An Obedient Easter

I hope that everyone had a wonderful Easter weekend! It just so happened that our club's obedience trial fell on this weekend, which was really strange. This is probably the first Easter that I can remember that I was not at church. It was a good weekend, anyway.

We started the weekend off with Teddy getting groomed on Friday morning. We went to our usual place, but a new groomer worked on him. She actually did a really nice job shaping his bracelets and his head, but she shaved way too much off of his tail base that I had been trying to grow out over the past couple of months. Argh! Here we go again with the tail, oh well. The funniest part about the grooming was that they put 2 big blue bows on Teddy's ears. It was hilarious! I just shook my head when I picked him up, and told him that his doggie friends were going to tease him at the C match that we were headed to that afternoon. Let's just say that we were the talk of the match!

Teddy and I showed in Rally Advanced and Excellent, and Wildcard Open, just for the heck of it, which gave us 7 ribbons and 2 RAE legs (numbers 3 and 4 towards his RAE title).

Heeling has always been an issue with us. I'm sure that I did not teach it properly from the beginning, but we have been working very hard on this lately. I will say that our heeling had gotten better in our last 2 trials, but we had a backslide this weekend. So, we will take a few steps back in our training. In our utility class on Monday night, I worked on having him off leash for most of the class, and reminding him that his place was right at my side, not checking out spots on the mats or visiting with another person or dog.

On Saturday, the Rally courses were deceptively easy. The signs were easier signs, but the course layout was what increased the difficulty level. The courses were not flowy, but had strange angles with a lot of diagonal lines. We kind of struggled through the Excellent course because of our bad heeling with a score of 87, but did much better in Advanced with a score of 94. On Sunday, however, the signs were more difficult, but the layout was more flowy. This was the first time that I have had the off-set figure 8 on the course, which was the first sign. I have to admit that I have been dreading the day when we would get this sign, but Teddy did surprisingly well with the 2 toys that were used as the distractions. I think he thought I was setting him up. :) We received a 96 in Excellent, and a 98 and 4th place in the Excellent class. Below is a picture of Teddy with his rally and wildcard ribbons.

Since it was Easter, my mom had to bring Teddy an Easter bunny. It was a big hit. There was much shaking and killing of the bunny. In case you are wondering what is on his ears, it's bows that came on some packages of Easter candy. We thought it would be cute for a picture.

Happy Easter!

We pray that you have a blessed and happy Easter weekend with your friends, family, and canine family!

Freestyle Filming

Teddy and I had a very busy weekend. We watched some of the Teacup Dog Agility Association trial that was local, we went on a therapy visit, and we did a lot of filming for our next freestyle video competition. I thought I would take advantage of having a blog and do something a little different. Below are the two best tapings from the weekend. They both have a couple of minor mistakes, but some of them you probably would not notice if you were not very familiar with our routine. If you have seen us dance before, this is the same routine, but with a little extra time and choreography needed to move up to the next level of competition. I think I'm leaning to one version over the other, but I thought I would get outside opinions on which version is better. So, let me know what you think:

Version #1

Version #2

Thanks!!

Puppy Training

I went over to my parents' house on Friday to do a little puppy training. It's so refreshing to work with a blank slate. It's so different though because I know so much more than I did when I started training Teddy. However, I still worry about doing something wrong and screwing them up. Gracie was a lot easier to teach sit than Heidi. Gracie is calmer and can focus easier than her sister. Heidi is a lot like Teddy in that she is easily distracted and has a higher energy level. When I first worked with Heidi, she just wanted the food so badly that all she could do was jump up for it. After I gave her a few pieces for answering her name, then she could focus a little better.

Here is some video, first of Gracie, then Heidi, of them working on name recognition, sit, and down:

Ok, and this last video is of them sitting together. Too cute to leave off of the blog. Maybe a brace freestyle routine is in their future? LOL!!! Ya, right!

Now to change the subject a little. I was going to post pictures of their first baths because it was too funny, but never got around to it. Since Patti had some cute pictures on her blog of dogs in her shop (see link to Poodlebugs on the right), I thought I should finally add the pics.

The first is Heidi, who was none too thrilled about getting a bath:

Here's Heidi in a poor attempt of a stack: Here's Gracie, you can see her claws came out:

Gracie was so tired from her bath, she fell asleep on the table:

And here they are one week later with their first top knots. Their hair was a little too short for them to stay in, but it's a good first try. Anyone know the name of the waxy stuff you put on the hair to make the top knot stay in?

Outrunning the Storm

OK, I am not posting this silly little video to show how good Teddy and I are at agility- obviously!! Actually, I'm really posting this for Patti to see how much we look like she and Boo in one of her very early runs with him. I can only hope that we can improve as much as the two of you in the future, otherwise, we can kiss all hopes of further competitions goodbye.

Anyway, I bought a new camera yesterday, and I was itching to try it out, so I took it to agility class tonight. We knew the storms were predicted to hit tonight, but we were hoping that we could make it through the entire class. That was not to be. We watched as the lightning got closer and the thunder louder. We were rushed to only get one run in each. So, I felt the time crunch as I stepped up to the first obstacle. My handling leaves much to be desired. I have got to learn to pick up my pace and give quicker signals. That is what messed up our rear cross and sent him around the jump. I also sent him in the wrong end of the tunnel. Too bad though, that my videographer missed our nice front cross. At least there is no way to go, but up! We were lucky to pack up and get out just as the storm reached us. The rain started as I got in my car.

Running Silent... or... Shut Up!

Wow, there has been a lot going on lately, and I have been extremely busy. Last week we had 68 degree weather, 2 inches of snow the next day, more 60+ degree weather, then 3-4 inches of snow the following day. Crazy weather! We don't know if it's winter or spring. It was because of the snow that I broke my camera. :( Teddy was having so much fun playing in the snow and chasing snow balls, that I was going to get a video of him. About 10 seconds into the video, the camera slipped through my hand and landed face first onto my sidewalk. I was really mad at myself for doing something so stupid, especially because I needed to try filming our freestyle routine for the video competition the next day. Luckily, it was just a point and shoot camera that also took video and not a fancy video camera, but I found out that it would cost just under the price of a new camera to fix it. Such is life!

Last Sunday afternoon I took Teddy to a fun match in a nearby suburb. The weird thing was that it was held in a parking lot of a grocery store off a busy state highway. It was a great place to work on distractions with all of the people (and kids) coming to see what was going on, the cars in the parking lot, and a lot of motorcycles flying by. I was a bit concerned because they didn't even have enough ring gating to complete the ring, so there was a corner formed with red tape. I decided it would be best to perform the heeling on lead. I was surprised to find that Teddy did pretty well on all of the other exercises, even with a very narrow high jump for the retrieve over the jump.

Teddy finally met my parents' new puppies. He didn't really care for them, I think he didn't really know what they were. It was pretty funny to see him try to avoid and ignore them. He would look the other way and back away from them. He's used to being around goldens and labs and corgis in his classes. I'm not sure he realized they were dogs. When the girls finally got brave enough to sniff his feet, Teddy would pick his feet up high, like he didn't want them touching him. Silly boy! We'll try again, they need to make friends.

OK, now back to the title of this entry. We had a great agility class this week. Our instructor had us walk the course, and then she told us that we could give only a beginning command. We had to run the rest of the course completely silent. I was a little surprised by this. I've always heard that dogs cue more off of our body language than our verbal commands. I have believed this to be true, but I didn't think it would really work for my dog. Teddy is the kind that is easily distracted and is difficult to retain his focus. I thought he needed verbal cues to keep him on track and to bring his attention back to me. I, and everyone else in our class, was shocked at how well Teddy stayed on track and even ran faster. It was a real wake-up call for me. I need to shut up and make it easy on Teddy, so that he doesn't have to filter out all of the excess information. I had a revelation, and I'll see how his progress continues with limited verbal commands. The only thing that we had a problem with was the weaves, and that could have been because he just didn't want to do them. I think we need just need to work on this. I would love to see video proof of this, but it's too bad I broke my camera. I challenge all the agility people out there to try running a course without saying a word. I think you will be pleasantly surprised.

Puppy Fun

I finally had some time to do some video editing of the new puppies. I've been busy spending what little free time I had at my parents' house helping out with the little monsters. They are cute as can be, but boy are they a handful right now. Potty training is job #1 right now. They are getting better, but we have to stay on top of it. Gracie is doing well, and is searching out the pee pads when she needs to go, but Heidi (who I originally thought was smarter) is the one who is having more accidents. She's sneaky!

Another issue my mom is having is their days and nights are a bit mixed up. They stay in the laundry room with open crates and access to pee pads. They, but mainly Heidi, tend to whine and cry at night. Gracie settles in to sleep in her crate like a good girl, while her sister goes crazy. I told my mom that we've seen enough tv to know that in every set of twins, there is always one evil twin. :) When I came over one afternoon to help, I put them in the laundry room behind the baby gate. Heidi immediately started to cry, but I took a metal bowl and tapped it against the gate and praised her calmly for being good. It only took about 5 minutes to get them quiet. I think consistency is the key and being more stubborn than a terrier. Teddy has helped me learn this difficult lesson.

They are so funny to watch play. We are trying to figure out which one is the dominant one, but they are both pretty dominant. Heidi is the toy stealer, but Gracie will sometimes stalk Heidi and pounce. We try to let them work it out amongst themselves, but we break it up when the biting starts.

Here are some videos that we took the day we went to pick them up at the breeder's house. They were playing with their mom. She was really sweet, so we are hoping that these little hooligans will turn out eventually like her.