Tag Archives: Collie

I Want to Bury my Head in the Sand

February 24, 2008 – 6:26 pm

I am just burned out with Rescue. Seriously. I don’t want to do it anymore. I want to stay home with my dogs and entirely ignore the overpopulation issue, all the tens of thousands of dogs that die every year because people don’t understand them, expect them to humans in suits, and abandon them.

It’s a horrible problem. It’s all over the stupid country. And all the good things that all the good rescues are doing seem like a tiny dent in the overall huge metal monster that it is. But we can’t take any more dogs into our home. At seven, we are packed. At six we are packed. At four we were okay and could do a foster or two. But at seven we cannot take anymore. Even at six, or at five, we wouldn’t be able to take anymore.

So I want to ignore the problem now, I want to bury my head in the sand, and pretend it’s not there. I want to work with my own dogs and love them and focus on them. I want to get Tony into a home, or a foster home. We are overwhelmed and overstressed. I have our used cisco router maxed, with all the internet stuff I do for rescue.

I won’t ignore the problem. I can’t. It’s too prevalent and anyone that has any dealing with dogs even in a very small way knows about it. The problem is there. It’s talked about. We have to be aware of it. And I’ll continue to talk about it, and be aware of it, and push rescue instead of breeding. But maybe, in my house full of happy dogs, maybe here where it’s safe and cozy and there is so much love and joy, maybe here we can ignore the problem and just be happy with who we have.

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By User ImageCynthia Blue [My Barks!] | Posted in Daily Posts, Rescue | Also tagged , | Comments (30)

Dog Address Labels

February 23, 2008 – 12:11 pm

I want some new return address labels.. the ones I have at work in my desk have my maiden name on them… so yeah, it’s been almost five years, maybe more, since I bought some. And I don’t know why, but I love return address labels. I like fancy ones with dog pictures and nice text. Even though people just end up throwing them away. I always buy checks with animals on them, too. Go figure.

So Vistaprint is having a sale on their Address Labels. If you use coupon code “BlogAddress75” at checkout, you’ll receive 75% off address labels! That’s a nice savings, and they have some good choices. I do need to get some business cards from them too for Collie Rescue. As I’m going to be putting up a jar at the next Collie Specialty for donations. And cards are nice to have there too.

So off I go to order address labels and business cards and spending more money! Even though I don’t have much money left, entering all the trials I have been. And flyball tournaments too. So many dog things, so little time… and never enough money! But I can put my new address labels on my envelopes!

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By User ImageCynthia Blue [My Barks!] | Posted in Info | Also tagged , , | Comments (1)

Clicking that Rear End

February 22, 2008 – 8:08 am

In my continuing pursuit of finding a reliable, solid, positive way to clicker train the flyball box, Tatum is being my experimental dog. She is so smart. She is doing great with her mat. I’ve changed the criteria so now she has to lie down on the mat, as I want that to be her default behavior. She’s getting it. The look on her face when she stands on the mat and gets no click is just priceless. :) She is figuring out that criteria changes, gets harder!

She is reliably pawing my hands now. And, of course, she’s using that behavior to try to get anything else, too. So that is going to have to go on cue very soon, so it ALWAYS happens on cue, and ONLY happens on cue. You know dogs and their feet. Just like us monkeys sometimes!

She is also reliably touching a white piece of cardboard with her front feet. She’s getting both on, though slightly, as it’s small. I need to find a phone book. We just usually throws ours away now and use the internet to find phone numbers.

I really want her to have exceptional rear-end awareness. And so I have a special toy (it was all I could find last night) that I put up to her back hips and click/treat. So she knows that the toy (I need a good unique stick with a shape on it to do this, really) touching her hip gets a reaction. Eventually, though it might take a while, I want her to move her hip toward the target so she knows she is moving that back end for her reward.

I’m also clicking and treating her for when I touch her feet, all four of them. This, of course, will not only be useful for flyball, but also for obedience and trimming those darn toenails, which she hates so much. Last night she was starting to hold still for me as I touched a foot. Sometimes I would lift it off the ground, sometimes not. Before I would C/T for only when I touched them, didn’t matter if she moved away. Now I’m only C/T when she doesn’t move away. And she’s catching on. And she’s not dying when her feet are touched. :)

What I’ll do after she has that rear-end awareness is get her to touch a foot target with her back foot on the ground. And then I can put it up on the box, and maybe pair it with the front foot touch. Probably I’ll do this on the flat first… front foot touch, rear foot touch, click treat. When she is dong that, up on the flyball box it will go. And I want her high on that box. And pushing off with her rear.

I have confidence this is going to work. It might be slow, but she’s not built like a border collie and she’s really going to need that rear end push off on the box. She’s my smooth collie girl, and I’m really having fun shaping this with her. And she is too. Last night, she didn’t want training to stop!

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By User ImageCynthia Blue [My Barks!] | Posted in Clicker, Flyball, Tatum, Training | Also tagged , , , , , , , | Comments (11)

Beautiful Lucy

February 20, 2008 – 8:20 pm

Lucy Lucy is our beautiful smooth collie girl. She does seem to be slowing down… with her cancer diagnosis and all. But she got to chew on a Kong a lot today, and carry it around and guard it, and guarding is one of her favorite things. Though she doesn’t like it quite as much as Levi does.

Lucy is doing okay. I watch her closely now and I think that her low energy is because of her cancer. But my husband says she is still the same. I just wonder. I worry about her every day. Monday I am taking her to the holistic vet to see what she can do, if anything, and get her opinion.

The rest of the dogs are doing well. I took Muffit and Tatum to Sugarhouse Park today for a walk. I haven’t taken Muffit out until now because he was sick. He’s done with his meds now and he is much happier, he is even enticing Tatum to play. He wants to play with Chase, too, but Chase isn’t ready yet. Having yet another new dog in the house has thrown Chase out of whack, but Chase is doing well and he hasn’t instigated any fights, which is nice. And we are helping him and making the other dogs respect his space, which is good and will help Chase adjust.

I’m please to say that Muffit ignored the people we walked by, sniffed everything, and seemed very well adjusted. :)

Fortunately we don’t need any eca stack around here to lose weight, but I am cutting down Tony’s food as he is a bit chubby now. And Muffit gets a lot to eat, since he is still too skinny.

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By User ImageCynthia Blue [My Barks!] | Posted in Daily Posts, Lucy | Also tagged , , , , , , , | Comments (17)

Foster Dogs over the Years

February 13, 2008 – 3:11 pm

Collections For the last few days I’ve been loading up my dog pictures from my old album backups and into Flickr. Flickr is very convenient and easy to use, and it helps me not use up lots of my server space.

We have helped a lot of dogs. I am proud of what we have done. Some of these dogs are no longer alive, but hopefully we were able to touch their lives and make them better in some way.

We have to take a break from rescue for a while, with Lucy’s cancer and her health a concern, my husband not having a job right now, an us just being overwhelmed. So no more foster dogs. I will try to coordinate collie rescue when I can, but that is hard without any foster homes. *sigh*

Click on the image to see all the sets of our foster dogs. I know one is not there… Alice, she was cute and I can’t find any pictures of her. Bummer.

All these dogs with the exception of Bria are from 2000 and later. Bria was at my old house pre 2000.

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By User ImageCynthia Blue [My Barks!] | Posted in Daily Posts, Rescue | Also tagged , , , | Comments (7)

Tatum is Officially Clicker Savvy

February 10, 2008 – 6:03 pm

First off, dogs like to lay their heads on keyboards, and it makes it hard to type!

So anyway I want to teach Tatum flyball the right way. And she’s not very high drive when it’s just me and her… so we are working on the small bits. I want her to have a nice swimmer’s turn.

There is a good article on training the box, which starts with very basic steps, over on Flyballdog Tag. And we need basics. Microshaping, even.

I got out the clicker and treats and I put down a white lid. Tatum knows to touch it with her nose, to run over to it and get treats, but not how to put her feet on it. So first step, get the feet on it. Well, she wasn’t moving her feet at all, so I put the white lid away and started to teach her to just move her feet.

She laid down, which was fine, and to get her to move her feet I put a treat in my hand and moved my hand far too her right. When she turned her body (lying down) to get closer to the treat, I clicked and gave her the treat. I kept moving my hand around to encourage her feet to move during the first training session.

We did this for a few minutes and then stopped.

A few hours later we tried again. I’ve been wondering how clicker savvy she is, as she’s very calm and subtle in her movements sometimes. We did the same thing.. I’d move my hand, she’d move her foot (either one, didn’t matter) and click treat.

Then I stopped moving my hand to see if she was getting it. First couple of times she just stared at my hand for a good minute, I swear. So I moved my hand again. But she was thinking about it. So I laid my hand still again, with treats in it, and she moved her foot! Click Treat! After a couple of those, she started putting her foot on my hand! Yay!

She is officially clicker savvy! I’m excited. She doesn’t offer much behavior to me.. not like Levi does, who throws himself all over the place to see what I want. But she’s a girl, she’s more posed than my goofy boys. And she’s still a bit shy when we work alone together. But to see her think and figure things out is great. I’m excited. I need to just learn to understand how she learns, and how she offers behavior, and how to shape her so we find out what we want.

And then put the behavior on cue, Only on cue, and Always on cue! Then I’ll be happy with my own training!

Oh.. so the next step is to get her to put both feet on the target, then put the target on the flyball box, and then get her up with all four feet. But that’s a while away so far. It’s gonna be great to have a flyball collie!

I just watched the AKC Invitationals… I would love to see Tatum there. Would love too! Sometimes I have too many toys hooked up to the HDTV and I need HDMI splitters too watch all I want. I want an HD DVD or a Blueray DVD… someday!

Drawbacks:
Now I have to also consider the consequences of doing this. At first, I was letting her nibble on my hand to get the treats. But she has such a soft mouth now I don’t want to reward her for being bitey when taking treats so I stopped that.

In addition I need to consider the white target. I use it for other things too, and usually it’s just a target to do a nose touch with and to get treats from. If I teach her to put two paws on it, she has the potential to do that all the time in all training environments.

So maybe I need to use something else.. when we reach that point. Maybe I need to make a special flyball target so I can still use the white lid for obedience targets and agility targets. Hrm… something to think about.

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By User ImageCynthia Blue [My Barks!] | Posted in Clicker, Tatum | Also tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments (10)

He’s Been Through Too Much

February 10, 2008 – 2:27 pm

Muffit 2005 Our Muffit boy has been through too many changes. My husband has told me we are keeping him. Well, at least my husband can’t get mad at me for keeping a dog without me asking him! :)

I was looking through my old backed up pictures from my old server, and I found this picture of him. It was under the folder named Leopard. Which brings back more memories… he originally was named Leopard, and his family loved him enough to have this very nice picture taken of him. But they had to give him up, I don’t remember why, and he went to another home and was named Wheatie.

Then he came to us.. again I don’t remember why they couldn’t keep him. We fostered him, he went to the other home and they named him Shiloh… and they are the ones who dumped this sweet border collie boy at the Humane Society of Utah.

And back he is again with us. Don’t ask him how to lose weight because he is too good at it. He is still sick, and he doesn’t seem like he’s getting much better. Now we will keep him. His name will be Muffit. He has been moved around so much, the poor guy must be confused and miserable. He sleeps a lot, but he loved his walk this morning. He’ll learn flyball, and I’m sure he’ll love it. :)

As the poem says.. if you love someone, set them free. If they come back to you… then you should keep the darn pup! ;)

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By User ImageCynthia Blue [My Barks!] | Posted in Flyball, Muffit | Also tagged , , | Comments (24)

Clicker Expo!

January 30, 2008 – 9:20 pm

Okay so tomorrow afternoon I am flying outta here and heading to the Clicker Expo in Los Angeles. I am excited. It is Friday through Sunday. I’ll fly home Sunday night.

Not only am I looking forward to learning a heck of a lot about clicker training, I’m looking forward to it being 60 degrees in California! I’m so tired of the cold around here. Though I do like the long dark nights. But they will have those there as well.

I hope to buy some good clicker products, and I’m really looking forward to the labs and seminars they will have. I will try to blog from there, but not sure how much time I will have. I’ll have my camera with me, too, because it’s new and I just have to take it, and I want to get some good pictures while I am there.

I do wish I was taking a dog… and Tatum just almost would fit in my carry on suitcase.. she tried super hard to scratch into it when I was packing. :) But alas, I don’t think she’d like to be cramped in there for two hours!

Anyway.. I may or may not blog before I go. Or while I’m there. Either way, should be fun!

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By User ImageCynthia Blue [My Barks!] | Posted in Daily Posts, Training | Also tagged , , , , , | Comments (18)

Green Dog Seminar!

January 28, 2008 – 6:18 pm

Touch n Go, the flyball club in Las Vegas giving the seminar in March, just announced they are also having a Puppy / Green Dog seminar on the Friday before! Yay! I sent in my entry fees and I’m going to bring Tatum. Woo Hoo. I’m excited. Not only will Chase get some good instruction, Tatum will too!

And I was all set to leave her home. I am glad she can come with. And I’m especially glad that she gets to be a part of the seminar. I just sent the check off today, they should get it Wednesday, and hopefully we’ll get a working slot. If not, I would audit that class. But I’d rather have a working slot. Tatum will be one of the very few collies in flyball. I think there are only 3 in U-FLI, and not too many more in NAFA.

So now we have to find some good discount hotels Las Vegas style. That, of course, take dogs. Still not sure where the seminar is, yet, but we want to get on it soon because the sooner we book them, the better a price we get.

I’m excited!!!

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

Learning to Play

January 23, 2008 – 6:39 pm

All Six It’s strange, teaching a dog how to play with humans. It’s so natural for them when they are puppies. But if it’s not nurtured and encouraged, appropriately, it can fade. Or if it has been a bad experience for them, they will avoid it.

Chase just naturally plays with people. And he loves tug. I didn’t have to teach him how to play. But Tatum… well, she knows how to play with other dogs, but she isn’t, still, quite sure how to play with me.

Today I was putting some dog toys a friend of mine made off the freezer, and onto a chair for a bit. Well Tatum thought it was a great pile and picked out her favorite and ran outside with it. First thing I think is great training and playing opportunity. So I go outside with her, but then all the other five dogs follow us out. So I get the toy, and bring Tatum downstairs and leave the rest upstairs.

She was still being playful so that was great. I squiggled the toy around and she chased it. I even threw it and she brought it back, because it’s more fun when it moves around. But she still won’t give a good grip on it and just full-out tug like Chase does! So we are working on that. Hopefully it’ll come!

She really is super fun to play with, that goofy collie girl.

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By User ImageCynthia Blue [My Barks!] | Posted in Chase, Tatum, Training | Also tagged , , , | Comments (29)