My 5 Favorite Things: the Dog Grooming Edition

Giving my large hairy and only-loves-water-if-it’s-a-natural-body-of-water-or-a-swimming-pool-but-no-bath-tub dogs is the bane of my existence. Between the de-shedding, being covered in water, and their “I hate you” expressions, I just don’t do it as often as I should. In fact, lately I’ve just given up and have been sending them to the groomer. But, when I do venture into this, I have found a few helpful products:

1. Vetrolin Bath Ultra-Hydrating Conditioning ShampooThis is my favorite shampoo. I use it for the horses and I use it for the dogs. Does a great job cleaning and leaves them smelling great. It also doesn’t agitate Guinness’ skin and he is so so sensitive.
2. EZ Wash Wand
   This one is something that makes my life easier rather than something the dog really likes but bath time is so much easier with the EZWash Wand! The one shown is the dog size (which I didn’t know they made until doing this post) but I have the larger horse size. Lets me get all over the body with minor wrangling of dog and I barely get wet while using it (unlike a normal hose).I also found while writing this that they have a shampoo container that can be added. I ordered that to give it a try.
3. HandsOn Gloves
   These are both of my dogs favorite grooming accessory ever. I get them out of the bag and they go crazy! They like the massage that they get. I like that they pull out all the extra hair. But really, what I love about these is how easy they make bath time. I pour the shampoo right on my hand and then attack the wet dog. They help me get right down to the skin  so that I truly get a clean dog. And the dogs don’t mind baths quite as much when they’re getting a massage.
4. SleekEz
   
   I originally bought this for Gus. He’s always sweaty and grows a way thicker coat than he should in the summer (to the point that I actually shaved him in the summer) so I thought maybe this would help. It didn’t. So I brought it home to try on the dogs. We have used so many different shedding brushes with Guinness and he hates them all. But this one, he didn’t! He not only tolerated it, he actually seemed to like it. The SleekEz pulled out the undercoat but didn’t seem to pull on his skin. It also left his coat looking shiny and healthy. The brush didn’t do as well with Harley but she also doesn’t have that big undercoat like Guinness does.
5. Synthetic Chamois
   
   They technically make these for drying off your car but I was given the tip to use them for the dogs at a Dock Diving competition. It was instant love. They soak up the water, you wring them out, and they’re easy to store and carry around without having to deal with wet towels. I currently am using The Absorber Synthetic Drying Chamois but I expect any high rated brand would do the trick.

Circle of Friends December 2016 Agility Trial – A Quick Write Up

If you were to look at this trial completely from a ribbons won, qualified runs earned, and titles completed, it is not going to look like a good weekend. But you would be totally mistaken.

Now don’t get me wrong, there were some epically bad parts. The worst run being the regular classes on Saturday when Harley was fascinated with the bean bags… so wish I had that on video because it was hysterical. I picked her up and walked her out of that class!

There were also some epically amazing runs. Most notably our X-Hoopers class that we had never tried before and entered last minute on a whim (and we also got a big old Q for!). The last Tunnelers class as well was a thing of beauty. It also earned Harley her title for Open Tunnelers.

But mostly it was a lot of E’s for eliminations due to start line stay training.

Agility can be incredibly frustrating because that one little thing ruins an otherwise fabulous round. The round that ended up following the above broken start line was magnificent. Harley hit all her contacts and she held them. If only we hadn’t broken that start line. And that was the whole point of restarting the run.

For the last year or so, Harley has been breaking her start line stays and running off to do her own little thing. Our coach rightly pointed out that we needed to fix that now. So, for every class (except for a handful like Tunnelers and Jumpers), if Harley broke her stay, we threw the class and trained it. The nice thing about NADAC trials is that you’re allowed to train one thing in the ring (a stay or a contact or a sequence). It will eliminate you but hopefully you can reinforce the issue for next time. By the end of the weekend, Harley’s stays were so much better and her contacts were excellent.

Guinness and Eric had a fabulous weekend also, picking up a handful of qualified runs and getting their Open Regular Title. Guinness’ big thing is that he looses focus and then looses time and he’s just not fast enough to loose time and still be able to qualify. He’ll get there though.

Since we are hoping to get Miss Z going in agility, we brought her out as well to play for a few of the days. She was such a good girl the whole weekend and was very polite. I’m glad she’s learning to fit in with our little pack.

500th Post

Wow! How did we get to 500 already?! In honor of this huge milestone, I want to recount my top 20 memories.

20. Dandy has finally arrived!

Photo © ES

19. Going Dockdiving with Harley for the first time. That pup is a jumping fool!
18. Getting my HR job in Seattle.
17. Dandy’s disastrous but incredibly memorable first schooling show.
16. Dandy’s fantastic and incredibly memorable first recognized horse trial.

15. Going to the 2012 Breeder’s Cup.
14. Guinness getting his CGC Title!
13. Going schooling at Caber Farms with Dandy.

12. Dandy winning an open training division at Rebecca Farms! Go super pony!
11. Our last wonderful Christmas in Tahoe with good friends, food, and puppies. Plus SNOW!

10. Going on so many epic trail rides in Tahoe.
9. Like this one where the horses get loose!
8. And this one where we go galloping on the beach and swimming.

7. Getting my very own Voltaire monoflap!
6. Taking lessons on an ex-Rolex horse! Jack is so cool!

5. Going XC schooling with Dandy for the first time.

4. And the second day of that too.
3. Then taking Gus XC schooling!
2. One last lesson on Dandy before I say goodbye.

And the number one best memory goes to…

1. Gus arrives!
   

Thank you all so much for coming along on this journey with me. I hope you’ll all be here for the many more exciting and fun adventures that await Gus and I down the road.

Hugs and horse slober,
Lauren

Making a Barn Dog – Part 1, Before the Barn

It should come as no shock that I think dogs and horses go together like ice cream and hot fudge. I understand people’s concerns about mixing dogs and horses, I just don’t agree. The real problem I see, and what leads to most people having issues with dogs at the barn, is that most dogs I see around horses are NOT TRAINED. And that will always lead to problems.

I may be biased, but I happen to think my dogs are pretty incredible barn dogs (or at least Guinness is, Harley is still in training) and I have been incredible lucky that I have been able to find barns that have allowed them to accompany me. And, because there has been a lot of talk on the internet in the past year about dogs being at barns and horse shows, I wanted to talk briefly about what I think is needed to turn a dog into a horse friendly barn dog.

Spoiler: a lot of hard work!

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Disclaimer: I am not a professional dog trainer. The following post is merely a collection of things that worked for me. They may not work for you. Your best course of action is to find a professional in your area. 

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It should go without saying, but if your dog won’t behave at home where he is comfortable and used to external stimuli, there is no way you will ever have a well behaved dog at the barn. There are too many fun new smells, new people, and new experiences at a barn or show for most dogs not to get distracted. To that end, the first thing you need to do for your dog is to make sure they are obedient at home. Then, at other new but dog friendly places, like the dog park.

Yes, I do expect my dogs to be able to focus on me and not just going wild at a dog park.

To that end, these are the “tricks” I expect my dog to be able to do when commanded, without being nagged, and no matter what else is going on:

• Sit
• Down
• Come
• Stay
• Leave It
• Drop *

* This is not the same as down but is similar. It takes a lot longer to perfect than a standard down but it saved Guinness’ life once and thus, I think, is extremely valuable.

Now, you might be rolling your eyes at me and saying “All good dog owners should teach their dogs those top four tricks,” and I would agree completely with you. However, I bring them up for two reasons. 1) Is that a lot of dog owners DON’T bother to teach these (some because they honestly don’t know how to) or do it half heartedly at best. And 2) For a dog you expect to be able to take off-leash at the barn (or really anywhere in polite company) these tricks need to not just be house-broke-polite, they need to be Obedience Trialing good. Let me explain what I mean.

SIT/DOWN

These should be pretty self-explanatory. Most people teach these using a lure and/or a clicker and I urge you to look up  how if your dog doesn’t sit (or down), there are lots of good tutorials on YouTube. But what most people don’t continue to enforce is that when asked for a sit or down, I expect my dog to continue sitting or downing for as long as needed until I either release or cue otherwise.

And, I know, this is extremely difficult. Especially when you have energetic puppies. To train this, start slowly. Only ask your dog to sit or down for a small period of time. Make sure you release before they break. If they break the sit or down before you say so, you need to start over and release earlier. Slowly build the time up. Feel free to keep treating through the sit or down, nothing wrong with that! It’s actually good because the dog learns that a treat is not the end of a trick. Besides adding time, teaching your dog that you can walk away from him (even leaving the room!) without him breaking is an invaluable tool. For the down, I often practice walking over my dog. At the sit, I practice walking around and standing over them.

For really advanced down and stays, start working on being farther away from the dog when you first ask for this. Expect the dog to sit or down where they are currently standing. Start close, work on getting farther away gradually.

COME

This is one of the most valuable tricks a dog should learn. And it is exactly what it sounds like. When commanded, the dog should come to you, no questions asked. This is a super hard one because when the dog is distracted, often owners start continuously calling for the dog and it becomes nagging. We all know a horse starts tuning us out when we nag with asking right? Well, it’s the same thing with dogs.

And while we’re on that note, let me talk about nagging with dogs (and something I’m so guilty of). Be careful how you use your dog’s name. Yup. If you start using the dog’s name any time they’re being naughty or not listening, you start nagging. If you’re doing it to get their attention but they’re just not paying attention to you, nagging. So if Bruno is not coming when you are calling and you keep yelling “BRUNO!” Guess who is going to start ignoring whenever you say his name? Yup, Bruno.

So don’t over do the name calling!

But this also goes for come or really any command. Try to only ask your dog to do something if you either know they are going to do it, or you have a way to enforce the command if they don’t.

Alright, back to come. When teaching this command, start working in a small enclosed space and make sure you have a high reward treat. For my dogs, this is string cheese. They LOVE it. They will do just about anything for string cheese. And when the dog comes, over praise. When I was learning to dock dive someone told me “If you don’t feel a least a little silly when praising your dog for bringing the toy back, you aren’t praising hard enough.” And treat heavily at first. Make sure the dog knows that they did the right thing.

Eventually increase the distance and take them to new places that allow off leash dogs. If you are nervous or in a large unenclosed space (or even an extremely large enclosed space) try putting a long line on your dog to make sure you can reel them in if you have to.

And eventually, stop treating for every time they come and only do it sporadically so that the dog never knows if they’re going to be getting a treat. Always praise though. Even if the dog was doing something naughty before you called them over, they did the right thing when coming back to you.

This trick really just takes so much time and continuous work on the part of the owner. It drives me nuts when I go to the dog park and see owners start calling their dogs and see the dogs just ignore them. So the owner gets louder and more insistent but the dog still does not come. Want to know a secret? The dog hears you. He’s just ignoring you. And that means you did not properly enforce “come.”

STAY

And now we come to the trick your dog must be able to do if you want to take them around the barn off-leash. They must stay until they are released.

Most people work in a down stay but you can do this with your dog sitting or standing as well. When I tell my dogs to stay, I don’t really care if they transfer between sitting and downing as long as they stay in the same spot (though I know this is not technically Obedient Trial correct). If you have been diligent about making sure your dogs stay sitting or downing when you ask for it, this will come easy, all you need to do is introduce the new command and enforce it.

Now, if one of my dogs breaks from a stay, I do something differently that not a lot of trainers teach you, so take it with a grain of salt. I learned this from the woman who trained Guinness (she is FABULOUS, I wish I could have sent Harley to her but alas, she’s in NV). When my dogs break from a stay, I do not get annoyed or scold them or even set them back up and re-command. Instead, I pick the dog back up and put it where they were supposed to say. And yes, I do this with Guinness, it’s comical to say the least. Then, I continue on as normal with out re-cueing.

Guinness used to be so good at staying that I could put him in a stay on the front yard and walk around the block. He’s not quite that good anymore, so you see, this is something that you don’t teach once. You need to constantly be reinforcing it. And when you are teaching this, try to introduce weird stimuli to the dogs, for example, throwing toys at them or around them, having someone else say their name or their favorite word (park/walk/etc).

LEAVE IT

A great trick for both at home and out in public. It’s basically teaching your dog to leave something alone. I use it a lot with Harley and the cats. Even though she really just wants to play, they want nothing to do with her and I don’t want her getting hurt.

Anyway, this one can be tricky to teach because it involves placing a high reward treat in front of your dog and then expecting them not to go for it. Not really fair.

How I taught this was by putting a good treat, but not their favorite treat, on the floor in front of my dog and telling them to “leave it.” As soon as they go for the treat, because they will, I will either put my hand over the treat and take it away or gently push their face away. This is where it’s important to know your dog because if you have a very food aggressive dog, you may want to teach this with a toy instead.

If the dog leaves the treat, I reward with a different treat. Rinse and repeat. Eventually your dog will look at it and hopefully look back at you and “leave it.”

DROP

I could probably write a whole post about the importance of drop and how to train it. But essentially what it is, is a perfectly instantaneous falling of the dog into a down position no matter where they are. The reason I call this drop instead of down is because drop is a harder sounding word and carries better than down if you are far away. I also have a personal different cue for this. For down, I put my palm parallel to the ground, for drop, I raise my hand into the air as high as I can. This is because drop is supposed to be used for a dog that is off leash and maybe far away.

If enough people want me to, I can do a quick tutorial for how to teach the basics of this.

When we lived in Washington, I was on a trail ride with Dandy and Guinness. At one point, we have to cross a road and the people driving this road are assholes and idiots. It’s not like they’re coming around a bend and can’t see us and yet one of my stable mates actually got hit when she was in the middle of the road. Ugh. But, when you are the trail side of it, you do come up to the road pretty quickly. Guinness was running ahead of me and had actually already crossed the road when I got up to the opening and waited to check for cars. He was about to turn back and come back to me when a car came zipping towards us. He was going to get hit. There was no way he’d make it across in time, the car was zooming. I screamed DROP as loud as I could and tossed my hand into the air. And thankfully, even though he was just learning this, Guinness put his belly on the ground on the other side of the road.

Now, he shouldn’t have crossed the road without me. I had been distracted and had not been enforcing the trail rules recently. So I got lucky on all counts. But this is why I think it’s a good trick to teach.

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A few things to note here, in the above explanations, I talk a lot about “releasing” the dog before they break the cue. This is so important to do and I can’t stress it enough. It’s like knowing when you are pushing your horse too far, or re-cuing right before you know the horse is going to do something you don’t want. But in this case, I am actually talking about a physical cue. When I tell my dogs to stay (for example), eventually I will release them by saying “okay.” This is their signal that they can relax and do what they want. You can pick any word you want, “purple” for example! Sometimes, my word of “okay” gets me in trouble because the dogs will be working and I will say the word to someone else but they hear it and release. All I can do at this is laugh and then re-cue for whatever I wanted, not their fault! They were being good and listening to me.

I also talk about HIGH REWARD treats. So important when training dogs. I thought we had these awesome dried meat treats. The dogs were both doing well but we had a lot of stuff to work on. Then, during one agility class, we had a substitute teacher and he brought string cheese. All of the dogs in class went crazy for this treat. Harley was suddenly perfect. So make sure you find something the dog really wants, I find cheese is a good one, also hot dogs.

Other tricks that I think are helpful:

• Heel – this is my more advanced form of “come” and basically means, not only come back to me, but come back to my left hand side and sit.
• Wait – an abbreviated form of stay, the dog usually stays “ready” for whatever they were going to do but is willing to pause, I also don’t usually release from wait. An example of this is when I’m leaving the house, I will tell the dogs to wait (and not rush out the door) but they are free to do what they want after a moment.
• Front – this is used in Obedience Rally and means that the dog comes to you and sits right in front of you. The dog is supposed to be close enough to you that you can clip a leash on with minimal movement from you. 
  

Now, remember that even if your dog is PERFECT at home, they dog is not going to be perfect right away when you go somewhere new. Good places to practice these things are at local parks (make sure you follow leash laws) and dog parks. And it is not going to be easy. Training a dog to be able to work off leash takes a lot of time and a lot of dedication. It’s never really done. Like horses, any time we interact with our dogs, we are training them something. It’s up to you if you are installing good or naughty habits.

As one more side note, if you are at all interested in dipping your toes into dog training classes (if you have never done one) or dog shows, I recommend looking for an AKC Canine Good Citizen class and/or test. We did this with Guinness and had so much fun. He also has a title from it. I have not been brave enough to do this with Harley because she is a little too excited still.

Celebrating Guinness

I had to take Guinness to a new vet today, and the vet is never one of Guinness’ favorite places to visit. In Seattle, the first time at the vet, he walked in with me all happy and excited, took one look, whirled around and ran smack into the door. Many times has he been dragged to the back rooms. Poor big baby.

I wanted to share some of my favorite moments from Guinness’ four years. I still remember walking into the house in Nevada for the first time and having that little fur ball come up and greet me.

And I’m not going to even apologize for the huge photo post. Because G is adorable.

Take Me Back to the Beach

Wow is it hard to get back to real life after going on vacation! We hadn’t planned on going anywhere for Memorial Day Weekend but the boy came home on Friday and said “Want to go to the beach for the weekend?” His brother is doing a huge drive around the country road trip this summer and happened to be in Florida so we decided to meet up with him in Pensacola.

I’m so glad we did! It was only a five hour drive from Atlanta and the beach was just wonderful! The first day we walked in to a huge LGBT party at one of the dog beaches. (Note, I have no problem with that lifestyle, what you choose to do or who you choose to do in your own bedroom between two consenting parties is none of my business). That was quite fun, actually. Everyone was super nice but they were also very trashed. Kind of reminded me of a big frat party. And they LOVED the dogs. But, hey, who doesn’t?

I will admit though that when we went back the next day, we went to the dog beach on the other end of the island so that we could actually relax…

I think Harley had the most fun out of all of us. She loved the ocean but the waves definitely wore her out more than we were all expecting. We were only at the beach for two hours the first day but she swam those entire two hours. In fact, any time we tried to make her take a break, she sat in the sand just watching the ocean and whining to go back. What a goof.

Also, I love having great food, especially after a long day at the beach. There’s something about the sun and the water that really takes it out of you. The first night we found a bunch of food trucks while walking around the actual town of Pensacola. The second day we ate lunch at the beach where I got to have one of my favorite southern coast meals: coconut shrimp. I’m not even sure why I like it so much. I don’t like coconut. Except when it’s on shrimp apparently.

Our last day ended up being a very short day at the beach. Even though the surf had been up and left us unable to swim the second day, the third day was even worse. We couldn’t really let Harley off the leash at all because all she wanted to do was go out in the water and retrieve trash or seaweed. I was so afraid she’d get swept out. She’s a good swimmer but the lifeguards put up the red flag for a reason Harley!

She did not appreciate that.

It was a quick weekend but so much fun. Take us back please!

Are We There Yet?

Well, the first leg of the trip is done… that was definitely the most difficult  drive I have ever had to do from Seattle to Minnesota and since I went to school in the PNW, I did this drive a lot! First, it was pouring across the whole state, raining in the first few passes, snowing in the last couple and when we reached the ND plains, we were stuck in this horrible wind coming from the south that made driving with the horse trailer not that much fun. But we made it and are enjoying a few days rest in Minnesota before we head the rest of the way.

Harley was a superstar for the entire trip. She just sat right up front with us and slept for the entire 25 hour drive. Guinness.. well, he is not a big fan of the car and he proceeded to tell us this for the first four hours of the drive. Thankfully he finally chilled out though he was clearly not thrilled with us. I totally get it, Guinness, I didn’t really want to be in that car for 25 hours either!

But he’s really enjoying being a MN dog. Despite the cold temps, the wind, and the snow, he had basically decided to sit outside on the deck for the last two days. Harley says she wants to come back in now, thank you very much.

Guinness got  new jolly ball at the Dover Store. I may have gotten a new show jacket too… okay, I did! All I had to do was tell Eric it was a fourth of the cost of the brand new Pikeur jacket I wanted and he handed over the credit card. We also saw this beauty:

And yes, that is orange piping. It also fit me perfectly. Someday. 🙂

 

 

Puppies on the Go

Between all the packing and working and just the general getting ready to move stuff, I have been trying to keep the pups busy.

I bought Harley a bunch of new nylabones from Costco and, to my great surprise, Guinness was quite enchanted with the bacon flavored one. Guinness is not one for bones or chewing of any kind.

They all smelled like plastic to me but Guinness picked that one out and ran off with it. Harley tried to get him interested in the peanut butter one so she could take the bacon one but Guinness wasn’t having any of it.

Every Wednesday has been agility class. They each get to go to half the class and this has been very hard for Harley. She’s gone a bit crazy actually because she doesn’t like being left in the car. As a consequence, the first time we do a run she bolts for the nearest contact equipment. Lovely.

And of course there have been lots of park visits! Marymoor Dog Park is literally the best dog park I have ever seen in my life. The dogs are really going to miss it.

Guinness is not a big swimmer but he is getting better about getting in the water. He still won’t go out further then he thinks he can touch. He does love tunnels though… and mud…

He was pleased with himself. I was not.

We also saw a gorgeous about six month old white long haired shepherd at the park one weekend. His name was Klaus. I want him.

Seriously, I almost stole him.

Harley, on the other hand, loves swimming. She will swim, swim, swim, and swim. All day if you let her. Actually, I usually have to tell her we’re done because she will keep going until she drowns and the water is still a little cold for me to want to jump in after her.

At least I get a really tired dog afterwards! Guinness is only slightly wiped out.

And to dry off, Harley then likes to go roll on her dry dog bed. Or my bed. Or the couch.Thankfully this time she chose her own bed.

And to top it all off, I got to play with a friend’s three month old black lab, Bella(trix). I luv puppies!

ZAP Agility Trial

What an amazing weekend at the Zooming Agility Pups Thanksgiving Trial! I don’t know if I can accurately describe it in one post but I’ll do my best. If you are not interested in a big long post about dog agility, here’s a quick summery:

Harley – 7.5 Q’s (qualifying runs), 7 first place finishes and her first title in Intro Regular!
Guinness – 2 Q’s, 1 Blue Ribbon, 9 other placed finishes

Okay, so now on to the actual post. I want to start off by saying how proud I am of both dogs. They were so well behaved, friendly, and even got compliments from one of the judges. You really can’t beat that!

The trial started very early Friday morning. They were running two rings at a time and I happened to be the first dog on the line in Ring 2 right at 8:00am. So we had to be there by 7:30 for the judge’s briefing and the walk thru. I was worried about it being chilly but luckily the weather wasn’t too bad and when they turned on the overhead heaters in the barn, we were really quite warm.

First run of the day was Chances for Harley. Chances is an interesting class because it’s all about distance work. Any of the obstacles can be in the course but they lay down a line that you can’t cross and you have to send your dog to the obstacles beyond it in the right order. You either Q or you don’t. For the Intro level, it’s pretty easy. In this course, behind the line was a tunnel and a jump but the tunnel was just right behind the line and it shot the dog out to go over the jump perfectly. Harley was just on fire for that run and did everything perfectly and so we got our first Q of the day.

Next was Jumpers and both Harley and Guinness were entered. I was excited for this class because Harley is awesome at Jumpers and I was hoping we might title in this class this weekend. It was not to be, however, because Harley ran around the first jump! She never does that! Ugh. So frustrating.

Guinness did all the jumps and seemed to be doing okay. One thing he and Eric are really trying to work on is his focus in the ring. He has a hard time at trials because he worries about where Harley and I are. For jumpers, he was pretty focused and while he didn’t manage to Q, he did jump everything and placed first in the class.

There was then a long break while we waited for all of the Elite dogs to run their classes. It’s always the biggest class and while it’s definitely fun to watch, it does get a little old. Some of those dogs are amazing though.

Both dogs were entered in Intro Regular 1 and Intro Regular 2 which are the same course only one was run backwards. This is the class everyone things about when they hear about agility. It’s the one with the Dog Walk and the A Frame. I was nervous about this because this would be the first time that Harley would have to do contacts at a trial and I didn’t know how she would handle them. Turns out that she handles them just like she does in class which means, she gets them sometimes and sometimes she flies completely off them. Even though she got a 5-Q in Intro Reg 1 for knocking a jump, I think the judge was a little generous. I’m pretty sure we did not actually hit that contact. She did get a full Q in Intro Reg 2 however, and I was happy with those contacts.

Poor Guinness though. He was so stressed and out of it at that point that he missed every single jump in the class. He did the class and he didn’t run out, so that’s a start but it was not a very good day for him.

Last class for our very tired pups was Touch N Go. This class only has contact equipment, hoops and tunnels. I’ll admit, I was pretty upset with Harley coming out of this class and didn’t even stay to look at results. I was pretty positive that she hadn’t hit her contact on the Dog Walk. And, I kind of goofed off the rest of the course so I knew we weren’t going to make time. But I found out the next morning that not only did she Q, she also won the class. Go figure. Harley is so damn fast.

Again, Guinness was a wreck in this class. The start was super close to a wall and the gate and he did not want to sit or stay. I was worried that Eric was going to get eliminated for man handling him but luckily the judge didn’t say anything. He was better for this class than he was for the Regular classes, but not by much.

By that point, both of the dogs were exhausted. Even though it had only been four runs, they were both mentally on all day. We left the trial around 2 and the slept the rest of the day.

Day 2 was again an early start as we had Jumpers first thing in the day. It had just started snowing when we left the house but things didn’t start turning white until we got to the trial and had, luckily, dragged our stuff inside to set up.

Harley was smoking again in Jumpers but luckily this time she did not run around the first jump. Several people that are in our training class commented that she was running better at the trial than she does in class. I couldn’t agree more and had said the same thing to Eric the first day. She LIKES the trial atmosphere and was just totally on her game every step of the way. I almost felt bad being in the Intro classes because it didn’t look like we belonged there. Another Q and another first place for Harley.

Guinness was much more focused the second day, thankfully. We don’t know if it was just the second day of the trial or that he went in the ring first or something else but he was actually enjoying himself. No Q for him because he missed a jump and the swinging around to come back to it kept him from making time.

Since we had a long break until the next event, Touch N Go, we decided to take the dogs out to the off-leash area and let them play in the snow and let off a bit of steam. They enjoyed that. It was much much colder on Saturday and even the heaters weren’t quite enough to keep us warm. I had on several layers and my long underwear. It was cold!

Harley did not appreciate the long wait in her crate until Touch N Go and let me know it the minute she came off the dog walk by pretty much skipping the whole down ramp. Ugh. I made her school it but it wasn’t much better so we just moved on and finished the course. I need to majorly school and install the “Touch” command in her. It’s something we kind of ignored early in her agility career because just getting her to slow down at all was kind of a miracle.

After that were two really good Intro Regular runs for both Harley and Guinness. Harley managed to get her contacts both times and did a really nice switch out to a second jump for me. She Q’d in both classes and Guinness Q’d in one.

Those two Q’s plus the Q’s in Intro Regular the previous day meant that Harley had titled! The very first title of her agility career. And, sure, it’s just the Intro Regular Title but everyone has to start somewhere, right?

To end the day, both dogs were entered in Novice Tunnelers. It looked like a pretty tough course. I was especially worried about going from tunnel 3 to tunnel 4 because tunnel 3 pointed right to tunnel 11 and I was sure that Harley was going to not want to pull off that tunnel.

Guinness went in first and he was just smoking it. You could see how happy he was and how focused he was on Eric. For being such a big dog, it’s amazing how much he likes going in the tunnels and his big stride really eats up the ground. I won’t hold you in suspense. They got fourth place (in a very large class) and Q’d.

Next, it was Harley’s turn. She hadn’t been holding her stays very well that day so I did the one thing my coaches have told me never to do: I walked backwards while holding my hand out, hoping that I could get enough of a lead out on her. Thankfully this worked and I did not fall on my butt.

This was actually one of Harley’s messier runs of the weekend. She did a couple of spins and was focused on me enough to look back and miss a couple of entrances. When coming out of the fourth tunnel, Harley didn’t realize how much it really curved and since she likes to bank off the side, she actually fell down in the tunnel. She recovered though and zoomed along the rest of the course. Even with all of those inconsistencies, she was so fast that we won the class and Q’d!

Like I said, an absolutely great weekend. There are a lot of things for both dogs to work on. The biggest one for me and Harley are the contacts and the biggest for Guinness is the focusing. At the next trial, we’re going to move Harley up to Novice and keep Guinness at Intro, we’re hoping that maybe if he knows Harley is back in his crate and I’m there to be his leash buddy, he won’t worry so much. Worth a shot.

Anyway, so proud of the pups. They did amazing and we all had so much fun. Can’t wait until next time!

Just Keep Going

It has been a crazy few weeks so I’m sorry for the silence. Besides just being busier than I thought I would be in November, I’ve been feeling completely exhausted all the time. I think I might actually be a bit depressed about the weather and the darkness. I’m not normally affected by that sort of stuff but it’s been a rough few weeks.

On the Dandy front: JLE gave me forced me to take back my irons because we are working on making things very black and white and she wants me to feel fully secure in the saddle. I have been riding four days a week, three of those being lessons and I’m feeling a lot better about working with Dandy. His attitude is showing it’s ugly little head right now but I’m learning to deal with it.

One thing that I’m doing in warm-up is not even giving him a chance to blow off my leg. The first handful of walk-trot and trot-canter transitions get a huge cluck and a smack of the whip right along with the leg aids. It’s been super helpful. I’m getting a lot more “yes, ma’m” then I used to.

We’re also working hard on getting Dandy to understand he needs to go into the left rein. He wants to lean heavily on the right lean and I just couldn’t figure out the timing of my aids because it felt like if I let go with my right, half halted with the left, Dandy would go crashing into the wall. Last Tuesday, JLE had me take up contact with both reins and then grab my saddle pad with my left like it was a side rein. I used the inside rein for flexion, and pushed for the bend with my legs. Finally, I felt the left rein connection. It was glorious. I’m sure the will be more of that tonight.

The pups are both doing well. Guinness gets to come to the barn with me most Sundays as he doesn’t like when there is football and yelling going on in the house. He’s always exhausted after that.

And they are both getting ready for their second agility trial which will be the Friday and Saturday after Thanksgiving. I’m super excited. Both have been doing so so good in class recently. Harley did decide that the A-Frame was a trampoline the other day but she also had some awesome contacts. Hopefully she remembers how to do those next week!