When Skyler wouldn't stay the border collies made a break for it:
Skyler who would not stay for a picture, and inspired the get away....
One day I will get around to training some of the more important things in life...forget the weave poles, or aframes, or contacts, or how to close cabinet doors...where is the group stay training???
With 5 dogs-2 shelties and 3 border collies, all long haired dogs.....I have a few choices in how I live my life.
I could
A. embrace the hair and just learn to enjoy being covered with hair all the time ;-). If I was smart I would have gotten dogs all the same color so I could just match my outfits to their hair, but everyone has a different color fur...
B. Beg my friend Collette to teach me how to spin yarn, gather the hair-very quickly I could make blankets for a small country with all the hair that ends up floating around here.
C. Give up all my hobbies, work, etc..and work 24/7 with a continual round of combing and grooming dogs.
It would not be so bad but the shelties are the biggest challenge. Skyler has always had this hair that has a super thick undercoat that is always shedding in clumps-and Chloe has the thickest hair of any dog I have seen. Chloes hair is so thick it is hard to get to her skin. Cricket is a weirdo and loves to go outside and roll in the dirt. She has a special talent she has worked to perfect so that she looks like pig pen with a little dirt cloud following her.
WHAT TO DO?
I have tried different types of vacuums, shampoos, furminators, brushing EVERY day, supplements in the food, little rubber brushes on the floors and furniture, but the war on hair just is never ending.
Enter my new best friend!!!!
I have never had any experience with a HV drier....where have I been? How have I lived until now? LOL. If you have a dog doing a lot of shedding some self grooming places have high velocity dryers you can use, if you have one near you CHECK IT OUT! It makes getting all the hair out so much easier!
This little beauty is the Double K ChallengeAir high velocity dryer and the wonderful UPS guy delivered my beauty two days ago. WHOOOOO HOOOO.
So check it out....I grab Skyler and set him up on my grooming table,....I blow through his coat and the undercoat is just coming out in sheets-without any work. I got bags and bags of hair in a really short time. Next his bath..the water from his bath just came off his coat in sheets. In say ten minutes he was dry and the ground was covered with hair. He looked gorgeous, I have only seen him look that good one other time which was when I sent him to the groomer. I have never been able to get that much hair out no matter how long I have spent or how hard I worked. A little over an hour from the start of our session and Skyler was dry, soft, shiny and looked about ten pounds lighter because of all the hair that was gone.
Chloe got a similar result. Her hair is so thick I usually wash her in the morning and then she is still damp in the evening. With the blower she was dry in no time and I got out lots of hair I just could not have got in the past.
The dryer was not as dramatic on the Border collies because their fur is not as thick and they do not have as much undercoat but I was able to fly through three baths and good grooms for them.
Everyone is so soft and they smell so nice-I am amazed at how much hair I could get out of the dogs and it was so easy......with this baby I can see bathing the dogs a lot more often ....hopefully it is going to help the hair situation around the house!
*****WEAVE POLE UPDATE:*****
It has been a few days since I updated the weave pole challenge, and there are some GREAT videos to share.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_M7WK9jXu6k Extra credit goes to Ricky and his mom, check it out she did a great job with their weave position 3-she was out there working hard even with her injury ;-). Ricky looks so happy, what a great weaver.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dare and Marie did the jump position 5 for their weave challenge. They are so much fun to watch ;-). Dare always looks so fast and happy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bD0b2PIsAZQ
AND TO SHOW HOW BEHIND I AM, Dare just also completed position 6 with 12 weaves. WOW, it is summer where are they getting all this focus and energy? I am so impressed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bpon5GpgjnQ
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Check out Psyches weaves, GREAT JOB with position one! Glad to see them joining us, very cool!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpzSkJtnG3o
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBrgT1Qau48 Nari vs the weave pole challenge Week 3 looks like it went great, and she has posted some awesome running dog walk practice too. They are looking good.
They also posted week 4 and have some awesome jump practices they have in their video, that Nari is so cute-and so fast! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2guHWHBr3c
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*****SPECIAL REQUEST:*****
Pam a dog trainer from our area has entered a contest with a training video of teaching a dog to pick up their back leg with an easy button. If you could go to the link and vote for your favorite video Pam would really appreciate it. If this link does not get you right there, click on video contest on the top tab.
http://www.usbones.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=VIDEO