Sweating to Agility

I took Romeo out to the agility field this afternoon. Of course, stupid me, I didn't check what the weather was like before packing up the car. I knew it was hot, but the weather has been so strange lately with frost warnings at night and crazy wind, that I never thought much of it.

MISTAKE!

It is about 28C (84F) out there. Sure, that may not be much to some of you crazy Southerners. But for us Saskatchewanians, it is HOT! Freakin' hot, to be precise. Shouldn't complain, really, we are finally getting some normal summer weather (a big improvement from snow in the early parts of May). But you know me, I will complain anyways. HOT!

Anyways, Romeo had a good time at the agility field. We worked on some contacts and played around in the tunnels. He isn't super keen on tunnels, not like a lot of dogs seem to be, so I am working on building some tunnel value. Of course, on a hot day like today, tennis balls mean more running and more hot Sheltie, so Romeo prefers food rewards in these situations. And food rewards mean I need to do more running to get to whereever Romeo is that needs to be rewarded.

I was told at our last agility class on Wednesday that I should be aiming for competition with Romeo for this fall. There is apparently a CKC trial in September that one of my instructors is judging, and she thinks we should be ready for that one. I've put in my order for a CKC agility rule book (darned CKC, they don't post their rules public online like most places do ... stick you with charges for buying the rules before you can play) and need to start reading up on what exactly is expected of us in a CKC trial. I don't know anything about the different games or levels or anything like that. If someone knows of a good website that outlines the rules of different agility organizations, that would be great! I would be particularly interested in a site that compares CKC to AAC to NADAC. Break it down nice and simple for me!

Here are a couple of fun shots I got this afternoon. Romeo was pokey because of the weather (hard to run fast when you are nearly tripping over your tongue), so that was helpful in that I got some pictures that were actually in focus!




Here is one hot dog after about 45 minutes of working.

"So hot even my shadow is panting!"

I Love Dollarama!

Really, truly I do!

I am taking the plunge and starting up my own Rally-O classes this summer (June 6th, to be precise), so have been running around gathering supplies for the past while. Got the CARO signs all printed and laminated, have my classes set up, a location, and all the important stuff. I've been trying to figure out the easiest and cheapest way to make sign holders that won't blow over in the wind, so in a last ditch effort decided to wander the aisles of Dollarama to see what jumped out at me.

After one trip I have all I need for Rally-O classes ... all for under $25!!

8 pylons
2 metal dog dishes
a folder to hold all the signs
the riggings for my home-made bar jump
50 plastic clothes pins
and 36 "Rally-O sign holders"



The sign holders are actually panels of small decorative garden fence. They are about 8 inches high and shove into the ground, intended for making frilly little borders around your flower gardens. But they pop apart easily and are just the right height to hold an 8.5 x 11 " piece of paper. Together with the plastic clothes pins, I have compact, light weight sign holders that poke right into the ground so won't blow over in the crazy prairie winds that we have!


I have weave poles (electric fence poles) that will work well for the Excellent level class, and am arranging to borrow a set of broad jumps from a friend. I think I might even be able to wrangle a tunnel for a couple of classes as well!

I'm quite surprised in the number of people I have signed up for classes. So far, enough for two Beginner classes, one Novice class, and one Advanced/Excellent class. Very exciting!

I'm really eager to get started ... so are the boys!

Dogster: Dog Tip of the Day Blog

This week I am being featured as a guest author on Dogster's Daily Dog Tip Blog!

It is a daily blog featuring short, informative tips on dog care, health, nutrition, training, etc. They have invited a number of experts in various areas of the dog world to submit tips, and I am honored to be counted among those number!

You can subscribe to the Daily Dog Tip and receive some fabulous tidbits in your e-mail inbox each day.

Sheltie Herding

Yesterday I took Romeo out herding again. We were invited out by a fellow Sheltie owner, and I was eager for the opportunity to see a more practiced Sheltie (and handler) do their stuff.

Jill and Pilgrim are a great pair, and Pilgrim's enthusiasm is infectious! It was great to watch them work, and even though Jill insisted that Pilgrim was sloppy, I was impressed. I see now, comparing how Pilgrim works compared to where Romeo is, exactly what I need to work on. And lucky for me, I think I can do some of that without sheep. Hopefully I will get around to it before our next adventure out to Dog Tale Ranch.

Here are a couple of pictures of the charming Pilgrim at work ...




As always, Arlette (owner of Dog Tale Ranch) was a joy to work with. Her passion for herding, sheep, sheep dogs and ranching is apparent in everything she does. And she has unending patience to deal with clueless people like me!

Romeo had a blast, of course. He hasn't quite figured out the finer points yet, but he sure understands that he can make those sheep move (and if he makes them move all in different directions then he gets to tear about after them to bring them back together again ... sigh). We worked on setting him up so that the sheep were between him and me, so that he can move up to bring the sheep to me. The tricky bit is that Romeo is so keenly focused on me, that while he is thrilled about the sheep, he still has a tendency to swing around towards me instead of towards the sheep. I'm considering velco and tennis balls on the sheep's backs.

We worked a little bit on driving the sheep, and he really liked that. It allows him to be closer to me, relatively, yet still working the sheep. When he is pushing them away from me, he gets to be between me and the sheep, so all of his focus is on the sheep and he was more responsive to my cues to speed up or slow down.



Arlette is playing host to John Carter for a couple of months this summer. John is a very experienced shepherd, trainer, and judge. And, of course, he was out to watch me flounder around with Romeo. It's a little nerve wracking knowing that I am probably doing everything wrong and the many other experienced people watching are likely rolling their eyes and groaning under their breath. At least, that is what I imagined, though it is probably a vast exaggeration.

On the ride home, Jill mentioned that John had commented on Romeo while we were out of ear shot. Said that Romeo had great power and interest in the sheep. So that leads me to believe that it isn't a lost cause, and as long as I can get my head in the right direction (and my body following along!), we might be able to have a bit of fun with this!

Urban Tracking

About a month ago I participated in a tracking seminar held locally. There was a bit of discussion about "urban tracking", and I found out that that is what Gio has been doing all along! I was under the impression that urban tracking was all about tracking on concrete in busy city centers. Apparently, the CKC version of urban tracking only involves 1/3 of the track on "non-vegetative" cover. The idea is that the track is laid in a busy public area. I have been training Gio a lot in school yards or sports feilds since the beginning, and that is the situation he would be in in the urban tracking test.

We went out this morning to the school ground behind my house to do a couple more tracks. Three tracks in total, two shorter ones with one 90 degree turn each, and one longer track with 2 90 degree turns.

I also tried to video tape Gio's third track. Damn camera quit taping around the second corner, though, and I didn't realize it until we were on the home stretch. Gio got a little lost at the second corner and it took some encouragement and prompting to get him to keep working it. He got it eventually, though.

Puppies, Seizures and Hockey

This afternoon I had plans to go squeeze puppies. Little black and white fuzzy sausages that have just barely opened their eyes.

But Gio changed those plans for me last night when he had another seizure, possibly two. I know the one at about 5:30am was a seizure, it was his typical grand mal. But I'm not sure exactly what was going on 2 hours earlier at 3:30am. It was windy last night, and the house creaks a lot in the wind, so at first I thought he was just reacting to odd noises around or outside the house. Gio woke me up at about 3:30am growling his "I mean business" growl. I have only ever heard that growl twice before in his life, both times he was protecting me against some perceived threat. It is very distinctive from his play growl or his "I want food" growl. But none the less, he was laying on my bed this morning growling at the bedroom door. I assumed he had just heard something blowing around outside, so calmed him down and told him to go back to sleep, which he did after a couple of minutes.

I never thought anything of it until 2 hours later when he woke me with the beginnings of a grand mal seizure. After that, I began to wonder if the growling wasn't some sort of psychomotor seizure. Psychomotor seizures can manifest themselves in a number of ways, often frantic running without seeing what they are running into, or "fly snapping" behavior. I have heard tell that psychomotor seizures can sometimes manifest themselves in sudden aggression, and with Gio being the very non-aggressive dog that he is (to a fault), the "I mean business" growl is as close as I have seen to aggression with him. The kicker is that he was somewhat responsive during the growling session. From speaking to other people with experience with psychomotor seizures in their dogs, it doesn't sound as if the dogs are ever responsive during the seizures. So that one is still a mystery. A theory has been proposed to me that maybe he was just a little more on-edge because he could feel the seizure coming, so reacted with a growl to normal outside wind noises. That makes a bit of sense, at least.

Either way, there was a seizure this morning and with Gio's recent trend of having clusters of seizures, I thought it best to stay close to home today in case he had another attack. So no puppy squeazing for me this week. Hopefully I will be able to make it out for some puppy breath face time next Sunday.

This evening I did leave Gio for a short while to take Romeo to his scheduled therapy dog visit at Saskatoon City Hospital. Unfortunately, he was competing with the hockey game that was on at the time, so he got very little attention. The nurses do love to see him, though, and we always spend some time with them.

The Shelties on Facebook!

I've held out creating a Facebook page for quite a long time. Mostly out of spite, really. Well, I have finally broken down and joined the masses. You can now follow Life is Better With Sheltie Hair on Facebook!

Sheltie Hair's Profile

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