Stick a fork in us . . . we're done

Phoenix, Jamie and I just got home from our last obedience trial of the year. Yeah, there are a couple of other "local" trials we could still enter but at this point, I think our time and money will be better spent buckling down and training.

This weekend capped a wonderful, wild, surprising, disappointing, enlightening, joyful string of autumn obedience trials. Phoenix Q'd in Open B both days and did his stays without looking like a stressball. He made some good choices in the ring. He made some naughty choices in the ring. He tried hard on some things. He didn't try very hard at all on others. 

We had fun at the matches and had lots of laughs sitting ringside. The costume parade on Saturday was hysterical. I wonder how many of the dogs got even with their handlers today?

The club even offered a Highest Scoring Malinois prize and we won it! Okay, we were the only malinois there but still, that's not a prize you see offered at every show.

I'm not sure when we'll go back into the obedience ring. My goal is to be ready for Utility in the spring but right now I'm not sure how I'm defining "spring." 

Happy Halloween!

Fun photos

Paula snapped this picture with her cell phone
while in the Cleveland (?) airport.

I'm not sure if it means:
A) This is the reason why Phoenix acts the way he does in the ring.
B) I should START giving Phoenix coffee before we go in the ring.
C) I should STOP giving Phoenix coffee before we go in the ring.
D) I should give the coffee to ME before we go in the ring.

The general consensus was that anything labeled "Phoenix Coffee" should probably come with a warning.

Here's a pic of Phoenix's nieces and nephews. His sister Cayenne had a litter about a month ago, 9 bouncing baby mals. As Catherine points out, one of the items in this group is not the same as the others. Here, kitty, kitty!

(Photo courtesy of Catherine Shields, Carousel Malinois)

Stone soup

First, a bit of deer follow-up. Yes, I feed my dogs raw and I would have LOVED to strap that bad boy on my luggage rack and haul his sorry carcass home. Might have made it all worth while. Although no deer is worth $3,000, having about 100 lbs. of meat would have offset my deductible nicely.

But alas, it was a hit and run. It was pitch dark and the deer vanished after I whacked him. I don't know if he bounced back into the north ditch or if momentum carried him on across the road. It was, as they say, a dark and stormy night. I wasn't exactly in a position to go looking for him. Next time, I hit a deer, I'll do it in broad daylight so I can track him down.

On a tastier note, I made the First Official Pot Of Soup of Autumn yesterday. I'd ground some chicken for the dogs over the weekend and in the process of reorganizing the freezer, found a bunch of soup fixins just waiting to be fixed.

I don't have a specific soup recipe. I just throw stuff in the crockpot.

First, some beef stock from a roast.
It came complete with little bits of potato.

Veggies du jour.

Taters. Lots of taters.
Taters are a food group by themselves.
And I'm too lazy to peel them.

A little chopped up leftover beef roast.
A little chopped up leftover pork roast.
The pork roast was actually supposed to be training treats.
Sorry Phoenix.
Will you forgive me?

The spice of life.
I never cook with fresh onions.
Fresh onions are evil.
Dried onions are my friend.

I love my crockpot.
I seriously love my crockpot.
I might starve to death without it.

Oh yum.
Gimme a spoon and the bread and butter.
Then leave me alone.
I tend to food guard.

$#@! deer

I hit a deer on the way home from work last night. This was my second deer-bashing incident, my fourth deer total and my first buck.

Ironically, it happened on the exact same stretch of highway where I hit "the herd" 8 years ago. That time I took out 3 deer, all does, all at once. That time, one hit the grill, one hit the driver's side door and one hit the driver's side sliding door.

I don't know if last night's single buck-bashing was better or worse. One minute I'm driving down the road, the next minute THUMP! All I saw were antlers and then he was gone. I didn't spend a lot of time on the side of the road looking for him. Since there wasn't steam billowing from the radiator and no fluid was gushing out of anywhere and the tire wasn't scraping the wheel well (which no longer had its original shape), I drove home, using a lot of creative language.

Actually, I only used one word. A lot. But very creatively. I used it as a noun, verb and adjective.

When I took C3PO to the body shop for an estimate this morning, I learned a new word.

That word is "spendy."

As in, "Oh, an Acadia. That's going to be spendy."

I used my original word some more.

Then he told me I was the fourth person to come in this morning with deer damage. And that was at 9 a.m. Welcome to Iowa County, home of deer with suicidal rage.


Does this look like $3,000 damage to you? Me neither but I guess most of the front end has to be replaced. And some internal stuff, too.

Although the headlights still work and I got assurances it was safe to drive. Whew, I was wondering if I'd be able to go to Omaha this weekend. Really, you have to have priorities.

Does anyone else see the irony of driving approximately 30,000 miles a year to classes, matches, trials and seminars, only to hit a deer coming home from work? My first deer strike happened on the way to work. Clearly, the problem here is work.

So now I'm waiting for my insurance agent to get back to me and I'm waiting for a sheriff's deputy to get back to me because you are supposed to report any deer accident damage over $500. Good grief, a deer could just LOOK at your car and cause $500.

Let's try this again

Here is the post I tried to put up last week but couldn't get the graphics to cooperate. So I took it down but apparently it was still showing as being up, but no one could open it. One of the computer goddesses at work helped me find larger graphics this morning. She also brought blueberry cobbler for her birthday. I think I love her. Happy birthday, Jennifer, you rock!

Anyway, NOAA came out with their 2010-2011 winter weather outlook last Thursday and since I know you're all as fascinated by the weather as I am (or not), thought I'd share it with you. Forecast outlooks being what they are, you can agree or disagree or agree to disagree or go out and burn your Old Farmer's Almanac because it doesn't say the same thing. Whatever. If you don't like this outlook, get on the Internet and check around, maybe you'll find one you like better.



I have my own personal way of forecasting (and even influencing!) the weather. It's pretty darn simple. Here's the formula:

For a pleasant winter with little snow and mild temperatures, go home and immediately put away all your dog training equipment. Store all jumps, contact pieces, tunnels, weave poles and ring gates securely in your garage before the calendar turns to November 1. Do not plan to get them out any time before April or do any outdoor training of any kind.

For a winter that is an absolute freaking mind-numbing pain in the arse, leave everything outside. It will disappear under a glacier before Christmas and you won't see it again until April. If you're lucky.

This works. Seriously.

My sheltie Connor was not a good jumper. He needed regular jump work in order to keep his rhythm. Any time off from regular jumping meant stutter-stepping next time we were in the ring. So in late fall of 1999, I came up with the outstandingly brilliant idea to leave a jump out in the yard all winter long so we could practice.

It snowed early that year. It snowed often. Whenever it snowed, it snowed a lot. The jump disappeared under a drift within weeks of my brilliant idea, not to be seen again until springtime.

You'd think I'd learn but I did the same d*mn thing with Phoenix's weavepoles a few years ago. He was just mastering them in November and I was excited to keep working him. I left my weaves out in the yard. One snowstorm after another put a quick end to that idea as snow piled up to within six inches of the top of the poles. They would have been great weave poles for a pomeranian or a rabbit.

A walk in the woods

Yesterday, Jamie and Phoenix and I hiked a local trail. We took the "red" route, 3.5 miles, that winds through native timber to a bluff overlooking the Iowa River. For all you forestry type people, the timber is called an oak savannah. 

It's my favorite trail even though it's had very little — make that zero — maintenance since it opened about 20 years ago so parts are kind of primitive. The dogs make sure I get up the steep hills okay. They also help me go down hills a little faster than is probably safe.

Jamie wore his doggie pack from Aunt Michele. He carried a couple bottles of water, a portable bowl and treats. He loves his pack and thinks he is all that when he wears it.

We frequently see deer and wild turkeys when we walk here but yesterday we made so much noise crunching through the dry leaves we probably scared away anything within five miles. 

It was a great way to spend a sunny autumn afternoon, the kind of day I want to bottle and save for February.

 

To sit or not to sit

TURN AND SIT VS. SEND DIRECT

A reader asked why I decided to switch to “send direct” with Phoenix’s scent articles after initially teaching the “turn and sit.” Thanks for the post idea!

When I trained my first two UDs, sending directly to the articles was not an option. The rules dictated a turn and sit, followed by the send. Then the rules changed and sending direct became allowable. I sent Jamie directly because his sits never had “slam your butt into the ground” speed. It seemed counterproductive to do the turn and make him sit, only to ask him get right back up again and go briskly to the pile.

When I taught Phoenix to do articles, he was very mentally immature. That translated to slightly insane. He tended to fling himself all over the place and was easily distract — oh, look, a shiny object!

So at the time, it seemed to make sense to implement the turn and sit so he could regroup and focus before being sent to the article pile instead of just flying out into oblivion, having totally forgotten what we were doing. Looking back, I wish I would have just left the whole turn issue alone until we were closer to actually showing in Utility but oh well, live and learn.

Somewhere along the line, he grew up and got a brain. By now we’d been working the turn and sit for about 2 years, although I hadn’t made article work a very serious part of our training since I was focused on Novice and Open. Articles were practically a recreational activity since he learned them quickly and thought they were fun.

When I started matching him in Utility this spring, I really wasn’t happy with the turn and sit he was giving me. Technically, he was doing it okay but like Jamie, the turn-stop-sit-get up-go sequence seemed to be demotivating.

As I mentioned in an earlier post this week, this training and titling stuff is MY idea, not Phoenix’s and I feel I owe it to him to find the simplest and most intrinsically rewarding method of teaching/performing any exercise. I really try to not make things harder than they need to be! Thus, the change to the send direct.

Sure, I could have worked to rev up the turn and sit. It’s always a tough decision when you’re facing a training issue: train harder to make the current method work or try something different? This time, I decided to try something different.

Besides, since the turn and sit are a scoreable part of the exercise, you can start losing points for a crooked sit, slow sit, no sit, forged sit, etc. before the dog ever gets near the articles. It made sense to just eliminate one more element of difficulty. I am a firm believer in picking your battles! Deciding to do the sit initially was one of those “What was I thinking?” moments that so many of us trainers have so many of! I’m sure for some dogs and handlers, the turn and sit works very well. It’s purely an individual choice that depends on your dog’s strengths and weaknesses.

Of course, the send direct is not without its scoring hazards. The biggest one is the dog making a wide turn, followed by a huge arc to the pile, although some judges seem to score that harder than others, while other judges totally ignore any sins that might be committed before the dog gets to the pile. Like so many things in the obedience regs, scoring how the dog gets to the pile seems very open to interpretation.

Please feel free to comment on your experiences one way or another.