Hope everyone is having a good weekend and had a great Thanksgiving holiday! We had a wonderful time at grandpa and grandma's! Grandma made a delicious traditional Thanksgiving meal - melt-in-your-mouth turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, stuffing, biscuits, cranberry, peas and corn frozen from their garden last summer, and pumpkin pie! I got to taste a little of the turkey and it was so good! Mom took me to run in the big backyard even though it was cold and windy, and we had our first real snow flurries! Then mom and dad and my grandparents played a card game called euchre for what seemed like hours and hours and I found it quite boring. We spent the night (I didn't sleep well and kept mom up most of the night) and came home after lunch on Friday. Even though I had fun, I was very happy to be home!
Today dad videoed a little of our agility practice in the backyard. Mom and I have been working on our speed and enthusiasm for the game. Nothing went completely right today but we're sharing the video with you any way!
Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Today we will be heading over to grandpa and grandma's to celebrate the holiday. I am happy to report that I am feeling much better and I'm hoping that means I get to sample a little of the Thanksgiving meal!
Do you remember last year at this time I entered my friend Johann's Howliday Giveaway and won third prize? Well he's doing it again this year! You can just go to his blog and register to enter and upload a holiday-themed photo and get all your friends and family to vote for you! Johann has added something new this year - he is raising money for the shelter where his mum found him! So you can donate a little bit to help the shelter out when you enter the contest. Here is the link to Johann's post - Johann's Howling Howliday Giveaway - the sooner you enter, the more votes you can get! I really had fun being a participant last year and I got very cool presents when I won third place!
My class last night went well - this week I did my fastest-ever-regulation-size dogwalk! And I got all my contacts so maybe the backyard training with the hoop is starting to pay off. Now if mom would just trust me at a trial and not babysit my contacts so much! Guess it will take awhile for both of us to be able to run in a trial with the same freedom we do at class or at home!
It's been awhile since I posted anything so I thought it was time for another puppy video!
Cute, huh?
I had a flair up of my IBS (for lack of a better diagnosis) this weekend. I kept mom up all night on Saturday with diarrhea or the possibility of diarrhea. She gave me some immodium (at my vet's suggestion) which I tolerated well and which kept it from getting to be a super mess. Sunday I ate only bland food and yesterday I was able to eat regular food and I had no more diarrhea after Sunday AM. But yesterday before dinner, I threw up a blob of dark-green stuff (not grass but we don't know what it was - I had sneaked some bunny poop in the yard though). Mom was freaked out but I felt fine. I had dinner and didn't throw up again. Then at 5:15 this morning I woke mom with the sound of my retching - I did it twice and nothing came up. Then I had breakfast and so far so good. Mom wants to know what the heck is going on?
So we haven't done a lot of training in the past few days - a little agility in the backyard because our weather has still been mild enough to be out there. We're continuing to work on my speed and motivation. Tonight (as long as I feel well - I keep telling mom I feel fine!) we go to class.
Today we watched a video kikopup made about how to train your dog to get in a purse (bag). Mom smugly thought this would be something very easy for me to learn and ambitiously set up the video camera to record our first training session! Ha! Here is the video! We apologize for the length but the original video was 13 minutes long and we got tired of editing! So when you see that it is 4.25 minutes long, thank us for cutting a lot out! :) Also two notes: 1. When training a mostly black dog, do not use a black bag and 2. When training a Sheltie, ignore kikopup's advice about throwing a treat into the bag to entice the dog in because the Sheltie will then forever think there is another piece of food in the bag no matter how many times they are told there isn't any!
Now you know what I have to deal with on a daily basis!
In other news, I did my fastest-ever-away-from-home-regulation-equipment weave poles in class last night - I was actually hopping two-footed over the base of the weaves. Mom was shocked and thrilled with my performance!
Mom, grandma and I went to a trial today! For the first time, I ran my standard run before my jumpers run. The course was not difficult and I handled it quite well until mom loomed over me and told me to down on the table and I wouldn't do it! We lost a lot of time there so we N.Q.ed! Score: 84, Time: 72.22 SCT: 64 (so I was 8 seconds over and lost 16 points that way - if I had only been 7 seconds over, I would have Q'ed) and YDS: 139. A lot of the run looked pretty good though. Here's the course map:
I waited around two hours for my second run - my first time in Exc. A JWW! Mom was totally stressing out about memorizing the course because it looked confusing to her. But she was able to watch lots of team run it (the trial ran big to little dogs) and then she walked it a few times more than she usually does. I thought it was a fun course - I will admit that I did stop to sniff once but it was far enough away from the jump to not get a refusal - and mom once again abandoned her plan and ran outside jumps and stuff to motivate me. It worked - we Q'ed and got 1st place! Score:100, Time: 46.62, SCT: 46 (good thing mom ran weird to speed me up and too bad I took the time to sniff - we barely made time - guess they round down because we were technically over), YDS: 149. Here is the course map:
And here is the video of both of our runs:
I would write more, but I am so tired! I may be a bit of a wimp, but I'm glad we are not signed up to run tomorrow too!
Have you all seen this? Ashley and Kaine are holding a freestyle contest - the details are in their video below. It looks like fun! Ever since Honey and Hsin-Yi posted a video about how to put together a freestyle routine, we've been thinking about it and trying to come up with some music. I know a lot of freestyle moves already, but we have to put them together creatively - that's the hard part, mom says! But we might try to enter the contest!
By the way, I am going to a trial tomorrow at a place we have never been to - a horse arena about 1 1/2 hours from here. I am running Open STD and Exc. A JWW. My grandma is going too! Wish us luck and hopefully we'll have video to share!
Yes, it's time again for another puppy video! I got several really cute ideas for what to call this series from Sara, Lian, and Ludo - thanks! - and just decided to go with Sara's "puppyhood tales."
It's funny because when I thought about doing this, mom assured me that we had lots of video of me when I was growing up. But now that we started looking at it, it's true we have quite a bit of video but it is mostly bad! You know, poor lighting, boring activity, stupid commentary (mostly goofy stuff mom says in the background), etc. Where are the early videos of me learning tricks and obedience stuff and going to obedience classes? I think even though mom and dad bought a video camera specifically to document my puppy days, they didn't do a good job at all!!!!
Any way, today's video clip is of my first time walking on a leash! I was about 8 1/2 weeks old. You can see that mom's leash-holding technique left a lot to be desired, but I think I was doing pretty well! Listen for the bird singing in the neighborhood - it was a white-throated sparrow!
It is still a t-day here in Ohio (just barely) and I wanted to post a video of some of my tricks just to show you that we are still working on some of them and learning some new ones and also getting better at some old ones! (run on sentence)
Oh and by the way, I was a good boy at class last night and didn't sniff once during the sequences we practiced! Mom was very happy with that!
Last Monday we went for a walk at another one of my favorite parks! There is a pet trail that goes through the woods and down to a creek. There was no one else there so we had the whole place to ourselves! We couldn't have asked for a nicer day!
When we set out I had to encourage mom and dad to get going - they are so slow sometimes! See the big sycamore tree leaves on the ground?
The sky was blue and the maple tree leaves were so yellow and pretty against the blue sky.
I jumped right up on this log and started walking it like a dogwalk.
Looking down the creek and then up:
Mom liked the tree roots:
Nearing the end of the trail:
Pondering the great outdoors:
Yesterday we went for a walk at the cemetery - we hadn't been there in a long time. I had fun but mom got annoyed with me because I kept running too far ahead and didn't come when she called me. So we didn't stay there long........
Today mom took me to the park really close to our house and I was much better and listened to her so we got to walk around for quite a long time! I know it pays to behave!
We are really savoring these nice weather days because we are afraid that there won't be many more of them until spring!
My name is Ricky (Covewind Little Ricky, AX,AXJ,CGC) and I am a six year old tri-color Shetland Sheepdog. I do agility and I like to learn tricks too! This blog is about all that and some other stuff as well!
I waited around two hours for my second run - my first time in Exc. A JWW! Mom was totally stressing out about memorizing the course because it looked confusing to her. But she was able to watch lots of team run it (the trial ran big to little dogs) and then she walked it a few times more than she usually does. I thought it was a fun course - I will admit that I did stop to sniff once but it was far enough away from the jump to not get a refusal - and mom once again abandoned her plan and ran outside jumps and stuff to motivate me. It worked - we Q'ed and got 1st place! Score:100, Time: 46.62, SCT: 46 (good thing mom ran weird to speed me up and too bad I took the time to sniff - we barely made time - guess they round down because we were technically over), YDS: 149. Here is the course map:
The sky was blue and the maple tree leaves were so yellow and pretty against the blue sky.
I jumped right up on this log and started walking it like a dogwalk.
Looking down the creek and then up:
Mom liked the tree roots:
Nearing the end of the trail:
Pondering the great outdoors:
