Oh please no mo sno

Ugh! I woke up to this today!Do you see that big covered thing next to that poor pine, who is screaming in agony because it has snow on it AGAIN! (trust me I can hear it), That is our camper. My husband and I were just saying yesterday we need de-winterize it because our first Dog Agility show is April 19. This last week I have been filling out entries and sending them off so I know there is light at the end of this cold, dark, frozen, ugly, boring tunnel. Soon we will unfurl that cover, load that baby up and off we will go.

But right now I just want to say....please no mo sno!

The Canine Caper

I called the dogs in after their romp in the backyard last Saturday and found this:Yes that is a big chunk of Jackaroo's face missing. Gives him a rather rakish look don't you agree?
He doesn't seem to mind much as you can see from his smile. I tried to get to the bottom of this incident but after a session of questioning all the involved parties refused to talk.
Though I have my suspicions...
So innocent looking. Uh huh.

What I did for Easter

Our Easter holiday was fantastic this year. My church had an awesome service, for the first time I roasted lamb, 2 huge legs of lamb that were fabulous, and we had a great time with Scott's family. The nieces and nephews had a nice little Easter egg hunt in our front yard and everyone had a wonderful time searching, eating, relaxing.

One of the best parts of the day was the "chocolate seminar" my sister-in-law gave us. P- has had some really great jobs over the years, at a winery, VP of Marketing at a brewery and now the marketing guru at a chocolate company. Check them out at Theo Chocolate.

I liked some of the purist dark chocolate bars but I have always been a milk chocolate gal so the 3400 Phinney Chocolate was what won me over. The Bread and Chocolate with actual breadcrumbs and a pinch of salt is fabulous, the Hazelnut Crunch just delicious and the Vanilla Milk Chocolate bar is sweet and smooth and oh yeah and the Coconut Curry is spicy and surprising, the Chia Milk chocolate again spicy. The mouth feel is incredible. OK, just try them all (I really have no financial interest but I'd like to keep the company in business so help me out). You can order on-line or find a store near you but give it a try. Then let me know what you think. I'm going out to get some now.

Amazing Love

We sang this in church this morning, it just keeps running through my mind. Amen.

Will winter never let us go?

This winter has been cold, snowy, wet, and LONG! I have tried not to complain but really! Enough already! I want to garden, I want to rake my yard. I want to go for a walk in the woods and swat at bugs!!!!
But it's a bit warmer now here in the northeast and Winter is slowly yielding to spring, but it's not going peaceable like. I was out last weekend during the torrential rain storm we had.
This is a the little brook down the road from us. As you can see it ain't so little anymore.

If so inclined we could do a little white water rafting. I'm counting my blessings because if that storm had been snow we'd still be digging out. So I find hope of spring in that I did not have to shovel any of that precipitation.

Since last weekend we've had sleet, rain, snow and yes, even a glimmer of sun.
Winter is not giving up yet, we are due for more "weather" this weekend. But it is warmer and the feet of snow on the ground is melting to inches. Just in time too, I am pining for warm breezes and sunshine. It's coming, soon, soon.

I get paid for this!

I love my job! As a dog trainer I get to play with dogs, puppies and help people train their dogs to be well behaved family members. But by far I love teaching dog agility the best.

If you have never seen a dog run agility it is wonderful to watch. You can visit this link to see agility videos and see what it is like. It's even more wonderful to run it with your own dog. A lot of people think only Border Collies can excel at this sport but from the smallest chihuahua to the largest Great Dane, all dogs can take part in this great sport. We have many students at our dog training school and we see all kinds of dogs. One of my students PE came last week for a private lesson with her Whippet.
Meet Lacey:

Isn't she cute? I love Lacey! I have often tried to slip her in my car when PE isn't watching but for some reason she keeps a good eye on her. Lacey has a nice wardrobe as you can see, here in the North East dogs without much fur need a coat!

Anyway, they came for a private lesson because Lacey has always stopped on the bottom of the A-frame. A technique we teach dogs so they safely navigate this large piece of equipment and hit the yellow contact zone at the bottom. The rules for agility state the dog must have at least one toe nail in the contact zone or they will incur a fault and will not qualify. But dogs need to have a concrete job, so for years we have taught them to come to a full stop at the bottom with back feet on the yellow zone and front feet on the ground in front. This can be very hard on a dog's shoulders over time, so we have begun to teach some dogs to run the A-frame, but they still have to hit the yellow zone. You will see what I mean in this following video.

There are a couple methods I have been experimenting with. This one was using stride regulators. Basically teaching the dog to stride into the yellow area. We thought Lacey was understanding so tried a sequence.

I am not a fan of changing a dog's natural stride and we had limited success with Lacey so we decided to change to a method we call the box.
I learned this from Rachel Sanders (an awesome agility instructor!) at BARK agility camp last summer. It is her method and is still fairly new. We started with the box made from PVC and the size of the yellow contact zone, on the floor, using clicker training to teach Lacey to run into the box. We then translated this to the a-frame. Now I have to put in a disclaimer here because I moved Lacey too fast out my own curiosity (Bad trainer!) but I am fairly confident this method will work for her. Here she is with the box the a-frame:


So PE when home to construct a PVC box of her own to work at a slower pace. We want Lacey to understand she must get all 4 feet in the box every time to earn a reward. At that point we will put it on command (what I call putting it on cue, that's trainer talk). Then we will get together in a week of so and move it to the A-frame to test Lacey's understanding. then we will move tot the next phase if she is ready and start having her run short sequences ending with the A-frame. I want to document this here because I find it interesting and I hope you will too.

What a great job!

The moods of Tyler

I am trying to learn more about my camera so these are not very good but only some of my first endeavors. He is still a really cute boy, even though my photography leaves a lot to be desired at this point.