Abbreviated Christmas

Wow, this has been a REAL winter this year – pouring rain, flooding, snow, windstorms, the works. The property is just a muddy mess and I’m very much looking forward to throwing grass seed EVERYWHERE this spring. In the meantime … yeah, mud and so many mud PUDDLES, just to keep it fresh. And we’ve had a nice cold snap, with some temps in the 20s and some just LOVELY snow. Unfortunately it was all around Christmas, so I had to do just a brief holiday with my parents before heading back before the storm. The doggies didn’t even get to go the beach! Still, we had so much fun romping in the CLEAN snow for a few days … before it melted into goo. I love decorative Oregon snow where I don’t have anywhere I need to be, it was a magical time.

Otherwise the arena is getting SO CLOSE to done! It’s been quite the roller coaster, but the surface is going in this week (god I hope it actually turns out to be a USEABLE surface!), and then the final details to set up for classes should be in the next couple weeks. They should finish the lighting hopefully tomorrow … we shall see. So I don’t know if I’ll actually be able to USE it this month, and I’m not planning to start classes until March (at least at this point), but I’m cautiously optimistic. Buying a place with an arena would have been a LOT easier, that’s for sure – but I love my property and it’s hard to believe I was actually able to make it all happen. Looking out at this big beautiful arena is crazy, and, boy, it would be nice if it were done RIGHT NOW so we could have somewhere not muddy to play in. So busy getting everything finished with that, and the weather is continuing to look wet and miserable this week – this is no sissy winter, I don’t want to hear anything about droughts this year.

I was and still am hoping to look at some herding this month. We did get in a bit before Christmas and went down to Laura’s Vishoot’s place on our way to coast for Christmas. I had been there long ago, when Navarre was young. I was curious how Asher was going to do in a new location on new sheep – and, knock on wood, he acted like he was somewhat trained. Fingers crossed we ARE making progress. We mostly looked at outruns and lifts, as if he does those well, the rest is fairly calm too. Basically Laura felt he lacked confidence and would get frantic when he thinks he might lose the sheep (she got to watch Asher’s just cringeworthy last ever run in competition last May where he couldn’t respond to anything at all). So my job is to help support him and let him know he’s doing it correct and to slow down. Work on my whistles and shorten my down whistle and work a sharp ‘there’ whistle to get him to collect himself before the lift (different than a down) and then keep in contact with him through the fetch to let him know he’s fine and doesn’t need to panic. I felt encouraged that we will pull it together eventually.

Bryn was a tiny superstar, as usual – I don’t know how I ended up with the little herding savant, but I’m just amazed at what she can do. New place, new sheep she was just lovely and natural with nice deep outruns and gentle lifts, covers her sheep, paces herself, responds without a fight … I didn’t train this, don’t feel like it should just happen, but there it is. Laura basically just said don’t screw her up, introduce some basic driving and shedding and keep letting her do what comes naturally. So if we get a chance that’s our goal. And did I mention how cute Bryn was? Because of course she was.

Back to agility, the snow melted and we survived a very chilly New Year’s trial. It’s always dicey entering trials this time of year, it can be beautiful … and it can be just a total mess. We were dry but cold, which was fine because I have heated socks and a heated vest now. Technology continues to advance! The dogs love the cold, of course.

Asher had a VERY exciting weekend as I convinced Carol to come run him in a few classes. He has this obsession with her that is ever so distracting when she’s around at an agility trial. So I was really curious what he would do if she actually ran him in one. They had never run together, so it was pretty amusing – and, yes, Asher had a FABULOUS time. He did do some weird things, but definitely no looking for me! They got his first ever Excellent FAST leg and some really nice pieces in other runs as well. We’ll see if that helps or hurts his constant looking for her on the startline now …

The big news, Asher finally got out of Open Jumpers! And he qualified in his first Excellent jumpers course and beat Navarre by over a second. Which isn’t a huge surprise, but I’m proud of the little guy. When he’s focused he can do great things. When he is NOT focused, good lord. We had another disaster of an Open standard run on Saturday – he broke his stay TWICE. I was just amazed – and then he ran past the first jump 😉 Then he actually got his dogwalk contact (hurrah), but I was too busy trying not to hit the judge to get where I needed to be and he goes off course. Then he self releases on the teeter, then he pops out of the weavepoles, then he couldn’t get the entrance in three tries … it was just ridiculous. But at least on Sunday he redeemed himself. Got ALL his contacts (including a 90 degree turn off the dogwalk – holy crap!), didn’t self release on the teeter, held his startline, held onto the weaves even through he jammed himself into them, hit and stayed on the table while I led out – all stuff he’s struggled with. I was pleased. He spun for no reason in front of the table and knocked a bar, but hey. Technically he also got an offcourse before we even started because I wanted to make sure he had a nice approach to the dogwalk and he touched the teeter we were starting next to to try to make more of an angled start, but whatever. So still needs one more open standard and then he’s out of open, which will be nice. Eventually.

Navarre remains ridiculously easy to run, we just had one bobble where I didn’t tell him tunnel and he didn’t go into the tunnel, which was totally my fault. Other than that he was Mr. Perfect. Who would have ever guessed that would be his nickname? So another double Q and he had a LOT of fun, he loves his agility and loves to trial.

Not sure when our next agility trial will be, possibly the end of January before I go back to teaching. And maybe I’ll enter Bryn, just for fun … maybe. Or maybe it would be smarter if I’m running THREE dogs in agility to wait and enter her until she’s actually READY. Maybe.

Haku and Dragon had their dentals, Haku ended up having two teeth pulled. I told them I wanted this to be his last dental and to take care of anything that looked like it was going to be trouble. It’s depressing, but he’s doing really well right now, so it’s time to take care of things before he gets more frail. I can’t believe he’s going to be 13 next year! But not for another 6 months, so no need to start rounding up. Haku took it all like a trooper, because he’s a rockstar like that. Came home and just grabbed a toy and ran around with it – hardcore old guy.

Dragon actually didn’t have anything that needed addressing (beyond the cleaning), surprisingly. He has bad maine coon teeth, but it’s just gingivitis and inflammation, she packed his gums with antibiotic cement or something that is supposed to help for like a year. Fancy. I’m glad that he wasn’t in any discomfort because I’ve been putting this off. And then he came home and he’s been SUPER happy and SUPER affectionate, like he’s permanently high or something. Which is cute, but is freaking the other cats out. Fizban is STILL hissing and growling at him days later, though Dragon doesn’t seem to notice at all, so weird. So that is NOT what I expected to have happen, I thought Dragon would be all traumatized and stressed, but no. Hopefully Fizban will chill out eventually, but sweet cuddly Dragon is certainly novel.

As we had a whole week of being essentially trapped at the property, we’ve been training obedience. Navarre looks really good, he seems to remember all his skills and enjoys practicing them. I have a secret plan to see if Carol takes him back into the obedience ring if he won’t get all weird about it. So we’re going to try to get some practice in. I have no particular show in mind, but he’s enjoying it, so we’ll keep practicing and looking for new location opportunities (the hardest part of obedience). And, yes, if he REALLY likes it, I’ll finish training his utility skills.

Asher has been more difficult to ‘quickly train all the novice obedience skills’ to. I figured he has a nice FOUNDATION for those behaviors, how hard could it be? The big skills he’s never been introduced to is a front and heeling. Or, well, heeling with ANY sort of precision. But just training the front, good lord. It’s been a while since we’ve trained a NEW behavior, I don’t think he’s as good at this as he was when was young. I have to wonder if neutering him would help with some of this spastic behavior. Still, he’s slowly progressing. His stays are good! He can do the stand for exam for ME, but haven’t tried other people. His finish is cute, he can kind of heel. We’ll see how far we get.

And the cutest little heeler in the household is Bryn, who I am NOT training to do obedience, but I do think should learn to pivot into heel instead of just bite and swear at me when I ask her to line up. OMG, this was so hard for her (another anti-flanking behavior)! We had to stop using food, she was so mad. With toys she thought it was more fun and could then pivot (with a pedestal) into me in both directions. Whew! So if nothing else, my goal for her is to have her line up for agility without barking and biting me in the shin.

I was so frustrated with training Bryn with food, but then I switched what I was using and found out she CAN train for food – it just has to be good enough (and I had tried a variety of treats!). I have such a little princess. Someone had given me a little package Orijin cat treats, which are these nice small freeze dried little pieces. Suddenly Bryn was all about heeling! Hmmmm. So we actually went back to another project I’ve been wanting to finish, which is to generalize her retrieve to a variety of objects – which she can now do … mostly. I tried a metal hook and a rock, and she wouldn’t retrieve those. And you can always tell when she says, “No” as she just comes up and hugs me when I ask her to do something she doesn’t want to do (and that’s fine, she doesn’t have to!). We DID work on just a little MOUTHING the objects, just to show that she could do it, but then I let it go. If I need a rock or my keys retrieved, I’ll ask Navarre or Haku (Asher is also a bit of princess about bringing back items that are ‘hard’).

God she’s cute when she trains ANYTHING though, just adorable.