Tracking

Monday I picked up Karl and we did more registering at Target.  Before that we went to the Elk River fairgrounds to see Dad and Dianna at the car show.  Dad ended up getting 1st place with his car!  Then we went home early and gave ourselves time to unwind for the work week.

Tonight Tom was not able to make it to training.  So I took the dogs out tracking.  I went to the Aquatore Park.  I did serpentines with both of them.  With food on the edges of the circles.  Copper did ok.  Vada had alot of trouble but she tried really hard and worked through it.  I think it helped her slow down.

 I had tracked on Sunday too out at Karl’s.  It was tall, thick, wet grass.  Vada flew through it and missed her corners.  She found the article though.  I setup her track with 7 legs and 6 corners to work corners by putting food after the turns but she was going so fast that it didn’t matter as she didn’t see the food.

I’ll be tracking with more serpentines in the near future.  We don’t have much time left for the St. Croix trial.  Tonight I worked Vada on her stand stay.  She did awesome.  I did all 3 positions and she did them all perfectly.  I ended with another stand stay that was perfect.

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Weekly Training

Monday night agility class went ok.  Our second to the last sequence was awesome.  The last one was a mess.  I couldn’t remember the course and I goofed up in a few places.  LOL

Tuesday night Tom had to work late so we skipped Schutzhund.  It was nice to get house stuff done.

Wednesday I met Cortney, Tanya, Gina and Des for them to get measured for their bridesmaid dresses.  Gina was able to try on the one that they have there.  It was beautiful.  It’s the wrong color but it looked nice.  I tried on my dress too so everyone can see it.  Then we went to Don Pablos.  I had a margarita.  It was very yummy.  And much needed after a long day at work.

Thursday I taught agility class.  I’m not sure what to do with the couple who drags their dogs over everything.  The dogs are terrified of the teeter because they drag the dogs over it.  The dogs won’t do anything on their own now.  No tire or table or anything.  I’ve explained how the dogs need to do it on their own.  They say the dogs do the stuff at home just fine but don’t understand when I explain that school is not home.  There is an article in Clean Run that might be helpful for them.  I’ll have to read it before the next class.  There was no class on Friday so we had to clean up after class.  Karl kindly offered to come down to work dogs and help me put stuff away afterwards.  But I just left my dogs home since they had just done agility all weekend and I was tired from it being a Winona week and being out late the night before.

Friday I stayed home and did stuff around the house and went to bed early.

Saturday Tom was in Brainard.  So I skipped training and went out and tracked.  I tracked at the Blaine City Hall.  The soccer fields were packed!  It was good for me to see how busy they do get.  Both dogs tracked pretty well.  Vada needs more work on her corners.  She was dropping like a rock on her articles.  My goal this year is to let the track do the teaching and totally stay out of it and not get frustrated at myself or the dogs.  Saturday night we went to Winona for Karl’s band to play at Bill’s surprise birthday party.  We got home about 4am.

Sunday we slept in til about 10am and got up to go to the last church service.  We hadn’t been able to go for 3 weeks so it was nice to be able to go again.  Then we went and registrered at Target.  We started anyways.  We spent a few hours there and barely made a dent!  Then Karl went home and I took Vada and Seven to flyball practice.  Copper went along for the ride.  Seven did ok.  He will do the box without being held if I step close to the box so he’s going around me.  With less momentum he was only getting 3 feet up though.  So we put a ball in and did 1 jump to the box and then the full run back with him.  He had trouble catching the first few times.  Then he was starting to get it.  We put in an 8″ board the last time.  He did ok.  Then I did a few just turns with no ball to end the session.  I can work him at home too if I get time.  With Vada I setup the props the way that Angie and Lee suggested.  I started with 1 jump and back, then 2, then 3 then 4.  She did ok.  She has a harder time controlling herself at the box the further back we get.  I would have video taped it but I didn’t know where I had a blank tape.  Next practice I will.  Then I took Seven home and Karl made dinner.  We got alot of wedding plans figured out.

Dutch Shepherd Event

We left on Friday morning to drive to Michigan.  It took us about 13 hours.  We arrived at the campground about 10pm MI time.  We had to find a campsite in the dark but I think we found a really good one.  We also met another Dutch Shepherd owner that was there for the event – Karen with Zombie and her other dog.  We setup the site and pottied dogs and went to bed.  The next morning the event started.  The first demo was agility.  We got to see Bonnie and Morgan run the mini course.  They also left the agility equipment setup during the day so anyone could play on the equipment.  We also watched Christie and Willow do a PSA demo.  There was a Search And Rescue demo done by a friend of Christie’s and her Golden Retriever.  Christie and Brass showed some SAR foundation work too.  They dogs loved it!  Then the MI SDA club did a demo on the UKC SDA program.  They did an excellent job.  Afterwards we breaked for lunch.  My awesome finace ran to a deli and picked up subs for us.  I stayed and saw Vada’s sister Rush work.  After lunch we had the conformation event.  All of the dogs entered got written critiques.  The class for 1-7 year old bitches was huge.  I was at the end of the line when we all got back in line to do the final go around.  The judge was watching each dog go around so I waited for her to turn her attention back to me before going.  She just started talking about who she thought was the winner.  She gave the win to Vada.  Then she realized she wanted to give the win to another dog.  So she gave it to the other dog.  Vada was totally the crowd favorite though.  People were telling me how they thought she’d be the winner and they were happy when she won and then bummed when she didn’t get the win.  I was proud of how well she did.  She was much calmer then other times she’s been in the conformation ring.  Then it was Narc’s turn.  I went and put Vada away.  They asked for males before I left and I told them I had to switch dogs.  When I got back with Narc they were going over a male dog.  So I stood next to them in the ring and practiced standing with Narc for quite awhile while they did the written evaluation.  Then they walked forward and gave the dog the win.  A girl at the table saw me looking very confused and pointed me out to the judge.  She told me that I wasn’t there at the beginning so too bad.  I said I told them I was switching dogs and I had been standing there for quite some time.  All I wanted was the written critique.  There was another male dog that was waiting to be judged too.  She decided to put us in another class.  Narc did not win.  He did really well though.  He didn’t bite the judge.  🙂  That night we had dinner with the group.  It was really good.  And entertainment was provided by Jerry Sprague.  He was good.  Then we went to play on the agility equipment with the dogs.  Everyone left while we were working dogs.  We went to leave and realized that the van wouldn’t start.  Karl thought it was a dead battery.  So we walked up to the ranger station and asked for a jump.  That did the trick!  We also figured out that we could put the borrowed flyball box on the front seat while I sat on the floor in front of it.  Angie and Lee from Springloaded were awesome enough to bring down a lane of jumps and their box.  They left it Saturday night so we’d have it on Sunday in case anything came up.  We also had an opportunity on Saturday to practice with the dogs so they were use to running on grass and on their box.  Narc had issues with going around the jumps on the way back but he’s been out of flyball for over a year.  Vada did well but her box turn sucked.

Sunday went well.  We watched demos.  Neighter of the Schutzhund dogs were there so Vada got to do bitework.  Melissa did SchH with her female DS too.  Her dog did the down stay while Vada and I did the Schutzhund II obedience routine.  Then she did the III protection routine and then Vada did.  Vada did really well.  I was proud of her.  She was happy to get to do bitework.  The helper really liked her.  Our flyball demo went well.  Karl did the talking.  I ran Vada to show what it looked like.  Then to demonstrate passing we ran Narc after Vada.  Narc had trouble catching the ball and going over the jumps going back.  So on his last run when he caught the ball the crowd cheered.  Then some people wanted to try their dogs out on flyball.  So Angie and Lee took over with them.  It was alot of fun!  After the demo Angie and Lee showed me some props I can use for Vada to get a better box turn out of her.  Angie also explained how to fade the props.  I ordered a new box and I’m researching jumps to purchase so I can work her at home every day.  We were the last demo of the weekend.  We helped them finish packing up and headed to our campsite.  We ended up buying 3 shirts for me and 2 for Karl.  They are DS shirts and support rescue.  Can’t argue with that!

Monday we hiked.  We did 2 hikes that were 2 miles each.  Each time we took 2 dogs a piece.  We also went into town to the library to check e-mail.  That didn’t work so well with my laptop but we went to Panera’s parking lot and I was able to get a connection.

Tuesday we went on a 5 mile hike.  We each walked 4 dogs.  Then we went to town to go to Wendy’s for the WiFi.  There was a big storm coming so we decided to pack up and leave early.  We left about 2pm MN time.  We got home about 3am MN time.  It was a long trip.  The last few hours were really tough.

Wednesday we slept in.  Then I brought a load of agility equipment and stuff over to Karl’s house.

It was alot of fun going to MI for the Dutch Shepherd Event!

Thursday Agility Class

This goes back to agility class 2 weeks ago.  I’m that far behind!  This is the class before the MMBC NADAC trial.  It was during our week off.  I had been busy with mom all day.  We went to lunch and then went to Menards to buy sheetrock to patch the giant hole in my wall that was under the paneling that I removed.  I hadn’t talked to Karl since early in the morning.  I had to rush off to class.  So I was quite surprised when he showed up at the end of class to work dogs!  They all did really well.  They were all happy to work again.  We decided that Karl is going to start running Prozac.  I think she runs better for him since she’s a daddy’s girl anyways.  And she’s mostly BC and Karl understands them better.  The flip side is that I’ll be running Narc.  Since I was running Prozac in the NADAC trial in a few days, I got to run 5 dogs that night.  LOL  It was my first time working with Narc.  I have worked with him at my house and Karl’s house twice in the past.  One time the teeter (down low) freaked him out and he ran away and hid behind the house.  The other time we were doing tunnels and he ran away to Karl.  He’s a little better now.  I still wonder sometimes if he even knows his name.  LOL  I did a few tunnels with him.  Then I figured I’d try to sequence with him.  I don’t know if it had ever been done before.  I had 2 tunnels in a row on my left.  I had the tug in my right hand.  Narc did the first tunnel and I trusted him to go in the next tunnel.  I took my eyes off him.  He got behind me and bit me in the butt!  I got a huge bruise!  He of course got corrected.  But by the end of the night he was sequencing the 2 tunnels.  He loves it.  He just has trouble controlling himself.  The other dogs did well too.  Hopefully it helped them get ready for the NADAC trial.  I showed Karl how to teach “go” using a bucket too.  We finished about midnight!

Agility Class

Our agility class went better last night.  It was cool but humid which was odd.  Traffic was better and I got there about 10 minutes early.  Vada did well.  She got all of her contacts.  I had a few handling blunders but we worked through them.  I need to work on her get out as well as having her come into my hand.  And when I want her to come in I need to remember not to bend over.  I had the instructor put her toy out after the weaves too since she was popping out to get the toy.  She was dropping alot of bars.  I did a 3 jump lead out to the table and she dropped every single bar.  I’d like to setup jumps at home at the park and work on long lead outs.  I think she’s racing to catch up with me so she’s not thinking about keeping bars up.  So much to work on!  I need more time in my days!  I’ll be happy when we get out stand in motion solid.  Then I’ll have more time to work on agility skills.  I did alot of running on the first sequence though.  It was nice.  That means I didn’t have to stop and redo alot of things.  I’ve decided that I’ll stay in this class for the rest of the session.  It felt better last night.  I just need to adjust to the earlier time and the different instructors.

Stefan Schaub Seminar

What a great 3 days!  Everyone had fun and learned alot.  We had cold, rain and giant gusts of wind but everyone stayed in a great mood.  The sun finally came out and the wind died down just as we were wrapping things up on Sunday.  Friday we started out with everyone doing obedience.  Stefan either gave pointers or said that things looked great.  He worked with Tom and Chewy alot on their dumbell hold.  They made alot of progress just in 3 days.  Vada did good heeling and her sit and down in motion were perfect.  Stefan even said full points and perfect.  Less then a week earlier Vada had lost her sit in motion so I was very happy to see that she got it back.  Then I showed Stefan what I was doing with the stand in motion.  He told me to just tell her to stay and walk away.  So I did and she stayed.  I kept adding time that I waited til I went back to her.  She got it.  Finally.  I did a bit more of that with her later in the day too.

We also did 2 rounds of bitework.  My goals with Vada were to work on neutralizing her to me by the helper, drives and long bite.  Both of her sessions on Friday were really good.  Stefan does his walking back when the dog is in front and barking.  It keeps the dog focused on the helper and it makes the dog feel like they are pushing him.  So he does that as I walk up to him so that Vada doesn’t worry about me.  As I walked up and he would walk back then he would stop and tell me to tell her to sit.  As soon as she sat he would pop the sleeve.  At one point he told me to tell her to sit but I didn’t understand him and she sat on her own.  LOL  He said to always start the dogs with a bark and hold in the blinds to get them warmed up.  For the second session we worked on drives.  Unfortunately, the first session didn’t get taped even though we thought it was.  And the battery had run out for the second session.  I was bummed.  We just got obedience but it was good obedience.  🙂  I think we worked on the back transport on Friday too.  It was very good.

Friday night we all went to Darryl’s house for pizza.  I worked Copper after everyone left and let them both stretch their legs.  I was home long enough to feed them and crate them and then headed to Darryl’s.  Darryl has a nice house, nice wife and 2 very nice dogs.  By the time I got home it was another late night.  Deb was at training on Friday too so it was nice to see her again and to see her Dutch Shepherd, Bart.  He’s a very nice boy!

Saturday a few people worked on obedience if they needed to.  I ran all 6 blinds with Vada for the toy.  Then I just did 4 for the toy and put her away.  Later I did some stands in front of my van.  I did them out of motion too with a light tap back on her leash.  She’s doing them with that little bit of help!  I also worked Copper a bit off on the side of the field.  I did some heeling and sit and down and stand in motion with him as well as had him chase the tug and bring it back to me.  Then we did our 2 rounds of protection.  We did the same thing as the day before.  In the first round we worked on her doing the first 4 blinds to a helper in the 4th blind.  Then I put her on a down outside the blind and sent her to the last 2 and there was a helper in the last one.  She loved that.  We did more neutralizing and a long bite.  In session 2 we worked on drives again.  She looked good.  When we were cleaning up and getting ready to leave for dinner I let Copper out to walk around.  He was getting so much pets from everyone.  He even jumped up on the picnic table with people to get petted.  He was in heaven!  He was very spoiled!

Saturday night we went to Tanuchi’s in Newport.  It was a buffet.  An expensive buffet but it was really good food.  Karl joined us for dinner which was nice.  Everyone likes to see Karl again.  I was happy to get to see him for a bit too.  All weekend I was only home long enough to sleep.  After we got home I hooked up the video camera to the TV so I could show Karl what we had been doing.

Sunday was much the same as Saturday.  A few people did obedience.  I worked Vada a bit and worked on the moving stand again.  When I did it with no help she sat.  Stefan suggested I use the German command for stay so it sounds different then my sit command.  Protection went well again.  Her grips were better on Sunday.  Angeli had asked Stefan about her grips on Saturday as they were getting crappy and he said it was because she was getting tired.  Sunday we had Tom work her so Stefan could give him pointers.  We mostly worked on neutralizing.  I totally forgot to bring the camera out on the first session.  The second session we did some work in the blind and then some catches.  Dennis came out for the day and trained Diesel and Ronin.  Jason also came out and trained his Malinois, Nico.  It was great to see them since they haven’t been out to club training for a long time.

Everyone had a lot of fun.  All of the dogs made progress in obedience and protection.  Stefan showed us how to have the dogs run through our legs on recalls to get straighter fronts.  By the end of the weekend most guys had overcome their fear and had their dogs doing it.  They had fun with it at first!  LOL

Stefan had to hit the road by 4pm to get ready to get on his flight.  That gave me time to get some yardwork done after I got home.  I finished putting up the little garden picket fence.  I planted the mums since the wind keeps blowing them over.  And I picked up garbage, bones, toys and sticks in the yard.  So I’ll be able to mow one night this week if it ever quits raining.

I think we’ll have the stand solid for our II at the end of June.  I also think that doing the helper walking back is going to help Vada alot for neutralizing so that’ll be less points that we lose there too.  And Tom got to practice long catches with her again too.  Those were my goals for the weekend and I think we met them all!

Catch Up

It’s been a long time since I have posted!  The last time I posted was during a nice, quiet week.  No agility class for Vada and no agility class for me to teach.  It was nice to have time at home to do things around the house and yard.  Also, I knew that our helper was going to be at a seminar that Saturday so I decided to stay home and work on home stuff instead of going to Cottage Grove to do obedience.  We went to church that evening and then went and saw the movie Music and Lyrics afterwards.  It was a neat movie.  Very funny.  We laughed alot.

Sunday was flyball practice.  I brought Seven, Vada, Prozac and Narc.  We worked on Seven’s box turn again.  Just having someone hold him while I do the tug to get him to hit the box and do a good turn with no ball.  With Vada we put the jump board in about 3′ and a few inches out from the box.  She had some success and some no success.  All were tight.  On alot of them she either crashed the upright board or took an extra step as she came off the box.  So we just need to keep working it and tweak it.  I video taped it so I’m going to put it on my website so Jennifer D can look at it again and see if she has any advice for where we’re at.  Narc did better this week.  He was more keyed up.  His outing wasn’t as good and he’s still chasing balls.  But he was outing eventally.  He needed maybe 2 corrections this week.  He chomped me a few times too.  LOL  I think Seven got me once too.  I ran Narc one last time and that time I faked him out – so he dropped the ball to get the tug and I pulled the tug up so he had to come back to me to get the tug.  Otherwise I let the tug go and he drops the ball and grabs the tug and the ball rolls past and he chases it and gets both in his mouth.  He’s learning and doing well.  He just has rehearsed bad behavior ALOT.  He should do well at the Dutch Shepherd Event though.

Monday was agility class.  Traffic was horrible to get there.  I barely got there in time and that was with stopping home to load up dogs and go and that’s it.  The instructors are very different then my last instructors.  It’s hard to get use to that.  And they have me do something else instead of correcting my handling.  Vada blew a contact and the instructor had me do just the bottom and then go back to the sequence to get speed and do the contact again. Vada nailed it.  I would have done that in training (and have) but in class I feel rushed so I don’t always do things properly. So that was a positive.  There is at least one very needy person who takes up alot of class time and seems to enjoy the attention as they keep doing the same wrong thing over and over.  One person from my last class is in there too and is ready to go to a different class as she doesn’t feel like she’s getting any feedback from the instructors.  One was late and rumor has it that she is commonly late.  And once it started raining everyone left to their vehicles and so the instructors quit too.  One went and started working her own dog.  But I’ll give it another week and see how it goes.  The classes are very expensive.  This is a short session so if it’s bad then I’ll sit out summer session II and start again in the winter in the barn.  I can work outside at my house or Karl’s now that it’s nice out again.

Tuesday was Schutzhund.  I can’t remember what we worked on.  Neutralizing I think.

Wednesday I had to skip Cardio Salsa class as my back was really sore.  I’m not sure why.  It started being sore from pulling weeds over the weekend.  Something must have made it worse.

Thursday I started teaching a new agility class.  There are 5 dogs in the class.  There are 6 in level 2.  2 are repeating and 4 moved up from Level 1.  Only 1 did not continue.  None of the Level 2 dogs from the last session have started Level 3 yet.  Everything went really well.  Then Karl and I worked the dogs after class.  We were there til almost midnight.  I worked on some sequences with Vada that we had gotten wrong in her agility class.  I worked them the way I had wanted to and it worked.  Copper just came in and did some tunnels and bottoms and weaves.  He was a happy boy.  Seven was happy to do agility again.  He loves all of it.  I had Karl run Prozac.  I think she runs better for him.  They did good.  She looked like she was running pretty fast.  When I run her it doesn’t feel like it.  I don’t know if she runs slower for me or if she’s just shorter legged so it feels slow.  Narc was very well behaved.  We discovered that he likes plastic water bottles.  He got one and pranced around in big circles crunching away on his new toy.  He was running through tunnels with it too.  He was very happy.  He seemed calmer over all and focused better.  Karl worked Fringe, Rally and Sonic too.  They all did really well considering they just had a long time off.  We have a trial in 2 weeks so it’ll be good to get them working again before the trial.  They’ll have equipment setup in MI too so we can play on that any time we want.