Thunderstorm

We had a thunderstorm late yesterday afternoon.  Max only barked a couple of times.  He came right over to me when he heard the thunder so I could do t-touch on his ears.  I put the thunder shirt on him while we ate supper.  I am so thrilled with how he has progressed and from being a skeptic I have turned into a believer of the bach flower remedies.

We went to Pawlooza in London yesterday.  It was wild and crazy.  Rylie "almost" tried dock diving.  He was so excited but when he ran to the end of the dock (a couple feet high - not regulation) he stopped and said "Are you nuts"?  I was going to let Max try lure coursing but they had stopped running by the time we got back to the course.  I did talk to a chiropractor who works out of London so I was pretty excited about that.  All in all it was a great day and the dogs had fun.  When I was finished talking to the chiropractor Neil said to me "You need to come to the booth two doors down" - you have to know him - to encourage me to stay at an event with lots of people one second longer than absolutely necessary is totally out of character.  Anyway, I was intrigued so off we trotted.  I met a beautiful 9 month old try-colour girl :-).  I don't even remember what they were selling at the booth lol.

Tomorrow night the dogs and I head off for three days of agility handling camp.  I'm excited and nervous.

You know you're old when........

The fur boys and I are on our own this weekend.  Engineering Dad and Engineering Kid have gone on a golf trip.  Last night I settled down to watch my newest video Unleashing Your Dog's Potential and realized I had no idea what settings to push on the remote to get it to play on our new fangled system.  Normally the TV is on sports so it's not like I "get" to use it much.  To tell the truth I didn't even try - that's what computers are for right?

This morning we walked down to the farmer's market.  Both dogs walked really nicely even though the brain suckers (aka squirrels) tried to steal Max's brain he fought back and I didn't have to put on the brain retainer (aka gentle leader).

Next on the agenda is bath and then we are having a celebration for a classmate and her dog who came second at Nationals last weekend!  Awesomeness!

Bad Aura?

I seem to have a really bad bird aura lately.  A couple of weeks ago I was walking the dogs in the morning.  I saw this bump in the sidewalk.  It was a baby bird.  Not quite a hatchling but certainly not a fledgling.  The poor thing was just sitting there shaking.  I couldn't see a nest although I'm sure it fell or was pushed out of a nest in the tree.  There certainly wasn't a nest that I could reach.  Now I know you aren't supposed to try and put fledglings back in the nest but I'm not so sure what you should do in this situation.  I suppose it's natural selection.  My dogs wanted to say hello in the worst way but I figured the last thing this poor little guy needed was to be traumatized by monster dogs so we just walked on and left the poor guy sitting in the middle of the sidewalk.

I don't know if my lack of action brought me bad bird karma but last week when we got to agility class I spotted a dead bird stuck in the wire fencing.  I very gently disposed of it before the dogs noticed it.  Last night I was a bit early for class and was standing outside the field watching my trainer work with her two dogs.  Out of the corner of my eye I saw a flutter and then this little bird kind of skimmed the grass in front of me and did a face plant right in front of my feet. It's wings fluttered a couple of times and then it stopped moving.  I have NO idea where it came from - there were no trees for it to fall out of close by.  It seemed to be walking/running rather than flying but there was no doubt it was dead.  I think it may have had a broken neck but since the poor thing died right in front of me it was still warm so maybe the neck would be floppy anyway?

I just want to put it out there to whoever is in charge of bird karma that I actually like birds quite a lot and if I felt my intervention would have helped the first baby bird at all I would have picked it up.

I was going to google what it means to have birds dropping dead around you but I decided it can't be good and it might be one of those things I'd rather not know.

Yoda?

We took the dogs for a swim today.  They love to swim and it's been so hot that they haven't had much exercise lately.  I think Rylie enjoyed himself.

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.