What do you think

In an attempt to both save money and be more environmentally friendly I purchased these for my dryer.

Shortly after, Engineering Guy came up from the laundry room carrying one and asked why the dog toys were in the dryer?  Apparently those who live in this house think I only buy things for the dogs!

Max seems to be doing better with thunderstorms.  I still have to be awake with him but at least he has stopped barking continuously and is down to just random barks.  During the second storm last night it was enough that I put on his thunder shirt and let him on our bed.  I didn't have to be massaging him so I'd say we are seeing progress.

Yay for Contacts

I am training Max and Rylie differently on contacts.  Max has running contacts.  Rylie is learning two on two off contacts (his front feet are on the ground while his hind feet stay on the contact and he touches his nose to the ground until I release him).  We are training this way on the advice of my trainer and it's mostly due to the speed of the dogs.  I need Rylie to stop at the bottom so I have a hope of keeping up to him.  Max will sometimes miss his contact in a trial and I still have to be pretty close to him to make sure he drives all the way down but all in all they were pretty easy to train.

We have been working forever it seems like on Rylie's.  It took him a long time to get decent nose touches and then he had a hard time stopping at the bottom.  Last week he did the entire A frame and managed to stay on it.  This week we added the dogwalk and he did both in sequence.  Yay!  I'm sure this will be a work in progress but I think the next trial he will be ready for an event with contacts.  Which is good because right now he can only do jumpers and he isn't pleased to go to a trial and only get to do one run in.

He had a grand time in class tonight because he got to do all of his favourite things (we were sequencing and I honestly think everything is his favourite )

Fireworks, Thunder, and Agility

After three nights the fireworks are getting a bit old.  Max has been doing really well though.  I used the rescue remedy Friday night but only the thundershirt and massage yesterday - even during the thunderstorm and he was fine.  The only time we had any real barking was when the fireworks were set off after we were all in bed.  We had to bring Max to bed with us both Friday night and last night but a few weeks ago even that wouldn't have helped.  Rylie woke up and vomited at 4 a.m. this morning.  No idea why - it was only the once and he seemed fine immediately after.  He didn't even want to eat grass when I took him outside.  Last summer that was always one of my signs that his tummy was still upset.  He was fine all day today so hopefully whatever it was has passed.

We went to an agility trial for just a couple of runs on Friday.  The best thing I can say about it is that Rylie got his second and last measurement and we no longer have to be places first thing in the morning to get him measured.

Max ran first and his run wasn't bad actually.  He took a few off course jumps but we are new at the masters level and both have a lot to learn so I was happy.  He was pokey at the start but got in a groove pretty quick.

Rylie had to wait a long time after they set his course.  Since he was the first dog I made sure we were ready - but nobody else was!  I guess they lost power so couldn't print out the running order and do whatever else they needed to do.  Rylie's run started out fine and then I realized at the last second that the tire jump was too high - in truth this probably upset my focus more than Rylie but it meant I didn't get where I needed to be and then he saw Neil and Max watching and ran over in their general direction.  We did get to start again because of the tire but I never got his focus back so I just picked him up and left the course when he decided to visit with all the gate stewards.  He is usually very focused so this surprised me but he also isn't used to seeing Neil and Max watching him.