We took the dogs out towards eastern washington today, they had a three hour hike. OhLa is lying down sleeping for the first time ever I swear!! They are dog tired. :) The place we went to is really neat, it's a forestry road that washed out a couple of years ago. The river is running right down the middle of the road in places, there are trails so you can hike around the washed out bits, then keep walking along this empty road. It was a bit creepy, kind of feels like you are in an abandoned town or something. Great place for dogs though, hiking, swimming, squirrel chasing and all off leash!
OhLa really likes the sunroof in the Subaru......
Fetching sticks!
Three bumps on a log!
Two Pretty Girls
We are heading back to PG tomorrow (and back to work, poo!). We are now on the countdown to OhLa's first trial! Only six days of training left until the big show!
We are having a great time here in Washington, and managed to get some toy hogging
in.....
And some beach time!
Here's OhLa's funny swim technique.....hilarious! She swims like a normal dog in the lake but it seems the waves have her in a bit of a flap!
We went to the local dog park today, they had a great run. It's a nice park, though it affirmed my beliefs that people who go to dog parks are a bit crazy. Seriously annoying self appointed dog trainers are forever providing unwanted "advice" to unsuspecting park go-ers. I'm glad I know better and my dogs (and I) prefer to keep to ourselves, but it makes me sad to hear the words "dominant" thrown out there so often. We all know what that leads to (thanks to you know who the "famous" tv trainer). I am happy that my stable dogs can tolerate telling off a humping husky and help a sweet little pitbull learn that not all dogs are going to get all up in her face and hump her (while the owner is yelling EASY EASY EASY from 50 feet away). Seriously people, like yelling easy is going to alleviate the dogs anxiety issues. Lucky for the dog it has learned how to tune out the owner almost completely (I would too if someone nagged me constantly!) If the dog didn't have anxiety issues to start with it will now, now that you have constantly reienforced with your shrill voice that there is something "wrong" with greeting a group of dogs politely. Sigh. End rant, suffice it to say there is something great about living in the north where you can run your dogs in the bush and not see another person. Having the beach relatively near by is almost worth the trade off though!
I think I must have smacked myself at least ten times this past week. (Reminds me of the V8 commercials!). OhLa has been doing lots of great stuff, do you think I can remember the video camera? Not so much! She has conquered the tire (after hanging herself in a last minute Abort! attempt, no worries she's fine and a whole lot more careful now) and the chute. The table, well, she gets up and lies down so that'll have to do for now. It isn't a super performance by any means but it'll get us through for now. We're working on moving the two sets of six weave poles together right now. She weaves a set of straight six like a pro! Nice and fast and with style, so I'm working on getting her up to a full set of 12. Saturday we embark on a US adventure, I have to go and write an exam for my upcoming move, so Ohla is joining me and we'll hopefully have some beach adventures and new agility adventures to report soon! Keeping my fingers crossed that customs will be nice to me this time!
I think if there is one thing I have learned about having a pointer it's that a good measure of stubborness pays off. When OhLa first came she was a lunging snarling mash of teeth and food stealing pushiness at meal time. She would dive on the counter and steal what she could, dive in the other dogs bowls and then scrap with them when they tried to protect their own dinners. It wasn't pretty, and I doubt she pulls that kind of behaviour at home either. Too bad for her I decided to make it my mission to have her eat her meals with the rest of the group, politely, and waiting her turn (which is last, dead last for the dog with the least manners!). It has been a long process, first having her eat in her kennel and wait to be released. Then gradually desensitizing her to the meal process. Mollie sits, I put her bowl down. Marty sits, I put his bowl down...OhLa dives, OhLa goes in her crate and does not get fed until everyone else has finished their supper. We made it past Mollie, Marty, and Cai, onto Toque...not bad, Jorja and SoBe = diving. She can push those two and she knows it. Finally after a couple of months of the exact same routine (dish diving = OhLa goes to her crate and eats last), she made it past all eight dogs and came to her turn. OhLa sits, I put her dish down, release her (a bit quickly truthfully but I really wanted success) and she eats her supper. But half way through she suddenly realises that other dogs are eating too, they might have something better, she leaves her bowl to snarl at them and shoves them out of their dish. Back to the crate, and the remainder of her supper waits for ten minutes or so before she sees it again. It has been three weeks since then, and tonight I wanted to video just how well she has done. I haven't been feeding her with the group every night, some nights she gets to go first and get her meal straight away in her kennel. I don't want meal times to be stressful, just a gradual desensitizing and learning experience. Right now I am working on proofing her to not release on the word "good", pretty impressive though that she can focus to work through that even with all the other bowls so easily accessible. At last it has become more rewarding to be patient than it is to be pushy. A few weeks ago she would have tried to cream Heidi for being so close to her dish, or shoved Heidi out of her bowl and gaurd both bowls. Tonight she even played tradesies. My dogs always go check out each others bowls when they are finished and make sure every last drop is gone. OhLa couldn't cope with that even last week but now she is joining in the game. Yes, it would have been way easier to just feed her in her crate, but look at her now! So here's the video (no comments on the laundry pile or the state of my dirty house at the moment!)
It has been a busy week here at the little house with lots of dogs! I hit an all time high this week, 18 dogs and counting! I have a Momma and a litter of seven pups though, so pups at two weeks don't really count (at least in my books anyway!). OhLa has been having a good time, she is very interested in the pups. Much to my relief this temporary fostering will be over tomorrow and we will be back down to a much more reasonable 10 dogs. This week in training, we started out building dog walk confidence. Dog walk you say? Why yes, when I was in abbotsford running the other brats in the regionals, I bought one of these:
Since we have already trained the teeter, the more scary of the obstacles with skinny planks the dogwalk was a cinch. It helps too, that OhLa has discoverd jumping off the top railing of my deck will land her in the agility yard (much to my horror she does this regularly). She can be seen from the kitchen window randomly running back and forth along the dogwalk all by herself funny girl! She has not however learned that the art of nose targeting applies to dogs who are running full obstacles.
We also spent some time working on weave pole footwork. She has the idea of weaves down, but she didn't get how to move with rhythm so for that, we went to the old style chute poles. If I had enough sets of two I would use those, but we don't so we improvised. What I really don't like seeing the video is how easily the poles move out of the way, not good it really teaches the dogs to push the poles which you don't want. However, a little style practice and we'll go back to the other set.
We finished up this week with an agility fun match, yippee! OhLa's first time out with a judge, other dogs, and a real trial atmosphere. She did really well, I was very proud of her! We ran around a few jumps, did the tire backwards and needed to have the chute held open (Woops! Forgot to teach the chute!) BUT huge success in my books: she didn't run away to go visit the other dogs; she sat, waited and held her start lines all three runs; she did all the obstacles nicely including the strange teeter, the newly learned dogwalk, and drum roll please.....6 straight weave poles! Not only did she do them, she did them fast and with perfect footwork, someone even commented on how nice she weaved! She jumped the jumps, responded to my front cross cues, and stayed with me through 18 obstacles (with lots of treats inbetween of course). I was very proud of her! Of course, I forgot the camera at home so no proof! Now I need to work on the tire, the chute, the table (it has been a while for that one) and I need to teach her how to rear cross. And of course the ongoing work of weave poles. So much training, so little time!
More work on weave poles this weekend. After I did this video I moved the poles into line, she did okay, but too many errors to consider it successful so we'll go back to them opened up a bit for the next session.
And just for fun, some video of OhLa with a Kong toy I just got. You put the kibbles inside and let them go for it, she had fun! Such a funny girl.
Right now she is torn between playing with Heidi and this cute little character here who is hanging out for a while waiting for his new home:
Fetching sticks!
Two Pretty Girls
