The Prodigal Son Returns

My dog is officially a badass.



I went out to Dianne's today (after over a month of being too busy to make it out) and got to see what Moss can do. Dianne has him going really awesome. He is completely on whistles, at barely 16 months old.



Awesome, right? I am so excited!



The best part is that he listens to MY whistles, too :D. I guess that means that I'm getting better at it. Dianne is really excited to start running him. He will be one of her nursery dogs next year.



I will run him in N/N (and PN, eventually... when I stop being such an idiot). Our goal is to get him qualified for the 2011 USBCHA Nationals in Colorado. Wouldn't that be a kick? Dianne has nothing but good things to say about my boy. He is looking SO grown up... I can't believe it! He no longer looks like a baby dog.

See?

















Well... must get back to work. Less than two weeks left in the semester! Let's see if I survive...

Blast From The Past

Exactly one year ago, Moss and Cedar looked like this:

Moss:




Cedar:




...I miss my boy :( I think it's time he came home from Dianne's for awhile... I can't stand it!

New banner

What do y'all think?

I don't have to go to campus today, so I'm going to try and find the time to give Cedar a bath. She's starting to blow coat and I'd like to get a head start on the shedding :)

Looks Like I've Got Myself an Agility Dog!

Went to agility practice this morning after a couple weeks off. There were only three people there (including me) so we got a lot accomplished today! It was a whole lot of fun. Mary (our instructor) says that we are just about ready to compete :) We worked a lot on sequences today, as well as weave entries and contacts (particularly the dog walk).

Cedar is really great at agility... I love seeing the joy on her face when we work on this stuff. <3

A "few" pix from today:

Bear With Me...

No, I haven't fallen off the face of the earth!

I am rounding the bend on this semester, and things are crazy right now. I don't have much time for anything, much less blogging! I'm up to my eyeballs in grading and my own work.

..........I know, cue up the violins.

But seriously, I promise that I will post as much as I can over the next few weeks, and after school is out in the beginning of May, will pick things up quite a bit. Stay tuned for new photos and maybe a video or two :)

Go Go Agility Rangers!

Cedar and I had agility this morning for the first time in a few weeks. As always, it's like she never took time off. She was fabulous! The weather was gorgeous, too.

The first thing we worked on was a short jump-weave-jump sequence. I've really been working hard on getting Cedar to be able to find her weave pole entries from any location. She tends to go so fast that she just blows by the weaves and doesn't even see them. So I worked on getting my body position just right to set her up for success. By the end we were doing pretty dang well! We still have a long ways to go before our weave entries are solid, though.

Next, Mary helped us work on a figure 8 jump exercise. The goal of the exercise was to work on distance/obstacle commitment, as well as working on front and rear crosses. We managed to do pretty well with it, successfully completing it twice, but I really need to make sure to work on the "turn" command this week as she's not quite sure what to do.

After that, I went over to the dog walk to work on contacts. She did pretty well, but I need to work on getting her to do it more independently. I tried to stay out of heel position to make her find the right 2on/2off "spot" and for the most part she could do it, but her body was crooked most of the time (pointed at me). I need to figure out how to fix that.... hmmm.... Hopefully my dad can get my contact trainer built soon so we can have an actual obstacle-like thing to work with. The mini teeter is too small, narrow, and low to the ground to be of much use.

Finally, we all did some sequence work. The course was a bit challenging today, consisting of a single jump, then a three-jump serpentine/threadle, two more jumps, a chute and tight left turn to another jump, then a broad jump, weaves, and a triple jump. It was all in a curly "triangle"-like shape. Cedar did awesome on the first part of the course, and totally rocked the threadle (we've been practicing those at home :D) but we ran into problems after the chute. She came out of that obstacle facing/running the wrong way, so we lost some momentum trying to redirect. As a result, I was too far behind her and pulled her out of the weaves. We practiced on that part a bit and got it better, even though she still was having trouble with the entries. I need to practice the jump-weave-jump exercise more to get her thinking and driving forward with control. Oh well, just more to work on I guess!

Since I didn't get any pictures today, here's a cute one of Cedar the day I brought her home at 8 weeks. You can already see the attitude, eh? :D

Lag Time

I'm really bad at actually posting on the same day that I work my dogs :-P

I went out Tuesday to Dianne's to work Cedar and Moss. Cedar is in heat, so she was kind of a dingbat. The sheep had run back to the pens before we even got to the field, so our first task was to collect them and bring them out to the field to work. Cedar has had problems with this in the past; there's a lot of pressure and she has to make decisions in very tight places. To top it off, in order to get in the correct position, I have to flank her around a pretty big pond with a hill in front of it. This freaks her out because she loses sight of me for a few seconds, so tends to stop short and come back to me instead of finishing the flank and getting behind the sheep.

Thankfully, I was able to work with her that time around the pens without getting too frustrated :). It took us a few minutes, but we eventually managed to get the sheep out to the pasture to work. She was a little insecure and clingy on the drive, but I attribute that to being in heat because she's been doing really well with driving in the past few months. I changed things up a bit and started working immediately on inside flanks; having her drive in different patterns (and to varying, precise locations) around the field. She did pretty well with inside flanks, I think she's starting to get used to what I'm asking. It's so cool to see her doing things that I thought she would never be able to do :).

I worked Moss also. I made a point to only use my whistle with him on Tuesday... it was simultaneously harder and easier than expected :-P. I think I'm starting to get the hang of it, although my tones are slightly different than Dianne's so I think Moss has a hard time figuring out what I want a lot of the time. Most of the time he guesses right, though, LOL. I'm pretty solid on the away, walk up, and that'll do whistles. I'm not so good at come bye. I'll get it eventually, though.

Moss did pretty well. He definitely thinks that he knows more about this than me, which is true. Unfortunately, he doesn't always take my commands. I worked a lot on getting him to be really precise in his driving, and did a lot of driving to locations we hadn't gone to before (different areas of the field). I think it was good for both of us; we've gotten a bit lazy about just working the little mini "course" that Dianne has set up (two sets of drive "panels" :-P). His outruns were good, too, as always. I only walked up about ten feet or so this time, and it didn't even phase him. He's such a natural. We also worked on getting some more finesse at the lift; while most of the time he naturally has a very good, intelligent lift, Dianne still wants me to have the ability to stop him at the top and whatnot. So we worked a bit on that, and getting him backed off. By the end he was very respectful and doing just what I asked. He's such a nice young dog. He turned 15 months old yesterday :)