Sunday, January 31, 2010

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.

Thursday, January 21, 2010

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.

Saturday, January 16, 2010

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.

Friday, January 15, 2010

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.

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

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.