Training update: Grad Novice, here we come

Thank doG the AKC overhauled the Graduate Novice class. Again. The last time I showed in Grad Novice was when Jamie was getting ready for Open and it scares me to think how long ago that was. I know we both had a lot less gray hair back then. Now the exercises are new and improved. It’s a much more reasonable stepping stone class between Novice and Open.

Phoenix and I are going to show in Grad Novice in two weeks at the Ft. Dodge trials and the week after that at the Hawkeye trials. Are we ready? Define “ready.” Are we perfect? No. Are we improving? Absolutely.

Heeling: I’ve decided to try heeling with my left arm at my side. After years and years of heeling with my left hand clamped somewhere between my boobs and my belly button, I’m ready for a change. The AKC regs say if you carry your left hand up, it should be “centered in the vicinity of the waist.” I’m not sure where my waist is these days and I don’t want to become one of those ladies who heels with her forearm supporting her bossom. Like that would happen. I have no bossom to speak of.

Anyway, so far, so good. Having my arm at my side seems to be improving Nix’s heel position and remedying some of our bump and crowd issues. The only problem is my hand occasionally flops around and whacks him in the face. Okay, maybe that’s not entirely by accident but he doesn't seem to mind. It’s also really convenient to tweak his head position when my hand is right there.

I’ve managed to drastically reduce the amount of cookies I use on heelwork but admit food will probably always be part of the program for me. I’m getting much better at using toys and playing tug to reward effort and build attitude. However, it’s hard for me to reward heel position with toys because releasing to a tug session pretty much destroys the position I want to reward (although the crazy wild dog can tug like the devil while holding his contacts in agility). So food still has its place, at least for me. Everyone has to follow their own heart when they train.

Drop on recall: If I get a nice running recall, the drop is less than ideal. If he slows to a trot and thinks about doing a nice drop, well, it’s a nice drop but then the recall sucks. We’re working hard on getting that elusive running recall in a formal context and I only ask for occasional drops. I am pretty sure he understands the concept of a drop out of motion. It’s the concept of that motion in the first place we’re working to improve, using toys, chase games and intense play to ramp up his speed. Food does not get the level of drive I want. Toys do. Great. More work for the trainer. (Try explaining this type of thing to your cardiologist when they ask about “exercise.” They sure look at you funny.)

Dumbbell recall: Couple of things going on here. We need to work “get it” in about a million different places. The hard, fast, git-yer-fingers-outta-my-way-sister-or-yer-gonna-lose-em chomp I get in familiar training building softens in new environments. And of course, working to build that driving recall continues. More running. Go, me.

Recall over the high jump: This is pretty straight forward. Fronts are improving as he learns to collect all 52 pounds of his bad self and not just slam into a sit in any ol’ spot. Finishes? They remain a work in progress.

Recall over the broad jump: Same as above. I didn’t want to re-type it. Cuz I’m lazy. And tired after running all over the place so that damn fool dog can chase me.

Long down, handler out of sight: What? I have to leave my dog? Alone? For 3 minutes? Are you sure that’s a good idea?

Confessions of a morning person

Michele gave me this comic strip and it pretty much sums up my life. I can't remember the last time I slept past 6 a.m. Even on weekends. Especially on weekends. Trial weekends. Match weekends. Seminar weekends. Or weekends when I'm meeting friends to train. In fact, I may be genetically incapable of sleeping in. 

The dogs are partly to blame for this. They have very successfully conditioned me to get up by 5:30 a.m., no matter the weather or time of year. Phoenix wants to rush out and embrace the day. Connor and Jamie just want their breakfast. And the Farmer wants ALL of us to get the heck out of the bedroom so he can get another 30 minutes of sleep.

I like being a morning person and getting a jump start on the day. Most of my friends are morning people, too. Sometimes its a chemically induced condition brought on by mainlining caffeine but who cares. We're the ones in the front row of the parking lot at the agility trial when the building doesn't open until for another 30 minutes. We get the best crating spots at obedience trials. We're the people everyone else asks to save them a spot because they know we'll be the first ones in the building no matter wherever we go.

Of course, the downside is that I'm usually crashed by 9 p.m. Morning people aren't known for having a rowdy nightlife. 

Hummingbirds, etc.

This plant has nothing to do with hummingbirds. It's a sedum called "Dragon's Blood." I love both the name and the plant. The plant is hardy. Extremely hardy. Psychotically hardy. We had record setting -40 degree temps last winter and this spring it never looked better. This is a little baby clump. The mother clump is in another flower bed. This is part of my "finding good plants to grow in hot dry places" campaign for the flower bed by the patio. Stay tuned.

Okay, on to the hummingbirds. Which aren't pictured here. Don't strain your eyes trying to find one. A few years ago, we were besieged with hummingbirds. Worse things could happen, I suppose. They were fun to watch, once your heart recovered from something the size of a very large bumblebee dive bombing your head when you stepped out the back door.

So the next summer, I put out a hummingbird feeder, kept it filled, clean etc. The only things it attracted were ants and bees and it leaked sugary glop on the ground underneath, which attracted more ants and bees. Go figure.

Last summer, no feeder. A few hummingbirds flitted through and seemed to enjoy the flowers on the patio, so this summer, my hummingbird-enticing approach is totally floral. 

This plant is called lantana. It is supposed to attract hummingbirds. If I were a good gardener, I could tell you what variety it is. But in addition to not necessarily being a good gardener, I am also a very forgetful gardener and don't have a clue.

But it's darn pretty. Even if it doesn't attract hummingbirds, it's still darn pretty. 

The Farmer borrowed the neighbor's skid loader and hauled in some dirt to level off the cistern (again). Now my Sweet 100 tomatoes have somewhere to call home. This is the extent of my vegetable gardening: two tomato plants sitting on top of the old cistern. A couple of years I've planted them directly in the ground, no pots, but that always gave me huge plants without a lot of tomatoes. I get a better yield by putting them in pots. And it's a little harder for the dogs to help themselves that way. A LITTLE harder, not impossible. Trust me. Ask Connor. He is a tomato-picking fiend.

I can already taste them, fresh off the vine, in pasta salad with a garlic and oil dressing, mixed with cucumbers and ranch dressing . . . oh, yikes, now I've gone and drooled all over the keyboard.

Some things never change

There should be pictures with this, I just can't bring myself to take them. Probably because I am laughing so hard tears are streaming and I am shaking my head and rolling my eyes and wondering "How can something so simple go so wrong!"

Finding the perfect dumbbell. It's the bane of every advanced obedience trainer. No wonder some people never train beyond Novice. It has nothing to do with teaching a retrieve. It's because they can't find the perfect dumbbell. Or maybe it's just me and my pointy-nosed dogs.

I am the Queen Of Dumbbells (note I did not say Dumbbell Queen. I think that would be something different). I have bought more dumbbells in 30 years of obedience training than you can imagine. Thank God for the garage sale table at the ICDOC trial every spring because I have sold more dumbbells than you can imagine, too. I should probably have a Web site: www.yesIboughtanotherdumbbell.com. The fact that I've managed to re-sell nearly 100% of my mistakes just confirms there are other people out there just like me who are always looking for a new (better?) dumbbell. Ha. So there.

How hard is it, really, to buy a dumbbell? Just go to J and J Dog Supplies or Max200 and order one already, for heaven's sake. They even have those crazy pink and green things at PetCo and PetsMart. Hell, the local feed store even has wooden dumbbells. I can't imagine there's much market for them in Iowa County but they carry them, nonetheless.

But we all know it's not that easy. It has to be the perfect fit. Perfect end size. Perfect bit diameter. Perfect bit width. The ideal measurements that will allow for clean and easy pick-ups with no fumbling or mouthing. Then there's the wood vs. plastic debate. Forget actually TRAINING the retrieve, finding the perfect dumbbell takes a ridiculous amount of time.

I honestly do not know how many dumbbells I have bought over the years. Granted, I've always had dogs with long, pointy muzzles and that makes it a little harder to get one that fits just right. Stock size dumbbells seem to be made for dogs with short, wide muzzles. Great if you have a golden or a rottweiler. Not so great if you have a sheltie or a terv. Not a problem, J&J is happy to make custom sizes. The problem is that what looks good on paper may not look so great four weeks later when the UPS man delivers the much anticipated package.

Somewhere along the line during Jamie's career, I ordered a custom-made dumbbell from a man named Joe Feist. Joe lives in Ohio and he used to make (I don't think he makes them any more) beautiful scent articles that were all the rage and were of such heirloom quality they were probably accounted for in trainers' wills and handed down from generation to generation. But he also made dumbbells, too, and he'd made the one Connor used throughout his OTCh. quest and afterward. So of course Jamie had to have one, too.

Well, Jamie's didn't really fit. The measurements were right but when it arrived, the proportions seemed all wrong. I put it in a drawer, got a custom-sized Invince-A-Bell from J&J and that was that.

Fast forward about seven years. Phoenix had learned to retrieve using a battered, gnawed old Invince-A-Bell and it was time to get him a "real" dumbbell for the Graduate Novice ring. I stumbled across Jamie's still brand new Joe Feist dumbbell and by some alignment of the planets, IT WAS A PERFECT FIT!

Hallelujah! I was freed from the curse of pursuing the perfect dumbbell. No more obsessing over 1/8" measurements and fussing about bit diameter and were the ends too big and was the bit too wide and OMG the future of my dog's entire obedience career is linked directly to whether or not his dumbbell is absolutely perfect.

We trained with that new/old dumbbell for about two weeks. Phoenix loved it. It was such a good fit. I was ecstatic. This was so simple. Surely we would breeze through Open. The gods were smiling on us. The planets were aligned. Life was good.

The dumbbell broke this morning.

I threw it in the house, on carpet, while doing some quick training before going to work. Phoenix retrieved it and as he fronted, I could see something was not right. I took it from him and one end, which had been dangling by a thread of plastic, fell off in my hand.

AAAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHHH!

Oh, the agony of having to start all over again!

Since we're entered in Grad Novice at a trial in 3 weeks, I quickly ordered a stock size dumbbell from Max200 this morning. In the meantime, Phoenix can train with Jamie's dumbbell, which is a touch too small but he'll just have to deal. If the Max200 dumbbell doesn't work, I'll call up J&J and put them to work making us an Invince-A-Bell. We're not trialing through July and August so there will be plenty of time to tweak measurements.

I may single-handedly bring this country out of its recession by buying dumbbells. Don't laugh. You just think I'm joking.

I'm normal! YIPPEE!!!

Well, sort of.

Last week I had a nuclear myocardial perfusion imaging test done. That's a really fancy name for a stress test. My cardiologist called yesterday to say the results came back normal, no blockages or narrowing of arteries in my heart. Definitely good news, since my dad had major blockages resulting in open heart surgery for a quadruple heart bypass when he was in his late 50s.

I've still got the abnormal heart rhythm thing going on but the meds seem to be taking care of it. Six weeks and counting without any caffeine from soda or cappuccino. I'm supposed to "avoid" caffeine because it can make the atrial fibrillation worse. (Hmmm . . . define "avoid.") Good thing I wasn't much of a coffee drinker to start with.

But I haven't given up, nor do I intend to give up, chocolate. Sure, it contains caffeine but not that much. And besides, chocolate is medicinal. Anyone who reads Harry Potter knows that!

Springtime stuff

I love columbines. These are in a little shade garden I planted because it was such an awkward place to mow that I got tired of swearing at it every week and just turned it into a flowerbed. It's full of columbines, ferns, hosta and coral bells. I'll post a picture later this summer, once the hosta get all unfurled. The only drawback to columbines is their bloom time is very brief. They are only pretty for a couple of weeks each spring.

So I enjoy them A LOT during that time.

This year, I am experimenting with ornamental grasses in the flower bed by the patio. It is a very sunny bed and gets a lot of heat reflected from the white siding on the house and from the cement of the patio. I never seem to keep up with watering there like I should. Plus the dogs run through it and occasionally dig in it. Anything that lives there needs to be tough. I'm hoping ornamental grasses will thrive without me having to hold their hand all summer.

Pictured left to right are: hair grass "Northern Lights"; dwarf fountain grass and Lucerne "Blue Eyed Grass." They are all dwarf varieties.


This is Phoenix in the cistern. I have no idea what he is doing. He doesn't either but he does it every chance he gets. The Farmer uncapped the cistern and filled it in about 10 years ago. It has been settling ever since. Every spring, I haul dirt to level it off. This spring, I decided hauling dirt would fall under the "don't do anything extreme" warning from my cardiologist, so I'm waiting for the Farmer to do it. And waiting. And waiting.

Lessons learned in the Novice ring

Phoenix went 3/3 at the 4RK9s UKC trials Friday and Saturday to finish his U-CD, 2nd places all the way. Mary H. and her crazy little sheltie Rowdy had a Novice B sweep, winning the class and going HIT all 3 trials. Good job, Rowdy! It had to be the mushrooms. Seriously, Mary was using fried morels for rewards. Why didn't I think of that? Oh, yeah, I ate them all myself.

Now we are DONE with Novice and moving on to Graduate Novice this summer with an eye on Open possibly later this fall. We'll probably do UKC Open first; UKC trials around here are nice relaxed little shows and a great place to start a new level of work. Plus I like the fact that the out of sight exercises are separated (honor down, then a group sit) so you're not throwing them both at a green dog all at once.

Novice was a great place to test out a young dog and see what the strengths and weaknesses of our teamwork are. After our April and May trials, I have a much clearer picture of what Phoenix understands and what he just plain doesn't get. It's not all about Phoenix, either. I need to work harder to build myself as the motivator, not the cookie. Phoenix loves his cookies but he loves his toys, too, so I need to burn a calorie and play with my dog! Our heeling needs a ton of work, not only on technical skills but on maintaining attitude. Not to mention being much clearer about my criteria and not being afraid to raise the bar and ask my wild dog for more. I'm looking forward to a summer of training and if I feel we have a solid grip on Utility, we might try Graduate Open this fall, too. Dream big!

After a week on furlough, I'm back to the office tomorrow and think the dogs will be glad to see me go so they can get back to their sleep-20-hours-a-day plan.