Back to Teaching

I really love my Winter/Summer break schedules – it’s my goal to have this sort of schedule year round. The classes are lot more labor intensive, but I do love all the specialty stuff – and, omg, so many cute trick dogs! Love it.

I did put my own dogs in two of my agility classes, and Bryn and Haven have been splitting the international skills class. Haven is making Bryn look bad. Though Bryn does have a lot of skills … when there is no motion involved. Which is why I continue to be surprised in the international sequencing class that she can’t do even two obstacles in a row. Bryn HAS the skills – IT SHOULD NOT BE THIS HARD. I think it really has been a revelation lately that it’s not just me and a lack of practice, she’s just … so hard. I KNEW she was hard, but I think I had underestimated HOW hard. Especially going from Navarre to Bryn in this class, and then double checking in the skills class that, yes, she does have the skills … it’s just ridiculous. And I realized why I got into so much WALKING when I do agility, because if I run she pulls off of everything, flanks like maniac, runs around things – did I mention, SO HARD? Between Bryn and Asher I have gotten into the worst handling habits.

So, yeah, it really shouldn’t be news, but Bryn is not just, like, a little hard – she’s REALLY FUCKING HARD to run. And starting to work on more skills with Haven is showing me that I had really sort of deluded myself about the whole situation. Still going to keep working on it, but hoping to get ASCA trials out here at my arena this year – and I think they’ll be perfect for Bryn (and Asher!). Bryn is still really fun to work with, and she’s having a lot of fun – just not much actual progress, that’s for sure.

In the meantime, Haven has been gaining confidence working in the group setting with the skills class. She can’t do all the skills, obviously, but the opportunity to work her around other at the same time is awesome. We started off slow, she got fired a few times when the excitement got a little too much for her – but she settled in and was able to work with all the other dogs running about and playing. Occasionally she would get a little distracted by high drive border collies whipping through tunnels, but she only looked and then could redirect back to me, and this was all off leash. I am super pleased with her, and she could do little parts of some of the exercises. You know, easily, without flanking around or pulling off of things or jumping like a lunatic – so novel! So much to do with her eventually, but we’ve got focus and working around other dogs with toys and food, which so much awesome.

Asher hasn’t been in any classes, but I did enter him and Bryn in one day of an AKC trial next weekend. I’m feeling at peace with my decisions to let go of international aspirations with him and Bryn (though I’ll still look at it with Bryn), as well as Navarre’s agility retirement. There was a lot of letting go of things so far in 2024, but one door closes and another opens. I am going to look into doing more obedience with Asher as well, though I’m still pretty sure Navarre would prefer not to go back that route … but who knows. I THINK Haven will enjoy obedience, and if I could get her into a Rally class, I think that would be fun.

We DID go to disc league … for two weeks, until it was cancelled for the rest of this session, just a muddy mess at the field by the second week. Navarre did great, thought it was a grand way to spend his time and my throws were not that bad the first week. Second week we had rain and wind … not so good at throwing in those conditions! He still had fun anyway, we’ll try coming back in the Spring.

I was hopeful for Haven to enjoy disc league, but she decided that she was not bringing back the disc in that environment. She still had a good time (she’s fabulous about GETTING and catching the disc, just not coming back), but you don’t get much of a score for laying down and chewing on your disc 😉 We went back to the drawing board and I worked with using some jealousy with Bryn and Haven to work on BOTH girls’ rather sad retrieves, firing any dog that detoured or stopped on their way back with the disc. This worked way better than I anticipated, both girls were spot on and no more screwing around (who knew Bryn even liked disc this much?). Turns out that only works with you have the other dog stationed ready to take over though 😉 We will continue to work on it, and hopefully in the Spring she might do better. Haven does love her disc! And maybe Bryn would like to do it too …

I have Haven entered in a Mia ‘Young Dog’ seminar in March. I waffled whether to put her in puppy or young dog, as she’s very much a puppy and we’ve done almost no actual sequencing at this point. But the only thing the puppy section was working on was engagement, and I feel good with that with Haven – and she has been there and worked at Barb’s already as well. So we’ll see, even if she does little two obstacle things, it’s just jumps and tunnels, she can do tiny pieces.

I also entered her in a 2 day tricks workshop with a trainer I’m not familiar with, but she does tv/movie stuff and looks like a good trainer. The freestyle folks are bringing her out, so that sounds fun. Once again, the actual working part is just to get out into new places, but hopefully we can learn things too. I am NOT good at actually transferring tricks to real life situations. I train behaviors and never actually proof them.

I also continue to audit the Justine classes with Haven, though we don’t do all the work. There is a LOT of repetition in those classes, and, well, she’s not a border collie. But she continues to enjoy it, and there is nothing she’s particularly struggled with so far. We don’t do that much though. We have started some contact flatwork with the platform, which she thought was sort of stupid at first, but is getting more into it.

We still do tricks and things every night, she continues to think that’s so much fun. Right now we’re working on limping, hoping to work up to skipping – which I did with Navarre, and it was freakishly adorable. We haven’t started anything too new and exciting, and try to circle back to previous tricks and actually keep them in her brain, and try to put them on cue.

Haven got to go back on sheep, I think her first experience was at 5 months? It’s been a while. Her initial experience was more just chasing and barking, and I expected more of the same – but guess which little borderpap was being all thoughtful and trying to figure out what we wanted. No problem circling, changing direction, staying off the sheep and not just barking and chasing. And she eventually started balancing and rating herself too – volunteering downs and all sorts of crazy stuff. So that’s annoying, as I don’t actually want to train her on sheep – but we’re going to at least keep revisiting it if she’s going to be so … easy. I’m not saying she’s ‘talented’ or has a lot of fabulous natural instincts – but she thinks it’s great fun and is super happy to control the sheep without being over the top about it all. Go figure. But if she continues to make it easy, I’ll keep letting her play occasionally. Carol worked her again, who has a lot of familiarity with ‘off breeds’, so that’s helpful. I don’t think she’s going to train my borderpap for me though.

Carol worked the other dogs too, Bryn continues to be too focused on holding the sheep, Asher is too damn fast and Navarre just wants to do his own thing. They all have skills in their own way though, and Bryn and Heidi continue to practice fairly often – which makes Bryn very, very happy.

So back to teaching, and back to working the dogs in agility. Going to focus on american style agility with Bryn and Asher and see what we can do the next few months – this is the best weather for agility. Summer will be here before we know it!

Oh, and Bryn FINALLY went into season – in February. Once again, 8 months since her last season, which makes it really fucking inconvenient for when I want to breed her on her next season. She SHOULD have been in season in December, and then her NEXT season was supposed to be June/July, puppies it the Fall. But assuming she goes 8 months from now, we’ll be doing puppies in the dead of winter. Sigh. Still planning on the borderpaps though, I think that will be a lot of fun. And maybe she’ll decide to have some pity on me and go into season in August, which would be a lot better than October. Fingers crossed.