Happy New Year!

I actually have plans tonight. Shocking. But I did get a new camera lens yesterday so expect new pics of Vivre as I play with it. I loaded one of the new ones up on flickr, but I haven't tweaked any of them yet so the others will have to wait.

We finally have had a break in the snow and cold weather so hopefully Vivre and I will get out and get some work done. Any way I just wanted to say...

Happy New Years!

Agility is Rocket Science!

These are hilarious!

Happy Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is a day filled with both laughter and irritation (because really what family gatherings aren't?) We will meet at my parent's house reminisce and talk about all the turkey's my mom has attempted to make. Like the year the rubber sink mat stuck to the bottom of the frozen turkey, filling their apartment with the noxious smell of burning rubber and providing holiday cheer to the employees of 1-800-Butterball.

Then we will watch the turkey episode of WKRP. For those of you who have never had the pleasure, the turkey episode is hilarious, warpy, but hilarious. So here is Turkey's Away Watch and enjoy, Happy Thanksgiving.

Hilarious!

Funny and true.

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/11/dogs-dont-understand-basic-concepts.html

Vivre can't howl

Poor Vivre, it really is so embarrassing. When the dogs are outside and the wolves start to howl the dogs will join in. Yoda is a GSD/Siberian cross. Thanks to his Sibe heritage he can howl beautifully. Even Apollo, the golden (?) cross can howl. Not a pretty howl, but he can howl. Vivre... not so much. Everyone is howling and Vivre is yipping. Over and over again. These little high pitched yips. Thankfully Vivre is blissfully unaware of how pathetic she sounds in contrast to the beautiful howls of the wolves. I am hoping that one day she learns to howl, preferably before she becomes aware of how sounds.

On a totally different note she totally shocked me the other day. Cold weather has sparked Yoda's energy level. At twelve his activity level is usually confined to short burst. I think having Vivre has been good for him because it has kept him active and for a twelve year old GSD he is still very mobile. Lately he has started play fetch. Something quite hard to do with Vivre around as she is so much faster than he is and will always get the toy first. I have started putting Vivre outside or in the crate while we play. Typically this upsets Vivre quite a bit she wants to play. So when I let her out and throw the toy for her she grabs it and runs around the house squeaking it ceaselessly. I can practically hear her mentally going "Mine, Mine, Mine, Mine," in time with the squeaks. She lays on the bed and squeaks it some more then launches herself to the floor and starts the circling all over again. The shock came yesterday morning. Yoda brought me the toy and instead of putting Vivre up I just started tossing it in a way where Vivre couldn't get to it first due to position and the lay out of the furniture. However when I turned to throw it the other way she actually stood still and let Yoda get it. She never stays still in the face of thrown objects and certainly never lets another get the toy.

I am sure she will return to her normal level of selfishness and I have no doubt that it will never happen again, but it does give me hope that she is growing up a little and I may actually be able to throw a dumbbell and have her wait until I send her to go get it.

Day 2

Sunday was day two with Denise. It was just as good as day one. I liked that there were so many different dogs there, we got to see how Denise tailored the exercises for the specific dogs the she was working with. I love stuff like that. I am such a geek.

Since I had that annoying front problem where Vivre wanted to stand at an angle instead of directly in front of me I decided we would work on that. I got up there and Vivre sits perfectly. Surely that was a mistake. I move and she's dead center again. We did this several times and while she did get a little crooked she never got that far off. What the Hell! Of course that turned out to be a good thing since we then switched to heeling where I discovered that I CAN"T WALK A STRAIGHT LINE! How did that happen? Of course Vivre forges but that's my fault, it is easier to see her if she is forward and I have inadvertently trained that, but my walking in to her is the reason she gets wide on me. So I come home today and start to work and I still can't walk a straight line. I am walking along the tile lines on my floor and I get so busy walking along the lines I quit watching Vivre. I am going to have to figure this out. I also need to learn how to work with a leash. If I can handle 25 foot lunge lines I should be able to handle a 7ft leash, but apparently I can't. I picked up a thinner leash that Brydon made and I am hoping that will help. She had some very nice collars and leashes. I need to measure Vivre's neck for her collar.

I also bought new toys. I was just tickled when I walked in and saw a table full of toys Denise brought. We got another French Linen tug since Vivre really likes those and Denise suggested we stick with that and I picked up a Gripper Flipper. So Vivre now has a frisbee we can tug with too. She loves it!

Denise also gave me a suggestion for teaching the blinds so that Vivre doesn't go too wide around the blinds and I don't have to fix it later. Which makes me glad that I have only done some basic work with going around object.

Darren showed up Sunday afternoon so Denise could watch the dogs work. She had a lot of good suggestions for Darren with Vivre, but Vivre did pretty well considering it was only the second time Darren had worked with her.

I'm feeling energized to get back to work. Just in time for winter :-) Vivre doesn't mind the cold near as much as I do. I will probably just have to suck it up and deal with it. I hope it isn't as bad as last winter. I couldn't handle that.

Day 1 with Denise

This weekend is the seminar with Denise. Today was great. I have walked away with ideas for when I start working on the formal retrieve and some ideas for helping to get a closer heel. And after following Denise's suggestions for tug delivery on the down after only a handful of reps she has quit levitating her elbows. That is something I have been struggling to fix and had no idea how I was going to do it.

Tomorrow we are going to do more work with the dogs and I have to decide what I want us to work on. I have so much I need to work on that it is hard to decide. I am thinking maybe fronts, I really need to get her straight. What she does now can barely be called a front, though I also got some great info on fixing that problem today too. I wish I had brought my hula hoop. If I had my ideal it would be to work on send outs. I can down Vivre and walk away either still or out of motion but she doesn't like moving away from me. I don't know about working on that at the seminar since I am not sure how I feel about working her off leash around strange dogs. Okay I know I am paranoid.

On another note I have a new appreciation for Yoda. This is the first time I have been away with just Vivre. So far we have trained with food, trained with toys, I've tossed food around the room for her to eat, and we've trained some more, and trained some more. She finally has curled up on the bed and gone to sleep. She has also been very good about noises in the hotel. I was a little concerned and the first time she heard people she started to bark, but after I hushed her she has mostly ignored the noises. I am off to make my notes from today and veg before tomorrow.

Sick as a ...

On my way back from Lexington I started to feel pretty bad, I made it home, fell in to bed and stayed there until Thursday. Even then I really wasn't up to par. It was two full weeks before I was better. Now I am having to deal with the things that didn't get done while I was sick, getting ready for this weekend and dealing with my post election funk, when I am faced with the depressing fact that I am surrounded by republicans. As a result none of the stuff I wanted to work on before the seminar got done.

I haven't even taken Vivre out in public. We have worked quite a bit in strange places, once she realizes that I have a tug she will focus and work regardless of whether or not I have taken her out lately. Hopefully I will be able to make time tomorrow to get some work done before I leave on Saturday.

Pictures

Here is a couple of new pictures of Vivre. I think she might actually look like a dog now.

Vivre meets Darren

Last night Vivre and I headed up to Lexington to work with Brydon and her helper, Darren. I am very grateful that Brydon set this up since my club basically shut down when the T.D started a new job. As a result Vivre hasn't done any bitework in about a year. I like Darren, he talked to her the whole time he was working with her and he has a very playful manner with the dogs. Vivre definitely enjoyed herself and I love being around dog people. Around here when I start talking about dog stuff people get this glazed over look in their eyes.

I also got to see Brydon's boys while I was there. You can tell that Vivre and Wicked are related, they share a lot of traits especially behaviorally. Wicked is surprisingly not that much bigger than Vivre though he has a lot more fur than she does and of course has filled out more.

I had to swing by petsmart and pick up some crickets for my aunt's frog, so Vivre also had her first trip to a pet store. She has gone to the feed store with me in the past, but last night made it clear that I haven't take Vivre out to work in new places lately. That last couple of weeks it was because she was in heat, but even before that we had been mostly working around the mountain. I couldn't even get her to heel from the car to the door of the pet store. Pathetic.

The seminar with Denise is in a couple of weeks. So I need to get her out working in new places again or she will be totally worthless at the seminar. I am also going to try and pretend to be an organized individual and make a list of things I have to work on, train, or fix. Off the top of my head...

Front - I accidentally trained a wonky orientation. She doesn't want to sit directly in front of me but canted to the side.

Impulse Control- I have done a fair amount of impulse control with the tug and am usually glad that I live alone when I do. I would hate to have to explain to somebody why I am bouncing on the bed, singing (badly) and swinging the tug around my head like a lasso. What I haven't worked on is impulse control when I throw things (like a dumbbell)

Duration and Distance- I need more duration on the down, if it is apparent that we are actively working she holds the down, but I haven't built the duration that I need, especially if I am not looking at her. I also need more distance than the down and sit out of motion.

Tracking- I really, really need to start tracking. We have done only a handful of tracks.

Revier- We have had a couple of shaping sessions teaching her to go around buckets, but I haven't gotten it solid and we will need that behavior for the blind search.

Stand- This is just stupid on my part. I totally forget about stand. I am putting this on a fairly high priority because I don't want to get a lot of reps of sits and downs out of motion then try to add stand later.

Retrieve- I have started back chaining the retrieves but the retrieves make up a lot of points in a schutzhund trial that I am a little paranoid about messing it up.

I need to fine tune my heeling, especially right about turns where she gets a little wide or occasionally forward. Now I remember why I don't like to make lists. I start thinking about everything I need to get done and think... well I won't use that kind of language here. Of course if I made lists then I might be more organized and more likely to get things done. Stands, Fronts, and added distance and duration on downs are the top three things on the list. I also need to get a jump so I can start training that as well. I might take a shot at building it. I will need to build the a frame so the jump might be good practice for me. Of course watching me attempt to hammer anything is amusing, but I figure that is why they invented drills.

Still Growing

I had all kinds of great plans for this month. I am trying to get training sessions scheduled with Brydon and Wicked. I had planned to take Vivre to the beach and get some lovely fall photo hikes in. I also just got bought some floating rope as well as a floating frisbee and a bumper. And now she has gone in to her second heat cycle and blown all my plans. Now I remember why I tend toward males.

I might have to break down and order her little heat panties, but I am holding out until I can find some that aren't humiliating. All of them are either pink or have little ruffles. Or, brace yourself for the horror, are pink polka dotted with ruffles. Vivre would bite me and with good reason. (Note: I hate the color pink. For most people the regular pink might not be too bad, but I just can't look at pink.)

So she has just started her second heat, and now I am really having to get in to the spay or not to spay mode. I really have no intention of breeding her since I can't imagine trying to find homes for a whole litter of little Vivres. Just the thought causes me to be in awe of Denise. But I don't want to spay her until she is finished growing, plus there are the new studies that show spaying to increase various health problems.

I am at least going to wait until November. I'll let Denise look at her and see if she thinks she is finally finished growing. Vivre has actually grown about 1/2 inch since July. Putting her at 20.5 inches in height. She is still so small and delicate looking.

I'm trying to fix my wonky fronts. I goofed up badly when training heel. I started by having her place her front feet on a target and then clicked for hip movement. However I focused on hip movement and didn't notice that she had decided that she had to be at an angle to me when in front of me. Her heel is fine, but she wants to front at an angle. I have gone back to basics and back to the foot target and started clicking hip movement that only moves her toward straight. But if anybody has any other ideas I would be glad to hear them. I have to get up early tomorrow. I hate getting up early.

More Hiking

So went hiked back out to dog slaughter yesterday. It was a beautiful day and since it had rained the first part of the day I figured that nobody would be on the trail. Thankfully I got an earlier start than last time so I wasn't racing the sunset. I didn't really get to notice how pretty the trail was before. Which I suppose became really obvious when about 3/4 of the way down the trail I looked around and realized I didn't recognize anything. I actually thought I was lost and turned around before I finally realized I hadn't been lost at all.

Once we got to the to falls I turned her loose and she had a blast running around and playing. I also discovered that Vivre isn't a great swimmer. So that is something to work on. I may head out to the lake and let her get some swim practice in. I don't want to take the hike back from dog slaughter completely soaked if I get in to help her. I didn't get any great shots of her, so I ordered a new lens this morning. It is an old manual prime, so even though it won't auto focus it is faster than what I am using now and should let me shoot some distance shots in low light.

Here is a couple of the shots of Vivre "swimming," I doubt you will see much more than the water, but it will give you an idea.

Offering Behaviors

I haven't posted much about what Vivre and I have been doing. There have been a couple of times I was thinking "Oh I have to blog about this," only to get busy and forget. The last week or so I have started working on having her either lay calmly on her side. I want to work her through the relaxation protocol and start the mat work from CU. We have done several of the other games in CU, but not the mat work. I opted against using her regular down because it has such a strong reinforcement history I don't think she will relax in that position. Instead she will be ready to keep working. So now she knows that if she lays on her side she will get petting and puppy massage. (Rubbing circles on her jaw just knocks her right out.) And a position that I hope to condition to mean "this is calm time."

Since it is so easy to let her roll all the way over on her back from that position I have also rewarded her rolling over with all four feet in the air. What she usually does is roll over first and bat at me with one of her paws then when I start petting her she rolls back and lays on her side. So it has become a way to solicited calm petting time. (She either nose bumps me or drops a ball at my feet if she wants to work)

I absolutely cracked up last night. Apollo, my golden mix, doesn't really care for Vivre and will mostly completely ignore her. After calling her away from him after repeated pestering attempts I watched her go right over to Apollo, look at him for a second and then lay right down in front of him and roll over then start batting at his face with her paw. The exact same behavior she uses to solicit attention from me.

I don't really do puppies. The house training and the teething and the complete lack of a decent night's sleep (and this is just a few weeks, I can't imagine parenthood.) But having a dog that has learned from the start how to trade behavior to get what she wants is just great. She is such a hoot.

What We Can Learn From This....

There has been a lot of news around town about Bugsy's death. I have heard several comments and reports blasting animal control. The fault in this situation lies not with Wayne, who tried for four days to catch that dog, and finally had to make a hard decision, but with the dog's owner. Bugsy's owner failed his dog in many ways. The most obvious by not keeping him confined safely in his yard and then by not coming to get Bugsy when he broke his chain. But his irresponsibility goes much further than that.

Before I go any further I would like to say that while I personally have no problem blasting this individual that isn't the purpose of this post. I want people to look at the mistakes made in this situation and learn from them.

The owner (who hasn't yet been named) picked a breed with a tendency to roam even though he didn't have any way to properly confine the dog. Please do your research when choosing a dog breed. (If you go to the shelter to pick mix it can be difficult to narrow down breeds, but these dogs are usually full grown and hopefully the shelter staff can give you an idea of the dogs personality and temperament.)

Puppy Socialization is very important. Dog's have a finite period of socialization during that time they need to be properly introduced to a number of different people, places, and situations. Dog's with protective tendencies (such as Great Pyrs) require extensive socialization and that shouldn't be forgotten. Puppy socialization is an important and extensive subject beyond the scope of this post. However because it is so important Dr. Ian Dunbar has made his books Before You Get Your Puppy and After You Get Your Puppy available for free online. Socialization is a big thing for me, it needs to be done and it needs to be done well. As a vet Dr. Dunbar is concerned with balancing the socialization needs with the need to keep the dog safe from disease. Personally I would avoid public dog parks and similar places, but consider lack of socialization a far more dangerous disease than parvo since it kills so many more dogs.

Socializations isn't all there is, genetics and temperament also play a huge role in personality and can limit how friendly the dog will be with strangers. As live stock guardian breed he was never going to be an outgoing loves everybody kind of dog. According to the AKC the Great Pry should be "strong willed, independent, and somewhat reserved, yet attentive, fearless, and loyal to his charges -- both human and animal." From the descriptions this didn't describe Bugsy. As time went on I heard more about how it took time before he would come to the people trying to feed him and his timid personality. This was likely a combination of poor socialization and genetics.

Picking a breeder and a puppy is a very important part of getting a puppy. A dog with good genetics can over come a lack of socialization. It is important to note that a good temperament genetically can come from a crappy breeder. My aunt has a puppy mill poodle who spent the first several years of his life in a small crate full of his own filth and now is very friendly with strangers. (Though he has still bitten in fear.)

If you don't have the time or the experience to put in to a dog that will require more training and/or socialization then either pick a breed and a breeder who will give you a dog that is naturally more inclined to be friendly or go to a rescue and get an adult dog that will fit your needs.

The "Come Game" is a wonderful tool for teaching both puppies and adult dogs to come to people. Directions can be found here. If you have a puppy or adult dog that seems to be reactive to strangers the best resource I can suggest is Control Unleashed by Leslie McDevitt. The book is worth at least twice its weight in gold.

Please learn from this tragedy and do what you can to make sure that your dogs and Wayne never have to go through anything like this again.

Crazy

Years ago my mother and I were at the hospital answering medical history questions since my great grandmother was about to go in to surgery. When they asked if there was a history of insanity in our family, our reply "You Betcha." I am only now realizes how true that was.

Trip to Dog Slaughter

So we went out to Dog Slaughter Falls tonight. It wasn't a bad hike, but I think it would have been easier if I hadn't been hauling several pound of camera equipment and being dragged along by a little doggy dynamo. Although no where near as fun without Vivre. There were a couple of places that were so steep I had to take Vivre off leash. It would have been to big a risk to have her navigate some of those rocks while attached to me.

Once we got down to the falls I took her leash off and let her run and play in the river. I'm probably not supposed to let her off leash in a national park, but she sticks close and we were in a bowl so nobody would suprise us and she was unlikely to take off.

I scared her big time when we started back. I tripped on a wet root and went down hard. I have a huge bruise and poor Vivre probably thought I was about to fall on her. When I fell I lost my flashlight. Which was a real pain, though we did make it back to the car before full dark. Though just barely. I am uploading some flickr shots, though it was so dark that I had to use a fairly high iso. Which means that the shots are noisy. I will head out there earlier next time so I can spend more time and get some better shots. Anyway here is a quick video clip I took of her wandering around the river.

Mini Terv

Vivre went in for her shots this morning. Renee and Todd had their dogs in, a GP and a newfie- flat coated cross. Vivre has never seen dogs that size before. So to distract Vivre we went to work. It was pretty crappy heeling, but it was the first time she has ever heeled on leash. That combined with the interesting doggy smells and the black giant watching her she did pretty well. I was happy with her performance.

I have been guesstimating her weight since I don't have a scale. She is tiny! She is about 20 inches and 35lbs. It is supposed to be cooler today and tomorrow, so weather permitting we'll go hiking this weekend. If it rains tonight then I will try and go to dog slaughter, if not then we'll head somewhere else. I will definitely have my camera so I should have some pictures from the trip when I get back.

The Wonder of Water

Vivre has never been crazy about water. While her sister, Juno, loves all things water, Vivre considered water a form of cruel torture. Today we walked down to the creek so I could play with my new camera. her normal behavior is to get across the creek as quickly as possible so she can stay as dry as possible. However I was walking up the middle of the creek to get some shots. Then I noticed splashings sounds. I have never seen her voluntarily get wet, but when I turned around there she was running up and down the creek and splashing through the deep part in the middle.

She didn't get up the nerve to lay down in the water, but a few more walks on hot afternoons might get us there.

Hot!

Last summer when Vivre made the trip from lovely northern California to Kentucky she wasn't happy with the heat. She just layed stretched out like she was dying any time she started to get hot. Not so this year.

My AC has been on the blink. We had somebody come out to fix it, it ran for a few hours and quit. Then the weather got cooler and his motor fell out so I just didn't worry about it. Lately the weather has gotten warmer again so he came back out over the weekend to fix the air, it ran for a few hours and quit. It is almost 90 degrees in here and Vivre keeps dropping tennis balls at my feet. I can't believe she wants to run and work in this.

Though I vastly prefer this to the 12 degrees and seven inches of snow, I am certainly more willing to work and play when it gets cooler.

Disappearing About Turns

For some reason we totally lost our left about turn. She has always had a beautiful left about turn. Not so good to the right, though we are actually do pretty well with those now too. I have no idea what happened. I will admit to not reinforcing it as much as I was reinforcing the right turns while I was trying to get those right, but it seems like it just disappeared over night. Luckily she is quick and eager to work. But she seemed completely cluess, almost like she had no idea that she was even supposed to turn with me. It seems to have been a good thing though, because now she is not only turning beautifully to the left, but the issues with her right about turn have also disappeared. She is staying much tighter in all her turns. I need to try and get the flip on the tripod so I can get some video of her heeling.

Picture news. I haven't put up any new pictures for a while. I was still using a SLR, but it finally started to have issues. So I got my Mom's old digital, which is what most of the shots of Vivre have been taken with. I don't think the cold weather was good for it, since it hasn't been the same since winter. But since my Mom's other camera isn't doing well I get it tomorrow, to test it, so I will hopefully be able to get some shots of Vivre. Of course it is going to rain tomorrow so I might not get too many. We have had a lot of rainy days, which has also put a damper on outside training. The falls were 11 feet above flood level. And with more rain on the way it really slows down training. I am going to try and take Vivre to the barn with me sometime this week. That way we can work someplace unusual, but still be out of the rain. Camera is here, so I am going to play.

Puppy Pics

After several instances where I had a hard time finding the picture I was looking for I finally downloaded Picasa for linux and started tagging my photos so I could find them. OMG! I had no idea I had that many pictures on my computer. The finally count was somewhere over 4600.

I did come across some of Vivre's puppy pictures. It is hard to imagine her as this little ball of fluff.

This one was emailed to me by Franziska when Vivre was about 8 weeks old









And this was taken at a horse show shortly after I got her.
All right I am done with my trip down memory lane.

Vivre Vids!

My Flip came in yesterday. I spent most of the day playing with it and then trying to get the videos edited down to something somebody might actually take the time to watch. I run linux so I can't use the FlipShare program it comes with. She is a little off in this video. She was moving a little slower than usual and after a bit I noticed she would occasionally start to limp a little. So she is going to be kept up for a couple of days. She won't like it, but she will live.

The Good, The Bad and the Strange

The good! My new video camera is on its way. Actually according to the tracking it is already at the post office, but our local post office seems to be understaffed since it normally takes them two or three days after something has been scanned to actually get it in the mailbox. So by the end of the week I should have Vivre Videos up and running. Basically the first few videos will just be of her running and playing. I need to go get a tripod for training vids and we are having a new web site done for the ridge so I will be getting videos of the wolves for the new site.

The Bad! Yesterday Vivre and Yoda (my GSD mix) started cussing at each other. My aunts dogs starting snarking at Vivre, Vivre started snarking back and in classic GSD fashion Yoda went in to take control and make everybody behave. Usually Vivre gives him a quick snark and goes on. Not this time, they circled around the yard snarking and cussing and growling at each other. They didn't really touch each other, but they didn't stop when I yelled for them to cut it out either. Yoda is twice the size of Vivre. He may be ancient, but he can stick kick ass if he needs to.

The Strange! (but good) I came in the other day to get some water and when I went back out to finish working I forgot that Vivre had followed me in the house. She spent about an hour and a half loose in the house unattended and nothing was destroyed! I also took a nap with her loose yesterday and she just stayed in bed and slept. Usually she gets up and harasses the cats to entertain herself. Aww, my little girl is growing up!

Give me a little distance.

I will be the first to admit that my training is a little strange. I started working on distance downs today and largely Vivre did well. I finally got the meadow in front of the house mowed and we were walking along to the creek when I figured what the heck she has finally seemed to really get the verbal cue. Lets try it at a distance. I wish I had thought to take a clicker because I think that would have made it a little clearer to her, but she did very well once she realized what I was asking for. She tend to not want to go all the way down, but keep floating elbows even in the house so I had to watch for that and a couple of times she sat or just stood, but by the time we headed back toward the house she was downing pretty far away. I am not good with distances, but may 75 or 100 feet away. Not on the first cue, but she was doing it. I had some cut up hot dogs I dragged out of the car, so I could toss her a bite. She is wonderful at catching so I could reinforce her at a distance, even with the food.

This is going to sound really bad and I am almost afraid to admit it, Vivre doesn't know "Sit," We train downs, heeling, go outs, marking, recalls, I could go on and on, but I just find sit boring. But Vivre has had a few sit sessions, and has been reinforced for sitting, but I haven't even tried to perfect the behavior and get it on cue. It has hit me though that I need to do that. I think that might help clear up what exactly sitting is for and keep her from offering it when we are working on distance. She is a year old any way. It is time for her to know how to sit. Plus I need to put it in the heeling.

I also need to work on slow heeling. She loves to heel and is great at normal speed and at a jog, but she just leaves when we start slowing down. I think she thinks we are done working. I'm allowed to cue at the speed changes for competition so if I have to remind her that we are still working I can, but I would prefer for her adjust her speed with out the added reminder. Just a personal preference.

I am going to start introducing her to jumping too. She had one session when she was 10 weeks where I had her stepping over a target stick held about an inch off the ground. I also have had her step through a hula hoop so this won't be totally new.

I really (REALLY) am going to have to start tracking. I wish Ring Sport was more common.

What I Didn't Know

When I first made the decision to get a working bred dog I started to do my research so that I had an idea of what I was getting in to. I was on email lists where people discussed their working and sport bred dogs. I read articles, web pages and blogs where people people discussed raising and training working bred dogs. But I find there is a gaping hole. Something nobody ever mentioned. Nobody tells you how hard it is to clean around these dogs. They don't warn you that when the broom comes out the dog attacks. When Vivre was a baby she would just latch on to the broom and would pick up the dirt I missed with her coat. She still tries to attack the broom so I sweep when she is outside. But now I am spring cleaning and every time I try to clean she gets right up in my way. She gets between me and the bookcase I am trying to organize, she noses around in my garbage bags. She is just pesty.

Of course I have never bothered to train her to ignore the broom, because it is usually easier to put her out for a little while. But since she has been in heat I... well I was going to fib a little and say I crated her. And I did for spot cleaning, but basically I just haven't given the house a good sweeping. So we have company coming and I am running out of time and it is raining and going to keep raining. So I can't crate her while I clean because I have too much work to do and won't leave her up that long and it is raining so I can't put her outside to play with the other dogs so I am trying to clean around her. (Did I mention it keeps raining!?)

So in the interest of correcting this glaring oversight when trying to clean around a Spritepup have a babysitting plan for the puppy.

Free At Last! Free At Last!

I noticed on Vivre's first birthday that she was starting her first heat cycle. I have never had an un-spayed female before. Heck I have only had one female before. So I am not exactly sure when caution crosses in to paranoia. We have no loose dogs up here, though our neighbor a mile away has a loose male. He never did try and come up here. Regardless today is the first time that I have let Vivre out of the fence to really run and she was excited. I picked up a stick and just tossed it for her. I let her run in to the tall grass to retrieve it and she would bound over the grass like a deer. I need to get it on film. I have a camera here that belonged to my uncle, but I don't have a firewire port on my computer. Denise has given me camera envy though so I am going to order a Flip.

She downed on the verbal very well when we were out there. I am not good at fading the visual cues and I need to work on that, but she was really doing well with the verbals today even with out me bending my shoulders.

I usually release her as soon as I start to throw the stick because I haven't worked on her staying with that kind of temptation, which means I need to pull my copy of CU back out and work through the program. It is well past time anyway. A couple of times I faked her out, pretending to throw the stick and release, after about the third time she came flying back at me and launched her self at my hand (which held the stick). I swear I can't play with sticks with out getting bit. I hate to throw a toy though, because I don't want to lose it in the tall grass. Maybe after I get it mowed down.

Good news though, Brydon has scheduled a seminar with Denise this fall that we are signed up for. So as long as she gets enough working spots (which I don't imagine will be a problem) we will have that to look forward to this fall. It will be great.

Happy Birthday!

Vivre is one year old today! Not that there is really any evidence of growing up. She hasn't gotten to go a lot of places this winter so today I loaded her up and took her with me. We headed first to the feed store. She get so excited because there are MEN at the feed store (little floozy). She is welcome inside and usually enjoys it, and did today too until she wrapped her leash around a rolling chair and it started to chase her. Yes, there are chairs in the feed store. After all farmers have to have someplace to sit while they gossip... excuse me, catch up on the news. That is far more dignified.

We stopped at a drive in for lunch while waiting to meet my mom. Vivre got a little hamburger (and half my sandwich as well.) After that she got to body tackle...um visit, with my mom. She loves my parents. After that she got to visit with my aunt until I finally had to get to take advantage of the sun and get some outdoor work done. I didn't get any birthday pictures, but will take some tomorrow and get them posted.

I have had a bad week and a virus on top of everything else, so I am going to keep this short and beg that everybody ignore the typos that I missed. Since I have already corrected myself about 8... um, make that 10 times in this short post I am certain that I missed something.

Too Tired to Tug?

The weather here has just been horrible. We have important visitors coming to the Ridge in March and need to have some decent weather so we can repair some of the damage we have sustained from too much snow and ice this winter. Despite the mountains of work we need to get done while we (finally) have some nice weather. I took the opportunity to take Vivre for a hike up the mountain.

She is turning in to quite a wonderful hiking companion. If she gets too far ahead of me she usually comes straight back if not she always comes back when I call. I think that she would always come back except for the slight difference between what she thinks is too far and what I think is too far. She waits if I have to try and find a way around a fallen tree she could just go under and even when she takes off off the trail like she is after something she comes straight back. Of course I always reinforce recalls while we are walking sometimes with food and others with the tug. Big efforts, such as leaving something interesting always get reinforced with the tug.

I think I took the wrong path when we were walking, because instead of getting to the area I was looking for I ended up heading toward the very top of the mountain. So we did a lot of walking up hill. Well I walked, Vivre ran, loped and trotted. Once I finally had to admit I should have taken the other path and we headed back.

About 2/3 of the way home I called her off something she was smelling and offered her the tug She started to grab it and then just stopped and decided she would rather have food. A first in Vivre history. Of course after we stopped for a minute at the picnic tables in the meadow near the house she was ready to go again. So yes, a spritepup can be worn, down. They just don't stay that way.

I'm Mean People

The one good thing about having seven inches of snow on the ground is it makes wearing Vivre down a little easier. (Seriously seven inches! When did I move to Canada?) It is more difficult for her to race in snow than it is over flat ground. And after hiking up the hill to feed the wolfdogs yesterday I can understand. It is like trying to walk through the ocean.

The other fun thing is Snow Balls! I can make snow balls and through them and Vivre chases them like tennis balls. The really mean part though is that I can't help but laugh when she goes to where they land and can't find anything but snow. She did also enjoy catching the snow balls. She has certainly outgrown being prissy about the wet.


Vivre jumps a lot, but this is the first time I have ever seen her do a vertical jump. Luckily I had the camera handy. You can't really tell it there, but she got pretty high. Not that that is all that surprising.

My desk

Vivre has decided that my desk is a toy bin. Where before I could leave her loose if I left the room, now I can't even go to the bathroom with out coming back and finding something from my desk has been pilfered. Just now it was a new thing of tea. I was only gone for maybe a minute and a half, when I came back in she had stolen a container of white mango peach tea and scattered the bags all over. Yesterday I left the desk drawer open (for just a second) and she managed to steal both a pouch with pendants and my nook plug. (Mom, the nook plug is fine. She didn't hurt it.)

I did get the tugs ordered, and they are on the way. So no more sticks for us. I think I am going to get her a new jolly ball. I had an old one with the handle chewed off outside and she loves it. She carts it all over the place and is perfectly willing to work for me to throw the jolly ball. The big thing for me though is it is too big for her to eat. (I usually only get the big horse sized balls.) We don't have any pet stores locally, but the feed store had some the last time I was there.

Ouch!

The first time I met Brydon she had a bandage on her hand from where Gator had missed the toy. The first words out of everybody's mouth that day was "Is it broken?" I thought I understood then. Sure a good sized shutzhund trained dog had gotten her hand while going for the toy. Yeah right. Like I had a clue.

I took Vivre out today. While she did get out to run for a little bit last night, today was the first day in a couple of weeks that we really spent time outside running and playing. I hadn't intended to do any training. We were just out for a walk. But Vivre will play with anything, so when I decided to do some training I just grabbed some downed branches. We would heel for a few feet and then use the branch either as a tug or I would throw it. I had switched to using food to teach heel, this is the first time I have used a toy exclusively for a while. I whipped the branch around for her to grab, as soon as she got it, it broke and before I could register it she dropped the broken piece and went the small part still left in my hand. Thanks to the fact that I was still moving and has some momentum and she is still young it really wasn't too bad. A couple of small places where she just barely broke skin and some swelling between my knuckles that took the worst of the hit. Needless to say that after that I quit tugging with the branches and just tossed them.

I have been meaning to order some new tugs from Denise and just haven't gotten around to it yet. That just became a priority. I want to leave some hanging by the door to make it easy to grab one as I go out, but Vivre doesn't leave handles on the tugs. As soon as I let her win the tug I either need to get it straight back or the handle is gone. I also lost some handles by holding on to them while we tugged. The stitching on the handles isn't strong enough to handle Vivre's pulling. So this week I am ordering some new tugs and putting a hook by the door so I can always grab a tug on the way out. And hopefully help to save my hands.

Horses and Dogs

Have you ever noticed the differences in the way people perceive horses and dogs? People expect that if they get a horse it is going to require training in order to be a good pet. In order to safely interact with them you have to not only have them trained you need to train yourself. However any idiot will get a dog with little or no experience or research. They also seem to expect that the animal will magically understand house rules and obey all commands whether the dog has ever heard the commands before or not.

It is like that in the movies. In dog movies you have these intelligent dogs, behaving perfectly and saving lives with no evidence of either prior or ongoing training. Meanwhile all horse movies start off with some wild and dangerous horse that with a lot of time and training becomes a champion of something or other.

I know that horses aren't as common as dogs and their very size makes them dangerous in a way that dogs can't be. A dog can hurt you accidentally, a horse can kill you accidentally. But it seems that it is more than that. Is it money? I know a lot of horses that are less than I paid for Vivre. But then there are a lot of crappy horses in this area.

Regardless, why is it so hard to understand that you have to train a dog to get a trained dog? Of course there are probably some people who have met Vivre who are struck speechless right now. She has trained behaviors, but no real manners. Schutzhund people love her while everyone else is horrified by her behavior.

Don't ask what brought this rant on. It is one of my weird monkey mind things that brought me here. On the Vivre front, after a couple of weeks of staying inside because of cold temps and food toys Vivre has put on a little weight. Not too much, but enough that I noticed. She was really a little too thin before now she looks about perfect. Of course if she keeps bouncing off Yoda's head the way she is then she will end up losing it again.

Ick! Cold.

So the last couple of weeks has been filled with below freezing temperatures, snow and ice. Even with four wheel drive there have been days that I had to walk food and water up the hill to the wolfdog habitats. It has so not been fun. Because of the very cold weather I haven't let Vivre stay outside at all. She has basically only gone outside to go to the bathroom and then right back inside. Truthfully it didn't even occur to me until yesterday that Vivre should have been bouncing off the walls. But despite the very limited outside time she has been very easy. Our training has been limited to heeling around the house and playing with a hula hoop. Both sending her out to stand in the hoop and sending her running through it.

She has hit the buster cube around the house, but other than that has been very mellow the last few days. Of course today she finally got to spend some time outside running and playing.

Oh, most of the time when Vivre meets new people we are in places where they are crowds or it is somebody who she has previously met, so while I had noticed that the last few times she has met somebody new she has greeted them happily. My brother was in for Christmas so I arranged for him to meet me and Vivre as I was coming in the door. It was the first time that I didn't hold Vivre back, I just let her go. She launched herself at him, at full speed. I finally had to go to his rescue. So she hasn't greeted a stranger with suspicion since she was very young. The weather is going to improve. Which means that I am really going to have to start tracking. We have worked maybe two tracks. I need to get on that, I just hate to do it in this weather. Though I know eventually I will have to track her in all kinds of weather.