training techniques

It is amazing to see the difference in littermates sometimes.

Gibbs is a social butterfly, much like his father, wagging tail, happy to see anyone, not bothered by much. He thought the show last weekend was JUST FOR HIM!! And made sure everyone knew just how happy he was that they had all gathered to see him. He handled the blow dryer fine, handled beign put ont he table well. I just have to bring him DOWN some.

Jenny, OTOH, is much more like their mother, who is very soft, not as confident. Put her on the table, she melts, turn on anysort of machinery, she cringes. .. so I've been working hard to get her over this, to help her emerge from this 'fear period' as the confident young dog she was a few months ago.

After Gibbs made such an ass out of me at our supported entry last week, I entered them both in handling class last night. Jenny has her first show next week. It's a Borzoi specialty, but I will be keeping a tight hand on who she meets, as I've seen some nastiness, usually by males, but sometimes bitches too. Stress, or bad temperament, who knows, I don't want it to ruin a good day for my puppy girl .. well, Bonnie's & my puppy girl.

So, we headed out to class, I arranged to get there early to let Jenny relax a bit. New place, new noises. Taking her out of the car, I put the racing muzzle on Gibbs.

This is a dual purpose action. The more they wear the muzzle, the less likely they are to fight the muzzle when it comes time to start running. He's been very sane about the muzzle, not bothered by it at all. It also keeps them from EATING my car, which their father did. they have plenty of toys,b ut I'd rather be safe than sorry, so thus the muzzle.

Our classes are held basically in a warehouse. It's in a big pole building type building, which can echo, and Jenny wasn't at all sure at first, a bit freaked out, but after making her come in, and getting her thru the strange dogs(why people think it's ok to allow their dogs to lunge towards a strange dog,I have no clue), we went in to visit the Berners and their mom.

I stood conversing with the Owner as Jenny stood next to me, eyes a bit wide at first at being happily greeted by 9 month old Mufasa who knows no strangers, his buddy Montana, and their two mixed breed buddies. . Jenny began relaxing, moving away from my knee, and I kept ignoring her. I know this is just a stage, as she quickly began moving up to the owner and her daughter for scritches, still not happy with the big strange dogs getting too close, but not freaking out, no hysterics, just backing off when they got close, but if they moved away, she moved up to sniff them. Her little body started to relax the longer we were there and I knew she had mentally relaxed when she started stealing toys off the display board LOL. I may end up usign getting new toys(as if my dogs need more toys) as a way to reward her for being a good girl. . as she definitely seems to love her toys.

We then went into class, and she again reverted to a little more nervous, but no stress panting, just this very worried look on her face as our large class congregated waiting for the instructor to get ready. I will say, after seeing some nasty darn dogs in the OB classes I've attended, it was soooo nice to see an entire class of well behaved dogs, ranging from a long haired dachshund puppy, to a Chessie, a Schnauzer, an Aussie, a Golden, Mufasa and Jenny, and a little bit in between. A lot of new faces for Jenny to get used to. We situated ourself towards the beginning of the line, as I wanted her to get used to both following, and being followed by another dog, but didn't want to have to worry about tripping over the littler dogs, so we sandwiched ourselves between the Golden & Mufasa.

And class began. First few steps Jenny was a bit confused, but she settled in quickly, I was soooooo very pleased with how she settled in. No silly antics like her brother either, moved out nicely, no bumping, no looking at me, not freaked out by the golden behind us, tail down, movement nice. . we stopped and I stacked her, and she kept lookign back over her shoulder at me, but otherwise, kept her stack perfect as can be, no other movement, no fidgeting. . .unlike her gawky brother, she is very well put together right now. She didn't give us trouble with checking her bite, and didn't react to being gone over. Our down and back was perfect also. . I was very very shocked. We went around to the end and she began going up to people on either side of us, lookign for treats and scritches, still a bit worried when a strange dog approached her, but as the night went, and I was given a toy by the lovely Golden's owner, she began to really relax enough to pounce on the toy when I tossed it and wag her tail, not a little wag, but a nice wag :) Ending it on a good note, I took her back to the car, switched the muzzle over, and took Gibbs in.

Gibbs is the devil child, just like his father was at this age, and I mean JUST LIKE HIS FATHER. Bounce bounce bounce, head up and looking at me, tail up in the air. Instructor gave me some hints that helped settle him down, some of which I'd started at working at home even before class, and that's walking him until he debounces, then break into a slow trot. .. but I also have to learn how to handle him differently than I've handled dogs for 15 yrs, he is much better if he CAN'T see my hand, vs the other dogs I've always shown with my hand down and in front of their nose if I can keep it there. Just a matter of remembering where to put my hand for each dog.

It's one reason I tend to train my own dogs, this difference in how you handle some dogs. I remember one of my first OB instructors wanted me to give Obie a harsh correction, I stood up to her. . .I knew if I'd done it to Obie, he'd've melted, Gibbs (And his Father, and in some manner Gossip) can handle a harder correction, while Dei, Kani, & Jenny can't, they will melt. Granted, that same instructor almost failed us because Obie didn't recall like a border collie. While another instructor in the same place understood and gave me other ideas to get Obie to do what I wished. .

You have to handle each dog differently, and the best way for their personality! And make it FUN!

Bitches In Season & Rally Shows

Soo, while at the show Sunday, I went to the club bench and told them I wanted to voice my displeasure about one of their policies. When they asked hwat I meant, I pointed out the policy about no refunds for bitches in season.

And got told it was an AKC policy

WTH are people who don't know policies holding AKC events? went thru my head. And I politely(I'm very proud of myself how polite I was) informed them that it was not, that it was a club policy, and that a large number of other clubs give refunds for bitches in season. The nice lady behind the table got a confused look on her face and turned to her companion, "He's a judge, he'll know."He politely corrected her and told her he was a ring judge, not an OB/Rally judge, and that it was different than the show ring, in that we were not ALLOWED to show, it wasn't a choice like it was in the ring. . .

She still looked confused and I basically said look, I enjoy showing here, you're 10 mins from home, but I won't be entering your shows again unless you change this policy. You're punishing me for trying to do performance evnets with an unaltered dogs, and since I have two up and coming dogs, those are all entries you will be missing out on. I also informed them I would be encouraging PVBC to pull our supported entry from this weekend as well as having told all my Rally friends not to support them.

She asked for my contact information and stated it wasn't something they'd thought of, that she'd bring it up at the next meeting and get back with me.

Not sure if anything'll get done about it, but I encouraged other exhibitors to voice their opinions of this policy. At $30 an entry, I can't afford to dump money into a show I can't go to not cuz of any good reason, but cuz Mother Nature is sitting up there laughing her butt off at playing me for a fool again. She's good at that!
　

Gossip & Grins=GOOOD Dogs!

April & May always get away from me. . and this year it's no exception.

PVBC's Supported entry was this weekend. . .and to support the Sweeps judge, I entered Grins & Gibbs. .Grins has never been shown outside of ONE fun match two years ago, Gibbs also has never been shown outside of one funmatch 6 months ago. . at which he behaved MUCH better than he did this weekend. Bounce bounce, tail way up in the air, looking over his shoulder at mom, grabbing my hand, you name it, he did it. . the good thing? At least he was HAPPY!!! LOL

He won his class, but neither one of the 12-15 month old boys were behaving LOL And lost Best in Sweeps to a much more polished 15-18 month puppy who's done a lot of showing

Then it was Grins time, and I was sure my silly boy would mimic his son,I always joke he's 7.5 going on 7 months. . but nope, Grins showed like he was a veteran show dog. Moved out smoothly, kept his stack, got a compliment on his wonderful teeth(We joke the clacking he does when he grins doesn't allow plaque to grow lOL) and a comment on how he's a hairball LOL. When he got the nod for Best Veteran, Vickie was shocked it was his first show LOL

Gossip got 4th out of 5 in regular class, but that's ok, I got a lot of compliments on how nice she is looking. And she made up for it Sunday by going WB for her 2nd point in two weekends out with kari. .. she was SOO happy to see her mommy, but not so happy to go back into the bitch in season run.

So all and all, a succesful weekend, made up for not being able to go racing this weekend. I DO have a lot of work to do with Gibbs to make him presentable for the Nationals LOL. . OTOH, I'm sure he won't be the only dorkie puppy, but I do wanna make sure Kari will speak to me again LOL

Got a down weekend next weekend, which'll include getting most of getting blankets ready and start packing for the nationals, yes, I start early LOL as well as spring cleaning(FUN!). May even take a hike, but i'm going to take it slow, cuz then it's going to be nonstop for a month before I have another free weekend, but I'm looking forward to the Nationals. . .:)

KC policies

The days are going too darn fast for me to keep up. I start a blog post, and then don't finish it.

After the weekend from hell(details to get posted soon as I can), I came home Monday, to find Gossip in season

A year ago, I wouldn't've cared so much, BUT

She wasn't supposed to be in til 5/22

I'd just sunk money into three different rally shows entries in the next month, and she'll be out BARELY before the nationals.

Thankfully one show hadn't closed yet, so cancelled that one, but the first one is nonrefundable for seasons

WTF?

In this day and age, when it's harder and harder to have unaltered dogs, i can NOT believe our PEERS have the gal to punish those of us who wish to compete with well bred unaltered girls. I did not enter this show with the thought she'd come into season so early. Why the heck would clubs, many of whom are suffering for money as it is due to entries being down, have such a stupid rule?

We are being pushed by our county and government all over the US to spay and neuter or dogs, being fined or caused to purchase expensive unaltered dog licenses. . .to have our own Kennel Clubs install such a ruling just adds insult to injury.

I truly don't understand this asinine rule, set by the clubs, not the superintendant, and I Wrote the club(Baltimore Kennel KC) and voiced my anger, politely, over this policy, as well as informed them I would be boycotting their OB/Rally events from now on unless they changed their policy, and that I would be encouraging everyone I know to do the same. It's been four days, haven't heard back from them, Plan on stopping by their club table tomorrow and asking them about this policy.

And since I have two boys in training, yep, who aren't affected by seasons, I will stand by that thought, even if it means missing judges I want to show under. There is no reason to support a club with this type of policy, and until they change it, they will not see my money. . .am going to bring this up at our (PVBC's) next meeting, as a 'do we really want to support a club who doesn't support unaltered girls?". . as our supported entry is this weekend

This is ludicrious. I could totally understand not refunding all of it, but to not refund most of it is BS.

So, be careful when you enter events, double check to see if refunds are given. . if they're not, write the clubs in protest. .. We can't substitute another dog, so we should get a partial refund at least. Andi f you're a member of a kennel club, please make sure they allow refunds for unaltered girls, require a drs note if you want, but give refunds.

Wellbred bitches are the future of our breeds, if we all spayed our girls, breeds would die off in 5-10 yrs. .. then where would we be?

bitches, got to love them, but boy am I sooo frustrated. Why, Gossip, Why?!?!?!

Gossip & Tony's weekend

One of the hard decisions, hard as in being honest with myself, I've had to make is that I do not do Gossip justice in the ring

The backstabbing nastiness I ran into up in NY/NJ, has really soured me in showing, no not everyone, there were some wonderfully sweet people, but there were some really downright nasty ones. . .and I just don't enjoy it, nor with my health, can I do justice with her, as she can move out. . so I made the decision after seeing Kari Macloskey with Bonnie's AM(who's now moved into Kari's house and heart) and decided to send her out with Kari

I have never used handlers. . .but the show ring is worse for me than the OB ring is. . .I'd much rather have fun with her in the Rally/OB ring than deal with the stress of the show ring. . .Four years away from showing with only dabbling in it, I've forgotten so much about judges. Kari loves to show, Gossip loves her, so it's a match made in heaven. . except I miss my spottled girl.

This weekend was our first weekend apart. . and the house is empty without her bounciness. . .but she's getting loving from Kari and is learning the dog show thing. . .and is coming home pointed in the ring :) She got to dabble in the group ring, was a bit confused of why there was somethinjg other than Zoi in the ring, but otherwise was a very good girl :)

While his cousin was showing, Tony went to his very first I'm entered race meet, and did his owner proud considering he's 13 months and some days old and those long legs don't go all in the same direction sometimes LOL He picked up his first .5 of a GRC point, considering he's running against cousins Kyrie & Ryder, he's got big shots to run against, so it's nothing to sneeze about. Baby Drummer got to practice, ran a Silken puppy into the ground, and schmoozed with his adoring masses, so they both had a wonderful weekend

PVBC's spring event

Photo by Jim Saklad

Oh what a weekend, so GLAD it's over!

Weather once again did not cooperate for PVBC's event. Sunday was miserable cold, but we got done before it rained, got everything packed up, INCLUDING the box(that was the easiest box loading I've ever witnessed), but it was COLD!!! And the wind didn't help.

One thing I did this time around, was 'hire' a 10 yr old. . a contractor that is working on Bonnie's house has a sweet boy who agreed to come out and run the bunny down the track in exchange for donations. We ran about 16 races, with an additional handful of practices on Saturday, and maybe the same number of runs Sunday with the large number of practices we did, and he made a nice sum from all the donations he was given(over $60). We've already booked him and another young friend of his for May. If you do racing, you know that one of hte hardest things to do is to get someone to walk the bunny back down the track. This worked out WONDERFULLY. His mom also thanked us, cuz it tired him out LOL. He enjoys the dogs, comes over to help socialize the piranhas every other week or so, they LOVE him. And I just got told tonite that he is soooo raring to come back, as he made enough money to buy himself a new Wii game lOL I love that enthusiasm

Unlike in December, just about everything went right and I started training my friend Mary McQuade on how to be race secretary. That helped a lot. She's a doll, and I'm so glad she came. I just had to worry about checking the board(she did it perfectly!) and run the lure. I'll be working on getting a number of club members trained, a lot less stressful if I know i have someone to help out!

Only problem we had was wind and the bunny, one high point race, the wind managed to throw the bunny off the track and Gossip shattered the post holding up the tape, scary shattered, she could've impaled herself on the broken piece. She was a bit sore from hitting that, and thus was house bound(not that she cares, means big fluffy beds, not getting rained on, she's all for that). fora few days, but is back to normal :) Otherwise the box, the equipment all ran well, the field was perfect, not too hard, not to soft. . .tho the bunny was hard to see on the wintered grass, thus the white bag that helped lift it off the field. Other than one obnoxious person who refused to run her dogs unless all other dogs were off the 8 acre pasture, everyone was great.

We had 13 starter Borzoi on Saturday, unfortunately 3 of them decided to be BAD. . .I feel bad for their owners, two of them are newbies to the racetrack, and it sucks when one day your dog'll run clean, next time you run 'em they're world class D***heads. . .but we had two NICE running FTE Borzoi, with the pretty white Bianca taking home the NICE Borzoi turtle (I didn't get a pic of it, but this turtle was NICE, nice enough her owner was bragging about it the next day at an ASFA trial LOL!) and Lori Miller's handsome Ryker placing nicely in the meet, not nice enough to get points yet, but he's learning strategy and it was his first weekend of being boxed. I really like him, he's a beautiful Teine bred black & tan. Top honours went to Gossip, but she had to earn it, then Padua to finish!(Congrats Ariel!), then a three way tie between Serrano, Dillon & First. LOL

Sunday was a much smaller meet, but unfortunately the bad luck for naughty Borzoi rolled into Sunday, and one girl decided she didn't like to be ahead, and turned to cheer on her cousin. .what's sad is she ran clean the first two races. . she kept weaving in front of Tipperary back and forth like she was cheering her on. Dingdong. . .Gossip won the meet, Ms First came in 2nd for 2 GRC points, and finished . . .was sooo tired Sunday night nothing was making sense. Tipperary was third, Surya, oh lord, images of his great uncle Races come to mind. . he's been boxed before, he's been raced before, but OMG!! Each time he was boxed, he got worse, and worse, to the point, third race he was a Paddock Scratch because we couldn't get him in. Having had to do that with Eros, I SOOO understand the frustration. . .

We had a number of nice practice runs with Surya's brother Yuri, Sciroccos' son Cayenne getting in a number of practices. Yuri cert'd with Grins ,and Cayenne'll come back out to play next time we have a practice. I was too tired to bring my monsters down by the time we were done.

We were so thankful for everyone who came out to help, even if they didn't have a dog in the race. Those hands are what makes a meet happen. Tho it does get frustrating when local Club people who are less than 10 mins away don't come out to help.

Grins got to certify a number of dogs this weekend, and enjoyed every bit of it. .from a deerhound to numerous Borzoi. . and when we quit yesterday, he was still raring to go. His eye has just about completely healed up! He'll be out next month to Cert' his kids for coursing!

So all and all, a successful weekend, but I am so glad I took this weekend off, had planned on going to RI, but changed my mind. The flooding made me glad I changed my mind, OTOH, it's nice not having anythign planned but birthday dinner and a movie, and maybe, just maybe, going to get First and the pups ASFA certified this weekend.