Drop on recall

I haven't really done any serious training since August which is simply inexcusable. My attempts to start consistent training in September ended when I lost my job. Someone might think that being unemployed should give me a plenty of time to do the stuff I want, but somehow I felt that I was even busier than when I had a job. I think, finally, things are settling down and I am trying very hard to get some sort of schedule worked out that allows me to do things I don't have time for. My new office is only 1.7 miles away from my house, so I am planning on coming home a few times a week during lunch break in order to get some daytime training done, but of course weather had to interfere and dump some snow on us, right after I had made a decision to come home for lunch. Don't take me wrong, I am not really afraid of snow, but the problem is that the snow only last here for maybe a day, after that it turns into ice and jumping dogs on ice doesn't seem like a good idea to me.
There are many exercises that are not where I want them to be and need a lot of work. One of those exercises is Drop on Recall. We've been picking at it occasionally for a pretty long time and I yet again I had decided that it has to be finished. Unfortunately, lately that means that I will remember to work on it for maybe two days and then completely forget about it for months, which explains our lack of success with the exercise. But yet again I am trying. Every time I decide to work on this consistently we make a tiny bit of progress though. Mozart had been dropping on the spot from the stand with me 40 ft away for a while now, but I was unsuccessful with achieving it in motion. First, I restarted the work on random drops. Every time I take him out for a run, I try to remember to do a few random drops as he is running about his business usually away from me. Wish I had a video of few of those drops when he was running away from me that flipped on the spot and downed on command really fast.
After he seemed to mastered that, I had decided to pair it with the recall again. The result - after maybe one successful drop Mozart was creeping forward again. To make my point very clear I went and took the light line. One end of the line was attached to the tree and the other end was attached to Mozart's collar. I measured the distance at which the line will stop Mozart's movement and put the mark there. My goal was to give Mozart the down command just in time that if he drops he will not get a correction, but if he decides to creep forward the tug on his collar will remind him that it's not appropriate. At first it was great, a couple of corrections and Mozart was much more mindful of the command. Unfortunately after just a few times he started to expect the drop, because he was attached to the tree I would have to go back and detach him and do a few straight recalls before going back to drops. This was quite annoying so to solve the matter I went and got an even longer line. this line was going from me, behind the tree and attached to Mozart. The goal of this setup was the following - when I give the "down" command, I will step on the line, if Mozart is not down, he will get a collar correction to stop his forward movement. If he drops, I would go in and praise him profusely. If he anticipates I will not drop him and will remind him that he should be coming unless there is another command given. That seems to work very well. I was truly surprised that just after two sessions he was doing full distance DOR yesterday in class with so many distractions and at a pretty good speed.
There is a progress at last!

Merry Christmas

Finally! we went last night and got our tree and the wreath. Can't wait to decorate it.

Lets see it in slow motion!

I made myself a "got a new job" present and upgraded my phone to 5s.  I dont know if it's a phone or new OS feature, but now my phone can take videos in slow motion. Since the moment I had found out this, I had been dying to see Moz jumping in slow mo.
Finally at the local match where I was helping with run thrus, I had the opportunity to test it. How awesome is this?!:-)

Trick-or-Treat

The things had been completely crazy in last few weeks, but I start a new job on Oct 28th.
You'd think that I would have been able to train my dogs more while I was unemployed while in fact the training stopped completely - things just got too stressful and busy.
Now that things are getting back to normal we can go back to training and what could be a better training opportunity than the Halloween night.
Considering the problem that  I was trying to solve with Mozart - barking at strange people, Halloween night seemed like the best chance to meet lots of strange people.
Little one got invited to go trick-or-treating with her friend so I asked if I can bring Mozart. I wish I was better prepared and had a costume for him and a good basket to carry around, but I had to live with what I had. AS a result Mozart had no costume and was carrying a Easter bucket around, so I was telling people that he is an Easter bunny.
Mozart was a hit of the night. People simply couldn't believe that the dog can carry a bucket around in his mouth.  Mozart's job was to carry the bucket, sit politely while people were putting candies in it and if we got really lucky - sit politely for petting.
I think the night was absolute success as I managed to expose him to lots of running and screaming children in funny clothes not to mention the number of "sits for exam" we accomplished.
I wish Halloween was a once a month thing, we would have done so much training!:-)

When it rains it pours. Is that how it is?

I had some ideas on what I wanted to write about last week, but something stopped me in my tracks.
Thursday last week I had found out that the company I had been working for is going out of business and as of last Friday I am unemployed.

To make matters worse this also meant that we were loosing our health insurance. Because company was going out of business the COBRA coverage will not be available.

To add to that, the government shut down put my husbands work at risk. Although he is working this week we are not sure whether or not he will be getting paid next Friday.

As of Tuesday I am locked  in my house with Belle in heat and Mozart loosing his marbles and me trying to figure out what I am suppose to be doing in all this mess.  Mozart is in love with everyone but both Belle and Brandy showing him their teeth, poor boy is very confused.

To add to the confusion I have an offer from my former boss to join his new company, but they are not ready to hire me yet, but because they have tight deadlines I am helping them out with some development work, while still sending resumes out.

My kids are confused why I am saying that I do not have a job but at the same time I am saying that I have work to do. To be honest I am quite confused myself.:-)

I had been much less productive in last two days sitting at home then when I used to go to the office on the daily basis. The whining Moz is not helping me to wrap my head around new stuff I have to learn for work.

If all that wasn't enough, some idiot merged into my husbands car yesterday morning. Although it doesn't seem to be my husbands fault, but the insurance companies now have to fight it over. I am just hoping that our rate will not go up and they will not ask for our deductibles to fix the car. When my husband called the police, they refused to come, said " just get the insurance information". How lovely!

I just want everything go back to normal and our crazy government to open again!

The Match

On Sunday we actually did go to the match. I managed to crawl out of bed somewhere around 6:30. The announcement on info dog said that match registration is 8-8:30 and  an email I had sent to somebody at the club confirmed it. The AKC regulations said that entries for "A" match cannot be accepted after the stated time, so I really had to hassle to get there on time.

I had checked directions to the location from my phone the night before and the google maps told me it was 1 hour and 4 min away. When I got to the car, a bit later than I planned : first, I had realized that the directions were taking me over the tall road that EZpass only, that meant that my commute is now longer. My GPS told me that I will arrive there at precisely 8:30 and that's assuming I will not get lost somewhere trying to find that park.

Secondly, I had a bit less than a quarter of gas in the tank. Damn it! I am not really sure that I will be able to make there on that much gas and I don't really have time to go get some. My plan became - go until I can no longer go and then find a gas station,  there got to be a one on the way somewhere.

Of course nothing went as planned. The "low gas" light came up just as I was getting off the high way and if there was a gas station on the way I would have stopped and gotten some gas. The problem was - no gas station on the way. With just 10 min to spare I had decided that I will go to the match considering that I was only 3 min away when the light came up. I know, I know, I had been told before that when the light comes up you should have plenty of gas in your tank to find a gas station. The thing is, my car is kind of funny that way. When the light came up, I was informed that I have 9 miles to go till empty. I hadn't make a mile when it changed to 3 miles and by the time I pulled over at the park, the indicator was letting me know that I had 0 miles till empty.

I got out of the car and went to register for the match, where I was given the match flier that stated that the registration is till 9:45! Cursing under my breath that I could have stayed in bed longer not to mention would have plenty of time to get gas and wouldn't have to be scratching my head now trying to figure out how to proceed, I asked where the nearest gas station was. It wasn't very far. I had driven on empty before. I should be able to make it ok. Smart person would have probably waited till the end of the match to go get gas, but with over an hour to spare, I really wanted to stop worrying about the gas business.

I found that nice lady, who seemed to be in charge, and asked her if in case I get stuck on the road if there is anybody here who will be willing to come over and rescue me. She gave me her daughters phone number. As I was driving to the gas station I was thinking that it probably would be smarter to ask her daughter to drive me to gas station to pick up a couple of gallons of gas instead of taking chances of getting stuck.

I did make to the gas station ok and finally was able to take a deep breath and relax a bit, picked up an ice tea for me and a bottle of water for Moz.

A friend of mine who lives near by came over to hang out with us, it was really nice. My handling in breed ring was horrendous, the only reason we got BOB is because we were the only dog in the ring, but we did get what we came after - the exam. The judge was a man and he did what any breed judge seem to do, jumped into examining his teeth before I had any chances to compose myself, that's the whole reason why I need to go to as many conformations matches as I can, so I can finally figure out how to be ready at all times. Mozart took it like a champ, although his stand wasn't solid and he tried to wiggle while being examined.

Before we had to go back into the group, Marina beat me up and told me to take longer steps, and hold the lead properly and bunch of other things.   Those damn rings are so small that if I take large steps and move fast I ran into the gave on the step 3! Non the less, we did much better. I thought I was taking pretty large steps, but I got yelled when I came out of the ring anyway:-) We managed to get a Group II. We lost to a very nice dobe, but we also did beat a few dogs, the most importantly we did make progress, yey!

From the breed ring we ran straight into obedience ring, just having enough time to take off the show lead and put the chain collar back on, came right in time to do a bit of warm up and get into the ring.  Moz as distracted, as usual. I think he only gave me a single straight sit, I had been working and working on it, and apparently we still have to do more work, he lagged a bit on the fast. He bumped me a lot on the inside of the figure 8, not sure if judge had noticed it. His stand for exam was pretty solid - the judge was a tall, old gentleman and Mozart didn't even blink. His front was almost perfect, but not quite. His recall was very lovely and fast. Overall just what I was expecting, no real surprises.

When the time came for stays, he barely made it through.  He was hot, although it wasn't really a hot day, but he was sitting in the sun, he was stressed. On the sit, he rolled back onto his hip, kind of like a puppy sit, I thought he will go down so I start sending him reaffirming thoughts.

On the down, he just lost it. He was rolling from one hip onto another and started whining.  In meantime, 3 dogs out of 5 in line had broke and ran for their owners. the owners went and put their dogs back in line, that commotion added to more of Mozart's stress. He became antsy and the whining picked up to the full volume. dang it! I am not quite sure how I am going to deal with his whining on stays, I am hoping that more practice will help it.

If it wasn't an "A" match, I would have probably went in and corrected him, but I couldn't do it at the "A" match, plus, I am pretty sure if I even had touched him, he would pop right up and I would have made the situation worse. Knowing that the other 3 dogs in the line up are pretty shaky, I've decided to let it go.

With all the rolling and whining, he did held his stay though.Even with lots of points lost for whining, we had managed to win the open B and even get the "High in Match" ribbon. Yey!

I had also entered him in BN class, which we also won. His figure 8 was better, his front was worse. He danced a bit on the stay as I was walking behind him and he started to loose his marbles as we were walking out. You'd think by now he'll be more tired and there-though lazy, but it seems he is just like a toddler that becomes more crazy as the tiredness progresses, until it turns into a full blown tantrum.  Luckily we were done for the day. I took him to the corner of the park and let him run a little bit, to get the crazies out.

Later int he day I decided to take him to my grand parent's house. We were gathering together to celebrate my grandmother's birthday and I thought it will be good for him to go and work a bit more on stays.

He was very good, he let my niece check him out. He checked her out also. He did a long down at my feet while I was eating and did lots of down stays when I had to go do something. In fact he was so good that he start to loose it again, so I had to take him out and let him run out the crazies again on the front yard, then he could go back inside again and continue to be good.

Changing Gears

I had been quiet again for over the month. It was a busy month and a challenging one.
I finally came to a decision that I will not be showing Brandy past UD. I simply do not have the time and  amount of money that it takes.

Taking Brandy all the way to the UD required a lot of work and sacrifices. My kids were one of those sacrifices. While they are getting good grades in school it was apparent for quite some time that good grades in American school don't really mean that they know and understand stuff, it simply means that they are like monkeys were taught to do something that they will forget the day after the test.


With Anya heading into high school next year and a college not being too far away, I had decided that my consistent involvement with their home work is absolutely must, especially where math is concerned.
Charlotte is very bright but she is not on the above grade level in math, where her friends are and that's not because she can't, but because I didn't have time to teach her more advanced math unlike other parents did.
I was reading about countries school ranking and although Maryland schools are ranked #1 in the country, I am starting to think that the credit is due to the parents, not the schools. The testing for the magnet programs is in few months and unfortunately I don't thinks I can get girls ready for it in such a short time.:-( But this year the girls academic will be my top priority.

The decision to stop showing Brandy wasn't an easy one, I sure had lots of dreams for our obedience career and she is sure a dog that could go all the way.  Now I just need to come up with a plan to keep her mind busy and active.

With Brandy's retirement Mozart took the number one spot. After doing some assessment it was apparent that our sit/stay and stand for exam is not up to a CD standard.

Mozart has a tendency to bark at some people. It's usually people that are weird in some way or have a strange body language that makes him suspicious. Unfortunately I had seen some pretty weird judges which mean that I need to make sure that he will not pull a stunt like this in the ring and gets himself DQed. That would end his obedience career.

Fixing it is not an easy thing as I can't just go asking strange people to do the exam. Most people are scared of him and it will just make a matters worse.
After some thinking last night, I had decided that the problem with stand/stay stems from poor sit/stay. This means that I will have to go all the way back and reteach sit for exam.
In sit for exam, unlike stand, I can actually correct for breaking the sit stay because barking is in fact a break of the sit stay.

Tonight in class I asked several people  to do a sit for exam for us. Lucky, Mozart decided to bark at one new person and it gave me a chance to work through the problem. With the rest, the goal was to make sure that Moz allows people to do the e am without excessive wagging of the tail and kissing in the face. After a few people and a multiple corrections( thanks Mike for some pointers) He finally strews to grasp the idea of not moving his head too much.

When we came home I realized that tonight is one of those nights when I don't have dinner for the dogs. I went to the store yesterday but for some reason I had only bought one chicken. Instead of being upset I decided to take Mozart and work him at the entrance to the store in hope that there will be at least a couple of people that he will find "strange" and decides to bark at them, plus going at night puts us at advantage as he is more likely to bark in the dark at people than in the day light.

I wasn't disappointed . The first person that came out of the store decided that Moz was really cute and proceeded to make funny faces and gestures waiving to him. As expected Mozart decided to start barking. I quickly put him on the sit stay and gave him a collar pop correction every time he barked. The lady left. After that Mozart decided to bark at pretty much every person coming out of the store. After being corrected every single time, he finally figured it out. From that point on, whenever someone came out of the store and Mozart felt like barking he just turned away and looked at me, getting a very enthusiastic praise in return.

The barking stopped.  I put him back into the car and went to get the chicken, then took Moz out again for a second small session - no barking. We worked on heel position and various turns and called it a day.
When we came home I asked Husband to do the sit for exam. Moz didn't wiggle a single bit even that I know he was psyched to see him. Well, we had definitely made a progress. Now I need somehow to make it carry over on sit for exam when strangers do it.

I am planning to go to a match this sunday and putting Mozart into conformation, novice and BN( if they have it) that should take care of 3 exams. I am hoping I will be able to find volunteers who might be willing to help me with sit for exam outside the ring, although the match being an type "a" match it might not be allowed.

Field Trip

Despite all the storms we were having this week we managed to get out on a field trip one day.
Here are a few photos that I took.

Where Shenandoah river meets Potomac

Jefferson Rock

This stairs were really creepy to walk on as you could see all the way down. Not as bad as walking on glass but still a bit challenging for those who prone to that kind of thing.

You can find the rest of the photos here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/97873218@N00/sets/72157634999526476/

Rained out

We are supposedly on vacation this week and we are, but the weather has not been cooperating with our plans at all. We decided that this year we will not go anywhere but stay home, go to the pool and field trips.

Monday and Tuesday were quite miserable - rainy and cold for this time of the year for our area. On Tuesday girls had decided that they want to have a spa day.:-)

We made a facial mask out of Greek yogurt and egg whites. Girls put the bath robes on and pretended they are at the spa.

The mask recipe called for 2 tbs of yogurt and 2 egg whites, so I had doubled the recipe for the three of us. To my surprise we had a lot of it left over. That's when it comes handy to have dogs around the house. Mozart was very happy to help up with the leftovers, plus I think yogurt could be good for him as he is on antibiotics for two weeks.

After that we made sugar and peanut butter cookies. Mozart wanted to help us to clean the dishes after the cookies were done, but he wasn't allowed:-) Warm cookies and milk were perfect on the rainy day!

Sunday Project

Before I tell you all about my Sunday project I am happy to announce that Mozart finally did pooped during our morning walk. He crawled under a pine tree and took care of his business and of course he was about to break down in his happy dance, when I had to put a end to it. I couldn't really blame him for wanting to dance, I was about to break down in a dance myself at this point, but doctors orders are doctors orders.  In addition, while crawling under the tree he completely shredded all that plastic defense I constructed to keep his foot dry so we had to head back home and take care of that foot.

On Sunday after I finished making gazillion of pancakes to feed an army of teenage girls I was starting to have a cabin fever. Here I was sitting on my sofa and twiddling my thumbs. The idea of me having nothing to was so strange that quite frankly it started to make me very irritable.

Just when Husband was about to kick me out of the house I told him that I am going to Home Depot to pick up a few things for my new project. Of course my loving husband said that he will go to the store and pick up all the supplies himself.

What I wanted to build was a wooden box that I can use for working on stays. Normally, I wold just use the PVC pipe for this purpose. However, Mozart is not really respectful of the PVC pipe boundary. I was suspecting that Moz is simply unaware of what his feet are doing on stays and hoping that if I raise him off the ground a bit and if the box is just big enough for him to sit in the correct position but any slight change in that position will make him fall of the box, he might actually notice.

I wanted to build a similar thing for teaching the stand as a tiny shift of his feet on the stand was causing me a great grief, plus I wanted to use it for teaching proper stacking for the breed ring. Now that Moz was on leash walking regiment, I've decided that  this is the best time to work on stays. The "stay" box idea was already cooking in my head when I came across a blog in which the owner of that blog did exactly the same and it seems she was seeing nice results with it.

The list of materials was simple a single 2x2 and 1/4" think MDF board. In addition Husband bought a miter box. Yey. I had been wanting a miter saw since about Christmas, but every time I ask for miter saw, I am told that in order to have all those tools we need to put a shed up in our back yard. Which means way more money than $200 I would spend on the saw, so I guess for now I should be happy with the miter box and I was.

my setup

Miter box is not nearly as exciting as a power tool, but it sure does the job it was designed to do - keeping nice clean cuts at 90 degree angle and even more importantly at 45 degree angle.


During Christmas shopping I came across a book by Ana White that has lots of cool wood working projects for the house. The best part - they were all done by women. I wanted to try my hands in the wood working for a while and the book was a great inspiration and I was about to start my first project!

Things got a little less exciting when I realize that it takes forever to make a single cut and I needed 12! Things turned to be quite frustrating when the time came for 45 degree angle cuts. The saw kept on popping out of the grooves and I figured that it was the person who was handling it. Husband came to the rescue and took over and then I saw that it wasn't the person but the damn saw. The saw was simply too short to use when cutting on an angle. As I was watching my husband struggling with the same things as I was just few min ago, I felt a bit better about my wood working skills. :-)  Husband had even less patience than I, so he turn around and headed back to the store to buy a longer saw.

I figured that I'd keep on working while waiting for the new saw.  The small kiddo came over curious to see what I was doing  and  wanted to help. After working on it she told me that she wants her own tool set - a tiny saw and a tiny hammer!:-)


Husband came back not only with a longer saw but also with a jigsaw. Yippee! A power tool! I used jigsaw to cut the piece out of MDF board.

I wasn't crazy about attempting to put the screws on an angle to fasten the corners together, so to make the screwing job easier on myself I used metal brackets to reinforce the corners. Even that now I had to screw straight down, I still struggled with keeping the screws straight, apparently I will need a lot more practice with the screw driver. On the other hand the jigsaw was very simple and exciting to operate.

Here is the box I had constructed. This is the upside down view of it.
















Here is the Mozzie testing it out. It turned out a tid bit too big, but I think it will work just fine. To prevent Moz from sliding on shiny MDF surface I went over it with a sand paper. Worked perfectly!

Bloody Saturday and Much Better Sunday

The past weekend started on a pretty crappy note. Originally we were going to take the older kiddo and her friends camping as a birthday party for a 13 years old. When we woke up the sky was grey and before I even had a chance to take the dogs out it started to rain.

Husband said that the forecast was promising rain all day with thunder storm overnight and suggested that taking bunch of girls camping in this kind of weather was a bad idea. Grumpily I had to agree, but we needed to come up with a new plan. I took the dogs out saying that I will think it over while walking.

When I came back to the house, I noticed that Mozart had bloody foot prints. At first, I wasn't really concerned as he wasn't limping on the way back from the woods and I thought it was probably just his nail, however, the amount of blood I saw when I picked up his foot was telling me otherwise. 

I ran inside the house and brought a bowl of warm water  with Epsom salt  to rinse his foot and see what is going on. On the examination it was apparent that it wasn't a nail but his paw pad and I couldn't really stop the blood to be able to really see how bad it was. Unfortunately, this called for a visit to a vet. In mean time we still had to make up our mind about the birthday party. Finally it was decided that we will try to reschedule the camping trip and invite the girls who cannot make it on the newly set date, tonight for a sleepover.

The whole reason why we decided on the camping trip in the first place as we couldnt imaging having 12 thirteen year old girls in our tiny house for a slumber party.  I quickly wrapped Moz's foot so that he doesn't bleed all over my car, jumped in the car and headed to the vet,  at the same time I was trying to call half the parents and let them know about the change of plan. Husband was going to call the other half.

I managed to get a hold of two parents before I reached the office, so all other calls had to wait till I was finished. While sitting in the exam room I kept on getting texts from Husband saying that pretty much all the girls were coming both weekends, well except the two I had called myself of course. Silly me was actually sticking to the agreed plan. I was really trying to focus on the vet while fighting the panic trying to set in at the idea of having 10  teenage girls at our house.

The bandage I made did absorbed enough blood that when it was taking off we could see what was going on with poor Mozzie's foot. His large paw pad was practically slashed in half and the cut was going really deep. Yep, it had to be stitched.

The biggest problem I have with the vets is that they do not like to do things to my dog right in front of me. they always desperately want to take the dog back where technician can do her work.  This really bothers me, I do not have the kind of dog I can feel comfortable to just handing over to someone.  It also appeared to me that the vet was a bit afraid of Moz - very bad sign, in my opinion.

We had finally agreed that they sedate him in the room where I was present and then they can take him in the back area and stitch him up. I had to leave as it was going to take about hour and a half as they were nice enough to squeeze us in without an appointment.  I left the vet and went back home to figure out the party situation.

The last bad surprise of the day was the $700 bill I had to pay when I picked Moz up! I need to find a cheaper vet.

He is doing fine, I think he is only limping a little bit because the bandage makes the walking uncomfortable. Other than that, the biggest problem we are facing is the "no running"  regiment for two weeks. First of all, Moz is not the kind of dog that can be a couch potato, I am seriously concerned that by the end of two weeks he will take the house down brick by brick.

Secondly, keeping his bandage dry is big pain in the butt. The grass in the morning is wet, the grass in the evening is wet. So every time I take him out I need to put bag on top of the bag on top of the bag. I finally ran out of bags, but the best construction I came up with so far is:  saran wrap over the bandage covered by one of my kids sock, covered by a plastic bag.

And finally, just to aggravate the situation even more, Mozart cannot poop. No, not because he is constipated, but because this crazy dog has his pooping ritual. The ritual consist of crazy zoomies before and after pooping. I can see that he wants to go potty and I see he is gearing up to take off which I put an end to, in response he forgets about what he wanted to do! I took him out twice tonight with the same outcome - no poop. If he does it in the house while I am asleep I will be livid!   

Well, this turned to be a  post on it's own, so I will have to write about the Sunday tomorrow.

Thursday night class

The biggest problem I have with keeping up the blog is that the only time I can write something is when it's way past my bed time and I can barely connect two words together no matter what language I use. Writing a coherent sentence - forget about it! Some people could argue though that  I have a problem with coherent sentences no matter what time of the day it is:-)

Thursday night is the night when we go to the group class. We usually have two classes - 6pm open class and 7pm "continuing education" class. Both classes are fun and I try to get to both, that way I can work one dog in one class and another dog in another class. Getting to class that is 45 min away by 6 pm is not an easy thing to do, though. Tonight I was running really late so I had decided to only bring Mozart with me, which turn out to be a right decision as every one was just doing open run thrus.

It is very easy to see the exercises I like to work on and those that I don't. Drop on recall is not my favorite and it was quite apparent tonight. I do find DOR to be pretty boring. It requires a lot of molding of the dog from the stand into a fold back down. Developing muscle memory in the dog requires hundreds of repetitions and I cannot possibly do more than five in a row before we are both bored out of our mind. I did try to focus on DOR daily during the last month and I think there is definitely a progress, but I only yesterday started putting it together with the recall. (Mental note to myself, that next time I have a puppy I should just teach down from the stand while the puppy is still young, I think it will make things whole lot easier)

The blasted broad jumps is another exercise that takes enormous amount of repetitions. As my friend Laura would say - "Blah!". And lets not forget the figure 8. I am not really a big fan of teaching heeling in general. I don't hate heeling, I just don't like teaching it to the dog:-) when all moving pieces are in place heeling is quite enjoyable. You are probably wondering what do I like to teach? Well, I am a big fan of utility. It's just so much more fun than anything else, but here is the bummer - you cannot get to utility until there is a good foundation in place.

Starting the beginning of July I went back to keeping a training log. This had been a great help in tracking what I had worked on and what I hadn't worked on. I finally had decided that I should wrap up our novice work so we don't have to worry about it anymore, that meant that heeling and figure 8 needed a good amount of work, but pretty much all novice work needs polishing and proofing.

Tonight I was very impressed that the work I put into figure 8 last week was really showing! If we could make that much progress in just one week, maybe things are not too bad. He almost didn't bumped me on the inside and almost didn't lag on the outside. It wasn't perfect but it actually looked like a figure 8! His straight line heeling was pretty good too and no bumping, but his halts had fell apart again. Darn it! I did spend a good amount of time straitening out those sits. Tonight he was sitting perpendicular to me. I think it's probably due to him being so worried about all those dogs sitting around the room and watching him. The class was packed and I could see his concern with all those dogs around. His lack of speed on both of the retrieves were another proof of that.

Overall I was pretty happy with his run and I am pretty sure as he will become more confident he will pick up the speed. Bottom line, we'd better hit some matches and I probably should start thinking about setting up a date for our novice debut.

Our instructor definitely pushing us in to the ring, but I am dragging my feet. From my experience showing Brandy I had concluded that if you put your dog in the ring, you'd better keep her there, otherwise by the time you are ready to go into open, you have to start almost from scratch in acclimating a dog to the trial environment.   

Knowing that showing in novice past our title is not something I want to do and can't really afford time wise or money wise, I think I'd wait going into novice till we are almost ready for open, although originally I wasn't planning on going to novice with him till we are almost ready in Utility, which is not going to happen before the next summer the earliest and that probably is very optimistic.

Random thoughts throughout the day

#1
This country's creativity with names occasionally creates a problem for me to the point that I am scared to send an email until I check and double check the spelling of names of the recipients. Otherwise, people do get offended having their names misspelled or even worse - the email will go to the wrong person.

Endless number of times I was searching in my mail trying to find an address belonging to a certain person just to have google tell me that nothing was found, because I was looking for the wrong spelling of the name!
Who can possibly keep it straight?
Judy
Judie
Kris
Chris
Erik
Eric
Sarah
Sara
Kathy
Cathy
The list can go on and on and on...
The situation was much better in Russia where everyone has pretty much 5 names to choose from. When almost every other man named either Sergei or Dmitry even with my horrible memory on names the chances are - I will get it right. And the best part they are all spelled the same way!

#2
I finally decided to figure out what it is Belle is chewing on and what  is falling on my head every morning in the woods during our walk. There are trees that dropping some kind of nuts. Belle is the only dog that likes to chew on it. After the scare that someone posted on facebook about danger of sago palms to dogs, I figured that I'd better find out and make sure it is not toxic, although, honestly, if it was toxic she would be already dead by now. Secretly I was hoping that what ever nut it is - it is edible. I guess it's my Russian nature that makes me always scavenge in woods for something edible. Last month I discovered service berries around our office. They are so tasty! It must've been quite a picture - me in business casual attire jumping for branches with berries:-) Oh the looks I got! Silly people, they had no idea what  they were missing.

I have no idea how people managed to survive without internet in the past. Standing right there in the woods I was able to look up the list of local trees and to discover that the nut was "pignut hickory". Not really edible, but also no-toxic to dogs. I also was able to discover that the tree outside of our office is Sycamore tree and not a maple as my boss though. I made sure that I let him know that during our morning meeting. The expression on his face was totally worth it, although he did tell me that I obviously do not have enough work on my plate if I have time to look up the trees.

Gotta Love Mornings

5:30am alarm goes off.  I am pretending that I haven't heard it. Wet nose pokes me in the face.
Mozart, wagging his stub, I am sure of it although I can't see it:  "its time to get up!"
Me: " I know, but I am too tired"
Mozart, poking me with his big wet nose again: " It's time to get up!"
Me: " It's still dark outside. Leave me alone"
Mozart: "Ok, then I will join you". Hops onto the bed.
Me:  "Ok"
Mozart: "pet me!" Wet nose pokes under my arm.
Me: "Leave me alone"
Mozart: "Pet me , pet me" More wet nose under my arm.
I turn away.
Mozart: "Ok, grumpy, I'll just rest my head on your hip."
Few seconds later.
Mozart: "This is boring" 
Mozart exists the bed.
Me: "Fine!"
Brandy: "U-m-m-m, u-m-m-m-m. Did you forget about me?!"
Me:  "ok, you can come over and snuggle"
Brandy happily jumps on the bed. rolls around snorting then plumps her behind right under my nose.
In meantime, Belle in the kennel downstairs.
Belle:  "I know it's morning. Let me out!"
Me, under my breath: "Be quiet Belle"
Belle:  "OMG, I can't stand this anymore. LET ME OUT!"
Me, a little bit louder: "Shut up"
Mozart comes back into the bedroom.
Mozart: "What?! she is on the bed and I am not?!" Jumps onto the bed and trying to jam his big body into a narrow space between me and the husband, whacking him with his paws.
The Husband: "Get the F$$$ dogs off the bed!" 
Me: "Dogs! Off the bed!"
I guess it's time to get up.
you can't be mad at the husband, he had been struggling with a pinched nerve in his shoulder and Mozart gracefully whacked him right into the shoulder.

Weekend Fun

This past weekend we had a pleasure to attend a workshop presented by Amelia D. Compton, Ph.D.  Amy's workshop is always interesting whether we talk about dog behavior or human. This weekend we were learning about different personality types.
During brakes we goofed around a bit. What would bunch of people who train dogs do if you have a bouncy labradoodle and a mastiff?:-) Eric had decided to teach Murphy to jump over Sherpa the mastiff. Here is how he did it:
First, he taught Murphy how to jump over the jump-stick ( no pictures, sorry).
Then, he used the stick to show Murphy how to jump over Sherpa.

Then, the jump-stick goes away:

After Murphy was comfortable jumping over Sherpa without the stick present, Eric was able to do a breakaway:

After that we had some more fun teaching Murphy to jump over multiple dogs:

Mozart had fun of his own. He and Ben - two jolly-ball crazy boys were chasing the ball over the mulch pile.

Mozart also enjoyed splashing in the baby pool:

Great training day

At least a couple times a week I am trying to train in the place other than the training facility or near my home. One of our favorite training places is the school yard.  Depending on the day and time it can be either totally empty that provides us with a lot of quiet training space or it can be buzzing with kids running, screaming, playing soccer, football and tennis, not to mention all the dogs that walk by!
So this Wednesday I loaded the dogs in the car and headed there.  I love training all three dogs at the same time, because it allows me to rotate between dogs, that accomplishes two things: dogs don't get overworked and they get jealous watching you work with another dog while they are tied up to the tree. Jealous dog is an awesome to work dog:-)
Belle was first to go. We worked on all the open exercises. She is such a blast to train! I took some videos of her jumping, but unfortunately my daughter forgot my camera at the camp so I cannot upload anything. Belle took to jumping as if she was born to do just that. All those endless repetitions of the broad jump that I had to do with her mother and Moz.. nope, not here. Just a couple of times and she was flying over the jump!

Moz is pretty good on his retrieves over high jump and on the flat, although I am not quite happy with his speed, I don't think he is challenged enough and hence he doesn't think he has to commit 100% of his attention to that. The BJ is the worst. I know for the fact that he can jump double that distance with ease, but he is not really interested. I tried and experiment. I took the white field bumper and would  throw it as Moz starts on his jump, that really caused him to fly over the jump with such an ease! Oh the constant question of want vs must. After some thinking I had decided that I will worry about his speed, after he gets it through his head that he has to jump just because I said so. When he is jumping reliably I will try to use the bumper to build some speed into the jump.
Heeling still needs a lot of work. need to figure out how to put the end to the constant bumping of me on heeling. DJ is coming along. Love watching him jump when he is committed!

Brandy had an awesome attitude as well. We worked on signals and heeling whenever I saw somebody walking their dogs by. Never can have too many dogs walking by, as long as they are on leash:-) Unfortunately the go outs are still a problem. As soon as I put the gloves out there her go outs start going right into the corner. This is so infuriating! But this deserves the post of it's own.

At  some point I did have a bit of a scare. As I was working Brandy bunch of kids came out of the school about 30 of them. all at once, running and screaming and heading right towards the tree where Belle and Moz were tied up. Moz as expected freaked out a bit and Belle is never shy to bark just for the hell of it. I had to run there yelling the kids and the dogs. Dogs - "down, stay" . Kids - stay away form the dogs:-) I need to work more on stays with both of the youngsters as they broke that  down-stay way too many times as the kids were going by.  I guess I do have my work cut out for me.:-)

Our first hike, well sort off:-)

I can be very stubborn, as those who know me can attest to. If I had decided that I really want something - hell and high water, but 99% I will do it. The hiking idea had been  occupying me since the day I had found that trail I mentioned earlier. This past Saturday I had finally decided that this will be the day when I go and have a look at it.

After I had finished bunch of things I had  on my list, including washing all of the dogs and grooming Brandy it was just after 7 pm. I checked the calendar, found out that sunset is at 8:30 and figured I should have enough time to go and have a look at that trail. My husband, who knows me pretty well, didn't even try to talk me out of it. He, however, insisted that I take a pocket knife, a GPS that I got for him to take on the hunting trips and his cell phone, as I was unable to find mine:-) I think if this state would allow for a concealed carry he would insist that I would take a handgun as well:-) Well, I can't really blame him for wanting to keep me safe.

By the time I reached the trail it was almost 8 o'clock. Even though the sunset was 30 min away, under the trees it was pretty dark, but stubbornly I kept on walking. The trail was following a creek and originally I was hoping that I will find a remote spot that would allow me to let my dogs take a swim in it, but to my huge disappointment a trail and the creek was separated by ivy and other vegetation making the  creek practically inaccessible. Brandy was happy as pie, I switched from a 6 ft leash to 15 ft line and that gave her plenty of room to  explore. As we were walking I started to hear some grumbling noises. As they were pretty remote I had convinced myself that it must be sounds of traffic. On the way back the sounds got louder and much closer together, that made it pretty clear the storm is coming.  Brandy who cannot handle a storm in the middle of the night didn't seem to be to concern this time though:-)

I started getting worried that my cell phone will get soaked wet, so Brandy and I jogged out way back. We had just enough time to get tot he car and drink some water before the rain hit.

HIT

Being left without a personal computer ( but this is a story for another day) I was stuck with a phone full of pictures and videos and no place to dump them. It shouldn't have come to me as a surprise that I finally ran out of disk space on my phone. As I was going over the pictures, looking at what can be deleted, I came across this one:

This is a photo I took of Brandy when we got a High in Trials out of open B last August while earning our second open leg.  I think our score was something like 197.  This was our first HIT and we got it as a small GSD specialty. Non the less, I think it's an accomplishment not to mention the fact that a terrier stole a HIT from the German shepherds:-)

Rats

Afina and Artemis the day we brought them home.

As I was thinking about events of the last year, I have to say that sadly both of our rats are no longer with us. According to Husband he came home and found Afina dead from what seems like an internal explosion. I was very happy that I didn't get to see it, seeing the blood spatter all over the walls was enough for me. Poor girl. Artemis lived for another 6 months, but the tumors started to overtake her, watching her rid with tumors and practically unable to move was heartbreaking, so we had to let her go. We both agreed that although the rats are very cute little critters they just do not live long enough, and we swore that we will not bring another rat into our house.

Running on autopilot

Every year I am looking forward to summer thinking that I will have time to do a lot of training and spend the time with the kids and every year I am surprised that I still cannot find any time to do anything. As soon as school ends, life becomes very hectic. Last two weeks of June were actually grate - one week both girls were at gymnastics camp, the next week kid#1 went to visit her grandmother so I only had to deal with kid#2, but then the hell began. Kid#1 started volunteer work at the elementary school, helping first graders that go to summer school, kid#2 is alternating between gymnastic camp one week and then Russian camp the next one. This means that my schedule is not only changes every single week, but it differ every single day. All I know that I need to leave work and run somewhere. The hard part is making sure that I remember what time I need to leave that day. If I manage to leave on time then while running to the car I, hopefully, can figure out who I am picking up right now and map out the directions to the destination in my head.

The next complex task is actually to stay on target route. This evening, for example, I thought I was going home. Luckily, I woke up just in time to have a chance to cut across two lanes and take the needed exit. Considering that in order for me to get the kid#1 from a friends house and then deliver her to gymnastics by 5pm I have no room for error, I would have been livid were I to miss the exit and have to spend precious minutes U-turning and dealing with additional traffic.

I find myself quite often driving somewhere on the auto pilot just to realize that I do not need to go to my office or the gym, but somewhere else. Gymnastics schedule is brutal - during the school year girls start practice at 4pm. Yes, there are some parents who can deliver their daughters to the gym by that time, but not me. Even that I work only 15 min away from home, I simply cannot leave office run home, then run to the gym and go back to work, so I don;t think the gymnastic practices could continue without out friend Sarah who is a college professor and hence comes home just in time to take her and my girls to practice.

As a payback I am trying, whenever I can, to bring her girl home from practice especially that the their house is right on the way home, but here comes the embarrassing part - consistently I forget that I do have O in my car. Running on autopilot as usually, I happily miss the turn to their house not blinking even once. Honestly, how hard can it be to keep the fact that I need to drop O at her house in my head for just 10 min. I think I remember it for about 5.  As usual, last night I was taking girls home, thinking about what ever I was thinking when the sudden smirk coming from the back seat brought me back to reality - sure enough I missed that damn turn again! In my defense, it doesn't help that there was a dead silence behind me. What 13 year old girls can ride quietly in the car? Apparently these two can, at least after 3 hours of gymnastic practice. I am thinking that maybe next time I should ask them to be loud so I can remember who is in the car with me.

On completely unrelated subject - there is something to say in support of the pocket camera, even if I am having a hard time taking the shots I want - I can carry it around everywhere. I sure would not bring my cannon to the quick trip to the creek, but I seem to take my small Olympus sz-10 everywhere I go for the last two days. On the bad side I spend more time playing with the camera and hence our walk lasts much longer than was planned - good for the dogs, not so good for me as it cuts into our training time.

Belle fishing

exploring the cave

Testing a new camera

I had been dreaming about taking the dogs on hikes for as long as I had Brandy ( 7 years). Brandy and I used to go to a local park occasionally but it didn't last long. It seems that the only time I truly own is from 5-7 am while everyone is still sleeping. Driving to the park at that hour doesn't seem sensible, if the park was withing the walking distance, I would have probably done it, but driving 20 min each way seems too long especially when it's not daylight until 6am even when the days are at it longest.

One of the few things I really miss from Russia is long summer days, I don't really miss long winter nights ( I know they do have to come together, unfortunately), but the fact that it can be still daylight at almost 11pm is wonderful when you have to train dogs and you have no training building and a tiny house:-) I could have trained them after kids are in bed and the temps had dropped.

The one of the reasons, I think, why I never really went hiking is lack of time. The kids were too small  and even if I took them with me, then I would have to leave the dog at home. Between my dog classes and kids gymnastics , which is pretty much every day, the only time we have to do any other things are Sundays. Leaving the house for two hours during that time seems very selfish, not to mention that at least occasionally the laundry needs to be done and cleaning bathrooms once in a blue moon wouldn't be a bad idea either.

This year I was starting to revive thoughts about hiking, but now I have to take 3 dogs on a hike. I dont' really fond of the idea walking all three dogs in the woods. I would have done it if I knew I will be all alone:-), but now days I have a constant fear of running into some people with loose and out of control dogs, so I really do not want to be put in this situation. I do not mind when people have their dogs off leash, even that it's against the law, as long as they understand that not all dogs appreciate being jumped on by some strangers so they keep their dogs away form other dogs. Unfortunately it seems that the mentality of majority of the population is that dogs need to make other doggy friends and people don't even bother asking if the owner of another dog is ok with it. Oh well, off the soap box.

Now that kids are older I am thinking that I want to start taking them and my husband hiking. Not to mention the fact that this way we can take all three dogs with us without any worry and I don't have to feel guilty leaving someone at home:-)

I like taking pictures, so having a camera on hikes is a must. I love my Canon D20 but it needs it's own backpack. If the kids are coming with us, I will need to have a backpack full of water and snacks and maybe even towel or two if we go to a creek. Taking yet another backpack for a camera doesn't seem exciting. Then I remembered that my husband got me a point and shoot camera for my birthday two years ago.

He really made a mistake with that camera. That Christmas he got me my Canon 20D and an awesome lens, that got me really excited. Then the next month he got me a small point and shoot camera. He really should have done it the other way around.:-) Needless to say this small camera was laying in the closet - never touched. I pulled it out and took it with me on the dog walk last night. To my huge disappointment I couldn't take a single decent shot.  After almost two hours of trying different settings I was ready to throw it in the trash. It was infuriating. I guess no one should really transition from DSLR to a point and shoot camera:-) I am sure this camera takes acceptable photos in the bright sunlight, the problem is that it cannot take pictures of the things I want to take pictures of - my dogs in the woods:-) The light is too low and it slows down the shutter speed to the point that everything is very blurry.
After playing with it for two days this is the best I manage to do:

Belle exploring the creek. In case a little bit of sunlight in just this spot helped.

This week had been crazy hot 94F+ with high humidity. Mozart seem to have found a solution to this problem - as soon as we come to the creek he plumps himself into it and doesn't move for a few min. Of course it's helpful that he can lay in the puddle and chew on the sticks at the same time. The thing he seems to like the most in this world:-)

we are back .. maybe....

Things had been crazy busy.  Last summer I spent preparing Brandy for our utility debut as well as finishing our CDX. By the time we had finished the UD (in  5 attempts) I was so burned out that I didn't really want to train at all, plus it was November, the days were short and even if I really wanted, training wouldn't have been really possible in the evening.
Mozart had finished his retrieve class and we had started working on articles in the fall.
Poor Belle was kind of abandoned outside of our usual Thursday night classes where Kid#1 was working her.
Come spring of 2013 and I had started trying to bring myself back into training and exploring past UD opportunities although not very successfully. We've been in the ring maybe 4 times and NQed all 4 times.  Brandy needs lots more work around barking and out of control dogs. Yeah, like that's easy to find in a control environment:-)

I was looking forward to summer in hopes that I would have more time, when I realized that it's already July and I am still hoping, so I went to a book store and got myself a famous "moleskin" notebook. I didn't really know it was famous until I bought it though. It came with a story telling how some of the famous writers and artists favored it in the past. For 2 weeks I had been pretty good about keeping my training log. I tried keeping my training log on my phone, found a couple of useful applications, but I realized that I really miss the pen and paper. It's amazing how much more productive I get when I actually creating a training plan for the day the night before, even if I do not manage to work on all of the exercises I planned on, it's still pushes me to try hard to stick with the plan.  When you have a three dogs that have to be actively trained I can't imaging doing it any other way.

Here is a video of one of Brandy's open runs. Unfortunately I have no videos of our Utility runs.