My 4 week and 6 week picture compilations of the girls...
May 2, 2010
Puppy Update! :)
Puppies turned 6 weeks old on Thursday. Seems hard to believe that in just 3 weeks from today I'll be back in IN with my first puppy since Merlin (5.5 years old now).
My 4 week and 6 week picture compilations of the girls...
My 4 week and 6 week picture compilations of the girls...
Apr 3, 2010
Pupdate! and Show & Go
Puppies turned 2 weeks old on Thursday!
New pictures posted - http://www.angelfire.com/ct2/Windcrest/Feistysecondlitter.htm
Also for those in our area, we'll be hosting an Agility Show & Go on April 25, 2010. Details can be found at Anything's Pawsible. There will also be an Agility Show & Go the day prior geared toward 4-H'ers. :)
New pictures posted - http://www.angelfire.com/ct2/Windcrest/Feistysecondlitter.htm
Also for those in our area, we'll be hosting an Agility Show & Go on April 25, 2010. Details can be found at Anything's Pawsible. There will also be an Agility Show & Go the day prior geared toward 4-H'ers. :)
Mar 25, 2010
Louisville & New Addition
As far as results go, Louisville was not the best weekend we've ever had.
Merlin qualified his first run of the weekend for MX leg #8 and 7 more MACH points. I noticed his jumping was a little off but I wasn't sure whether to attribute that to something being wrong or the surface (we don't hardly ever run on dirt). He seemed fine otherwise so I let it be, but when we went to run in JWW he came off the start line much slower than normal, and pulled off two jumps so I just made a hasty dash for the exit. I have to be careful about stopping mid-course with him, especially if he's already in a semi-worried state, because he can take simply stopping mid-course to be a failure. Current consensus is he pulled something in his groin area. I worry it is and has been the same issue for the past year or more and continues going undiagnosed or not fully treated/healed. I hope we figure it out soon, but until then he won't be doing any agility or obedience (it also affects his sits).
Rio was a bit overwhelmed by the environment by Saturday (the biggest trial he's ever done and the longest), but did earn his first OA leg with a first place on Friday. He was quite close to Q'ing on some other runs, so with it now warming up I hope to be able to help his "baby dog" skills blossom into Excellent level skills. :) Our main downfall on Saturday is a very loud, male gate steward had him freaked and we were not able to compose ourselves sufficiently before or during his run. We had the same gate steward on Sunday, so I tried a different approach to the situation and it seemed to work better but again, still not composed enough for us to be together as a team.
The brightest spot of my weekend was when Carolyn told me that the litter I was waiting on had been born - and there were LOTS of girls! :) The dam is CH Tartan Bay Flew To Freedom OA OAJ RN HIC CGC/TDI "Feisty". Feisty is a daughter of CH Bayshore's Under My Spell "Toby" (a son of BIS/BISS CH Borderfame Spellbound), out of the lovely BISS CH Brackenhill Flew By Ewe CD NA NAJ PT ROM "Devon". I had the pleasure of meeting Devon as well as Feisty's littermate Chance (CH Tartan Bay Let It Ride AX AXJ HIC) and half-sister Ella (CH Tartan Bay Supernatural NA NAJ HIC) this past October at the BCSA National. At the time, I hoped a Chance kid would be joining our family this past winter but it wasn't to be. However I was quite happy to hear plans were underway for Carolyn's co-owned litter sister of Chance to be bred the coming year. :)
Feisty was bred to CH Holther's That Old Black Magic NA NAJ NF HIC CGC "Mercer", a son of CH Jule Too Holther's Cap Feather "Cap", out of Aust CH Trumagik Star Gazing PT AD "Kisha". Mercer is also a littermate to Savannah (CH Holther's Garden of Good and Evil PT AX AXJ CGC/TDI). I haven't yet had the privilege to meet Mercer (aside from pictures and video) but I hope to at this year's National. :)
5 girls and 2 boys were born on 3/18, so if all goes well I will be flying to Connecticut 8 weeks from Saturday! :) I plan to do a bit of everything with my little Potion... conformation, obedience, herding, and of course my main love - agility! I will attempt to document training progress on here as well as lots of pic-spam (probably mostly pic-spam) as she grows!
I made a desktop background of the girls in the litter with the 5 day pictures... we'll see which one wants to move to Indiana! :)
Merlin qualified his first run of the weekend for MX leg #8 and 7 more MACH points. I noticed his jumping was a little off but I wasn't sure whether to attribute that to something being wrong or the surface (we don't hardly ever run on dirt). He seemed fine otherwise so I let it be, but when we went to run in JWW he came off the start line much slower than normal, and pulled off two jumps so I just made a hasty dash for the exit. I have to be careful about stopping mid-course with him, especially if he's already in a semi-worried state, because he can take simply stopping mid-course to be a failure. Current consensus is he pulled something in his groin area. I worry it is and has been the same issue for the past year or more and continues going undiagnosed or not fully treated/healed. I hope we figure it out soon, but until then he won't be doing any agility or obedience (it also affects his sits).
Rio was a bit overwhelmed by the environment by Saturday (the biggest trial he's ever done and the longest), but did earn his first OA leg with a first place on Friday. He was quite close to Q'ing on some other runs, so with it now warming up I hope to be able to help his "baby dog" skills blossom into Excellent level skills. :) Our main downfall on Saturday is a very loud, male gate steward had him freaked and we were not able to compose ourselves sufficiently before or during his run. We had the same gate steward on Sunday, so I tried a different approach to the situation and it seemed to work better but again, still not composed enough for us to be together as a team.
The brightest spot of my weekend was when Carolyn told me that the litter I was waiting on had been born - and there were LOTS of girls! :) The dam is CH Tartan Bay Flew To Freedom OA OAJ RN HIC CGC/TDI "Feisty". Feisty is a daughter of CH Bayshore's Under My Spell "Toby" (a son of BIS/BISS CH Borderfame Spellbound), out of the lovely BISS CH Brackenhill Flew By Ewe CD NA NAJ PT ROM "Devon". I had the pleasure of meeting Devon as well as Feisty's littermate Chance (CH Tartan Bay Let It Ride AX AXJ HIC) and half-sister Ella (CH Tartan Bay Supernatural NA NAJ HIC) this past October at the BCSA National. At the time, I hoped a Chance kid would be joining our family this past winter but it wasn't to be. However I was quite happy to hear plans were underway for Carolyn's co-owned litter sister of Chance to be bred the coming year. :)
Feisty was bred to CH Holther's That Old Black Magic NA NAJ NF HIC CGC "Mercer", a son of CH Jule Too Holther's Cap Feather "Cap", out of Aust CH Trumagik Star Gazing PT AD "Kisha". Mercer is also a littermate to Savannah (CH Holther's Garden of Good and Evil PT AX AXJ CGC/TDI). I haven't yet had the privilege to meet Mercer (aside from pictures and video) but I hope to at this year's National. :)
5 girls and 2 boys were born on 3/18, so if all goes well I will be flying to Connecticut 8 weeks from Saturday! :) I plan to do a bit of everything with my little Potion... conformation, obedience, herding, and of course my main love - agility! I will attempt to document training progress on here as well as lots of pic-spam (probably mostly pic-spam) as she grows!
I made a desktop background of the girls in the litter with the 5 day pictures... we'll see which one wants to move to Indiana! :)
Mar 16, 2010
Whoops
Already too much delay in blogging! Merlin, Rio and I are headed to the Louisville cluster after my class tomorrow morning.
Merlin is entered in Excellent B Standard all 4 days, and Excellent B JWW on Thursday and Saturday. He needs 3 MX legs and 2 MXJ legs to finish each title - so it's definitely possible to do both this weekend. If we don't that's okay :)
Rio is entered in Open Standard all 4 days, and Open JWW on Thursday and Saturday. By my records he needs 2 OA legs and 1 OAJ leg to finish each title - however when I just looked him up on AKC they don't have his OA leg listed. Guess I'll need to look into that!
Too much to still finish before we hit the road tomorrow (including school-related things)! Will try to see if someone will video, but no promises with that. :)
Merlin is entered in Excellent B Standard all 4 days, and Excellent B JWW on Thursday and Saturday. He needs 3 MX legs and 2 MXJ legs to finish each title - so it's definitely possible to do both this weekend. If we don't that's okay :)
Rio is entered in Open Standard all 4 days, and Open JWW on Thursday and Saturday. By my records he needs 2 OA legs and 1 OAJ leg to finish each title - however when I just looked him up on AKC they don't have his OA leg listed. Guess I'll need to look into that!
Too much to still finish before we hit the road tomorrow (including school-related things)! Will try to see if someone will video, but no promises with that. :)
Feb 16, 2010
Obedience
The boys and I are heading out to a training building to get in some obedience time this evening! I'm hoping to be able to video at least some of it but we'll see. As far as training goals go...
I'd like to run Merlin through all the Novice tasks, plus also work on his retrieve. The club's jumps are stored away for the winter, so working on Open stuff will be limited. My main focus is going to be reinforcing his choice to sit when we stop - for whatever reason he really gets concerned about being wrong when he sees things that have traditionally meant conformation. I'm not entirely sure why, as I've always been very careful to differentiate between the two. Heeling is an entirely different body position, different lead (or none at all), different collar, different cues (and is always cued when expected, not assumed)... he's been heeling and gaiting for about the same amount of time (by the time he was 3 months old). Heeling has been entirely clickered, with no corrections (just withheld rewards) for "mistakes" - so he should not have any reason to fear being wrong in this instance. I did not really see this behavior until we took obedience to an environment where all the "context clues" seemed to support (to him) that we would be doing conformation. I do notice that his fluency of sit vs. down vs. stand could use some work, so am working on that as well. I feel that the early classes we attended (before we began training on our own) probably attributed to his worry about being wrong. While he was never corrected in these classes (at least not in a manner that should have this kind of result), the classes were demotivating and the instruction was often very negative and stressful. Regardless, I will NOT permit that to be an excuse of why we can't get through this - I know we can.
For Dewy, I'd like to fine tune his understanding of heel position (it's really rusty as we've not worked on it much) and maybe dabble in the exercises he can do from each level. He can't do the jump height he'd be required to anymore (and we don't have any jumps tonight so it's a moot point anyway), which is why he'll never get his last CDX leg or his UD. He would have to jump 16", whereas his jumping limit is actually about 8" these days. If obedience jumps were forgiving and displaceable, it might be one thing to try for the last CDX leg - but I will NOT risk his safety crashing into a solid jump over a single Q.
For Rio, my main goal is to work his heel position, stays, and recalls. I'd also like to see if I can get him to mouth the "dumbbell" in a different location (which is the stage of retrieve training we're currently at). Rio is another "if it's not food it doesn't belong in my mouth" dog like Merlin was, with few exceptions. He will sometimes grab one of a few squeaky toys and just squeak the heck out of it, but he has no interest whatsoever in playing with a person with a toy. He somewhat likes the Tug-It but again, only if he's in the mood. At this point, his retrieve training is using one of his most preferred squeaky toys since I know he is already willing to mouth it. As he gets more willing to mouth it, I'll gradually transition to less desirable objects - making them more desirable than they were originally, since now they are a key to something he wants. At this time I don't really have an interest in actually trialling with Rio in obedience, but I do have interest in training some of the tasks. Transitional students from more punishment-based methods seem like they'd be a bit more likely to humor me in training it with this method when all 3 of my dogs happily, reliably retrieve via this method instead of 2 out of 3. Plus every dog I train to retrieve this way teaches ME something else that I can then pass on to students and future dogs. I also enjoy the challenge of teaching a task in a positive, motivating way to a dog that has little-to-no natural desire to do that task. :) Not that I find that a desirable characteristic (I do find a lot of value in toy drive), but again - it's not what you have it's what you do with it. To me, the lack of a natural retrieve not an excuse to not be able to train the task (nor do you need to resort to force fetch to achieve it).
Anywho, off to do some homework and then dremel nails before our training time tonight! If you have any thoughts on Merlin's issue, feel free to post - I can't promise I'll try your suggestion (f.ex. if I feel it's likely to increase rather than decrease his worry) but I do promise to consider it. :)
I'd like to run Merlin through all the Novice tasks, plus also work on his retrieve. The club's jumps are stored away for the winter, so working on Open stuff will be limited. My main focus is going to be reinforcing his choice to sit when we stop - for whatever reason he really gets concerned about being wrong when he sees things that have traditionally meant conformation. I'm not entirely sure why, as I've always been very careful to differentiate between the two. Heeling is an entirely different body position, different lead (or none at all), different collar, different cues (and is always cued when expected, not assumed)... he's been heeling and gaiting for about the same amount of time (by the time he was 3 months old). Heeling has been entirely clickered, with no corrections (just withheld rewards) for "mistakes" - so he should not have any reason to fear being wrong in this instance. I did not really see this behavior until we took obedience to an environment where all the "context clues" seemed to support (to him) that we would be doing conformation. I do notice that his fluency of sit vs. down vs. stand could use some work, so am working on that as well. I feel that the early classes we attended (before we began training on our own) probably attributed to his worry about being wrong. While he was never corrected in these classes (at least not in a manner that should have this kind of result), the classes were demotivating and the instruction was often very negative and stressful. Regardless, I will NOT permit that to be an excuse of why we can't get through this - I know we can.
For Dewy, I'd like to fine tune his understanding of heel position (it's really rusty as we've not worked on it much) and maybe dabble in the exercises he can do from each level. He can't do the jump height he'd be required to anymore (and we don't have any jumps tonight so it's a moot point anyway), which is why he'll never get his last CDX leg or his UD. He would have to jump 16", whereas his jumping limit is actually about 8" these days. If obedience jumps were forgiving and displaceable, it might be one thing to try for the last CDX leg - but I will NOT risk his safety crashing into a solid jump over a single Q.
For Rio, my main goal is to work his heel position, stays, and recalls. I'd also like to see if I can get him to mouth the "dumbbell" in a different location (which is the stage of retrieve training we're currently at). Rio is another "if it's not food it doesn't belong in my mouth" dog like Merlin was, with few exceptions. He will sometimes grab one of a few squeaky toys and just squeak the heck out of it, but he has no interest whatsoever in playing with a person with a toy. He somewhat likes the Tug-It but again, only if he's in the mood. At this point, his retrieve training is using one of his most preferred squeaky toys since I know he is already willing to mouth it. As he gets more willing to mouth it, I'll gradually transition to less desirable objects - making them more desirable than they were originally, since now they are a key to something he wants. At this time I don't really have an interest in actually trialling with Rio in obedience, but I do have interest in training some of the tasks. Transitional students from more punishment-based methods seem like they'd be a bit more likely to humor me in training it with this method when all 3 of my dogs happily, reliably retrieve via this method instead of 2 out of 3. Plus every dog I train to retrieve this way teaches ME something else that I can then pass on to students and future dogs. I also enjoy the challenge of teaching a task in a positive, motivating way to a dog that has little-to-no natural desire to do that task. :) Not that I find that a desirable characteristic (I do find a lot of value in toy drive), but again - it's not what you have it's what you do with it. To me, the lack of a natural retrieve not an excuse to not be able to train the task (nor do you need to resort to force fetch to achieve it).
Anywho, off to do some homework and then dremel nails before our training time tonight! If you have any thoughts on Merlin's issue, feel free to post - I can't promise I'll try your suggestion (f.ex. if I feel it's likely to increase rather than decrease his worry) but I do promise to consider it. :)
Feb 7, 2010
Well...
Well, as you may've guessed from the lack of update things didn't work out as hoped. He is a wonderfully sweet and smart boy, but unfortunately he and my intact male Sheltie didn't particularly get along. There are some other possibilities coming up, but it just depends on how things play out. I'll share some details on those when things are more definitive. :)
In the meantime, the Shelties and I have been hanging out at home and playing in the snow! We missed our agility rental last weekend but hope to schedule one for the very near future - I'm getting a bit a bit stir crazy and craving some agility, and I know the dogs are also. :)
In the meantime, the Shelties and I have been hanging out at home and playing in the snow! We missed our agility rental last weekend but hope to schedule one for the very near future - I'm getting a bit a bit stir crazy and craving some agility, and I know the dogs are also. :)
Jan 29, 2010
New Family Member
Well, we do indeed have a hopeful new family member joining our "pack"! Details, pictures, and such will be shared this weekend. I'll be meeting his breeder in Pittsburgh, PA which is about halfway for us both (6-6.5 hours). :)
Excited would be an understatement!
Excited would be an understatement!
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