January 2008 - Posts

• Show Update

  I have been absent in my posting, but for the most part there hasn't been much out of the ordinary going on.  Just lots of work, work & more work!  Luke went to the chiropractor last week for his "pre-show" adjustment.  I figure I'll just make it part of our showing routine to ensure that he's able to give his best effort during a trial weekend. This was not a normal trial weekend for Luke and I by any stretch of the imagination.  My family's 13 year old Scottish Terrier, Cody, was in and out of the vet's office all week last week battling heart problems and dealing with his Syncope.  My mother was on vacation with her sisters and my father was planning on going out of town this past weekend.  Because I had Luke's trial, the plan was to board Buddy & Cody for the weekend at a local kennel.  Due to Cody's health problems, my dad decided to have him stay at the vet's office under observation all weekend.  I didn't want Buddy to have to go to the kennel by himself, so I opted to keep him with me for the weekend.  I took his crate to work with me Thursday night and got it set up next to Luke's so that we'd be all set for the weekend. My dad left Friday afternoon and I thought it would be easier on Buddy if we stayed at my parent's house.  That was bad idea number one!  Nobody got much sleep that night -- every time I woke up Luke was awake and usually looking into the mirrors that cover the closet doors in the bedroom. His lack of sleep was probably partly to blame for his ornery attitude on Saturday, but I know that Luke was very upset that Buddy was on HIS turf at the show.  Buddy did exceptionally well in his crate amidst all of the activity, but it was obvious that Luke did not want to share his "special" time with another dog.  He was generally uncooperative all day long.  In our first regular class he got 45 faults!  The second wasn't much better, with 25 faults. I have to take the blame for chances as I know I cued the tunnel too early, so he took the closer one.  In touch-n-go he didn't hit a SINGLE contact that I can recall.  I thought that weavers would be our saving grace of the day as he loves that game, but he side-passed a tunnel and then went in the wrong end when I called him back to me. Go figure that the only class he Q'd in all day was open JUMPERS.  It was our first time trying jumpers at the open level and I think Luke liked it much better than the novice courses.  He finally started to listen to me in that class and seemed to enjoy himself.  Thank heavens we got that, as I was starting to think it would be our first time to go all day without a single Q. I opted to try to keep Buddy at my apartment Saturday night in the hopes that we'd all get a little more sleep.  It actually went much better than I anticipated.  I woke up when Buddy jumped off the bed at 12:30, so I took him outside and he poo'd, which allowed all of us to go back to bed until the alarm went off at 6:00 a.m.  Luke seemed in much better spirits that morning and was wild & raring to go when we went outside. Our first regular class was night and day from the prior morning.  Luke did very well, nailed his contacts (barely!!) and only ticked one bar down on a turn.  Because we run in the skilled division, this meant that we got a 5 point Q for that class.  I was happy about this because it evens up the other 5 point Q we got during our first time running open!  :o) The second regular class ran absolutely perfect.  Luke did some beautiful crosses for me and even held a start line stay.  He slowed down nicely for me on the a-frame and I hoped for the same as we approached the dog walk as the second-to-last obstacle.  He trotted down the decent, looked at me as I told him to wait and then LEPT off right above the yellow and sailed over the last jump.  The whole crowd groaned as they felt my pain. I made a poor decision on setting Luke up for the opening sequence in chances.  I falsely assumed that he would target the tunnel (the correct obstacle) after the first jump, but he looked at it and went straight for the dog walk.  I should have attempted a start line stay and led out a bit to more successfully push him out to the tunnel.  Because this is a pass/fail class and we'd already failed, I made Luke re-do his contact on the a-frame when he blew it later on in the course.  I hoped that this would make an impression on him for the next class, touch-n-go. Once again we came VERY close to a Q, but it all came down to the very end.  This time the last sequence was the dog walk into the tunnel.  Luke was way out in front of me as he went up and over the dog walk, so I did a pretty harsh STOP to try to get him to slow down.  He did, but once again he got right above the contact and then sailed off to the next obstacle.  One of the elite competitors spoke to me after that class and said that I am inadvertantly cueing Luke to leap off like that by pushing him forward before he has actually entered the contact zone.  I need to be much more aware of my body language on the contact equipment! Luke ran a picture perfect tunnelers course that had a pretty high level of difficulty.  The course had repeated call-offs and tight turns and Luke never bobbled once.  I was very proud of his performance during this run.  He came in nine seconds under time and earned his Open Tunnelers title with this run.  I don't see any reason not to move him up to elite in this class. I got a little lost on the jumpers course (the open jumpers has a lot more turns than novice!) and I'm quite sure that this contributed to Luke bringing down a bar on one of the turns.  It was a very nice run otherwise, though, and I'm happy that Luke really seems to be enjoying the jumpers class now. It was a very emotional weekend for everyone at the dog center.  My trainer's youngest dog, Rocky, had surgery on Thursday to repair what we believed was a partially torn ACL.  It turned out that he had a bony growth on the joint that was causing him pain, so that was actually good news!  Laurie has been on an emotional rollercoaster with the whole Rocky deal for weeks and was doing well dealing with his recovery -- then, Saturday morning her oldest GSD, Cassie, suffered what was believed to be a stroke. Laurie left the trial right away Saturday morning to take Cassie to the local vet.  They did what they could to stabalize her, but suggested that Laurie take Cassie to the University of Minnesota for more specialized treatment.  Jim left the trial to help Laurie on the drive, and the rest of us were left to run the show.  Around 11:00 a.m. or so we got the news that Cassie had passed away on the drive to the University.  This was very sad news for everyone and it made for quite a somber trial the rest of the day.  We were all running in slow motion with no energy and the relatively small trial ran until after 5:00 p.m. that day.  The news of Cassie's passing was hard on me because I worry that we'll be going through the same with Cody soon. Laurie and Jim were back at the trial Sunday morning, despite the fact that we all told them to take the day off and let us handle things.  Everyone was a bit teary in the early hours as we gave our condolences to Laurie & Jim, but we were able to shift our attention to our dogs and enjoy the day.  When the day was done, a bunch of us went to Carlos O'Kelly's for our normal Saturday routine that had been skipped and enjoyed listening to Laurie share fond memories of Cassie.  It was a nice time for everyone to be able to share.  This weekend served as a hard reminder of how wonderful our canine companions are and how hard it hits us when they leave us suddenly. We have a short two weeks until our next trial, again at Family Dog Center in La Crosse.  I very quickly need to decide what classes to enter with Luke.  He is eligible to enter Elite regular & tunnelers at this point.  I am torn about the proficient/skilled NATCH/medal issue still, but after talking with another competitor this weekend I have to admit that the medal is every bit as important as the NATCH.  And really, earning points towards a medal is more useful than having them go towards nothing at the open level, right?  Hmm, I may have just answered my own question in this post! Luke still needs all three of his open chances Q's, two more in jumpers, one more in touch-n-go and two more in weavers.  I'm starting to feel like the open chances is going to plague us like the novice jumpers!! Posted Jan 28 2008, 08:40 AM by KarissaKS with no comments

• And back down to 16".....

  When I signed Luke up for his next agility trial (January 26 & 27), I was quite certain that he'd be comfortable at 20" by that time.  I admit that I haven't been working him at that height yet, so thus I haven't really been HELPING the cause at all.  I have felt much more comfortable working him over 16" & 12" jumps in practice, mostly for fear of "breaking" him again. We saw Dr. Schilling on Thursday at the dog center.  Luke was VERY messed up again.  He was tighter than ever in his atlas!  I'm not really sure what I can do to help that, but I will admit that I have not been giving him regular massage sessions these days.  I really have to be better about that, because I do believe that it helps.  Luke had a fairly big reaction to one of her adjustments to his neck, but he didn't seem to mind the lower body manipulations as much this time.  He definitely wasn't going for the accupuncture again, though, and bent a couple of needles quite badly in his discontent. On Saturday we had a big 4-H instructor's conference at the dog center.  They were there to learn how to teach agility to their students, as some of them were completely new to the sport.  I was scheduled to work retail that day, but Laurie asked if I'd also be willing to use Luke as a demo dog and to teach the table to the group. We had an Excellent AKC course set up and I didn't get a chance to walk it, much less practice it with Luke before our first run.  It was....  interesting, to say the least.  I ran him at 16" since neither of us were prepared and he was leaping off contacts, bringing bars down, taking wrong obstacles, etc.  It was a good example of what NOT to do! For our second run we were supposed to make mistakes on purpose.  I decided to run Luke at 20" since two of the other dogs wanted to go at that height and I thought it would be good practice for him.  Luke wanted nothing of it.  He refused the first (winged) jump twice and I decided to just go on.  I pushed him WAY too hard on the A-frame and he flew off it a good foot above the contact zone.  He went around another jump, jumped off the dog walk before the contact, went around another jump and then didn't go through the final tire.  That run definitely gave the 4-H folks a scoring challenge and maybe a hand cramp or two.  I decided that Luke wouldn't be doing any more demo runs that day because he just didn't seem into it. He did help me with my table demo, though.  It didn't require much effort on his part and he most enjoyed getting to play tug while waiting for our second group to reach us.  We were short one dog for the final demo of the day -- a fun relay race that consisted of a jump (12"), a set of six weave poles and the tunnel.  I knew that it was something that Luke would enjoy and he really revved up for it!  The first team had a bit of an unfair advantage by having two super speedy Elite dogs, but we actually pulled our own and came in really close.  We demanded a re-match, but got smoked on the second run because our lead dog ran off to visit someone in the corner!  Oh well, I still pushed Luke really hard and he flew!  It was a nice way to end the day for him and he had a lot of fun. I did make the decision to move him back down to the 16" skilled division at the next show, though.  I left a note in the secretary's office requesting the change.  In the mean time we will have to PRACTICE at 20" to get Luke comfortable at that height again. Tonight is week two of my beginner agility class (teaching) and I've decided to leave Luke at home this week.  He doesn't enjoy spending that much time in his kennel and with as tired as he's been lately, I believe he'd be better off sleeping on the couch at home.  Hopefully he can rest up and catch up on his sleep!  Now if only I could do the same... Posted Jan 14 2008, 02:29 PM by KarissaKS with no comments

• My little "demo dog"

  Luke got to be my "demo dog" last night during the first night of beginner agility and he didn't let me down!  I thought it would be helpful to show the students what a "finished" dog looks like going through the weave poles, so I had Luke crated next to the ring and I brought him out for the demo.  I just had a set of six poles set up and he flew through them!  He definitely didn't want to go straight back into his crate, though.  Regardless, he did, and he behaved himself very well. Last night was my very first night of teaching agility!  I had my lesson plan all ready to go for the four, possibly five students that I was expecting.  Imagine my surprise, then, when the class list had NINE people on it when I arrived to set up.  Ack!  Instant changes.  I was really looking forward to having a nice little intimate group for my first class and I didn't know if I was prepared to handle such a crowd. It was a good group, though, with just a couple of wild dogs.  I believe most everyone will end up staying on leash throughout the entire session, but there are a couple that may be able to do without it.  The majority of the dogs were larger breeds, but we did have a few smaller dogs that I could stick together -- one is a teeny tiny toy poodle that is very well behaved and he was a joy to watch.  I can also tell that the female GSD will fast become a favorite of mine. Everyone did very well with the three obstacles that were introduced -- jumps, weaves & tunnel.  Using the 2x2 method of weaving, we got up to four poles without a problem, so I expect we should be doing all six by the end of the next class. While Luke was definitely a super demo dog, I think I may end up leaving him at home on future Monday nights.  I think he'd rather sleep on the couch for a few hours rather than be locked in his crate.  I'm also helping out with the puppy kindergarten class following beginner agility and Luke has to stay crated for that as well. I had so much fun in the puppy class!  It definitely helped to feed my puppy craze that I've been feeling lately.  We had about seven dogs in the class of all types -- from a Puggle to a Labradoodle.  What's with the "designer" breeds, anyhow?  A few of the students had obviously already began training at home, as they found the sit exercise quite simple.  Assisting this class is an eye-opening experience and takes more knowledge & expertise than I had originally imagined! I will also be helping with the beginner obedience class on Wednesday night, so as to hopefully be able to help Laurie out by teaching these classes one day.  Originally I'd thought it would be no big deal, but there is a lot to learn! Dr. Schilling is coming to the dog center on Thursday for some chiropractic appointments and I have Luke signed up to see her at 1:00.  I definitely think he's due for an adjustment and may even take him to see her once more before our trial at the end of the month just to make sure he's in tip-top shape. Posted Jan 08 2008, 07:53 AM by KarissaKS with no comments

• Happy Birthday Luke!

  Luke is four years old now!  It's hard to believe that his birthday is actually January 1st, but considering he was surrendered to the Humane Society as a puppy by the people who bred him, you wouldn't think they'd lie.  If it's true, it's pretty cool to have a New Years puppy!  Plus it makes remembering his birthday really easy.  We've been busy since I last posted!  Luke is enjoying the added exercise in his life!  We've been playing lots of frisbee in the snow, which he LOVES -- but he gets upset when I throw it low and duff it in the snow so that he can't jump up and catch it.  Maybe some day I'll let him go back to his spectacular leaps, but I'd like to keep him in one piece for a bit longer.  I'm hoping to get him in for a chiropractic appointment soon to see how things are going. Luke spent New Years Eve at Grandma & Grandpa's, as I didn't know when/if I'd be coming home.  It turns out that G&G were party animals this year and Luke had to ring in the new year alone (although he enjoyed sleeping on their couch!), as they didn't get home until 2 a.m. He had a fun birthday morning of sledding with his "cousins" (my nephews) and by the time I got up to my parent's house he was wiped out!  We just hung out there for a few hours and then Luke got to come to the barn to help out with chores.  It was a pretty fun birthday for him and by the time we got home at 5:30 he was pretty tired and ended up crashing on the couch for the remainder of the night. Life returns to normal now that the holidays are done.  Agility classes start up again next week and I imagine that I'll run Luke through some of the exercises.  I'm teaching the beginner class at 6:00 and then there is a "fun agility" class that follows it -- the fun agility is supposed to just be course running, so that will give us some nice practice time. Our next trial is at the end of this month and I've got Luke entered in Open Proficient 20" in everything, so we need to start practicing the 20" jumps again!  If Luke seems comfortable at this next trial we'll be able to move up to Elite in some of our classes and start working towards our NATCH. Posted Jan 02 2008, 08:09 AM by KarissaKS with 1 comment(s)