Mimzy Weaves and Teeters

Well, today is all good news. The specialist said that there is nothing wrong with Deets other than the fact that his L2 vertebrae is just a tad funky-shaped in the arch on top, but that it isn't causing him any pain or discomfort and gave him the all-clear to run and compete as normal.

Mimzy is progressing quickly and while working on her jumping on the end of the teeter board and targeting to the bottom she decided that it was just easier to run up the whole thing and do it herself. She's even got down that she has to run all the way to the end of the board and crouch down to hold on, and she did it over and over again and loved it! I will get video soon.

She's also finally progressed to doing all 12 weave poles, and doing them quickly and well. She likes to do them too!

This weekend we are off to northern Arkansas for a bike race/fishing trip on the White River, something all the dogs always enjoy. Pictures soon!

A Day at the Lake

Well, it's been an interesting week. First, the foster puppy we obtained who was supposed to go to her new home Friday was diagnosed with parvo Tuesday night, so the last week has been one big parvo puppy mess. "Sam" went downhill fast on Friday night and has been hospitalized all weekend, and was not expected to make it, but she has! So we haven't been out to train just out of courtesy because we're dealing with parvo in the house.. er... garage.

Wednesday morning I took Deets to see Dr. Reeves here in Tyler to rule out the possibility of his bar knocking being caused by any pain, and Dr. Reeves said that his L1 vertebrae is raised and that I should stop running him immediately and pull him from all competition, we should do an x-ray, and start on chiropractic adjustments. At first I was very upset by this news, but the more I have thought about it and the more I have discussed it with my vet at home and with a friend who is a musculoskeletal specialist in canines I have decided that stopping Deets from running altogether right now is pretty extreme, considering he is not showing any sign of actual pain and he loves his job. I am going to continue to run him at lowered jump heights and go easy on him, and I am going to let him compete in our USDAA trial the third weekend in May, though I pulled him from the CPE trial on May 8/9th. This week Deets and I are going to Dallas to see the specialist and have x-rays done and see what needs to happen. I like Dr. Reeves a lot and I greatly respect his opinion, but I think that stopping Deets from running altogether right now is a little extreme and I trust the opinion of the specialist more... who wouldn't?

So, since we haven't been running this week the dogs and Yater and I went on a day trip to Lake Tyler to have fun. Enjoy the pictures!




Here is Landon being my guard dog... he loves to just sit and watch mom.





























The Catahoulas LOVE to fish! They watch the cork bounce up and down in the water and then try to eat the fish when you pull it up.














Look! We got one!















Deets is in his element.















Me and my little girlfriend.















This was funny, I can't believe Yater got it on film. I'm pretty sure the dogs were plotting against me.

Mimzy and 2X2s

Well, Deets can do everything he needs to be able to do to compete and do well in standard classes, and Landon is doing well on his distance work, so now it is time to focus on Mimzy and get her up-to-speed. Mimzy still has a baby-brain. She's only 18 months and still acts like a little puppy and is still a little unsure of herself. Obviously, she's doing really well with jumpers and has pretty good distance work, but we still really need to get it in gear and get out contacts and our teeter totter and our weaves. We have been working steadily with the 2X2 weaves at home, but she is not as mature or fast-learning as Deets, and I haven't had as much time to work with her as I did when I was committed to 2X2s with Deets, which is my own fault. However, in a fairly short amount of time she has gotten up to doing 6 poles.

As you can see, she's still a little unsure of her footing, but she is driving foreword fairly well and understands her entries and what her job is. Once we can put two sets of 6 together and get her to twelve, I will go back and do some exercises that Susan Garrett shows in her dvd to show the dog how to properly navigate through the weave poles. It is amusing to me that Mimzy will be weaving before she has contacts or even the teeter totter.

We've been clicker training the teeter totter and she's getting the idea, but we still have some steps to go through before she can do the whole thing together, and because she's a little fearful it may take a while. She is entered in standard level 1 at a CPE trial the second weekend of May, where she will not have to teeter or weave, but I am concerned about her making her contacts on the dog walk and A-frame. I need to get her going on her contacts, but since lovely big Deets broke my contact trainer, I can only work when we get out to CM Streak.

Cross-behinds

I have really been working lately on getting to be a better handler, with better distance work and more fluid and directive commands. With the help of my trainer, Terry, I feel I've made a big improvement in the last several months. My worst maneuver, by far, is the cross behind. I've been working hard at this with all three dogs and with myself, even practicing the maneuver without the dogs. This week I finally felt like I really got the feel of the move itself, mostly with finally understanding that the cross behind occurs behind the dog, not behind the obstacle. For those of you who don't know what a cross-behind is, it's a maneuver where you send the dog slightly ahead of you and cross behind the dog to change directions. Such as in the picture above, Mimzy was on my right side, but I sent her ahead slightly and crossed behind her to put her on my left. We really started to get it while practicing a masters level jumpers course from the DAWG agility trial in McKinney this last weekend.



Deets' weaves are really coming along and looking great. He's got a great little duck paddle going through them. Mimzy and I are still working steadily on 2X2s and she's down to 4 straight poles, ready to add another 2. Her contacts are coming along slowly, and I'm honestly getting frustrated with how long it's taking her to catch on. Deets' contacts look good but need a little polishing as I think I've rushed him a bit, but he generally gets the idea to go to the bottom and stop. Deets and Mimzy are really coming along, and all are surprising me. Landon who is really awful at cross-behinds even got them down today. Mimzy is forever thrilling me and I'm convinced that as she matures and starts to really get this down she will just be a blast. I'm astounded at how fast Deets has progressed. The second weekend in May Deets will compete in Standards for the first time, and Mimzy will be in jumpers. The weekend after that is a USDAA trial here in town and Deets and Landon will be in standards, jumpers (Landon in P2) and gamblers. Mimzy will be in jumpers. I've decided to move Deets down to Performance in USDAA so that he can jump 22 instead of 26, because he's such a big, thick dog that I don't think it's fair to ask him to jump over his own shoulder height by that much. Mimzy, on the other hand, will be jumping 26" even though she is only 23" tall, simply because she's so lean and athletic.

USDAA Trial 4/11/10

We went to the USDAA trial put on by Dallas Agility Working Group this last weekend and brought home lots of ribbons. Deets competed in Starters Jumpers and although he did really well, he took out a bar and went off course. Still had fun though! And the off course really was my fault, I stopped and faced the jump rather than turning and continuing to move. Woops, I'm not perfect either!

Landon competed in Gamblers, Standard, and Jumpers all on Sunday. Gamblers wasn't so great because we had to do the teeter totter at a distance and he bailed on me. He got his first standard leg, though, and did the teeter totter albeit slowly. He also got his last leg for P1 jumpers and another blue ribbon, which makes him three for three.

Jumpers with Weaves

Well, today all the dogs got worked again. My lovely boyfriend went with me and took the video camera, so I have a lot of footage of what we worked on today. Through the week, I've been working with Landon on getting the movement for cross behinds, which in case you don't know what that is it's when you send the dog ahead of you for an obstacle and you switch sides behind them. Our practice with it showed when we worked a jumpers course from the AKC Nationals this year.



Deets and I have been working on our 2X2 weaves, and now at day number 8 and less than an hour of combined training, Deets can get all twelve weaves with some amazing entries.


He is also doing well on his contacts, and does great cross-behinds... so he can do this very difficult jumpers course as well. He's pretty darn slow in the video because he was so tired at this point already, he was ready to quit. He got almost through the whole thing without knocking bars, but took down a pole on the double at the very end. He's going to be my darn little bar knocker...







Mimzy is still coming along steadily with learning the teeter totter game. Look how cute she is when she pushed it down!