CHERRY

So I havent talked much about a new little star in our home that is doing wonderfully. Cherry is actually a Contact Point Agility dog, but Karen has let me keep her here for the last couple of months. Cherry was born about two weeks before Breeze, and is a cousin of Breeze's. So the fun thing is that Cherry came here just shy of turning 2 yrs old, but I remember holding and playing with her when I origionally went to meet Breeze. I have a lot of pictures of that trip. I also remember seeing on the CP email list the pictures of Cherry at 14 weeks jumping over a tunnel, and I remember writing in that I thought Cherry really wanted to be an agility dog for sure. I remember hearing about the day they took Cherry in to the vet because she had been limping and it turned out she had a broken pelvis I believe. Anyway, she had a FHO, where they remove the head of the femor and then instead of a true hip joint as I understand it the muscles are holding the hip area together. Origionally Cherry came here because Breeze was doing her exercises and rehab and Cherry needed to do the same exercises and so I figured the more the merrier. When Cherry first came we spent a lot of time teaching just plain manners, and doing a lot of exercises. Cherry was a challenge for me because she was not at all food motivated, NOT AT ALL. And she loved to play with toys but didnt really understand how to play WITH me, so it was difficult to use that as a reward. She has some really truly awesome drive though and is the sweetest dog ever. I will say that Cherry is the only dog in my house right now that gets full house privledges and doesnt have to go in a crate when I leave. Skyler is pretty much on that status too, and Chloe I just worry about her and Liz fighting through crates, but Cherry just never does anything wrong. She is my husbands favorite dog, and the kids just love her. Cherry is fun for them because she is gentle and sweet and still loves to play-she is a ball maniac. So recently there have been some really exciting things going on with the ol' Cherry. I am GOOOOOOOOD at bringing out food drive and I am getting much better with playing with the dogs and all of a sudden Cherry is the easiest dog to train. So I started Cherry in a little beginning agility class and I do have to say....at the risk of bragging.... she is by far the best dog in the class. OK that is my own opinion, but.....LOL, I really think she is. She is amazing, like between exercises I wanted to shape a focus-just asking her to sit and look at my eyes-then increase the duration she could do that. By ten minuetes later she was holding my gaze as long as I will hold her and I can run and move and she will run after me and find my eyes. Wow, two years and still working on that with Liz. She was the demo dog for learning out around a cone and after two of three tries with Alicia the instructor, I took her back and we were able to run by the cone and she would go out and around it. Last week we were doing jump-tunnel and Cherry would sit behind the jump-knowing that we were going for the way fun tunnel, and even though she hadnt done it before she was pulling and then went over the jump and raced through the tunnel where I threw the ball for her. All of a sudden she is a learning machine. It is all clicking for her so fast. She is really doing so good. I am so proud of her.
Sooooo I have a SUPER FUN challenge I am doing with Cherry now. I had tried earlier to do the 2X2 weaves when I was origionally teaching my dogs but she just was not operant enough yet and she wasnt into the rewards enough to really get into it, and the way I handle that type of thing is to just wait and work on other things. SOOOOOO we are BACK, and I am going to try to get these weaves down in the next two weeks, and I mean I want some awesome weaves. hahahahahah, so that is the challenge. I will post how it is going to keep myself moving and honest, and I will post a day by day progress video in TWO WEEKS. I really think we can do it and I think this is going to be fun. I will have to take a few days off because I have to be out of town for a few of the days, so that will be my excuse if it takes us a few more days....but I am still going to predict two weeks!!!

CHLOE NJC, CGC

CHLOE GETS HER FIRST TITLE-so it is Jazzy Little Chloe NJC, CGC. So yeah, I know it isnt a huge deal but it is to me. I was a nerd in school, I used to go to a junior high where these gangs of girls would chase kids down and beat them up when they didn't do well in baseball or volley ball. I was just never good at physical things, and I have done dog training but the competition side of things just intimidated me. I love to challenge myself and even working as a nurse I would do some of the more difficult things, but I just dont like doing things where I feel judged or people have to watch me doing it. I have a huge perfectionist streak that makes me not want to try things when I am not going to be perfect or when I might look foolish, and I have had to really come to grips with that in my little agility adventure. When I started private agility lessons just working in front of the instructor made me really, really nervous and I had to make myself go because it was hard. When I very first started group lessons I would write my instructor at the time, Deanna, and apologize when I had trouble getting something. Anyway, agility has been good for me and I have worked through a lot of things, and so getting my first agility title is so much more then a little novice title. It is a symbol of all that I have worked through and am working through. Chloe has had a lot of challenges, but boy running with her now is so much like sitting at home in your favorite chair, it just feels so good-except that start line. So this weekend Chloe Q'd and got a first in every run, except one where we got excused when she peed at the start line, LOL. I was not at my best this weekend, but boy there were two times when Chloe just seemed to read my mind and I was so far behind that I had to trust my dog, which people keep telling me I need to do more, and she pulled it off. Chloe and I have worked through a lot and just a year ago she could not make time-she barely walked, she could not weave, she ran around every obstacle. We worked through her physical issues, her motivation issues and now she is always way below time and she just reads things so well, she is really a sweet, nice, consistent little girl. CONGRATS CHLOE, AND THANKS FOR BEING MY PARTNER!!!

BREEZES FIRST TRIAL!!!

Breeze first trial was every bit as good as Lizzies first trial day was bad. She is just such a good doggie she handled the stress wonderfully and as the weekend went on with each run it seemed like she was getting the game more and more and looking for where to go, and understanding my body language a little better each time. I did not know what to expect from her, so I didnt know when to let her go and when to sit closer and babysit. Trusting my dog has never been my strong point, so I had a lot of trouble sitting and babysitting areas where I felt I had to stay to get one obstacle and then getting to the next area I needed to be. I have only done a handful of longer sequences with her and I do not have any feel for the timing with her yet, and that was HARD. She doesnt feel like anyone else I have run with and knowing when to stay and help her and when to just let her go is not something I have a feel for yet. I felt like such a rotten handler this weekend, but Breeze really did good even though I will have to say I did not give her the best chance by giving her good direction. It is weird to run with a dog as fast and happy as she is, I wasnt stressing walking up to the line which is always stressful for me and Chloe because I havent really come up with a good way to do that with Chloe so she doesnt start worrying and shutting down, but with Breeze we could just walk up there and not worry about it, that was fun. Then Breeze was just having such a good time and getting better with each run. We came out with a HUGE list of things to work on but a huge list of things that went right and the best part is that she held up beautifully physically. I did not opt to give any medication because I wanted to get a true test of how she was going to hold up and if she would get sore, and she didnt show any signs of hurting that I saw.
Our last run was on sunday in the dark, and a tunnelers run. There were two sets of tunnels that were parallel, and one was a set that were touching each other and Breeze being a baby agility dog does not always read my signals really well, the first tunnel was a dark blue one in the dark and the judge was sitting right next to the tunnel, so there were a lot of things in that run that made Breeze a little nervous at the start line and she broke, and I went with it because I had not thought it out ahead of time what I should do if that happened. Anyway, she Q'd and got fourth in a pretty big class of dogs. Her first Q. She read everything I did perfectly and I was proud of myself for not getting lost, although it was a really nice course.
Beeze is so much fun and so nice to run with, even knowing she has a lot of training that needs to be done and there is so much more she needs to know and I had no idea what we would get out of her, and she is so much different from anyone else I have run, and the list of dogs I have run is pretty small......I still did not get very nervous and I kept my stress pretty much under control. The last few trials I have been a real stress case, but I have to say I did sooo much better this trial. I worked hard on that and I think I did OK. Funny I started out doing well with stress my first couple of trials and then I started worrying a lot more and I just got so stressed I really had trouble thinking, remembering the courses and it was very uncomfortable.
So this trial this weekend was such a mixed bag of emotions and there were such extremes of how things went, I deceided to give everyone a little seperate entry and seperate the memories a little bit. It is going to be really rough to have so many dogs just starting out their agility career at once, the highs and lows come a lot faster that way for sure.
BREEZE....Breeze....boy, I sure wish she didnt have hip dysplasia, maybe she is going to do pretty well with that, but I will always have to be more careful to not tear her down, and I will always worry, it all comes down to that I will always worry about how she is doing physcially. I will always have to limit her number of runs, and I will just always be having to make sure she gets her accupuncture, her supplements, her exercises, great nutrition, I just will never just get to run her and not think about it because I love her to death and I do not want to tear her down to do something I want to do....maybe as time goes on and I get a feeling for how much she is able to do and handle I will relax...and not worry as much?
I really have GREAT things to say about Breezes first trial, it was a real terrific suprise. Breeze is such a fun dog, she is just easy as far as her training, her drive, her stress levels, she is just a fun, easy dog. Breeze is just the sweetest girl.

The day Lizzie and I would like to forget.....Her first trial

So Liz had her first trial entry. Lets say she will NOT be entering any trials soon and as SOON as her "run" was done I found the trial secretary and asked how to pull Liz from the rest of the trial. The really unfortunate thing is that whole incident unfortunately I think points to a really bad judgement on my part to enter her in the first place. The sad thing is that Liz was making sure HUGE progress, and is a different dog from this summer when we couldnt get her to stay with me and work during a private session and she has come to the point that she can do a long stay with a group of dogs sitting right next to her when I am 30 feet away and jumping and clapping. How great is that and how wonderful the progress. Liz is able to do agility in front of familiar dogs on familiar territory, or I think at a place that I can work for a little bit to get her attention first and let her settle in. To enter a trial Liz will have to be able to walk into an area "cold", turn and give me her attention. We are definately not there. Poor Liz. So the plan was to take her into the ring and set her in front of a few obstacles, let her perform them, get her and run out of the ring. Well, Liz just went way over threshold and when placed in front of a tunnel just took off in a major zoomie around the field. She was so over the top she couldnt even do the one tunnel. I will say when she does that I do not think she is hearing things, she is not thinking she is just feeding off the movement. So thank heavens we were at a yard that had actual gates and was fully fenced, everyone spun into action and slammed the gates closed. Liz did come to me and looked relieved when I got her, and I know dogs dont think this way, but I felt like she was just as upset over what happened, and I felt like she was telling me that she just couldnt help it. I felt so horrible for my little girl. It was all my fault for putting her in a situation that in hindsight I should have known she was just not ready for. It was not my most proud moment as her trainer. The really bad thing about the situation is the whole thing has just made me feel hopeless about her prospects and while we were riding on a high and I was starting to feel like she was going to be able to do anything....now I am just having trouble thinking about even continueing her training. It would just be so much easier at this point to get a nice, easy, fun puppy-although I know there are no guarantees on that, but... I just want an easy, fun dog that I can just have fun with and that everything isnt such a challenge. Can you tell it is a bad morning for Liz and I. I just feel so inept because I just do not know that what I am doing in training is what Liz needs, I do not know anyone who has trained through these things, and so everything is just what makes sense to my pea brain or what feels right and so far it seems to be working but we just get to this point and then we have not gone beyone that, so I really worry that I am missing some little thing that I should be doing. I just wish I knew so much more. To make things worse....I am not sure how obedience class will go tonight. Last week Liz was jumped by a cattle dog WHILE she was doing a recall to me, right as she got to me and her toy. The rest of the class she wouldnt let any dogs near her, she would cross to put me between her and the dog, and she wouldnt look at her toy. Liz and I are hitting a little low right now, hopefully it will pick up again soon.