Autumn colors

There's frost in the forecast for the weekend and we'll probably have a hard freeze in the next couple of weeks but for now, my flowers still look great. Well, some of them have taken a beating over the summer and it's time for them to go away but apparently these don't know the end is near.

Snapdragons are one of my favorite annuals. They can take a light frost and keep on blooming. There were tons of little bees and big bumblebees buzzing around yesterday afternoon when I took these pics. You can see one of the little guys sitting on a petal.


Love, love, love my miniature roses. They are tough as nails. I added two pink ones this spring (thanks, Michele!), but the Russian sage fell over on top of them. They're fine but not photograph-able. That sage is out of control. Yet another thing on my gardening to-do list - whack the sage.


Coleus will not withstand any kind of frost so I'm enjoying this while it lasts. Isn't the color wonderful? This plant has been through wind, drought, hail, grasshoppers and crazed malinois and still looks this great.


I bought a little container of cheap asters a few years back, no idea they'd be this big and pretty. The bees LOVE them. The whole plant was buzzing in the sunshine yesterday afternoon.


I'm fixing this picture in my mind to think about in January.

Going camping

Camping at the DMOTC agility trials last weekend was one of those things that fell into the “You really should have known better but you did it anyway” category.

We’ve had a mild and pleasant September here in Iowa with nighttime lows in the 50s. That is perfect weather for camping. So of course, the weekend I planned to sleep outdoors in a tent, the lows immediately dropped to the low 40s and upper 30s. That is perfectly ridiculous weather for camping in a tent and any sensible person would have recognized that.

But we did it anyway.

The group included me and a couple of other friends who are veterans of camping with dogs. We are the sole remnants of the original band of agility gypsies who used to pitch tents on the shores of Saylorville Lake in late September. The number has dwindled over the years as the agility gypsies have apparently wised up and now all camp at the Motel 6.

The weather was clear and dry and we enjoyed annual camping traditions like building a campfire, getting chased around by the smoke, having a potluck meal, eating more toasted marshmallows than is probably healthy and laughing like loons about a lot of things that normal people probably wouldn’t think was funny at all. Spam. Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!!!!

See what I mean?

Then it was time for bed. I was nothing if not prepared. I changed into my sleeping attire: sweat pants over long underwear, wool socks, a turtleneck sweater under a sweatshirt and a fleece jacket. I jammed a stocking cap on my head, which let me tell you, made me the poster child for sexy camping chic. The Farmer didn’t know what he was missing by staying home. Or maybe he did.

I crawled onto an air mattress covered with a fleece blanket, pulled another fleece blanket over that, pulled an unzipped sleeping bag on top of everything and then realized - I can’t move. Fleece sticks to fleece like Velcro. It was clear that I’d better get comfortable because changing positions was not something to be undertaken lightly.

Jamie flopped on one side of me. Phoenix flopped on the other side. I looked at him. He looked at me. I asked him if he’d like to sleep under the blankets. He gave me a malinois sneer. Okay, fine. I knew that wouldn’t last. Phoenix is a firm believer in creature comforts.

Ten minutes later, he slithered over me like some weird furry reptile and began burrowing under the sleeping bag. Uh-huh. Thought so. I covered him up and we all settled down for a long winter’s nap. Technically that was the first full day of autumn and I thought it was a little snarky of Mother Nature to throw unseasonal overnight lows at us.

Really, sleeping in a tent when it’s that cold isn’t bad at all. I was warm from tip to toe, Phoenix cuddled close under the blankets and Jamie sprawled in furry splendor atop the sleeping bag. I don’t know how he did it but every time I checked him, he was warm as toast and seemed to defy the elements. This is the dog who pants in January so I wasn’t really surprised.

We had a variety of sounds to keep us entertained: raccoon fights, coyotes howling and people from other campsites who were either fighting, howling or singing. It all sounded the same. The sound of walnuts launching themselves from nearby tree branches woke me up at regular intervals. After a couple hours of that, I thought they had morphed to the size of coconuts or bowling balls. How can something so small be so loud?

The part that sucked was getting up in the morning. First, I had to dislodge the dogs, who like to greet the pending dawn by dancing on my head. Then I had to peel myself out of my fleece-induced Velcro state. Then I had to get off the air mattress, which, predictably, was not quite as fully inflated as it had started out the night before, leaving me lurching around like an unbalanced drunk.

Once I found my shoes and flashlight, got leashes clipped on the dogs and unzipped two tent doors, we stumbled out into the predawn darkness and headed for the shower house.

There I discovered that showering when it’s 42 degrees is highly over-rated. Never let anyone tell you otherwise. It wouldn’t have been so bad if the water had been A) warm B) ran in a consistent stream and C) warm. We were camping in a conservation area and they take their conservation seriously in Polk County.

The showers are those annoying timed affairs where you push a button and the water runs for a minute or so, then it stops and you have to push the button again. I am sure this discourages lengthy water-wasting showers. This is all fine and good except the button in my shower stall shut off after about 6 seconds (yes, I timed it), leaving me to lather, rinse and repeat with one hand while continually smacking the button with the desperation of drug addicted rat in a lab experiment.

That was truly one of the most unpleasant experiences of my life and the fact that it was self-induced doesn’t change it any. Trust me, I did not repeat the experience Sunday morning and settled for washing my hair in the sink. I may be crazy but I’m not stupid. If anyone got close enough to tell I hadn't showered that morning, they were going to have bigger problems than any lingering eau de dirt horse arena.

The second night, I amped up the human snugness factor by zipping up the sleeping bag and sleeping inside it, with the blanket over the top. The combination of fleece jacket vs flannel-lined sleeping bag was no better than fleece jacket vs. fleece blanket and any bodily motion met with great resistance.

Phoenix wasted no time curling up under the blanket. Jamie was delighted to discover he could now re-arrange the blanket as he saw fit. Which meant wadding it up in a ball and flinging it as far away from him as he could get it. Phoenix and I both took a dim view of this. By morning, the Skinny Little Dog had managed to scratch open the sleeping bag and maneuver himself inside it. He didn't really fit but it didn't matter since I couldn't move anyway. The blanket was covering a lot of him and a little of me and Jamie was the only one who looked happy.

We’re done camping for the year. I have lots of happy memories of pleasant evenings with friends, perfectly toasted marshmallows, mesmerizing campfires, snuggly dogs and near hypothermia experiences. Who knows what next year will bring.

A top 10 list

Here are the top 10 ways to tell if you've been running agility and camping at Jester Park for three days.

1) Everything you own smells like campfire smoke, including your dog and your van.

2) You slap your knee and dust puffs out of your jeans.

3) Enjoying the sounds of nature while camping includes a screaming raccoon fight at 2 a.m.

4) Enjoying the sounds of nature while camping includes listening to the coyotes howl at 1 a.m.

5) Enjoying the sounds of nature while camping includes listening to the drunken yahoos a few campsites down singing "Happy Birthday" for the seventh time in two hours.

6) You have damp camping gear draped across all the furniture in the spare bedroom.

7) You took a shower in an unheated bath house on a 42 degree morning and can safely add the experience to your F-It List (Rhymes with Bucket List) of things you never want to do again in your life.

8) You came home and took the longest, hottest, soapiest shower you can remember.

9) By Sunday, your jeans could run an agility course by themselves.

10) By 6 p.m. on Sunday, you've done 4 loads of laundry.

Okay, 10 isn't enough.

11) You learned that wearing a fleece jacket while crawling into a flannel-lined sleeping bag means you won't be able to move. Whatever position you collapse in is how you're going to stay all night because fleece sticks to flannel like velcro.

12) You're sitting at the computer at home, your dogs walk by and you catch a whiff of campfire smoke.

13) The most beautiful thing in your house (after the shower) is your bed.

14) You got to watch the vast number of penguins . . . err . . . pelicans . . . migrating on Saylorville Lake.

15) What happens in the tent, stays in the tent.

16) You've eaten more roasted marshmallows in the last two nights than you have since this weekend  last year.

17) You've eaten so many roasted marshmallows, you can elaborate at length about the style and technique used to achieve a delicate brown with slightly puffed top.

18) Camping in a tent when overnight temps drop to 40 can be a very snug and toasty experience if you observe proper protocol for layering blankets, sleeping bags and dogs.

19) The malinois prefers to be included in the base layer.

20) The tervuren should be applied to the top layer. He may re-arrange all layers to suit himself with little regard to other occupants of the tent.

21) This may lead to dissention in the ranks of the lower layers.

22) Doing a happy dance on the air mattress at 5:15 a.m. is highly frowned upon by the human element.

23) The canine element does not care.

24) When it's 41 degrees outside, getting up in the morning is a genuinely unpleasant experience.

25) Genuinely unpleasant experiences tend to spark new and creative uses of the English language.

Insight

I intended to write about the Port-A-Potty that nearly flew off its trailer while going down the road in front of me but that will have to wait. Sometimes, things just hit you out of the blue (hopefully not a Port-A-Potty) and you feel compelled to share your epiphany with everyone. Or at least that's how it works for me.

Yesterday afternoon Phoenix went to see the chiropractor. He has a standing appointment when a chiropractic vet from an eastern Iowa practice does a “house call” at a local training building and saves a bunch of area people the approximately 100 mile round trip to his clinic.

Anyway, Nix and I went early, because I wanted to train for just a bit before his appointment. That would free up the evening for packing for the weekend and watching the season premiere of “Criminal Minds.” Important stuff.

All I wanted to work were articles and gloves - 10 minutes, max, in keeping with my "less is more" approach. It was such a lovely afternoon, several people who had arrived before me were hanging around outside the building. Nix and I went inside. He had done two (informal) articles with speed and happy attitude when a couple of people and their dogs came into the building. They sat down on one end of the building, very politely, with their dogs not being disruptive.

The change in Phoenix was phenomenal.

He went from being up, bouncy and totally engaged to tense and slow. His body carriage changed. His whole demeanor went from “This is fun!” to “Oh crap.”

I’ve known for a long time that he has no use for most “strange” dogs. He doesn’t have a lot of use for many dogs he knows, either. He has a few doggie friends (two lab girls, a pack of field spaniels, a couple of shelties and a pomeranian, go figure) but otherwise, prefers to pretend other dogs do not exist.

I didn’t realize, however, how much impact the simple presence of other dogs had on his work until seeing the stark before and after contrast yesterday. He was extremely concerned about the new dogs in the building. He wasn’t dysfunctional. He was still working and it was passable but certainly not the dog I’d had 2 minutes before.

He wasn’t distracted in the usual sense. He didn’t want to go see the people and dogs but their presence was clearly disturbing to him. He started giving me slow and sloppy responses, exactly what we’d experienced in the ring.

Hmmm . . .

A few months ago, my reaction would have been “correct it.” Even though my correction wouldn’t have been harsh, I wouldn’t have let him “get away with that.” At least I learned enough from our summer training to know this was not the answer.

Instead, I asked him for the barest element of the exercises, a simple retrieve. When he fronted with the glove and dropped it, body posture still obviously stressed, I laughed at him, grabbed the glove, ran around the building with it (safely away from the dogs and people) and let him chase me and eventually catch the glove. We did the same with articles.

I let him make the choice: fret or play. He lightened up visibly. The focus shifted from the strange dogs to me. No food or toys were needed. No correction was involved. Chasing me and getting to play tug with the glove and article became the reward. If he hadn't responded well, I would have backed down to something he COULD do successfully, maybe just simple attention.

When I thought he was relaxed and back in a comfortable place mentally, I asked for a semi-formal article (sent him from a stand facing the pile, goosed his butt on the way out, asked for a front but no finish and let him leap up an grab the article), then a semi-formal glove (same thing) and ended the session. He was much happier and he was trying. Not perfect but who cares.

Phoenix seems to be a dog who understands WHAT to do but hits a lot of mental walls that inhibit his ability to do it. Just making him do it wasn’t going to help him deal with the elements he found disturbing. By not turning it into a confrontational “me vs. him” situation, I think (again, time will tell), I moved us one step up the ladder in terms of “Hey! Isn’t it more fun to play with ME than worry about THEM?”

Don’t know why it took me so long to figure this out. To paraphrase Thomas Edison, I haven’t failed, just found a lot of ways that don’t work.

Feet, weather, training and a mission statement

The foot ligaments: are better! Not at 100 percent yet but I think with timely applications of adrenaline and ibuprofen I’ll be able to run Phoenix this weekend. The swelling is pretty much gone, my foot is still kind of bruised-looking and definitely sore, but if I wear stiff-soled shoes, I can walk without pain. Give me another 36 hours and I’ll be able to sprint like the wind. Or something like that.

The training: What exactly AM I doing with Phoenix’s obedience work now? At the moment, we’re on the “less is more” plan. I’m making it a point to keep our daily sessions at 15 minutes or less. And I’ve quit training every day. OMG! THIS IS HARD FOR ME! I’m a training junkie and always had dogs who felt the same way. We could train FOREVER. Phoenix thinks that much training, for a dog who knows what he is doing, is highly over-rated.

While some trainers might argue “But he HAS to understand that he HAS to do it,” I think the “We will train as long as I want to and you will like it” approach is counter-productive for where we are right now. I’ve been down that road. Yes, I absolutely agree the dog has to understand that non-compliance is not an option, but he also has to WANT to do the work or all the HAVE TO in the world is not going to create the kind of teamwork I want. If you get the WANT TO, the HAVE TO is kind of a non-issue, providing the dog understands his job.

So we’re doing less training but we’re doing it with more intensity and stopping while whatever we're doing is absolutely the most freaking fun either one of us has ever had. Talk about hard! When things are going so well, I want to keep going. But I want the game to stay fresh and fun and grinding him into the ground just to prove the point that I can MAKE him do it is not the answer.

Something that helps is keeping a training journal. I’ve done this for years, but now I use it to pinpoint what I want to work each session and how I want to make it challenging or new. This keeps me from trying to work everything at once (over-training, ugh), which seems to be my training default, and also helps make sure we work each of the Open/Utility exercises on a regular basis. Left to my own devices, I would totally ignore the moving stand and broad jump. Just because I can. Because they are stupidly, deceptively simple. And they need to go away.

The weather: sounds awesome for camping this weekend. With an extra blanket. And long underwear. And thick socks. And I’ll probably be sleeping in my stocking cap, something that hasn’t happened since the ice storm power outage of February ‘07.

The weather dudes can’t seem to agree on nighttime lows, which are ranging from 38 to the mid 40s for the weekend. Well, I camped one year in the spring and the water froze in the dogs’ water buckets. We lived.

The mission: when I started ExerciseFinished, I never intended it to be a training blog. And it isn’t, because there’s always of bunch of weird crap on here that is just reflections of my life and has nothing to do with dog training.

But when I do write about training, I truly hope my thoughts, experiences, reflections, etc. can help trainers with the same kinds of issues to reasonably think things through, not just follow the training approach that often seems to value making the dog perform no matter what - instead of trying to figure out what the dog really needs in order to give a happy, willing performance that is not based on constant cookies OR fear or pain avoidance training.

In keeping with these thoughts, you might like Denise Fenzi’s new blog, www.denisefenzi.com. She is much of the same mind and expresses it in a more sensible and organized fashion, unlike my rambling discourses.

Smarter than the average bear?

A lot has been written about the intelligence of dogs and most of it has been written by people who know more about the subject than me. But Jennie’s comment last week about how intelligent dogs are harder to train than “slightly dim” dogs got me to thinking. Here are a few of those thoughts. As usual, I probably have more questions than answers.

Remember the study that came out a few years back that said border collies were the smartest breed? Ask any BC owner and they’ll tell you that doesn’t mean they’re automatically a breeze to train or live with!

Measuring canine intelligence is a dicey proposition and too often we tend to decide which breeds are smart or not by the numbers of each represented among winners in the obedience ring. Somewhere along the line, the ability to win in the obedience ring has come to equate a higher level of intelligence.

Of course this is ridiculous. Folks who have played the obedience game with an open mind know every dog is an individual and words like smart or dumb often reflect the person holding the leash much more than the dog.

A more accurate declaration would be “Easier to train” equals “Wins in the obedience ring.” There’s a reason golden retrievers, not whippets, dominate the obedience scene. How many times have you heard someone say, “I’m getting a golden/sheltie/fill-in-the-blank next time because they’re easy to train”?

I think most folks would agree, some breeds ARE easier to train than others, especially for higher-end competition where tiny performance details may separate the top four winners. At a recent trial I attended, golden retrievers accounted for nearly 2/3 of the entry in Open and Utility. This is not an accident. They are well suited for demanding obedience competition.

Notice I did not say some breeds are EASY to train. I said EASIER. Even if done well, with patience, respect, realistic goals and a lot of time, training ANY dog to the UDX level or beyond is never easy. It takes a tremendous amount of effort and dedication on the handler’s part to make it happen. And that’s never easy. If it were, everyone would have an OTCh.

But some breeds seem to excel, while others rarely make an appearance in the obedience ring. Is it because certain breeds are so mentally superior they understand what we are trying to communicate in spite of our clumsy and often flawed training efforts? Or is it because they don’t object to the constant repetition/correction approach some trainers feel is necessary? Or because they are willing to tolerate heavy-handed training methods that would have other breeds saying, “Screw this, I quit.”

I’ve always felt that the relationship between dog and trainer was more responsible for a team’s success than the dog’s genetic material. But let’s not deny the facts — if you get a puppy from a litter with OTChs. going back for generations on either side of the pedigree, chances are that puppy is going to be extremely “trainable,” regardless of the breed.

The pedigree proves that genetic line is mentally predisposed to successfully work with humans and physically able to do so for long enough to earn high-end titles. This is a wonderful thing. Breeders would be foolish not to make it part of their programs and exhibitors who enjoy that particular breed would be foolish not to recognize it. Does this mean everyone should rush out and get a golden retriever or sheltie from a specific kennel so they can "win"? Of course not. Not unless you truly, truly love goldens or shelties. But if you love Fluegelhunds, then keep loving and training Fluegelhunds.

I don’t think an OTCh.-loaded pedigree necessarily means those dogs are “smarter” than dogs who might not be achieving on such high levels - they are just very amenable to working happily with humans and have been trained by experienced owners, leading to a high rate of success, as measured by titles and scores, in competitive venues. Which, ideally, is what many of us want.

We often don’t recognize intelligence when it’s living with us. The “slightly dim” dog is willing to keep repeating things over and over, exactly the same way each time, while we tell him how SMART he is, while the “smart” dog may start asking questions or re-inventing the wheel or doing God knows how many crazy ass things that make the trainer think “What is WRONG with that dumb dog?”

Looking back at the dogs I’ve trained as an adult, I think my shelties were of average intelligence but they possessed a joie de vivre for training and showing that amplified it. I do feel my Belgians have been on the higher end of the intelligence scale (some of their problem solving has been freaky scary) but Phoenix is by far the most difficult dog I’ve trained. Although a lot of that is of my own doing, he is a free-thinker, creative, inventive, pushy, sensitive, reactive and absolutely un-interested in doing the same old, same old day after day. This is not a recipe for an "easy" dog to train.

He can be a total sweetheart or a complete challenge to live with. One thing is for sure, now that I’ve come to realize he needs more from me than commands and consequences, our training is NEVER boring.

Regardless of how brilliant or dim-witted we think our dogs are, we need to be more invested in building a relationship with them that allows us to learn together. Phoenix has made it very clear that I need to learn more about HIM — not just what I can train him to do — before our obedience ring work is going to improve.

You might be a redneck if . . .

. . . you've ever used vet-wrap to keep an ice pack in place. Yep. That's my foot with an ice pack vet-wrapped around it.

You might be a middle-aged woman if  you pulled ligaments in your foot by . . . get ready for this . . . it's crazy wild . . .

 . . . standing up.

In keeping with my long history of getting hurt in odd ways (vacuum cleaner handle in the eye, bungee cord to the face, etc.), I have once again found a totally ridiculous way to get hurt without trying.

It happened at the school program I did with Phoenix on Thursday. We were almost done. The kids were petting Phoenix and I was crouching on the balls of my feet, giving him treats, which was totally stupid because A) Phoenix adores kids and B) crouching like that is really hard on my knees. It was about to be really hard on something else, too.

I stood up and something in my left foot went POP! Ouch! WTF??? SOB!!! The pain was incredible. Like someone had driven a truck over my big toe. I seriously could have thrown up. But image is everything. We finished the program, with me balancing on one wobbly leg. Then I limped out to the van, took Phoenix home and went back to work. My foot hurt so bad I called the local clinic.

"There's not much we can do for toe injuries," the nurse said, her tone of voice clearly indicating that unless it was hanging by a flap of skin or had a bone poking out of it, I should just hang up and get on with my life.

It FELT like a bone was poking out of it. It felt like red hot nails were poking into it. She asked how it happened and I tried to explain that one minute I was fine, then I stood up and well, that was that.

"Sounds like you've hyper-extended your big toe," the nurse told me. Apparently this happens when you have a sudden shift of weight or balance and your toes end up trying to compensate for your whole body. It's fairly common in athletes.

Yeah. Ha-ha. How common is it in middle aged women giving dog obedience programs in the library?

"You've probably pulled or torn some ligaments," the nurse continued helpfully. "There's really nothing to do but put ice on it, elevate it and take an anti-inflammatory. And stay off it. It will take a week or two to heal."

A week or TWO? Stay OFF it? Yeah, sure. 

Oh, and I was supposed to keep flexing it so it didn't stiffen up.

Flex it? I wanted to cut it off!

TG the Granger agility trials aren't THIS weekend or I'd be hiring a rent-a-handler. Let's see . . . two runs a day times three days . . . Michele, Rilda, Tammy, Marsha, Paula and Tracy . . . that comes out nicely. If the boys want to play, Jeff, Terry and Bill could take a turn.

As it turns out, I THINK I'll be okay to run my own dog next weekend. The last 48 hours have been pretty crappy but my foot feels a lot better today. Do you know how hard it is to ice and elevate a foot? You can elevate a foot or you can ice a foot but doing both at once is not easy. Hence the vet wrap idea (thanks, Renee!). 

The part of my foot that hurts most is the right half, top and bottom. That part was so swollen by Thursday night my toes couldn't even touch the floor. It's bad when you can't touch your toes. It's even worse when your toes can't touch the floor.

Thanks to gimping around at work Thursday and Friday, my entire foot ached by the end of the day. The right side hurt from the pulled ligaments. The left side hurt from me walking on it funny. My left knee hurt from the awkward way I had my foot propped up on my desk at work (finally, an excuse to put my feet on the desk!). And the right side of my body was complaining because the left side was out of kilter and it was being asked to over-compensate.

Seriously, if you had told me when I was 20 that life after 40 was going to be like this . . .