Ears and Freestyle

OK, so it it sounds like these two things are totally unrelated? Unfortunately, that's not true at my house lately. Ack, have we been through it lately! Teddy started off with inner ear inflammation, then he got an infection on his outer ear. I thought that the antibiotics that he was on was hurting his stomach, so we stopped those as soon as his ears were better. When he continued to be a picky eater (a sure sign that something is not right with him), we went back to the vet to find out that Teddy's throat was very inflamed. I swear, if it's not one thing, it's another! With all of this going on, we've been trying to finalize our new freestyle routine for our first live competition. Whew!


Last week, Teddy and I attended an adoption event for a local animal shelter. We had promised to do some freestyle and obedience along with some of our other freestyle training buddies. We had a blast, but it was the most difficult evironment in which to perform, even on our best day. We were in a parking lot, with our ring defined by a few orange cones, there were cars driving by, dogs and cats waiting to be adopted, and a modest crowd of people on their lunch breaks standing around sending telepathic messages to my dog for him to come over and say hello. Those telepathic messages are stronger than a little black poodle can take. It's a good thing that everyone was easily impressed with a few tricks because doing our full dance routine was not happening. Teddy's good at schmoozing the crowd.

As I said above, Teddy and I have been hard at work on our new freestyle routine. We've been trying to put all of the pieces together and make sure that it fits with the music and it looks somewhat polished. We're still working on the last part. :) So, below is some video from our practice last Saturday. It's very raw. In fact, we totally scrapped the whole first part of our routine, so this was the first time we were trying out our new choreography. I'm also only half in costume- don't worry, the green shirt is not part of the costume. I'm taking a risk in showing this video because we look so rough. It's hard to see in the video, but the reason we had trouble with the hula hoop is because Teddy has on a light line, so I have to make sure that the line clears the hoop before I can move it, otherwise it would look a lot smoother. Anyway, enough disclaimers, we still have a lot of practicing to do in a short amount of time!

Agility Class Videos

I have compiled a few videos from the last couple of weeks of agility class. I was anxious to try out my new video camera on the agility field. I used a tripod because I really didn't want to take people away from their own dogs. I am happy to say that Teddy is doing so much better about zooming (knock wood). I am thrilled that he is really wanting to play with me and is trying really hard. Now the problem is ALL me. And I am getting really frustrated with myself. It seems that I can't do a rear cross. Ack! God bless all of the first dogs out there who have to put up with their handler's ineptness while we learn what the heck we are doing!

The first video is a rear cross exercise. As you can see it takes us a couple of tries to get it right. I was pointing my body in the wrong direction, and I wasn't letting Teddy get ahead of me enough to actually do a rear cross. You mean you have to let the dog go ahead of you to do a rear cross? I am so challenged!

Here we did some Greg Darrett box work. Good stuff. We were supposed to use 2 front crosses. I am having trouble getting my timing right on turns so that I don't send Teddy around or in front of a jump.

In this video, we got to make up our own course. Our instructor just wanted us to use each piece of contact equipment twice. That's why the sequence doesn't look smooth or flowy. At the beginning, Teddy got distracted by a border terrier puppy in an ex-pen on the field. He has to go check everything out. Sorry that you can't quite see the whole field.

This is just a short sequence that we did: tunnel-A frame-jump-weaves. I lost my connection with Teddy at the bottom of the A frame because I did not reward his 2 on/2 off contact, so he was looking for his treat. I was also glad that his weaves picked up speed by about half way through.

This sequence was kind of difficult for me because I am so handling challenged. We were supposed to try to run it first by staying somewhat in the middle. Again, you can see that I have trouble with my timing and body language. The second time, we were supposed to use a rear cross. I really struggled to not turn too quickly and pull him in front of the jump. I did some heavy editing so you couldn't see how challenged I really am. Boy do I have a lot of work to do. I think I need to take some private lessons without my dog. Poor Teddy!

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.