Agility and Rally Practice

So, after my rant about the weather my body decided to rebel and get sick after Valentine's Day. It was quite the loverly Sunday, and then Monday I felt like I had been hit by a truck! Oh, and it just happened to be somewhat nice those two days!!

But I am finally feeling better and the dogs got to play agility and rally today! Hobbs was so excited he was trying once again to do everything he knows all at once. For example, I sent him through the weaves, he popped out half way through, jumped onto his DW board, and then attacked his bucket trying to stand on it. Sometimes I could swear he was a border collie! Needless to say he did a few puppy push-ups to get him focused a little bit.

After his sanity returned, he did so well at the weaves and out of 25 times he popped out twice including the insanity before the push-ups! He also nailed every single one of his entries, including a couple hard ones! Don't worry, we did other things in between weave runs, he didn't do 25 in a row!

He also worked very hard on his contact position on the board. He would get there and then I would jump around and throw treats on the floor and talk to him and tell him good boy, and say the O part of OK. He broke a couple of times, but quickly learned that it was sooo much better for him if he stayed. It was a little odd that he was really good at the end position on left, but not on the right. On the right he wouldn't stop....he is a little obsessed with staying on my left side which is causing some problems agility wise.

We worked on jumping (with a shoe rack) and Hobbs is very, Very, VERY, slowly learning cik and cap over the jumps. Right now, he is only getting the Cap half of it which is to the right....he only gets the cik part if I send him from my left side.....sometimes. I am not 100% sure how to use these commands on course, but I figure it may come in handy some time. I did a tiny bit of shadow handling and practicing front crosses. I really wish I knew how to practice the rear crosses on the flat! Hobbs gets it usually over a jump, but it would be nice to do some flat work with it.

I set up a small "course" of weaves to jump to board, and visa versa. He did really well even when I just stood in one place and pointed to the obstacles. I even practiced pulling him off the board after the jump. He did it really well the first time, but then got obsessed with getting to his end position. He certainly loves the contact equipment!

Patriot got to practice some rally moves, and he is finally getting used to the finish right move where he walks around me to get to heel. His finish left is just as bad, but he is slowly getting it. It is really good that this was just for fun! I don't think he will ever be quite good enough to compete. Class is canceled for tonight because it is blizzarding outside :( Really sad because we missed last week's class. I was exhausted after our anniversary trip, and wouldn't have had any fun. Patriot got to play around on the bucket a little bit and he can now pivot all the way around it, in both directions! It is SO good that he is just as happy with kibble as he is with really yummy treats, because he gets nothing but kibble.....not even milkbones anymore!

He is going back to the vet for the allergy test soon (at the first of the month) because he just isn't getting better. I am frustrated with it, and hope that they can come up with a good reason that it seems that EVERYTHING makes him more itchy. It doesn't help that stupid school kids keep throwing apples over into our yard!! He gets one just about every week, which isn't helping him at all.

I decided to stop letting Hobbs practice rally stuff because the one time we practiced it is when he got obsessed with my left side. Silly boy! He practiced some tricks, and is learning the "beg" position right now. He got super obsessed with offering his paws every time I asked him to sit, so I am trying to give major rewards for him just sitting still with both paws on the ground. This is why I promised myself that I would NEVER teach my dogs to shake!! Now the one time I broke my rule I get a dog who is obsessed with offering paws! I am running out of things to teach, but keep looking for more on youtube.

Hobbs' agility foundation class got pushed back a week until March 10th, but I am still so excited about it! Hopefully it will be new stuff for us!

Crap!

Patriot has been on prednisone sense the middle of November, and just finished his last half a pill about a week ago. Well, we are back to living on benadryl to keep the itching at bay. It seems like this flare up is worse than the last one! So we will be going back to the vet at some point to find out what we should do next. I am really not looking forward to a food protiacall! That allergy food is like $60 a bag!

***Some more info*** Patriot is eating Natures Recipe Fish and Potato dog food after trying both lamb and rice and Fish and Rice with no luck. He has actually been on this food for several years with very good results. I am considering trying a Duck and Potato food to see if he has developed an allergy to his food. I haven't gotten him allergy tested yet because the $200+ charge isn't covered by his pet insurance (pre-existing condition) and isn't really fitting into our budget right now. So it is trial and error until we find something that works. Something of note, he did get into several apples in the past few days that fell off our tree....I am starting to wonder if he is allergic to them.

On a better note, Patriot has his first Rally class tonight and all the practice we have been doing is helping him not swing out when he sits in the heel position! It is great to see how much he love doing obedience practice! I just hope he can behave himself in class....and that the two benadryls he had wont make him sleep through class.

Agility and Rally Practice

Ok, so Patriot's Rally class was postponed for a week due to the blizzard we were having on Tuesday. I was really disappointed and sad, but after my riding lesson and everything that day (driving for 1 1/2 hours in the blizzard was a bit stressful) I was exhausted and happy I didn't have one more thing to go to! The only thing that will be hard with this class is that fact that my riding lesson is the same day, and it is at 8pm. I have been lucky to go to bed as late as 9pm!! I will just have to slip a late nap in right after my lesson and Robert will have to be the dinner cooker that day.

But anyways we decided to practice some Rally today. Mostly I just wanted to lower my expectations and stop trying to push clicker training on Patriot. He just doesn't' get it, so I am going to have to figure out another way to teach him that perfect heel position. Another of our personal challenges is that Heel in GDB training means Patriot's head is at my knee, rather than his shoulder like it is in competition obedience. That is going to have to change soon! Something I really wanted to try with him is getting him to do the hind end work on the bucket like Hobbs does. The hard part is that with Hobbs I could click and he would instantly understand that he was doing the right thing! But I decided to stop thinking that way and just get Patriot on the bucket......and this was the result:

I am so glad that I just took the time to show him (by physically putting him on the bucket) what I wanted him to do, and now he is getting a little better at it!

Then Hobbs and I also practised some agility and also played on the bucket a little bit (he really doesn't learn anything new on that ever, but he is getting rather confident on it! Just look!

He looks like I yelled at him in this one, but he just was sick of sitting on the bucket and wanted his treat

We brought the weave poles inside for some practice because he was refusing to do them outside. He would just act like he had never seen them before! He was ecstatic to be doing weaves again! I was afraid he was going to get going too fast and break one of the poles but thankfully he didn't. Finally he slowed down a little and got his footwork going and then sped back up doing it properly. He is so fun to work with!! I can't wait til his agility class starts in March!

Patriot - Rally Obedience!

For a while now I have wanted Patriot and I to have our own special thing to do together, just like Hobbs and I have Agility. He isn't the kind of dog that could do agility and have fun with it. I drug him over a couple jumps in the back yard, and then he laid down on the ground so I couldn't do it anymore lol. He definitely knows how to get his way!

Yesterday I got an email from a wonderful lady who has been getting me information about agility classes in Ogden. I had asked her almost a month ago about a possible Rally-Obedience class starting soon. She got back to me and told me their is a Rally class starting in January. So I signed Patriot and me up for it! I am really hoping that we have the skills necessary to go into the class (the pre-requisite class was a CGC prep class so I think we will be fine) and have fun.

For those who don't know what Rally is here is a link to the AKC description of it. I don't know if we will even like it, but I have heard it is really fun for both the human and the dog. Patriot's obedience is a little rusty though so we will be working on it the next couple weeks. For the life of me, I can not get through to Patriot about the concept of the clicker. He just doesn't get it! We have been working on just a nose touch to the hand for over a month and he still doesn't get it....if he happens to touch my hand it is because he is sniffing for a treat!

I will update about our progress and classes once we start them!