Reading Materials

I know that I was doing a monthly post where I would do a review on a dog and great dane related book that I had read.  I have a feeling that it's going to be a little while before I get back on that train again, but I thought I would do a little post about what I'm currently reading and see what others are also currently reading.

I'm kind of juggling reading materials in three different areas.  There's the work related area where I'm trying to get caught up in background information.  Basically reading the papers and books that get cited a lot and that people in the field feel are the most relevant.  My basic interest is animal behavior.  The specific area that I'm doing my reading on is stereotypic behavior.  It's something that I've found interesting for a while, but now that I'm actually doing some reading up on it, I'm even more interested than before!  What kind of behaviors are people seeing in various animals?  Do we know what triggers it?  Do we know why it starts or stops?  Is it good or bad?  What are the physiological and neurological factors driving this behavior?  What has been done to alleviate it and/or prevent it?  It's some really interesting stuff!

My second category of reading material is dog related.  This a really broad category and is anything from sport specific, to breed specific, to conformation, to movement, to just stories about dogs.  I'm currently just starting "Peak Performance," but I'll be switching gears a little in a couple of days and taking on another book.  As I rotate through my dog related books I feel that it keeps me mentally invested in the things that I do with my dogs and why I do it.  It keeps me thinking (when I'm not having my moments of burn out more recently) about what I want to continue to do with them.  Areas where I want my training to improve.  Different methods to train the same task or behavior.  I really like to rotate my reading material in this area because it basically keeps me thinking.  I'm always picking up little golden nuggets from one area that will help in others.  There's so much exciting stuff out there that it's no wonder I have a giant stack of unread books sitting on my desk just waiting to be opened!

The third category is just my "pleasure" reading category.  While the other two areas are also enjoyable, when I'm reading those materials, I want to be more mentally engaged in what I'm reading.  For those books I want to be really mentally present and trying to take in, retain, and apply what I'm reading.  My pleasure reading category are the books that allow me to sort of check out.  I get to read them simply for the pleasure of reading them.  This is also the area that generally falls by the way side when I'm more backed up with reading in the other categories.  I'm currently reading "A Dance With Dragons."  This is the most recent book in the Game of Thrones series.  It's taken me a while to get around to reading this book, though we got it right when it came out.  I am happy to say that I'm not a bandwagon Martin follower.  I was reading these books back before the TV series brought them to the attention of the mainstream world.

So that's my current reading material.  What are you reading?

Hello World!

Ouch!  Have meant to get on here many time, but it's the same ole story.  Too much going on and not enough motivation to actually write anything.  I've been in a bit of a slump with regards to training the dogs and getting myself to actually work with them on the variety of things that we need to work on has been trying.  I've been feeling incredibly unmotivated and I don't like it.  I've been keeping up on their physical exercise, so no fatties here!;0)  Business at work has also caused my schedule to jump all over the place as well.  Like I said, same story, different day.  However, I'm going to make a commitment to get back on here at least once a week.  I don't want to set the bar too high and burn myself out before I even get back into the swing of things, so we're starting with lowered expectations.

I don't even know where to fill things in.  Currently all three dogs are in their summer time off.  We won't be doing any competitions again until the fall.  I'm actually pretty happy about this.  I was getting a bit burnt out.  I have more weekends free and I feel like I'm getting more stuff done around the house (because I am) and seeing more of friends (because I am), which are all good things.  I'll still be showing Elizabeth's girl Ruby in conformation, so it's not like I'm disappearing completely, I just won't have my own dogs to juggle, which is immensely easier.

I believe our last big show that we did was the Great Dane Club of Northern California's fabulous specialty weekend!  I still absolutely love that show, love the trip, and love getting to see everyone.  They also pulled off an awesome addition to their fabulous show this year and had dual obedience and rally trials!  Totally awesome!  Naturally, I entered Heffner and Bess in everything.  Without going into too much detail (and because it's been long enough now that my mind is a little foggy on the exact details), Heffner ended up doing way better than I expected and Bess did way worse than I expected.  While Heffner still had his moments of distraction in the ring, I was incredibly pleased and impressed with how well he did even as things were heating up!  Bess, well, she had a rather stressful day and admittedly I didn't handle it very well.  I ended up scratching her from the second trial all together.  She ran out of the ring during her Graduate Novice run and completely stopped moving during her Rally Advanced run.  Not great.  In all, she only qualified in Rally Excellent.  Heffner earned to qualifying legs in Beginner Novice and one Rally Excellent leg!  He would have had a second Excellent leg except that I screwed up one of the new stations TWICE!  Ouch!  In conformation I got to take Bess' sire into the ring in the veterans class.  On Saturday he took best veteran in show!!

After the show itself was over, we all (Ruthie came along as well for Monday's activities) headed down to San Jose to stay with my friend Megan, who was gracious enough to let us stay in her house!  And the reason we were down that way was to go to a Denise Fenzi obedience seminar!!  I was able to get three working spots so that all three dogs could get worked!!  It was awesome!!  She had some good ideas of stuff for us to work on and I was pleased with what advice she had.  A lot of what she mentioned with Bess totally made sense.  In a nut shell, I'm often way too much for Bess when I'm praising and verbally rewarding her.  It's basically causing her to shut down a bit.  There's a whole lot more, naturally, but I don't want this post to get too long.

And that pretty much leads us up to now.  Just this past Tuesday Bess got spayed and also got a gastropexy.  She is recovering beautifully, though the inactivity is starting to wear on her and therefore me. 

All in all, things are good, I just need to get my rear in gear on a few fronts and get out of this funk that I've been in.  Hopefully my posts will become more frequent than just once a week, but we'll see how things go.  I really look forward to trying to catch back up on everyone's blogs and see what's going on.  And the new Blogger format is creeping me out a bit.  I don't do with change that isn't mediated by me!!!lol

Wow

So that's the longest that I've ever gone without blogging! Holy cow! Lots of the usual. Busy with work and busy with the dogs. I ended up getting offered the new position that I was applying for. And my boss has counter offered. I'm just waiting for my official offer letters to give my final decision.

Gad zukes! The biggest problem with going this long without blogging is that there's way too much to catch up on to fit it adequately into one post. And since my memory can suck at times, I'd probably be pretty sketchy at trying to retell it. I'll do a brief over view.

I mentioned that Bess got her Beginner Novice title! She still didn't sit on the one and only halt in the heeling pattern. And her sit was a bit dysfunctional throughout, though she managed to totally nail the halts on the figure eight. Go figure, since I never throw in the halts when I'm practicing. I just reward for staying with me and for the speed changes. She also got another RAE leg that same weekend. Her performance in rally was pretty poor. Obedience was definitely much better. And then I did this crazy thing where I stopped coaxing her through part of the Advanced run and put my hand on my stomach like I do for our obedience heeling patterns. And she magically got better. I'm not saying it was great, but it was much improved. Maybe there's light at the end of the tunnel!

I also audited a Dee Dee Anderson obedience seminar. It was great! A lot of information packed into two days. Lots to think about and work with.

And then this past weekend I had the danes entered in an AKC agility trial. I apparently did some misrecording of where Bess had what legs. I thought she was in Excellent JWW but it turns out she was one run short. The flip side of that is that she actually qualified in Open Standard back at the beginning of February and she is now in Excellent Standard. Well, this past Saturday after two crazy runs in FAST and Standard (due to too much rain all week, the dogs didn't get a lot of exercise and an under exercised Bess is not such a great thing), she stuck with me and nailed her Open JWW run for that final leg!! Heffner was fabulous in both of his runs that day, but we had little bobbles that cost us the runs. However, he was really enjoying himself out there and I can honestly say that I had more fun running both dogs that day than I've had in a quite a while!!

Technically I had the dogs entered again on Sunday, but that wasn't to be. Ruthie seems to be a little constipated and she also periodically goes through these phases where she gets ticked off in her crate at night and will scream at random hours for no reason that I can figure out. Saturday night was a particularly bad night and she was sounding off at least once an hour. I don't think that I got more than a half hour of "sleep" at a time all night. When my alarm went off the next morning I got up and was going to see if some coffee would help get me through. Unfortunately that just wasn't going to be enough. I was not functioning really at all. There was no way that I could memorize courses let alone run them. And operating on less than all my faculties while trying to maneuver my very large reactive dog around an agility trial venue is not the smartest thing to attempt. So I drove up the fairgrounds to pack up my crates and headed home to try and catch up on some sleep. As soon as I hit the bed, Ruthie started screaming in her crate again. I'm not going to lie, I was not terribly fond of her at that point. Because I was seriously sleep deprived and about to lose my mind and possibly go all homicidal on her screeching butt, I put the bark collar on her and peace thankfully reined in the house.

My wonky sleep schedule over the weekend left me feeling almost hung over on Monday. And I've got a relatively calm but long day at work ahead of me tomorrow. Fingers crossed that all involved are feeling cooperative tomorrow. My sister also went into early labor today and I'm kind of on pins and needles waiting to get the call to head down to the hospital. So lots of exciting things going on!!

I hope that my absence hasn't upset anyone!! And hopefully I'll be back to blogging on a more regular basis. :0)

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!