Tag Archives: Box

Flyball on the Couch

January 7, 2008 – 6:36 pm

Well tonight we did some fun flyball training. As I want to start Tatum off right. I want her to have a super nice box turn. And I want to do drive shaping with her, so she can get high, and still be in control and think, and come down quickly when she needs to. Important for both flyball and agility. And even obedience, really.

So I took a break from moving hosts and looking at cables and worked with the dogs a bit. I also want Chase to have a better box turn. So I stuck the tug toy up on the couch and played with Chase, jumping up on the couch, grabbing the toy, and jumping back off to me. Hopefully fast! With him I’ll eventually move this onto the wall, I think he’ll be great at, literally, bouncing off the wall. :)

And Tatum was all wound up at that point, so I got her out too and put Chase away. And she will follow the tug toy with me, and she is even starting to tug! She does have a good amount of prey drive and I’m tapping into that. So she followed the tug up onto the couch, then off. And we did that a few times and she had a great time! She’s gonna be a great flyball collie. There are not many collies in flyball. Last check there were only 3 (Tatum included) in U-FLI.

So the beginnings of flyball training for her. And some flyball fun during the cold winter days.

By Cynthia Blue [My Barks!] | Posted in Chase, Daily Posts, Tatum | Also tagged , , , , , , , | Comments (10)

Moving Hosts

January 2, 2008 – 4:10 pm

Ugh. Moving hosts takes a long time. I was hosted on Blue Host, a shared host. And I was getting the Exceed CPU messages too often for my liking.

So I’m moving to a VPS, Virtual Private Server. I did some research and I think it’s best for me. I hope I have enough space, memory, etc for all my sites.

Of course it being a VPS, It’s basically a blank empty box and I have to install everything except the Operating System, from scratch. PHP, MySQL, Virtual Hosts, etc. So it’s coming along. Taking a while, that’s why I haven’t been blogging much, but it’s getting there!

Anyway… that’s what I’ve been doing lately. :)

By Cynthia Blue [My Barks!] | Posted in Daily Posts | Also tagged | Comments (15)

Stand for Exam and Heeling

December 19, 2007 – 9:01 am

Two of the most critical things for Chase to learn at the moment.. before he goes into Novice to get his CD in Obedience, is the Stand for Exam and Heeling.

The Stand for exam is so hard for him. Hard, because he loves people! Which actually says a lot for him. When he was found in the parking lot of the pound in Utah County, he would approach no one. He was afraid, and that is why they named him Chase. And when he came to stay with us, he wouldn’t come to us either for a long time. Now, it’s hard to tear this boy off of a person. So probably he liked people, but was too afraid.

Anyway so the Stand for Exam is hard for him because he gets all wiggle butt and wants to say hi to the person approaching him. Well, my obedience instructor came up with a great solution! He knows a perch box, he loves putting his feet, front or back, and he’ll offer either or both, on a box. So we have him do that, I put him in a stand, stay, walk away, and the examiner comes and touches him.

Wow! Giving him that perch box to put his feet on is helping already! He now is learning this is an exercise, instead of just people saying hi and petting him. Already, after only doing it a half a dozen times, he’s getting it!

Also his heeling. It is coming along. When there is a treat on the stick he heels beautifully. He doesn’t understand to keep watching me, though, when the treat goes away. So we are working on that, too. I am working a Look command with him so he can sit and look at me. And I will transfer that into the moving heel.

Training with him on Monday was a ton of fun. His Go Outs are also doing very well, he’s starting to spin and sit. I didn’t write about this before because I was still stunned.. well, you can read my post from Monday, I am trying not to think about it anymore. Sometimes I just want to look at hot tubs, buy one, and sit and relax and blog. Can you blog from a hot tub? They need to make waterproof laptops.

By Cynthia Blue [My Barks!] | Posted in Chase, Obedience | Also tagged , , , | Comments (19)

That Darn Flyball Box

December 16, 2007 – 4:51 pm

Okay I went to have Angel’s and Tatum’s toenails trimmed by our Thunder Paws Flyball Captain, and of course she sent me home with a practice flyball box. :)

It’s sitting in my front room and I haven’t, of course, used it yet. I want to really find out what I’m doing with the darn thing. Chase needs to get higher up on the box. She has taught her Jack Russel to bounce off the wall, literally! I think that’s an awesome idea. I need to get a carpet square or something and put it on the wall, then have Chase do that. Once i show him how, I know he’ll have no problem. That will get him WAY UP on the box, which is what I want. And without a jump prop in front.

As for Tatum, I don’t know, yet, how to start her out. I want to start her out right. So if you have any suggestions, please let me know! I have some ideas and I’ve gotten help from my team, and I’m always open for more ideas.

EDIT:
Links to box training:
Shoot Training
More Shoot Training
Swimmer’s Turn
Flyball Training Manual

– I don’t get the Shoot… how does the dog change from the long ramp to doing a swimmer’s turn off a short box?

By Cynthia Blue [My Barks!] | Posted in Flyball | Also tagged , , , , | Comments (10)

Collies and Border Collies are so Different!

December 10, 2007 – 8:38 pm

We have four smooth collies in our house and one border collie. And man, are they different. :) Chase, the border collie, has taught me so much about drive shaping and high drive dogs. And I hope to use that to help train Tatum as we move through the training process.

I went to obedience training this morning and I’m really having fun and learning a lot about obedience. Lucy has her ASCA-CD but that is the only obedience we have done. Oh we have done rally, Levi has his RE and Lucy has her RA but I think we rather squeaked by on those.

Chase is really coming along on his obedience. I am going to start doing box work with him. Sits, downs, stands in the box and from a distance. We need to work his ‘go outs’ so he’ll spin and sit. It’s too much like flyball for him to run across the ring, grab the treat, then come back. He sure is fast though and he loves it! He is not even in Novice yet but we are working all levels with him, open and utility too.

Tatum did well, too. She got to play with Rift, her new border collie friend. And, what is nice, is she was able to pay attention to me and work with me, in very brief increments, while Rift was still in the room. I even was luring her into a heel by me with a treat for a few steps at a time and she was following me nicely. And she is starting to play with me, and even choosing me for play over other dogs. I think once we get competing it will be hard for her to focused on me and not want to play with the other dogs. She is not as focus as Chase the border collie, but that is to be expected.

So anyway I was on the go most of the day and now I’m tired and Oh My Gosh it’s already 8:30 and time for bed! Work tomorrow. We had a fun weekend, though. Tomorrow I’m going to have a private with my amazing trainer so I can make sure I’m getting Tatum off to the right start. Yeah I have trained many a dog in my time but I want to be completely open to new and different ways of training so I do it right with her.

By Cynthia Blue [My Barks!] | Posted in Chase, Flyball, Tatum | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments (5)

Wordless Wednesday

November 28, 2007 – 7:21 am

TatumChewBox Wordless Wednesday

By Cynthia Blue [My Barks!] | Posted in Tatum | Also tagged , , | Comments (34)

Flyball and Agility!

October 17, 2007 – 7:11 am

Well, this coming weekend is our first flyball tournament! I hope Chase has a good time, and I hope he does well. His box turn is still not that great when the jump board isn’t in front of the box, I need to find a way to fix that but not this week, too much to do before I head out.

I wish I had a new color GPS to take with me. I am loving the look of them, and I really want one. But I’ve been spending way too much money lately so I’ll take my old black and white one with.

The flyball tournament is U-FLI. I hope Chase gets enough points to get his first flyball title. That’ll be exciting. Then Chase, Levi and I stay in Nevada for the week, I’ll work some, and the following weekend is an agility trial down in Pahrump.

So this’ll be fun. My new team, the Thunder Paws, is awesome and I just love working with them. They are nice and friendly and laid back, and at the same time they do want to win. I will be caravaning down with some friends from the old team. I’m very glad I have kept those friends too!

By Cynthia Blue [My Barks!] | Posted in Agility, Chase, Flyball | Also tagged , , , | Comments (3)

Shy Tatum

October 13, 2007 – 8:46 pm

I have been taking Tatum out a lot to socialize her. I took her, today, to the Course A’Lure so she would get used to being around activities and people. I take her out Wednesday evenings to our informal training sessions we have with some friends. And I take her to flyball practice on Sundays.

She’s getting fairly comfortable at flyball and on Wednesday nights. She’s starting to take treats, and she loves playing with the other dogs.

She still doesn’t really know what treats are for. At the Humane Society they had a pet psychic there, Patty the Pet Psychic. I have heard good things about her and she was having short sessions for a very reasonable price. Patty basically confirmed my suspicions about Tatum. Tatum doesn’t really recognize humans. She has had no good human experiences. Humans have been negative and unpredictable to her. She doesn’t look into a human’s eyes. She doesn’t know anything about human signals or emotions.

Patty said that extreme happy emotion and situations can shut her down or freak her out just as much as extreme negative emotion and situations. And to just keep everything really calm. So I think I won’t be trying to engage her in really excited play with me. Patty said Tatum is like she’s almost autistic. But it’s not a mental defect, it’s behavioral. And I am confident that we will get around this and Tatum will learn to recognize me as a good thing and will be able to give me eye contact in the future.

Tatum does know dog behavior, emotion and signals very well, though. She is very dog savvy, and she likes to play and gets along with other dogs. I will still be taking her out to dog events for a long time, so she knows that there will be something there for her.

Now she is sleeping in her crate. When we got home she started going after Bianca, which is a sign of stress in her. And to prevent this from escalating I am enforcing down time. She doesn’t know how to settle herself down, so I, as her guardian and her instructor in living in a human world, am doing it for her.

I still adore Tatum. I found she loves liver, so I cooked some up and we use that for training treats. Thanks to my friend Astrid who is coaching me on how to cook the darn stuff! (I can screw up a box of cake, no kidding.)

Tatum is already more relaxed outside the home than she was 2 weeks ago. Tomorrow we go to flyball, then Sunday I might take her to agility practice. Not quite sure if I’ll take her Monday, she really might need a down day and I don’t want to push her too much.

So that’s the update about Tatum. I want to blog about her, because in a year or two I won’t remember what she was like. My husband will, though, he remembers everything! ;)

Fortunately neither Tatum nor I are so nervous we need incontinence products to help us through tough situations. But sometimes people do, and it is a legitimate concern.

By Cynthia Blue [My Barks!] | Posted in Tatum | Also tagged , , , , , | Comments (6)

Our House Smells like Dog

October 6, 2007 – 10:15 am

It’s official, our house has that dog smell you find when you walk into a house that does a lot of dog rescue. What do I have to say to that?

Oh Well. If you don’t like it, don’t come over and smell our house. ;)

Actually, I’d rather not have that smell, but actually it doesn’t really bug me very much. In a way it’s a good thing, as it is a sign of helping the dogs. You can even tell we have a dog house by our mail boxes, as we have a dog plaque near, that says ‘blues’. Though we do have a sable now.

By Cynthia Blue [My Barks!] | Posted in Daily Posts | Also tagged | Comments (8)

Raising Funds for Collies

September 14, 2007 – 11:13 am

Utah Collie Rescue just started a fund raiser. If you would be able to contribute, even if it’s only $1 or $5, we would appreciate it! We hope to get $300 by the end of 2007.




Please contribute through this box so we can keep track of it all! Thanks!

By Cynthia Blue [My Barks!] | Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged , | Comments (6)