don’t do much with him.  Levi is retired, cranky, and jealous that he’s not my main companion anymore, but I train him some and go for walks and things and that makes him happy.  Tatum, Chase and Jet are my three main sport dogs now and they are fun to work with.

All in all, our happy house of six dogs is really peaceful. Everyone gets along and everything is going well. I miss Angel terribly, still.  The worst thing about coming back from trips is not having her here to welcome me home.

Everyone else is pretty happy and healthy though. But I don’t like it when the dogs get old.  I wish they were all young and healthy.

Spirit Chasers Spice CDX

Chase got his CDX!!!! I am thrilled!  I almost thought it would never happen. He started laying down on his sit stays back in March.  After the pigeon incidence and he got to do a 9.5 minute down stay in the ring. After that, I thought we were pretty much screwed.  But with lots of training and persistence, he held his sit stay today!  Wooo Hooo!

It’s my first CDX ever on a dog.  Levi had one leg toward a CDX before I retired him. He just wouldn’t hold the out of site stays.  So that’s okay.  But Chase always had the potential.  He has the potential for a UD, too, so now that his CDX is done we are going to work the UD exercises.  That’ll be fun. I do want to get his ASCA CDX too, though, but hopefully that sit stay will hold for those legs too.

Today was an adventerous day… last night driving up to Idaho Falls Chase pooped in his crate, which is really rare. He’s usually really good about letting me know when he has to go out. But he didn’t give me even a peep.  Then this morning his poop was solid again.  But last night Tatum didn’t settle at all and kept me awake most of the night.  She’s usually really good in the hotel rooms so I don’t know what was up with her. Hopefully tonight she’ll be good and tired so she’ll sleep.  She also Q’d in Rally Novice B, yay!  I’ll post more about that later. I was so nervous about Chase and that CDX leg that I didn’t spend as much mental energy on Tatum as I should have.  But she did good, she got a 91 out of 100 so I was very proud of her!

So after we were done at the trial we came back to the hotel room and I took a nap. It felt good, I was exhausted.  The stress of the CDX was such that I felt like I was going to throw up after it was over.  I was so relieved.  So I took a nap and when I woke up I couldn’t find my smart phone.  I looked in the hotel and the van  and couldn’t find it.  So then I remembered that I’d thrown some stuff away at the trial site and though oh no, maybe the phone was with all that stuff.

So we went back to the trial site and they garbage collectors had come only an hour before! I thought I was screwed! So we did some training with the puppies and some friends and that was fun. Jet did some go-outs and some heeling and some dumbbell and had a great time.

When we were done I figured I’d walk the path once again from the van to the tent set up to see if I could find my phone.. and as I got closer to the tent site I realized that I had never taken my chair down, and maybe it was in my drink holder.  And it was! I was so relieved!  I don’t want to buy a new phone, I can’t afford it! And I really like my smart phone.  :)

We then went to Cafe Rio for dinner, and then we went back to the hotel. Chase is again runny so I’m not sure what’s up with him.  It’s not affecting his performance, though. But since he now has his CDX I’m not going to put him back in the ring Saturday or Sunday.  There is no reason to waste energy on those stays when he doesn’t have to.  So now I get to concentrate on Tatum’s Rally for the next couple of days and I hope she will get her Rally Novice title!

It’s time for bed, good night!  ;)

Jet and Chase

I won’t need any diamond engagement rings up in Idaho… but I do want some Q ribbons! Tatum is in Rally, too. She seems to have regressed a bit lately into some more shyness so I hope she does okay. My poor special needs rescue girl. I adore her, I do push her, but without a little push she’d be a bubble dog and would be too afraid to leave the house. So a little push is a good thing. As long as it involves lots of Tuna Brownies!

I hope to have internet there and be able to post about our Obedience.

Chase and his Frisbee

Although it’s not really an officially acceptable thing by the UKC, afterward the club had a Wildcard class. If you are not familiar with obedience, Wildcard is just a class where you can go in the ring and, well, kinda train, but you can’t really train… and you can’t get legs or qualifying points or anything. It’s just really a thing you can do to see if your dog is ready for the qualifying events. They have Wildcard Novice, Open and Utility. And I think you can opt to not do two of the exercises in each class.

So the only reason I would enter a dog in Wildcard is, like I said, to see how he acts in a real show environment and see how he’ll do. But, I actually pretty much know what Chase is going to do, he’s a very solid and predictable dog, so I wouldn’t enter him. Maybe I would for Utility, I dunno. I’ll get to that bridge when he has training to cross it.

Most of the dogs I saw in the Wildcard classes were… well, just not really good. Some were slow and poky, or seemed like they needed a lot more training. Actually, what I thought they needed was motivation and positive reinforcement. Since you can’t reward a dog in Wildcard with treats or toys, and you can’t correct with words… what’s the point? It’s just like the real thing, pretty much. Okay you can give some double commands I guess if you want to, or need to. But if you are too enthusiastic then you can be asked to leave the ring… at least I think you can. So unless your dog is trained to the point where all they need is a couple of double commands to remind them of things, why would anyone enter?

To me, if you put a dog in the ring, your training has to be solid. My trainer says it’s like a bank. Training puts money in the bank. Trialing takes money out of the bank. You have to have your bank chock full of training before going into that ring. Because it only takes the dog once or twice to realize that there are no corrections and no rewards in the ring. And if you go into a ring, any ring, and your dog doesn’t do a sit when you tell him to, then you take him out of the ring and you either correct him or reward him for a sit, what is he learning? He’s learning that in the ring he can pretty much do what he wants. Outside the ring he has to do what he’s told. Wildcard or not.

So for me, i want my dogs able to do the entire ring performance without treats, in a solid way, before I put them in a ring. Be it agility or obedience. And I’ll tell ya, I’m in no rush to get Jet into a real trial ring. When he’s ready, he’s ready, and I’m not going to say he’s ready until he is ready. And I want his bank totally full of good training before we go in. I want him to be happy and motivated and smiling, doing a whole routine, without treats or corrections, before we even step foot in a ring.

Of course you can never train for every imaginable thing. And I’m sure Jet will come up with some odd things I’ll have to fix. Like Chase and his darn sit stay in the ring. And Chase… well, he didn’t start obedience until he was about four years old, no foundation training at all. And his Open work is actually quite beautiful. It’s that darn sit stay biting us. I was going to show him at an ASCA obedience trial in a couple weeks, but I’ve pulled him because the more he lays down on his sit stay, the more often he’s going to lay down on his sit stay. So back to training it is. And back to ring-like environments so, hopefully, he doesn’t know the difference. Though it’s hard with a smart dog. They know the difference between training and trialing quite well, even when we try to fool them!

With Jet, though, he’s going to love obedience! He already does! And he loves to work, and he loves to do the exercises, so I think he’s going to really excel at obedience. Only one other Danish Swedish Farmdog was doing obedience here in the USA, and she’s moved back to Denmark. So Jet gets to set the standard for obedience work for the DSF. So I want him nice and solid before we even think about going in! And he’s going to get a UD… no doubt! He’s so smart and we love to work!

So anyway, I am confused about Wildcard and I just don’t understand why people keep putting their dogs in the ring and getting the same sloppy results. Okay granted some dogs are just goofy (like a friend sheltie I know LOL) and he has just got to keep trying because he knows all the stuff, and he can do it, as long as his mind doesn’t get too distracted. So in that instance I understand. But for the most part, I don’t!

Chase

Well Chase now has Three CDs behind his name. Though the UKC CD might actually be a prefix title I’m not sure.

Today we went to a UKC trial and he picked up the last leg for his UCD. We don’t have many UKC trials here in Utah and so we do them when we can, and when we don’t have twenty other things planned like we usually do. He qualified with a 181 which isn’t too bad. Out of 200. He got a bit lost on his off leash heeling and went on my right side, but got most of his sits and did pretty well. I moved him to Open A for tomorrow, maybe we can get an open leg. Though in UKC, just like the other venues, they have the dumb out of sight sit stay for three minutes, so hopefully he’ll hold that. He’s been laying down on that lately in AKC trials. Hrmph. I hate those dumb sit stays.

I’m going to bring Tatum and Jet tomorrow too. After the trial is over they are having a 10 minutes for $10 in the ring deal for training. And you can have treats! So I’m going to get them in the ring for some training and use some treats. Jet’s heeling is coming along very nicely so it will be great to have him in the ring. And Tatum always needs to get out and get in rings and other experiences or she starts to revert back to scaredy-dog rescue girl. So it’ll be good for them both!

Okay I got all Chase’s titles and here is his official name, titles and all!

UCD Spirit Chasers Spice AKC-CD OA OAJ XF CGC C-STA C-ISLA C-BGA ASCA-CD RS-O GS-O JS-E WV-N PK1 TFE-III FDCH-S

Dorky Chase

Well, I took Chase to obedience trial this weekend. AKC. He needs only one more leg for his CDX. But dangit, now it’s being elusive. He got his two first legs boom boom. Now he’s going down on his sit stay, which is an NQ. Ugh! So frustrating! He has been doing so well at training too. Just solid. Maybe if he had some contemporary sofas to sit on he’d be more comfortable? I just don’t know.

I’ll try again in August in Idaho Falls. It’s so pretty up there and the trial site is nice and calm. And I want to get Tatum ready for Rally-O too.  Hopefully she’ll be okay in the ring. She still gets nervous but she can do it!  It’ll be fun. Of course I’ll have to bring Jet too. Even though he can’t do AKC trials, he’s my baby so he comes with me everywhere. 

This picture is of Chase in our back yard with a weird look on his face. He can be such a dork. 

Chase Goofy

The weekend before last I took Chase to Denver, Colorado, and we did some ASCA agility there. I was really pleased about how we ran. Chase did awesome, and I did pretty good at handling him, too, if I do say so myself. We got 2 and a half standard Qs, and two jumpers Qs. In Standard, a full Q is 10 points, and you need 30 points for a title. We got 25 points so I was really happy with that. Since we have such a hard time Qualifying I’m really happy with how we did!

In Jumpers he got his Elite Jumpers Title and an extra 10 points to boot. Now we get to work on our ATCH points in Jumpers. That’s so neat! I’m excited. We still need 5 points for the Elite Standard Title, then we can work on ATCH points for Standard too.

We didn’t do all that well in Gamblers. My timing needs improvement, but we’ll get there. Chase did great and I’m very happy with him!

It was windy and dusty and I could have used some acne facial cleanser to clear up my skin after. But it was warm which was nice for a change. Of course it’s warm here now in Salt Lake, too. And I am really ready for summer!

Well we are sad here, because Angel is gone, and I don’t really have much desire to blog lately. I went and did agility last weekend. It was okay, but my heart was so heavy on Saturday that I handled Chase very poorly. We got one half Q, which was good. Then on Sunday we got another half Q, which was also good, because that got Chase his open standard title. It was ASCA.

I haven’t even been on my laptop much… been just kinda hiding, sometimes in bed, sometimes in front of the TV. Mostly with the other dogs snuggling against me.

I’ll get better… but for now, I just have to be sad for a while.

Jet And The Scrubby Brush

Okay so I kinda mentioned last post that Chase didn’t get that last leg of his CDX at the AKC trial last weekend. He’s a good boy and he tried really, really hard. The first day he was really distracted, and the second day he did awesome, but he laid down on his long sit and that disqualified him. Ugh. I hate those sits and downs! They last for 8 minutes, and going in the ring for the real exercises last less time than that. Every time I train Chase for that sit stay, I apologize to him, saying I know they are dumb!

But anyway, obedience is actually very difficult. My trainer tells me it takes an average of 21 tries in the ring to get a CDX. That’s a lot… and Chase has only been in the AKC ring 5 times now. He nailed his first two, which was great. But now his sits are getting sloppy so I have to give him more information that he needs to sit… he needs to stay in the position I put him in until I release him. It’s hard, it’s not a fun part of obedience. It’s an obedient part, which I guess is reflective of the name. But still… bleh. And this picture of Jet is him not being obedient! LOL. He got my dish washing scrubby brush and of course I had to take a picture of him as I was tugging… taking it away. He is such a goofy boy. Such a sweet puppy.

Anyway, Obedience is tough, but it’s also a challenge that I love doing. We’ll get it, I have no doubt. Next weekend we are doing ASCA agility and that should be fun, too. I hope to get Chase out of open standard and into Elite. And start working on some of those more elusive Elite titles! And then I won’t have to buy weight loss products, because I’ll be running around getting tired!

Well today Chase went into the obedience ring again and we tried to pick up that last CDX leg in AKC obedience.  He was a good boy except for he didn’t heel. The place the show is, is at a huge conformation show, indoors. And so there are a ton of dogs and a ton of people and it’s an extremely distracting environment. And I didn’t get there early enough and heel him around to make sure he knew that was what we were doing.  So he went in the ring and wandered off and didn’t heel at all.  Bleh.  He also laid down on his 3 minute out of sight sit stay.

So I’m glad that I entered him tomorrow too. I figure he will have a good chance of getting 1 leg if I entered him in 2 days. And I will do some heeling tomorrow morning before we go in the ring. And I’ve been working the sit stay too.  I hate those stays. They are awful, and I always apologize to Chase when I ask him to do them, saying I know they are stupid, but was just have to do them. I’d rather go atv riding than do those stays… and I don’t like that either!

So tomorrow, hopefully will go better. He’s a good boy. I was only a little mad at him during the heeling. The rest of his work was very nice!