Speaking of Boone...

Out-takes

A few weeks ago my friend Wendy and I hauled the sofa from the daycare down to the river bottom. Why you ask? Well to take photos of course!!!!

I wanted a photo of me and the dogs for Christmas...Wendy took lots and lots of photos...

Do you see a theme in the outtakes???

Boone was not co-operating....

kissing, what camera?, tongue out, eyes closed....professional model he is not :o)

Isn't it Lovely????

My friend Jan of "Jan and Dave" made this bag for me for Christmas. It is a great bag- big enough for LOTS of stuff- pockets and all sorts of things. The best part of course is the two cardigans- a tri on one side, and a merle on the other. How Perfect! :o)

Thanks Jan and Dave!!!!

6th Photo

Sarah tagged me from Dig It Fetch it Herd It...How fun!

Here's the deal:

You have to check your Photo Archives (or wherever you store your images) then select the 6th file folder, open it & post the 6th picture contained there, with the story behind it.

Now I have to tag six friends to do the same:

Slow as Molasses
4 Dog Craziness
Days at Daybreake
BorderBlog
and anyone else who'd like to play!

Make sure to comment so I know you've played!

Anyway, here is my photo

This was taken at my friends family farm- we take the dogs down there to run like hooligans. Wicca was fetching a stick- and Sam got all caught up in the moment- and then he remembered he doesn't like water... :o) It was pretty funny. Oh, and that's Boone fuzzy butt in the corner..

Indoor Games

It has been brutally cold here the past few days. The dogs run out, do their business and then run back in- quite often on three feet.

We have done a few short walks- but Pixel really hates boots at this point so it was quite a struggle for a whole lot of nothing... :o)

So to keep them busy, and to tire them out we have been doing lots of fun things indoors.

First each dog gets 5ish minutes of "training"- sits, downs, stand, heeling, pivots, nose touches, tricks.... I usually take about 12 cookies and we do only as much as 12cookies allow...

Then I put all the dogs away and hide a water bottle with kibble in it somewhere in the living room. One at a time they get to come out and "find" the hidden treasure. Each of them does something a little different when they find it. Wicca carries it away and gets the kibble out. Vito throws it in the air and rolls around on it. Boone paws and pokes at it until I get the kibble out for him, and Pixel tries to eat through the bottle right then and there...

Another game we play is upstairs fetching. I throw the toy to the top of the stairs and send the dog...Pixel doesn't play this game yet, but the others do.

We have also been experimenting with the yoga ball and perch. All of the dogs can get on the ball now- even Pixel. They all like the perch- Pixel in particular is sure it's a food dispenser

One of the favorites in the house are the 1,2,3 Go races. I put all the dog in sit stays(except Pixel who I still restrain) then I throw cookies across the floor and whisper 1, 2, 3 OKAY! The dogs release on the Okay- of course the dog who get their first is going to get more cookies...then I call them all back - the first dog back gets the cookie. The others get nothin....Wicca and Pixel have this figured out pretty well and are always the first ones back..the boys, not so much.

Any other fun indoor games ideas???

-40

Uh huh. MINUS 40....who knew it would get so freakin' cold!!!!

Stupid Ears

Pixel wanted to tell everyone that tape sucks....

Stupid Ears...

Baby Nolen

I went up to the hospital for an official first meeting of the baby. He is pretty freakin' cute! He is quite small (to me anyway) and is so far a pretty content baby. He only cried a few times while I was there.

I took tons of photos- but here are a few of the best...

Happy Birth day!

My sister had her baby this morning! At 1:00am almost exactly little Nolan Allan James Hughes was born. This is my sisters first (and maybe only!) baby. I jokingly had told her she had to have the baby between 3-6 that afternoon as that was really the only time I had available. Instead she waited till the wee hours of the morning...

She had to be induced- and went to the hospital yesterday morning around 7:30. She finally had the baby this morning. I am no expert in the baby department but man, who knew it hurt so much! My sister is kind of a wuss, but we could hear her in the waiting room. Even after an epidural....

It was a long night. I at least went home from 8:30-10:30 and

got some sleep before being called back for the big event....

Did you know that Hospitals are boring.
The lights are bright. And I really, really, missed my sleep.

All for one little peek at the little baby, a gentle hug for my sister,

and to keep my dad company in the waiting room. He paced, and paced, and paced some more. It was maddening and at one point I told him to either sit down and read the twenty year old "Womans Day" magazine, or take a walk. :o)

He took a walk.....hearing my sister scream like she was almost did him in, but he survived and was all teary eyed when we were finally allowed back in to see her.

I wasn't able to take any photos of the baby. He was lacking oxygen and had to be taken to the ICU for a bit. I will have pictures to post later today! But he is cute- he has hair, and looked really good for a new born!!! (in my opinion anyway)

oh- and for some doggie content Hurley had a sleepover at my house...It was very weird to have a big dog in the house. Makes my dogs look like midgets....

Training

Wicca had a good night last night- we worked on start lines, weave entries, distance, and handling.

We started with a simple set up from this issue of Dogsport- it was a great exercise that you could do lots of handling stuff on. I worked on front crosses- and improving my bad timing. :o) Wicca was good- only two knocked bars- my fault. Not hers. She was very excited to be out and playing so it was a good opportunity to work her start lines as well. I was pretty happy with her. No slouching, and no creeping. Yay for Wiccie!

Then we worked on a little bit of a gamble with the teeter and a jump discrimination from a distance. She rocked the exercise so we ended up working more on a tight turn off a jump rather than doing the same thing over again. We still struggle with getting a nice, tight turn and keeping the bar up. But we were mostly succesful. :o)

The last exercise was one I wanted to spend the most time on. Unfortunately I only got to run it three times. Which sucked. But oh well. It was jump weave, jump weave, with a curved tunnel and then the dogwalk parallel to the jump weave thingy. The first time I ran it I wanted her to get the entry with me racing and ahead of her. She did great. The second time I ran it I was on the other side of the dogwalk. No problem says wicca. The third time I ran it we started with the dogwalk, and turned towards the weaves- no tunnel. she did it! She was wide, but she didn't suck to the tunnel which made me really happy. we then wrapped the jump (and knocked the bar) and went back to the weaves, tunnel and dogwalk.

Her contacts were great all night. I have been making a point of trying to change the head up crane look :o) and have been rewarding head down and throwing a random target down once in a while. It seems to be helping as I noticed her head and neck were straight last night and not up. Not down how I'd like but definite improvement!

6 things we like

Wicca, Vito, Boone and Pixel were tagged by the Daybreake Cardigans....

So here is our list of our 6 things we like:

1. Food! anything that has meat. yum.
2. Walks! Sniffing, pulling, getting tangled up, meeting people (Vito tried to veto this one but everyone else won him out), and running in the field. Fun!
3. Wrecking toys- pulling that white fuzz out of the eye socket of the stuffed dog is the best thing ever!
4. Fetch! Chasing, barking, biting....need we say more
5. Barking! Should be it's own sport really.
6. Dog Stuff-agility, herding, whatever. It all really means cookies. :o)


I will tag these 6 people...er dogs.. to play:
Bosley and Maggie at It's a Bernerful Life,
Coulee and Lacey,
Jane (just jane, not the others) from the dig it portion of digitfetchitherdit
might be interesting to see what Sandy's gang has to say- Duke, Mira, and Sadie
Tate and Kort from One Collie
and Skid from Alta Pete

of course you don't have to...it's merely a suggestion to join in the fun... :o)

just like wicca

notice she is laying ON the toys....

she doesn't share well...

she really is just like Wicca....

The Kiss

At daycare Vito is a total Ladies man. Apparently he was grumpy yesterday.

(click on image for full size)

All She wanted was a kiss!

When she grows up

she wants to be just like her big sister Wicca.

Best friend Shep

She loves Shep...she really does :o)

Pieces of Pixel

Her hair is growing as much as the rest of her....

Puppy Class

I am leading a drop in puppy class on Wednesday night. This was the second week and it has been lots of fun. We are working on foundation skills for obedience and for agility. I have found it really helpful to be able to work Pixel in a group setting. I find that I miss that alot with my dogs as typically I teach the class and leave my own dogs at home.

I work with Pixel every day- but it is good to be able to teach her to learn and listen when there are other dogs around. The class has a cavlier pup, a collie, a sheltie, and a staffordshire bull terrier. Everyone in the group is what a call a "Performance" home- they want their dogs to play agility, flyball, or obedience when they grow up. It is nice to work with like minded people.

Anyway, last night we did a lot of stuff and I was very pleased with how well Pixel worked.

We started with playing with the pups- tugging, fetch, chasing, more tugging. Pixel was all over that :o)

We did some "Choosing to heel" games which I was surprised she did so well at. We have hardly worked on this but she was great! Heads up, looking for the cookie. She's so cute.

For the first time we played the "Attention" game- Pixel doesn't quite get it yet, but we'll work on it at home. She has a short attention span to begin with and doesn't know yet about eye contact.

Then we brought the stools out and did some perch work- this is probably Pixels favorite game. She thinks the stool is a magic treat dispenser :o). We had the puppies start moving around the stool to build rear end awareness.

I have been struggling with getting a good hand touch with her- she is reluctant and we've had to build this up really slowly- we now get a good push, but her aim sucks :o)

We also introduced a clear target plate tonite- for a nose touch. This will be for building good contact behaviors- and useful for teaching Go Outs in obedience, as well as distance in agility. Pixel likes the target plate a little too much still....

Then we started shaping a go round around a pylon. I had started this at home this week and Pixel understands to move around the pylon- we have it about 4 feet away now.

We ended on Sits and Downs, and then of course gave them a chance to play together.

Puppies are so fun!

Good Boy Boonie

Last night I left Wicca at home and just took Boone to train at the arena.

I had a few general goals-

• no barking while other dogs were running
• focus and attention even when excited
• not taking equipment if not asked

and then there were the actual training goals of

• 270's
• a-frame at full height
• weaves
• start lines

I was very proud of him last night- during the first class where he actually got to train I kept him in a down stay when it wasn't his turn- there was no barking. I rewarded him for being calm, and staying. No spinning and panting. We warmed up with some heeling/running past equipment before each turn- he still will run out and try and take stuff, but will come when I call him- which is a pretty major thing for him. He finds agility highly rewarding without me :o)

Our first exercise looked kinda like this with a curved tunnel on one side. I worked just the circle of jumps with Boone- and then worked on decceleration with him- he doesn't really pick that up very well so we spent quite a lot of time on it. We also worked front and rear crosses. It's pretty amazing what you can do with four jumps!

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Then we worked on weaves and wow! is all I can say. I haven't done any weaving at home lately but he was a weaving machine- he had some great entrances and I even managed a front cross after the poles! On this station we worked on 270's as well.

The last station we worked on the a-frame. Backchaining, Backchaining, and Backchaining some more. I had it at full height with a small target plate mostly hidden by dirt. I would say we were 90% successful. The height of the frame is making him rock back to be able to get into position and not bounce off. After about 10 reps building up from a foot from the bottom to a foot from the top I ended on a tunnel, frame, tunnel, frame sequence where he stuck his contact both times.

He is really improving a lot and I notice changes every time we train. I entered him in almost a full trial for January. We have lots of training to do before then but with consistent work I think he'll be ready.

Beautiful Pixel

She has grown so much in a month. It is hard to believe!

Hurley

This is my sisters dog Hurley- isn't he handsome?

He was a rescue pup- found wandering around a small town bordering on the reserve.

I suckered them into keeping him. Now he is very spoiled, but very happy :0)

Who knew he'd get so big!!! He's got legs that go on forever!

He came and played at daycare yesterday-

I couldn't resist posing a photo with Wendy's dog Lacey.