So when I had Lizzie into the vet to check her ears after she had been shaking her head more then usual, we discovered a little "cyst" at the base and just below the bottom of her left ear. Turns out the "cyst" was her microchip and it had migrated. In this case the vet feels that it will still be picked up if she is scanned.....which I am hoping to be true, but I think this points out the need to have the microchips scanned for when I go into the vets office in the future. Just to make sure they are where they should be. The bummer of the deal is that Liz is my dog I would imagine is the most likely in my pack to NEED her microchip one day. She is getting so much better at coming back but when she gets excited movement is so intoxicating to her that she is way more likely then anyone else to just get excited and RUN. I think she would be quite aways away before she would figure out that she had gotten into a situation she might not want to be in. ANYWAY, so I am going to make sure to have everyones chip scanned when we go into the vets office for other things.
On the positive side, Lizzie was a little angel today at the vets office. You know she can be such a handful at times, but she is the best natured little girl. She was doing all her tricks and using very good focus while we were in the waiting room, she was very good at just keeping herself from getting too excited. A little boy ran over and sort of jumped on her and was hugging and kissing her. Liz and Chloe are my only dogs that I have no worries if something like that happens. Liz just loved on the little boy and didnt even jump on him. When we took her to see the vet -she was wonderful with the vet tech and did her tricks (I was using a lot of tricks and keeping her mind occupied to help her keep her excitement under control). The vet was able to examine her and mess with her all she wanted and Liz was an absolute champ. We walked in on a loose leash and were able to keep the leash loose say about 80+% of the time and we were able to leave on a loose leash. See Liz is not just a hard girl to train, she is also one of the sweetest dogs I have ever had and except for her excitement, she has the most stable temperment and just handles so many things so well. I am really happy I have her, I sure would not have chosen her if I knew what I was in for....but ......I really am lucky to have her in my life :-) .
Random training results
Sooo we are trying some new things with the wild Miss Liz to keep her training moving along. One thing we are doing is to have her play agility with Alicia, our awesome instructor, and I have been fortunate enough to have Pickle run with me so that I can feel how it feels to have a dog that really understands their job, so I can handle Liz with more confidence. WE have also went back to decreasing her distractions, and gosh we had some beautiful work this week. Liz really likes to play agility with Alicia. I found having someone else run Liz had some very big benefits,
1. I can see what Liz is doing that are mistakes because of my handling and what she just isnt understanding.
2. I found it VERY useful to see how Alicia handles Liz, she is very upbeat and very exciting and I found it really neat to see her use that with Liz and see how she motivates Liz with those type of skills, I think that will help me a lot. I have also been understanding lately that I do not have to be worried about Liz level of excitement, it just has to be handled and directed and Alicia does that really well with her. Liz is getting way more used to working with a higher level of excitement and I think if we can get her trialing that will be a good thing. Watching someone else who is of course going to have different tools is very useful to see different ways to handle things and how they work.
3. I think it will give me more confidence with Liz to see that I can trust her more then I do at times-although I totally love her but there are times when I should trust her more but because I am trying so hard to make sure she does well I do not give her as much a chance to shine as I could.
4. I would guess that working with more then one person will help Liz to generalize her job and understand what she is doing even when there are slight differences in how different people cue the job.
SOOOO for the rest of my dogs, and any new puppies I think that having them learn to work with other people will be something I am going to make sure to add to my little list of things I would like to teach my doggies. I was soooo proud of Liz, I knew she would work for Alicia, but I did not know she would do as well as she did. I was sitting right next to them working and the first minuete she was not sure what she was supposed to do but then she understood that Auntie Alica has good things to eat and she knows how to use a toy, then she was more then happy to hang with her and play agility.
ON the other side of the equation, I got to run a little with Pickle. Pickle is my hero and such an awesome dog. It did feel really neat to be working with a dog that so totally understands his job. I think that my experience with him will really help me back off and let my dog do their job and run with more confidence. So THANKS Pickle for putting up with my learning experience.
Sooo the other thing that has happened is I pulled my back. Man am I a hurting puppy, and now for some reason my knee is killing me too. So I have been just hanging out moaning and groaning. Sooo this afternoon I deceided to do a little clicker training with Liz and Breeze. I didnt want to get up and let one outside so I was trying to think of something to teach them both at the same time that I could do without moving around a lot. So.....bored minds can react weirdly and I deceided to see if I could teach them both to target each other at the same time-to sort of give each other a kiss..... My poor girls-I am sure they would like the SPCA to know some of the things that go on around here. Anyway, it turned out to be a very fun experiment. It was really neat to see how each dog was learning just a tad different. First they are so used to shaping that when I got out the clicker and the treats they very quickly started to figure out that I was clicking for their noses getting closer to each other. It wasnt that easy to think of something that I would be able to have criteria for both dogs that I could click at the same time for both and so it was a little more challenging then I might have thought. At first they got really spastic because they had never targeted each other so they were pawing, nosing and batting at everything they could see that possibly be the key to getting their click. You could see the wheels turning that they were thinking hummm, it seems to have something to do with touching my sister, but how could that be? Finally I think Breeze totally had that she was supposed to touch Liz's nose with her nose,, and I think what Liz was understanding was to turn her nose toward Breeze and let Breeze do the nose touch on her nose. Anyway, it ended up with a very sweet kiss looking behavior and when I left off we were putting it on cue. It was a way to pass a little time and kept my girls busy for a short while, and I just love doing fun little training sessions because I am always so amazed at how quickly they pick everything up and figure things out now a days. Just seems the more we play with shaping the quicker they get it, and now they are so quick.
1. I can see what Liz is doing that are mistakes because of my handling and what she just isnt understanding.
2. I found it VERY useful to see how Alicia handles Liz, she is very upbeat and very exciting and I found it really neat to see her use that with Liz and see how she motivates Liz with those type of skills, I think that will help me a lot. I have also been understanding lately that I do not have to be worried about Liz level of excitement, it just has to be handled and directed and Alicia does that really well with her. Liz is getting way more used to working with a higher level of excitement and I think if we can get her trialing that will be a good thing. Watching someone else who is of course going to have different tools is very useful to see different ways to handle things and how they work.
3. I think it will give me more confidence with Liz to see that I can trust her more then I do at times-although I totally love her but there are times when I should trust her more but because I am trying so hard to make sure she does well I do not give her as much a chance to shine as I could.
4. I would guess that working with more then one person will help Liz to generalize her job and understand what she is doing even when there are slight differences in how different people cue the job.
SOOOO for the rest of my dogs, and any new puppies I think that having them learn to work with other people will be something I am going to make sure to add to my little list of things I would like to teach my doggies. I was soooo proud of Liz, I knew she would work for Alicia, but I did not know she would do as well as she did. I was sitting right next to them working and the first minuete she was not sure what she was supposed to do but then she understood that Auntie Alica has good things to eat and she knows how to use a toy, then she was more then happy to hang with her and play agility.
ON the other side of the equation, I got to run a little with Pickle. Pickle is my hero and such an awesome dog. It did feel really neat to be working with a dog that so totally understands his job. I think that my experience with him will really help me back off and let my dog do their job and run with more confidence. So THANKS Pickle for putting up with my learning experience.
Sooo the other thing that has happened is I pulled my back. Man am I a hurting puppy, and now for some reason my knee is killing me too. So I have been just hanging out moaning and groaning. Sooo this afternoon I deceided to do a little clicker training with Liz and Breeze. I didnt want to get up and let one outside so I was trying to think of something to teach them both at the same time that I could do without moving around a lot. So.....bored minds can react weirdly and I deceided to see if I could teach them both to target each other at the same time-to sort of give each other a kiss..... My poor girls-I am sure they would like the SPCA to know some of the things that go on around here. Anyway, it turned out to be a very fun experiment. It was really neat to see how each dog was learning just a tad different. First they are so used to shaping that when I got out the clicker and the treats they very quickly started to figure out that I was clicking for their noses getting closer to each other. It wasnt that easy to think of something that I would be able to have criteria for both dogs that I could click at the same time for both and so it was a little more challenging then I might have thought. At first they got really spastic because they had never targeted each other so they were pawing, nosing and batting at everything they could see that possibly be the key to getting their click. You could see the wheels turning that they were thinking hummm, it seems to have something to do with touching my sister, but how could that be? Finally I think Breeze totally had that she was supposed to touch Liz's nose with her nose,, and I think what Liz was understanding was to turn her nose toward Breeze and let Breeze do the nose touch on her nose. Anyway, it ended up with a very sweet kiss looking behavior and when I left off we were putting it on cue. It was a way to pass a little time and kept my girls busy for a short while, and I just love doing fun little training sessions because I am always so amazed at how quickly they pick everything up and figure things out now a days. Just seems the more we play with shaping the quicker they get it, and now they are so quick.
Welcome Keen
WELCOME to new little Keen. My training buddy just got this sweet little guy, and think we are all going to have a lot of fun having him in our little training group. Keen is 5 1/2 months and came from http: //www.doublejtraining.com/ .
NOT AGAIN BREEZE
YIKES, so Miss Breeze is once again causing problems!!! Just when I think we have everything handled, poor little girl. So this time Breeze has a little weirdness to her gait and is unable/unwilling to sit to stand and keep her left leg under her body so she was throwing it out in an odd way. Well a couple of days after that we went to class and I let the dogs run in the agility yard, which is what I normally do. So I was watching all the time and Lizzie, Cherry and Breeze were having a heidi hoo time running around and being wild and all of a sudden Breeze would not use her left leg at all. Of course she still was running full out on three legs. I of course had a sick lump form instantly in my stomach and got out her mat and started grabbing ice packs to sit down and stretch Breeze, put ice on her and figure out what the problem was. So I turned around and she wont use either back leg. Now I was really feeling sick. So I get Breeze over to her mat, and try to do my deep breathing, assuming that she has pulled something in her leg, AGAIN. Well, her whole inner thigh was just covered in hives, her skin was so thin you could tell it could just tear off without any problem at all. Her thighs looked like they had rope burn, they were blood red and splotchy, it was horrible and I couldnt figure out what happened. When I calmed down I noticed her breastbone was all red and bumpy too. So not knowing what to do I gathered everyone and everything and threw them in the car and headed to the nearest town to get some benadryl and a collar so Breeze could not chew on herself and make the situation worse. So turns out she had some sort of Toxic Allergic reaction to ????? something. I think that is why she was using her leg weird, she does have huge open, weeping sores on her thighs where it meets her body now. So now I am all weirded out trying to figure out what could have caused this and what to do. Everything in my house is getting washed with non allergenic soap, she is getting tea tree baths, she has had to have some prednisone just to get this all under control and she looks a mess. I did notice some nasty smelling somthing in the Acton yard and thinking perhaps it was sprayed or someone dumped something on the grass and Breeze brushed up against it or possibly there is even just some little bugs in the grass biting her because the grass is really long and there are a lot of wild animals that I think go through the yard-gophers, mice, owls???? ANYWAY, just getting really tired, you know I have had more health issues with breeze since she turned a year old then I have had with all my other dogs combined. I love Breeze and good thing she is the sweetest little girl, but goodness some days it feels like she is a train wreck. I keep thinking gosh this has got to be the end of her bad luck, and so when anything else happens it feels like such a huge thing because of the cumulative effect.
LESSONS LEARNED: If any allergic reaction is suspected, WASH the area off immediately. I should have hosed her down right away. I had thought of it but then I was afraid I was going to break open all the skin and make it worse because the skin looked so bad and so fragile, but I should have hosed her off. When in doubt probably a good thing to do.
I NEVER should have taken out the emergency first aid kit from my car, what was I thinking???
So as a consequence of this latest incident, which this is the least of my worries, but training has once again had to be put on hold because her skin is still raw and pinkish and she is cranky as all heck so I just dont think she feels really good. I just feel so bad for my little girl.
LESSONS LEARNED: If any allergic reaction is suspected, WASH the area off immediately. I should have hosed her down right away. I had thought of it but then I was afraid I was going to break open all the skin and make it worse because the skin looked so bad and so fragile, but I should have hosed her off. When in doubt probably a good thing to do.
I NEVER should have taken out the emergency first aid kit from my car, what was I thinking???
So as a consequence of this latest incident, which this is the least of my worries, but training has once again had to be put on hold because her skin is still raw and pinkish and she is cranky as all heck so I just dont think she feels really good. I just feel so bad for my little girl.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)