Specialty Week, Our RE Title & Teeter Stuff

Well, first things first.  Carla and I headed out to Springfield, MA over the 4th of July where we finished our RE title and earned our first 2 RAE legs.   I was particularly pleased about our performance because last year at this show, we had a lot of issues.  This venue is tough because it’s a large, busy, show; and the rally ring is set up right along the corridor where people come in and out of the building, so there are LOTS of distracting things going on.  Last year was our first attempt competing off lead and we weren’t quite ready for that level of noise and distraction.  This year, we were much better prepared, Carla even held her Sit for the honor when a big scary dumpster was pushed past us.  I was so proud of her.  So here’s the picture from Wednesday when we finished our RE title:

 

I eventually want to transition to Novice, so we will continue to work on our RAE legs, while I continue to work on fading my cues.  After 3 days of Rally at the Springfield shows, we headed down to Enfield, CT, for the Portuguese Podengo Club of America Specialty.  The judge, Luis Gorjao Henriques, put Carla up out of 7 entries in Open.  He was also very helpful (and patient!) after the show when he discussed the merits of individual dogs.   He liked Carla’s topline, tail and coat.  He also commented on her attitude <g>.  He said she is a little small, could have a more triangular head, and a better ear set.  All in all I was pleased with the results.  Here is our picture with the judge and the show secretary:

The photographers at the show, Agile Images, were fantastic.  In addition to shooting win pictures, a video of the event, and candids, they kindly agreed to take some pictures of Carla’s spider dog trick.  To see all the pictures from the specialty, visit the Agile Images website here: http://www.agile-images.com/

Carla does her Spider Dog Trick at the 2009 Specialty

 

In other news, our teeter performance continues to improve!  After our last teeter session, some friends pointed out that Carla was cueing off of my motion at the end of the teeter.   So we worked some more on this in my last session with Sassie.  Sassie was kind enough to videotape it for me so you can see our progress.  The teeter is slightly higher than what we worked on before,  and Sassie did a great job of directing me to run FAST past the end of the teeter. 

Here’s a clip of some of the work we did.  I was pleased with the improvement.  On the last run, there’s some yummy stuff (can’t remember the name) that’s sort of like play-doh at the end of the teeter that Carla is stopping to eat.

We’re going down to Y2K9 tomorrow to work some more.

Teeter Progress

I finally feel like we’re making some progress on the Teeter.  The quick history is that I spent a lot of time trying to get Carla to go to the end of the Teeter, and then letting the end drop a bit, then a bit more, etc.  However, what I discovered is that Carla HATED the banging of the teeter and the feeling of it banging her butt on the way off.

So… we went back to the beginning and just started working on getting OFF of the teeter.  For weeks, and weeks, AND WEEKS!  Finally two weeks ago, I could get Carla to go over a low teeter and drive off it enough so that it wasn’t hitting her on the way up. 

This week, we raised the teeter a bit and you can see that she’s a lot less concerned going off.  She’s driving towards the Manners Minder which you can’t see in the video.  You may be able to see that she is still flicking her ears back when she hears the bang, but all in all, I’m pretty happy with our progress.

I also want to teach Carla to hold something, partly because it’s cute, and partly because I have grand aspirations of someday getting a CDX.  I’m not quite sure how to go about this, but saw Sassie Joiris do something like this with one of her dogs at a seminar.  Hopefully I’ll get to see Sassie in a couple of weeks and she can help us along.

And finally we played around with some of the other body targets we know.  No goal here, just playing around.

Two Down, One to Go

So with one thing and another going on, I’m finally making time to get back to my blog.

After all, I have important news, Carla is only 1 leg away from her Rally Excellent title. Yeah!

Perry, Carla, and I spent the weekend in Syracuse so that we could go to the Syracuse Obedience Training Club trial. I finished Carla’s RA at this club’s January trial, and everyone was so nice, we decided to go back again. Perry decided to come along as well, so the kids spent a fun weekend with my brother and SIL, and we had grown up time AND a dog show – my kind of weekend!

Carla worked well both days. The judge for this trial was very nice, and put together an interesting course, but she was tough! The first day, we scored a 75. We IP’d (failed) 2 exercises, both entirely my fault. The first IP was on the Come Front Finish Left. The come front went fine, but when Carla finished, I look down and said “good dog” at which point she popped out of the sit. If I had been really on the ball and just moved forward we would have been fine (maybe a 1 point deduction) but instead, I had her sit again, which caused us to fail the exercise, 10 points gone. The other IP was on the Moving Down, I forgot to pause after walking around Carla. I KNOW I’m supposed to pause. I’ve been told by other judges that I MUST pause. I tell my students in the class I teach, that they MUST pause, but for some reason, my brain sees the word “Moving” and off I move, no pause, minus 10 points! The other 5 points were just sloppy heeling and sits – so Carla did great but is clearly hampered by her handler of little brain.

Today was better, Carla was a little distracted, but I was a little more together so together we did fine and scored 88. We lost 4 points for repeating an exercise, the 90 Degree Pivot -Left. Carla didn’t sit after the pivot and since we don’t usually have a problem with this, I wasn’t sure if she didn’t sit, or if she sat but popped back up. I wasn’t willing to risk the 10 points if she had popped, so we just redid the exercise and took the 4 point hit. (Turns out, as you can see in the video, that she didn’t sit, but I didn’t know that at the time.) Our other deductions were just onesy-twosies. I paused a second on the Moving Stand (which you can see in the video), and then right after the stand, on the Slow heeling I was trying to keep Carla slow, but was really giving her the same hand signal for Stand so she was a little confused. She also drifted a little at the heeling around the food bowls, and again when there was a furball floating by on the floor. I also finished the course by passing the last sign on the wrong side. Ugh. We did have a great back up, although Perry was so excited to watch it live, that he forgot to capture that exercise on film :~(

The honor exercise that I was really worried about went fine both days, although she almost broke her sit today when someone’s camera flash went off.

All in all, 2 Qs, 2 4th place rosettes, and a kid free night away from home. Priceless .

So, one more leg, and we’ll have our RE! I’m not sure what we’ll do after that. I’m not much interested in going after our RAE title, so we may try and buckle down and make some progress on agility. We had a breakthrough on our teeter work last week, so I’m feeling a little better about our agility prospects.

Perfect Score!

Today Perry, Reanna, and I took Carla to the Harrisburg show to compete in Rally.  Carla and I competed in Advanced B, and completed the course with a perfect score of 100 for first place.  Yeah!  Perhaps even more exciting, I FINALLY have a video of us doing Rally. 

It was fascinating watching the video – I didn’t realize how much I’m still bending over and leading Carla with a finger target.  I don’t think I’m doing this while practicing, so it may just be part of my anxiety issue.  The targeting aside, today, I felt that we were finally working as a team.  I was very nervous until about 2/3 of the way through the serpentine, and looking at the video, I can almost see Carla relax and start to enjoy herself. 

As usual, Carla made friends and by the time we were through the course, had acquired an entire cheering section, which you can hear as we finished.

Reanna has been asking for a video of HER and Carla, so after we were done in Rally, we took advantage of some of the open space at the show site for Reanna and Carla to show their stuff.  Including Reanna’s version of “spider Reanna:”

Later as we were browsing vendor booths, we met another Podengo person!  I can’t remember her name (Sandy maybe), as Reanna was not interested in chatting, but it was fun to meet someone else with a Podengo – and I’m looking forward to meeting with her and her dog Ethel(?) at the National.

Spider dog – almost there!

Between kids and work and life, I don’t think I’m going to make it down to Y2K9s this weekend.  So since I won’t have any agility to blog about, I thought I’d put together the history of our spider dog trick to date.

Carla and I took a dog tricks seminar with Sassie Joiris back in January.  One of the tricks she is teaching her dogs (Norfolk Terriers and a Whippet) is a handstand.  We decided to try it with Carla.

I started off sitting down facing her and getting her to back onto a folded towel.  Carla knows a few body targets, so she picked up on this pretty quickly.  Then I moved the towel to a ramp, and then started working with just a ramp.

Here’s our first try with the ramp, my camera operator is my 7 year old.  She charges a $1 for 5 minutes of camera work.  LOL

Here’s more of the same session, you can see that I raised the incline too quickly, but once we brought it back down, I thought Carla did quite nicely.

And finally:

 

She’s even better at it now, I can just squat near the wall instead of sort of coralling her with my legs.  Last night at the Beginner’s Rally class I help teach,  I was trying to demonstrate backing up to a target, but Carla kept trying to put her rear end up in the air, even without a wall.  I’ll try to get a more recent video soon.

I think the total amount of time we’ve spent working on this trick is probably about an hour – spread out over a few weeks of 5 – 7 minute sessions.   It was easy and fun and made us the hit of my dog training class!

Today Audra decided to come with me to Y2K9 to work with Carla.  It’s great that she’s old enough to help out and as a bonus, I get a lot more video!  Also, having someone along makes it easier for me to work on the weave poles and the teeter as at this point, those are easier to do with 2 handlers.

For weaves, we just called Carla back and forth between us.  We started at 6 poles, then went to 8, then to all 12.  You can see Carla hopping over the channels – I’m not sure if that’s something to worry about or if that will just fade in time. 

Here’s Carla on the teeter.  This is how we started the teeter a long time ago, just having Carla drive to the end to get her reward.  Then a different instructor had us do some work on going down off the teeter which had the unintended effect of causing Carla to stop at the beginning of the contact zone to wait for the teeter to drop.  So we went back to just going right to the end, and at the end of the session, we added a little bit of bounce to the board.  Audra enjoyed this because she stood at the end of the teeter and called Carla to a finger target.

Then we did a short sequence – which was super fun, but clearly we need to start working on our A-frame contacts.  I think I’m going to order the DVD of Rachel Sanders Box Method and try that.

And finally, another VERY short sequence with a special guest handler!

After we were done at Y2, we jumped in the car and rushed to make it to Audra’s karate class.  We made it in time, and here she is leading her class in the first part of their kata.

Well here I am.

I was dragged kicking and screaming on to facebook, I’ve twittered for work, and now I have a blog. 

For anyone that doesn’t know me, I live in Bucks County, PA with my loving and ever-patient dh, my 2dds, 7 & 4, 5 dogs, 4 cats and a parrot (that’s where the ever patient part of dh comes from).  I currently work full time outside of the home, but don’t know how much longer that will be true.  My hobby (and the primary reason for this blog) is my pets. 

My youngest dog, Carla, just finished her Advanced Rally title, but before we start working on our Excellent title, there are a few things I need to sharpen up – primarily our come fronts.  So tonight I went back to basics and started working on getting her comfortable between my feet. 

Carla wins her RA title on her 2nd Birthday