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.