Quick Check In

I realized that I hadn't posted anything in over a week and thought that I should do a bit of an update. Things have just been so busy and I've had a few different things going. First and foremost, Bess got her third and final qualifying leg for her Beginner Novice title this past Friday down in Albany, OR!! The next day she also managed to get RAE leg #7. I have more to say about all of that, but I still have much to get done tonight.

Part of the reason I've been preoccupied is that I'm applying for a new position at the same campus that I work at. Without going into too much detail, my primary responsibility would be training animals. Pretty cool! With the application for this position I realized that I haven't done a serious revamping of my resume in about eight years. And writing a cover letter actually took two nights to get through. I already have an interview on Monday!

I've also developed this strange fascination with trying to get an adequate amount of sleep lately. I've been going on a rough max of five hours of sleep a night on week nights and sometimes less on the weekends, depending on what I've got going on. I discovered that getting to bed a little bit earlier and "sleeping in," i.e. not getting up early to work the dogs on the week days, has been decidedly delicious!:0)

I've also been taking some fun new exercise classes with some of my coworkers and it's been a blast! Tends to tweak my evening schedule with the dogs a fair bit, but it's been overall worth it.

So things are good here and I will hopefully be getting around to a more detailed post on the previous weekend with Bess in a day or two! I hope everyone is doing well despite a variety of not so good news that I've been getting caught up on. Two more days and then it's the weekend!

Movie Monday

I finally did it!! I made a video blog!! I opted to do it in just one shot, which wasn't all that hard considering I didn't go into it with a clear goal of what I wanted to talk about. I also decided not to edit it. So here it is and hopefully it doesn't seem too dorky. ;0)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNgvcZmMQr0

Happy Friday!

I'm so happy it's Friday! I'm currently waiting for the rain to stop long enough that I can hopefully take the big dogs out for a run. I'll be down in Salem this weekend for a rally obedience seminar/workshop that is going to go over the new AKC rules that roll out in April. I decided not to do a working spot because my focus is on what exactly is wanted with the new exercises and what exactly is meant by the new rule changes. Specifically I want clarification on what is considered luring and how points will be deducted for it. I've heard a lot of people lately talking about the new exercises, but I think some of the general rule changes have been over looked, such as the deductions for luring in the ring. I feel pretty good about my signals for the dogs in the ring, but I want to make sure that what I'm doing isn't considered luring or using an air cookie. We had enough struggles lately that I don't need to add point deductions for things that I wasn't even aware I was doing!

The down side of a weekend spent without a dog in a working spot is that all three dogs will get left at home. Unfortunately I also won't be getting home until it's already dark, which rules out taking them on a hike to release their pent up energy. I predict that Heffner is going to find something to shred, Bess is going to be doing a lot of spinning in the downstairs living room, and Ruthie is going to poop in her crate.;0)

And since it's also been a relatively low key week, I don't really have anything else to report on. Here are the break downs for the Idita Walk and the Pedometer Challenge:

Iditawalk minutes so far: 1,144, so we have technically finished the Idita Walk, but we're going for 2,500 minutes!

Pedometer challenge daily totals:

Feb. 12 - 8,711
Feb. 13 - 27,184
Feb. 14 - 25,811
Feb. 15 - 25,389
Feb. 16 - 20,704

Happy weekend everyone!!

Training Thursday

I actually got a video put together!! I combined the "extreme" hand touch trick and the catching treats from mouth trick into one video. Slowly but surely all three dogs were building in enthusiasm for jumping to touch my hand. With further practice I'm pretty confident that I could continue to build their enthusiasm for it.

The catching the treat from my mouth part was pretty hilarious. The first time that I tried it I got a variety of responses from the dogs. Bess tried to hop up and get it from my mouth. Heffner's initial timing was off and he started snapping at just the air. And poor Ruthie. She started to develop a complex that I was just spitting things at her and she started to actually flinch. She never got to the point where I could get her to look up and try to catch the treat before it hit the ground.

Here's the video:




The next trick of the week is going to be teaching your dog to back up away from you. Shoot for whatever distance you want to. Bess already offers this at times, so I'm going to shoot high and say I want her to back up the length of the upstairs hallway. Heffner doesn't offer this already, so I'm going to shoot for getting him to take at least three steps backwards away from me. And I haven't even taught Ruthie to back up yet. So I'm going to be conservative with her and say that I want her to get to a point where she's backing up a step away from me. Good luck!

Movie Monday

I've got a few videos to get caught up on, but before I get into that, I am finally getting ready to actually do the video blog that I mentioned previously as a supposed monthly goal. For reals this time! Before I get into dorking around with that, I was wondering if anyone out there reading this blog had any questions that they would like me to answer in the vlog? If you've got a question, something that you want me to explain about my dogs, or an idea, shoot them my way!!

Now for the videos. I've got some agility videos and some Beginner Novice videos for Bess that I haven't gotten around to posting as of yet. In each of these cases, Kennedy has been gracious enough to video us! Now lets see if I can get these in order.

Here is Bess' first BN leg after a very loooooong day at the expo center:





Bess' BN leg #2:







Bess' JWW and Standard runs from February 4th:






Dorking around in FAST:





And finally the big boy in Standard:






Phew! I feel better having gotten all of that caught up! And I even managed to get a training video put together for Thursday!! Happy Monday everyone!

Weekend Wrap Up

We had a nice mellow weekend at home this time around. I meant to get up early Saturday morning and take the big dogs up to the mountain so that I could do some cross country skiing and they could burn off some energy, but that didn't happen. My alarm went off and my skating by with the bare minimum of sleep for the past few weeks over rode. I reset the alarm and took the big dogs for a long hike instead. It's really quite nice to spend an hour round trip in the car versus three plus if I were to go up to the mountain. It's hard to beat!

We also ended up having a visitor on Saturday night! Bora came to spend the night! Since the big dogs got plenty of exercise that morning, Adam and I took Bora and Ruthie out to play in the soccer fields near our house. I attempted to get some pictures of them in action, but none of the pictures really turned out except for the one above. I thought it was pretty cute! I did manage to nab a couple of videos as well. As it turns out, any videos that we take on our newer camera crash my laptop when I try to edit them. Not cool! So I just had to upload them as is.







The second one is definitely the funnier of the two!

And since I didn't do my little Idita Walk and Pedometer Challenge update this past Friday, I'll get to it now. Anyone else joining in??

Idita Walk minutes so far: 908 minutes

Pedometer Challenge daily totals:

Feb. 3 - 9,930 steps
Feb. 4 - 24,246
Feb. 5 - 7,906
Feb. 6 - 24,231
Feb. 7 - 15,771
Feb. 8 - 26,079
Feb. 9 - 12,221
Feb. 10 - 10,678
Feb. 11 - 23,793

I hope everyone had a great weekend!!

Shout Out!

You've heard me mention her serious collar making skills before, but I wanted to give another shout out to my friend Kennedy of Kennedy's Kustom Kollar Kreations!! I don't even know how many of her collars we have right now, but we have quite a few including the seriously awesome, custom Backstreet Boys ones that she did for us just a few months ago. She's got some great fabric options. She does amazing custom work. And she can honestly come up with some pretty amazing stuff even when her customer isn't all that helpful in the ideas department (**cough**ME**cough**).

To put it lightly, she has not had the most stellar start to 2012. I would really love it if we could all show her some love, give her some encouragement, and help make this venture a really positive point for her. I pretty regularly put orders in with her and just put in one for a St. Patrick's day collar for Ruthie (The Midget isn't yet fully outfitted for all of the holidays). And really, who DOESN'T need another collar???