First place!

Last weekend (July 23-25th) was the Reliant Dog show, and the pups and I were there all 3 days. Duke was doing frisbee demos, Coral was doing Rally, and I was their chauffer and buyer of treats.

Duke was scheduled for one demo on Friday, and two each on Saturday and Sunday. That's 5 demos in 3 days for my lazy beast! The Friday demo went great! He did awesome, and wasn't distracted by the crowds or noise at all. Saturday morning, he landed weird a couple times. We think it was just carpet burn on his precious little toes, because we checked him afterwards, and nothing seemed to be injured. Either way, I pulled him from the afternoon demo just to let him rest. On Sunday, I could tell he was holding back a bit, so I kept the throws REALLY short, and slowed down the pace a bit. His paw may have still been bothering him, or he could have just been tired. The Reliant dog show is crazy, lots of noise and commotion, dogs everywhere, people everywhere, and my pups were there from 8:30 until almost 5 all 3 days. The poor pups were tired!

Coral was entered in Rally Novice on Friday and Sunday. I had actually taken her to Reliant on Wednesday so I could get my crate there, and let Coral check the place out a little. I never take Coral to places as crazy or with as many dogs as Reliant, so I knew she'd be overwhelmed, so I thought I'd give her a chance to see the area before the craziness started. I grabbed my treats, and we practiced right by our ring, and she did great. During the actual competition, treats aren't allowed, but you can train and practice with treats right up until you enter.

On Friday, Rally started at 11:30, but I knew we had 80 dogs in Rally Excellent and Rally Advanced before us, so I knew we wouldn't be going for a while. What I didn't realize, was that "a while" would be 5 hours. I took Coral out of the crate several times throughout the day to practice, and she did great each time. Until it was her time to compete. She was tired by then. And since she hadn't actually been in the ring before, she wanted to sniff and check everything out. For the first few signs, she didn't pay attention to me, and just wanted to sniff everything. I did get her refocused on me, and she did great the rest of the run. We pulled off a 90/100, which was sufficient to qualify for her first leg. (You need a 70/100 to qualify. Once you get 3 legs, you get your Rally Novice title.) Not bad for her first Rally run ever. Especially since I didn't get serious about practicing until 2 weeks before the show.

Coral got a break on Sat, she wasn't entered in the competition, but I brought her to Reliant anyway to practice. Good thing I hadn't entered her! She was SO distracted! And I got frustrated with her, which only made her shut down more. Oy vey.

Sunday was a fresh start. A very stressful fresh start. Duke's second demo and Coral's rally run were going to be almost at the same time. I kept running back and forth between the two areas so check how things were going. I ended up running outside to let the dogs potty, changing clothes really quick, grabbing Coral to practice for a couple minutes before her run, doing Coral's run, running back to the frisbee area to crate her and grab Duke, doing Duke's demo, throwing him back in the crate, and then running back to the Rally area to see how Coral scored. A very out of breath, but excited me was practically flipping cartwheels when I saw that Coral got a 96/100, and that no other dog had even scored a 90! My puppyface got first place! One more leg, and she gets letters after her name, yay Coral! Not a perfect run, and I definitely see where I messed up (I gave her the wrong command to back out of my way on inside turns!) but overall, I'm superhappy with how we did.




Her prize for her awesomeness? A stuffed pink elephant squeaky toy. She was so happy!

And I got her a first place cookie. Since Duke is spoiled too, he got a watermelon cookie.

Oh! And to make things even more exciting, guess who was sitting RIGHT in front of the Rally ring? Coral's foster mom, Cathy! Cathy is all sorts of knowledgeable about Danes, Agility, Rally, and Conformation, so I was all sorts of nervous to have her watching. She teased me about being so loud, but hey, my puppyface was paying attention. I think part of the reason the other dogs didn't so well was because earlier in the day, someone ran a dog in heat, and there were drops of blood in the ring, which really distracted a lot of dogs. Especially male dogs. Especially the intact male dogs. But not my spayed female puppyface with the really loud handler! :)

Agility dog fail.

My special snowflake...

My puppyface finally got her CGC!

At 6 years old.

Ok, so maybe this post should really be titled "I finally got off my lazy tush and tested my puppyface for her CGC." But that's entirely too long and unwieldy.

I had actually been working on getting Heidi ready for the CGC, but she was adopted a week before the test, so I figured I'd bring Coral to class and test her. The CGC isn't a terribly difficult test, they just want dogs to be under the owner's control and tolerant of handling. I think it's a good idea for dog owners to work on the CGC, just because it's a basic, attainable goal that will make their own lives easier.

The part of the test that I was worried about was the last part, supervised separation. From the CGC website:

"Test 10: Supervised separation
This test demonstrates that a dog can be left with a trusted person, if necessary, and will maintain training and good manners. Evaluators are encouraged to say something like, "Would you like me to watch your dog?" and then take hold of the dog's leash. The owner will go out of sight for three minutes. The dog does not have to stay in position but should not continually bark, whine, or pace unnecessarily, or show anything stronger than mild agitation or nervousness. Evaluators may talk to the dog but should not engage in excessive talking, petting, or management attempts (e.g, "there, there, it's alright")."

Coral has some mild separation anxiety, and whines when I'm she's away from me. A LOT. When I left the room, she whined briefly, but by the time I came back, she had decided to lay down, with her weight shifted to the side. Which was a HUGE breakthrough for her. Stressed dogs don't lay down.

Coral wasn't perfect, there are definitely things I could still work on with her, and that I do want to work on if I want to do some Obedience or Rally trials, but I'm still incredibly happy with her, and that she's learning to relax without me.

Tired Heidi

Wanna see how a tired Heidi acts? This is after 2 obedience classes, one hour of puppy playschool (free puppy playtime/socialization), an hour of teacup agility, and two hours of random running around and playing.









She did this for about 45 minutes today before she got tired and laid down.

Heidi doing what she does best

It's not quite the same without audio, you don't get to hear Duke and Heidi going "rawrawrawr" at each other, but cute nonetheless. This is what mornings are like at my house.

Paws in the Park, Part III - Coral Lure Coursing

Last year, Coral and I discovered a new (to us) sport called lure coursing. It's typically done by sighthounds, but since Coral has a high prey drive, I thought she'd enjoy it. And did she enjoy it. She sucked at it, but she had a blast. So when I found out they'd have lure coursing at Paws in the Park, I knew I was bringing Coral. This course was set up differently as last time, the path was bordered by 2 foot tall plastic orange fencing. Which does not bode well for my sweet Coral, who doesn't exactly turn well. One of the turns was a sharp 90 degrees. When she got to it, Coral sailed right over the fencing, and then couldn't get back in. We tried a couple more times, but she jumped at the same point every time. And got confused about how to get back in each time (I told you she was dumb).

One of the teenage volunteers offered to try to block her from jumping, but when I said she could try, but Coral can't turn, so 80 lb Coral might slam into her, she opted not to block her. Can't say I blame her.





Amazingly enough though, her best time was about 17 seconds. At the time, the time to beat was 13.5 seconds. My 6 year old lazy lab/dane mix did pretty good, considering she lost time by getting stuck outside of the course each time.

Paws in the Park, Part I - She's pretty. Pretty special.

This weekend, the pups and I attended a frisbee tournament in Pearland. They had a number of other competitions and demos, including DockDogs, agility, flyball, and Coral's beloved lure coursing. I just brought Coral and Heidi on Saturday, but the whole herd on Sunday. I opened the back of the Jeep, and we kind of camped out there most of the day. Doesn't it look cozy?


At one point, I told Heidi "ok" to come out of her crate, and Coral apparently thought I meant she should hop out of the Jeep. (My fault, I use the same release work for all dogs--from now on, I'm teaching each dog their own release word.) I asked her what she was doing out of the Jeep, and she hopped back in. Into Heidi's crate. Somehow she had enough room to jump in and turn around.

How I know it's feeding time at the zoo

This is how most of a day in the life of Coral and Duke is spent. It's a rough life, isn't it? And yes, they prefer a mountain of bed, so when they get piled up when I vacuum, sometimes it stays like that for days.


This is in the evenings, when their internal clocks tell them it's feeding time.


Creepy, aren't they? Duke likes to remind me that he hasn't been fed yet, just in case I forgot. He comes and sits right in front of me, and roos at me briefly. Usually I stifle a giggle and ignore him, so he sighs loudly and lays down, defeated. But sometimes he flops his big head in my lap to remind me how cute he is.

Wide Load

Or "Why my neighbors cross the street when they see me coming."

I thought I'd do something different today. Walk all 3 dogs together. They're short clips, so you shouldn't get too seasick watching them.




Heidi and Duke are really good walkers, Coral's the bad walker of the bunch, but I took her to class this morning, so she was a little tired.

Videos of dogs playing

Coral and Heidi were playing, but I had to find new batteries for the camera, so I missed the crazy zoomies, but here's the tail end of the play session.



Versus how Coral and Duke play. Bit rougher. You miss the full effect because I don't have sound, but Coral and Duke snarl and growl and sound like they're going to eat each other. That's apparently how they show affection.

New bed for Heidi

While Heidi seemed perfectly comfortable on the giant dog beds, I thought she needed something more her size.


Then I remembered I had an extra super soft pillow, and decided to give that one to her. I think she likes it.


Elvis impersonation.




Demon puppy!


Apparently Coral thought it was comfortable too.

Playtime!

"Bop."




"My turn! Bop!"




"Are you SURE that's a dog?"

Meet the scrufftastic Miss Heidi!

Look at this little cutie, she's my new foster. She was found wandering the streets last Friday when it was snowing, so my friend brought her in while she looked for her owner. My friend was calling her Hopper, because she's got a torn paw pad, so she hops on 3 legs sometimes. My neighbor is calling her Heidi because of her long supermodel legs. She's a goofy looking chihuahua/terrier mix (we think), but she's sweet as can be.

When she met my two, Coral was throwing herself on the ground and playbowing, but Heidi wasn't interested. She was, however, interested in Duke, and kept following him around. Duke, on the other hand, wasn't sure about her, and kept running away, with occasional reprieves when Coral ran between them, trying to get Heidi to play.



"What is it?!"



"Eek! Get away!"



"I was just saying hi...."


"Let's play!"



Heidi in her usual state, begging for bellyrubs.


"You can get off the computer now."








"Oops, I falled."


"Who you laughing at?!"


When she is ready for adoption, she'll be available at the Houston Westie Rescue.

Weekend observations

1. Coral doesn't actually like football. When the hubby starts watching football, she leaves the room shortly thereafter. If we call her back, she'll hang out for a few minutes, and leave again. Just not a fan. Or maybe, the hubby screams at the tv a little too much, and my incredibly noise-sensitive pup runs away from the madness.

2. Coral's left ear is a centimeter longer than her right ear. I measured. I was sitting behind her and noticed her left ear was longer. I had never noticed that before. So like any other insane individual, I measured her ears. She has a tendency to hold her ears differently (one is out more, or back more than the other), so I just didn't notice.

Apparently I don't give my sweet puppyface enough credit.

Considering how many times she's run into the house, Coral's not exactly known for her intelligence. But apparently she's not quite as dumb as I thought. Last week, Duke learned a new trick.

Coral fell for it a few times over about 3 days, but then she realized what he was doing. The other day, Duke barked, and started jogging towards the bed (on the way to the door from where he was). Coral started to get up, but decided not to. As Duke passed the bed, he slowed down and looked at her like..."What, not getting up?" Since she didn't get off the bed, he just sat on her instead.

Duke has a new trick....

And Coral is less than impressed.

Coral is my alarm barker. I sort of discourage it, but not really because I'm home alone a lot and I don't mind door to door solicitors thinking my dogs are going to eat them.

Anyhow, Duke was sitting next to me when all of a sudden he barked once for no reason. Coral jumps up from her bed to check out what's going on at the door. Meanwhile, Duke calmly walks over to the bed and lays down. I'm pretty sure he just barked to get her up so he could steal the bed.

He did this twice today. But that's ok, Coral proceeded to lay on him, since he was on her bed.

Duke's new crate

With all the demos and activities the Houston Canine Frisbee Club does, I decided it was time to get a travel crate. After learning that the largest plastic crate is incredibly bulky and very heavy (45 pounds), I realized that I need a soft-sided crate. Fortunately for me, www.dog.com had a very conveniently timed sale on crates. I got this one in XL for $35. It only weighs about 10 pounds and has a handy bag to lug it around in. It just arrived today, and Coral loves it. Duke is a little leery of it, but Coral keeps darting in there.