Bits and Pieces...

Had a great weekend! I am still in Seattle and spent the weekend with Maze at an AKC agility trial. It was a very interesting and therewere a couple of firsts for Maze and I, 3 standard Q's, 3 Jumpers with Weaves NQ's!! Maze has never been to a 3 day AKC trial and not double Q'd at least once! The other first, a triple Q in standard and no Q in Jumpers. Those are 2 firsts I could have lived without, but, like all things in agilty and life they most likely happen for a reason.
The main reason these awesome firsts happened, I believe, is because I am suffering from a serious case of Plantar Fascitis in my heel and the pain is excruciating! Adrenaline does a fabulous job of masking the pain while running but I do feel a bit like a weeble out on course and I am quite sure Maze thought he was running with an alien!
Today I took copious amounts of ibuprofen and decided that I was going to run no matter what as poor Maze really did deserve an actual handler, I sucked it up and ran 2 beautiful courses as did Maze, unfortunately, he had a bar that he tried desperately to get over!!! Oh well, life will go on and I guess I will certainly from here on out not take Maze the Q machine for granted!
What else is new, Hmmmm.... I think the combination of work, 3 days of AKC with only one dog and Dangers impending surgery have made wht is essentially a shortish trip seem like a lifetime! I am having a great time out here with my firneds as well as the awesome peeps that I am teaching but I am really missing my puppies on this trip. Geoff is being so great and tells me everytime I call that Danger is doing great, when I am sure he is literally bouncing off the walls! 2 more days until I get to see him at least for a few hours before I drop him off at the vet for surgery, that is officially going to suck! The suckiness will end however when he is fixed, rehabed and back intraining to be the agility superstar I know he is going to be!
I did have a great adventure yesterday though! After the trial I went with a friend to get a new tattoo and on the way to the tattoo parlor she commented that she was low on gas but that we would be fine as she can go up to 30 miles with the gas light on, and, besides she NEVER runs out of gas! Can you guess what happened next? The best part was actually running out of gas on a 2 lane bridge over Lake Wahington, there were a lot of angry drivers on this particular bridge! The super cool part was when the emergency response truck showed up and pushed us at about 45 MPH over the bridge to a pull off so we could wait for gas. So many firsts in one weekend!!
I have also spent a lot of time this weekend thinking about what's next on the agility agenda, the wheels are definitely turning and I will share the journey in my next post! Happy Sunday!

Lemons into Lemonade, Hmmmm....

My last post was all about the euphoria of success and what incredible highs we get from the little things in life which very often include our dogs. Life with dogs sometimes hands us lemons as well and this too we must deal with.
What kind of lemons this time you ask? Well, what started out as an innocent walk down our road last friday, ended in a quite lame dog, 2 seperate Orthopedic vet visits, 2 sets of X-rays, Deb getting to spend a less than quality night with Mr. Hormone, a long morning taking MY dog to the vet as I had to leave town, a misdiagnosis, a true diagnosis, a lot of crate rest and, drumroll please... an appt. for Caudal Cruciate ligament surgery next Wednesday!
I am just heartbroken that my boy has to go through this and I am devastated that his agilty training that was really coming along has now come to a screeching halt, I am so sad that he cannot run and wrestle with his buddies and it kills me to rest and rehab dogs as I am very much a guilt ridden individual when it comes to confining my dogs, a weakness I know!
Danger and I are very lucky however to have had the good fortune to have friends who point us in the right direction, an amzing agility/facebook community who have given me so many ideas and options, and, the privelege to meet Dr. Stubbs who fit Danger in immediately when he was overbooked, essentially as a very kind gesture to a very "good" client :-)
Dr. Stubbs began his examination of Danger and pretty much immediately noticed that the laxity in the knee was not consistent with an ACL tear but the much more rare Caudal Cruciate that keep the tibia from sliding backwards. He took a new set of X-rays and the proof was immediate, the "good" knee was seated beautifully and perfectly and the "bad" knee was a good 3/4 of an inch back on the fibia.
It is just a little bit ironic and humorous, if I can indeed find any humor in this, that we can provide so much excitement for the surgeon by way of offering a "different" and "unique" injury.
Dr. Stubbs was very excited that he gets to perform a surgery other than an ACL repair which it sounds like he can pretty much do in his sleep these days. He did, however, assure me that not only has he done this particular surgery before but it has been successfully performed on working dogs.
I was only able to talk with Dr. Stubbs on the phone but from that phone conversation I can honestly say that I trust him completely and know that the Danger Mouse will be in very good hands! His obvious knowledge was amazing and he really cares about the dogs. I am confident of the future prognosis as Danger is such a young dog and built so beautifully, we will just be getting a bit of a late start :-)
So, where exactly is the lemonade? My boy is alive, he can be fixed, we have a great surgeon, and we have a great support system to get us through this. To be continued...

Ahhhh...sweet success

Isn't she beautiful :-) OK, so I am a bit biased but she is just so darn cute! This is my SoBe DoBe Doodle Bug who this weekend did her first running dogwalks, since we have started the whole retraining process. It was in the masters gamblers class at the FRAC USDAA trial in Laramie. My incredibly insightful friend Sonya, pushed me, yes PUSHED me to try the dogwalk in the gamblers class. She told me that I needed to "try" the dogwalk in a situation that I could control and set up the approach to resemble what we have been doing in training.

I admit it, I was petrified to put her on a walk in competition, the adrenaline alone could easily push her over the top, literally and figuratively, potentially resulting in failure!!! I don't think I could stand it!

I have been so very patient and have been religiously training her walk, some might call it an obsession! She has been progressing beautifully and I have even been able to run with her on a full height walk with her clearly and cleverly running all the way through the contact!

This past week I was hosting a series of seminars with Daisy Peel and she also pushed me to start moving forward and even made me work some turns with the Sobster off of the walk, she was brilliant!

So, why was I so frightened of actually putting her on a walk in competition? Because I did not want her to fail, OK, I did not want ME to fail!

So, between Daisy reminding me that failure is "part" of the process and Sonya telling me that she was NOT going to fail, I sucked it up and planned on 2 dogwalks in gamblers. Fortunately there was a jump before and after the walk and I could essentially mimic the training set up both coming and going, I went for it!

I planned a smooth flowing opening leading up to the dogwalk, SoBe tried desperately to make it a very messy opening but I kept to my plan and she flew to the dogwalk, up, over and through the contact, BOTH WAYS!!!! Just like we practiced, and practiced, and practiced! :-) I was thrilled to say the least.

I do know that Daisy is right and there will be failure and I think I am actually prepared for it but success sure is sweet!

I still do not have intentions of entering her in standard classes, GP's or any other classes with a dogwalk that I cannot control the situation for a while but it sure is good to know that we are on the right track and that she is truly understanding the behavior!

That was the first run of the weekend what a way to start! SoBe made the end of the weekend absolutely awesome as well by winning the very competitive 22" Masters Jumpers class! She beat her daddy for the very first time and blew the doors off the place with a 23 sec. round! My friend Gosia video taped the run and I will post it as soon as she sends it my way. I have to tell you it was quite a high! It was the first time I truly went out and handled my girl like a grown up and it paid off in spades!

Well, I am off to Seattle to teach for a few days, I am also entered in a 3 day AKC trial with Maze should be a very good time!

Well, time to get some housework done and head out to train some dogwalks!

at least 1 video uploaded!

I spent the entire evening last night trying to get this video and the one I took of SoBe running her dog walk to upload to this blog, well, several hours later at least Dangers video is up! It is really quite painful and frustrating to be so incredibly technolgically challenged, but I will survive I am sure and maybe even someday be able to upload 2 videos!!!!

Please ignore the handler as she has obviously had a very long hard day and is a bit weary looking :-)

The really good news, contact training is going GREAT!! Danger was awesome on 99% of these reps and in general seems to really be grasping the concept. I did learn that i will have to move the dog walk up in slow increments as my need to "see" where we are at required me to raise the dog walk to full height after these attempts to "see" where we were in our training. Needless to say, we are NOT ready for full height but that is OK we have time.

Danger is doing so awesome in his training I am very excited for both of us! He is super smart and super drivey but has a brain I love it!

We have been working on balance work on the bit peanut ball as well as balance beam work on the plank on balance discs, thank you Stephanie for this awesome training tool!

He is diving into hid 2on/2off position on a low teeter and tugging like a madman on the end of the board.

I have finally started to sequence a few jumps, (bars on the ground), although he could easily jump full height at this point, as evidenced by his incredible ability to levitate onto the kitchen table from a stan still right next to it!

Since camp I have gone back to more foundation work, I had the pleasure of joining Stephanies foundation elective at camp as I have the mornings off and learned that I was moving forward a bit too fast, Hmmmm... happens to all of us I guess :-)

I have gone back to more parallel path work and am revisiting Dangers toy work. He loves toys but I was losing a bit of his ability to play with whatever toy I offered with the intensity that I want, so, back to the 2 toy game and race games to all toys, he is doing awesome!

Danger also has realized that a nose touch can have a little power behind it!

My new personal mission is to start logging my training sessions so that I keep a good balance of behaviors and to be sure that I am moving forward in a balanced and steady fashion.

SoBe has been improving by leaps and bounds on her dog walk as well, improving because there are very few leaps and bounds off of the dog walk anymore!!! She is running through :-) her video is on You Tube in my video account if you would care to see it.

I have been able to start moving and the toy is now out far enough that she really is not 100% sure where it is! Last night I placed my toy, sent SoBe over a jump wrapped her back to the walk and I ran the entire way at full speed, she NAILED it!!! I also happened to time it just for fun and she did the entire walk start to finish in 1.42 seconds, not bad!

It has been a very busy summer and as I write this my mind is all over the place mentally packing for the trip to Durango I am starting today. I am headed over to teach for a few days and trial over the weekend. SoBe is still only doing JWW as she will not be entered in any classes with a dog walk for some time yet.

Camp was awesome!! On my to do list is to get next years instructors finalized and get the registration form done and up on the website.

Also, on my to do list is to get the coaching program up and running, I have a few people already in the works and need to get moving forward. I am also offering e-lessons at my private lesson hourly rate :-)

What else has been going on?? Wally is finally feeling better after a summer of back issues and he was on fire at the last trial we were at, it is sooo good to have my boy back!

Maze is fully semi-final Q'd up for the Nationals and Wally is all set for team and has a semi final bye in Steeplechase.

SoBe and Merger will make their Nationals debut doing what baby dogs do team :-) SoBe is also doing Steeplechase but no GP as I hear they use a dog walk! Don't worry teammates by Nationals we will be ready to try the 1 dog walk that will be required in team standard and plan on helping us to get to the rely finals!! Go baby dogs!

Well, I need to pack so, have a great day everyone!