Happy 11th Birthday Haku!

Haku turns eleven this month, my perfect boy is getting older – and obviously more perfect, of course. He’s definitely slowed down the past year, I know he has arthritis in his wrists and toes. Then losing Bright was so hard, as they had their games they would play together all the time, and would play Stick when hiking and keep each other active and busy the whole time. Now Haku just walks behind me almost the entire time that we hike, and he doesn’t really have a ‘job’ during the week to keep him mentally stimulated since he’s pretty much retired from herding. I don’t like taking him to the park as he does so much hard running and that’s the most difficult thing on him. Finally, he’s just so loud and obnoxious when I’m trying to train Asher, and what with keeping the arena doors all open to keep it well ventilated for the virus, I don’t even bring him into the arena often because I don’t want to disturb Dwight and his neighbors.

At home he still plays a lot and continues to be his busy self, but since I’ve started back to teaching I just don’t feel like there is nearly enough Special Haku Time. So my goal recently was to make sure Haku gets all the love and attention as well as physical and mental outlets that he needs. So our first game … agility! Which is obviously not a ‘new’ game, but he hasn’t actually done agility in years. He runs around the arena all the time, and we have done lots of obedience and herding training in the agility arena through the years, but we haven’t actually done AGILITY in the arena in a long time. Not that Haku can do much, and definitely not jumps, but he can still weave and do tunnels and run contacts (especially with them lowered for Asher). So, yes, Haku is having an ‘agility revival’, and it always surprises me how he can jump right back into it after not doing it for so very long. He’s just so enthusiastic about everything he does, and he doesn’t need to do much, he just loves to have a ‘job’. Obviously we can also go out and do little bits of herding as well, as well as obedience. Haku has done it all! Haku loves to show off all his things, and he knows a lot.

Then I always thought that Carol’s midnight walks sounded actually rather fun, but I find walking dogs on leash around the neighborhood to be rather, uh, boring. But if you do it late at night it’s actually kind of novel, and you know who is the perfect midnight walk companion? Haku! He is enjoying his Special Haku Walks and I hope that will help keep him mentally and physically fit in a low impact way. Navarre and Asher don’t know what to think of this new development as we leave them behind, Asher just lays right by the door until we come back. Navarre is, uh, less concerned.

So happy birthday to the best dog ever! We are still figuring out his ‘retirement’, but I will do everything I can think of to help keep him happy and healthy. Somehow he did very much transition to an ‘old dog’ recently, and it kind of caught me unaware. It’s a different phase in life, and we will adjust together.

As for the Goober Boys, they had a busy week. First of all, the big news, Asher is weaving! Clever little thing took seven sessions to work up to 6 straight poles, and then transferred that to 12 poles without batting an eye. Now, to be fair border collies are kind of autistic and really excel at repetitive tasks, but he is such a fun dog to train as well. Obviously there is a lot of work to be done, but checking that off the list for now. We’ll play channel weave games this summer to work on his footwork, speed, independence and sequencing and put it together again when he’s a bit older.

Some video of his some his first 6 poles:

This was like the 3rd even set of 12 poles – he’s thinking so hard!

As for the dogwalk, I overreached by trying to get rid of the manners minder too soon (he just thinks it’s so stupid!), and he wasn’t quite ready for that – just toys was too exciting and he wasn’t strong enough on the criteria yet. So the plan is to go back to stage one, just a board on the table to a manners minder and really proof it with ONLY the MM and no toy ‘jackpot’ until he shows me he really knows the criteria complete with turns. If he knows what he’s doing, he will do it, because he’s a good boy. We’ll get back to the fun part soon enough.

We were going to work on that this week, but, as usual, my manners minders (I have like four of them at this point, and none of them work well!) were giving me fits. I finally got one working correctly by using a remote from another machine and then a dispensing disc from yet another one – but it works! By the time I got it all figured out we didn’t have much time, so I figured we’d just do a bit with the aframe which was already lowered.

Clever red thing just took to it right away, which, to be fair, he already has the concept of running all the way down the board and the aframe is easier since it’s so big and the criteria is not as strict. So we played with the manners minder and he had no problem backchaining until he was doing the full (lowered) aframe.  I was so happy with him I broke out the toys and it STILL looked good. Added speed before and … uh, less good – serious ski-jumping. So we worked through that until he was giving me a full stride of the downramp and he was doing a lowered (4’6″) aframe in sequence at speed in less than 10 minutes without ever having seen it before with nice low hits. Which, once again, he’s already done a lot of foundation work with the dogwalk, but I was pretty impressed how fast he put that one together.

That is one very fun puppy, we’re really having a good time with this agility stuff. This is also my favorite age, when you get to start putting things together and everything they do is just awesome because they don’t know how to do anything! Once you start having expectations it’s not as fun, and then when they’re ‘trained’ is my least favorite, then you just get cranky when everything isn’t perfect! But right now, I LOVE putting it together with a baby dog – especially when they enjoy it as much as I do. Next week we’ll try to make more progress on the dogwalk, I’d really like to get that one checked off the list so we can start playing with the teeter, which we haven’t looked at other than just playing bang games as a puppy. And then once he’s got the running contact, need to look at putting on the stop as well. Ah, so much to do with a baby dog just getting the obstacles trained! And eventually we’ll start looking at collection more seriously, and introduce backsides as well. Someday.

As for Navarre, he had his vet appointment this week and I still really like the vet there. She was super impressed by how much better he felt compared to when she saw him last. The work that Maddy has been doing really made a difference and he was way less painful and restricted. We went ahead and did a couple back xrays, which were MOSTLY good – I was happy to see no signs of any spondylosis or arthritis, which you worry about with a big agility dog. Everything looked good except right at the base of the spine at the tail, which is where Maddy had found the most discomfort, despite the fact that his ‘mowhawk’ is very much on his mid-back (and the mowhawk has disappeared from his lower back since Maddy has been working on him).

Upper back looks normal

So here is the weird part at the base, which is kind of doing it’s own thing here. There does not appear to be any inflammation, but it should not look like this. It’s possible it could be affecting the nerves in the area which is causing the peeing issue. As for why it looks like this, we don’t know. And what to do about it, well, not much we can do with the spine, the vet feels the best thing is to continue to work with Maddy, possibly put him on anti-inflammatories for a few months and see if there is any improvement (though who knows, maybe his back always looked like this). But as he is feeling good in every day life, and feeling much better overall, hopefully we are already on the right track for helping him out. I’d still like to see about getting down to see Patrice as well. The vet felt very confident it was not a prostate issue at all, so we can get rid of that worry, at least.

Modeling his mowhawk

So maybe it’s something big, maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s going to be a long term concern, maybe not. Maybe it will affect his agility and herding possibilities … or maybe it won’t. Really not much to say right now other than he does seem to be feeling fine despite it all, so hey. We will continue to do herding, but I’m putting most agility on the backburner as we don’t have anything we’re working for at the moment anyway. We may play around a little but I worry about that more. The good news about agility is that this seemed to happen when we most definitely weren’t doing agility, and hadn’t been for some time – so probably not CAUSED by agility, anyway. Which makes me more optimistic we’ll be able to go back to it, hopefully.

Oh, and Navarre is SUCH a good patient – it’s so nice to have a dog that doesn’t get freaked out at the vet, even when they took him back and did the xrays, they said he was the easiest dog they’ve done! He’s such a good boy, and has taken this all in stride, because he’s a superstar. Now, if they’d just STOP SHOOTING OFF FIREWORKS around my house he would be a lot happier, the random fireworks at night has made him very wary about going outside when it’s dark. Sigh.

True Summer and hot weather arrives next week, and I don’t have any big plans for the season other than to power through. This is the first summer I’ll be teaching through, so we’ll see how we all survive. I did smash all my classes into the morning-ish hours, so I’m done by 2 everyday. I’ve actually really been enjoying that schedule, and it would be nice to keep, but it’s hard when not everyone is getting the classes they want. Still, it can get plenty hot, even in the early afternoon. Just need to get through mid-September, only 8 weeks to go. Will still try to do our early morning hikes, and hopefully try to stay practicing in herding. We’ll be able to do a little agility in the mornings before classes, so the plan is to finish up Asher’s obstacle training by Fall. I’ll keep my eyes open for any opportunities to get him on some different equipment in different locations as well, which was much easier before the virus. Mostly we’ll be chilling out and hiding from the sun. Definitely not a fan of summer.

As for herding, the boys continue to progress. Navarre was surprisingly less conflicted this week, and I have to wonder if it’s connected to his back? Wasn’t seeing the poop eating and sulkiness. I’ve been really happy with what he’s doing and we continue to move in the right direction. Maybe he’s getting more patient with me. This week I attempted to pen the same group of sheep with both dogs and just could not do it with either dog. I always struggle with the sheep that don’t really respond to handler pressure, when I can’t hold my side I’m not sure how to make it work. Both dogs did GREAT at getting the sheep to me gently, getting them lined up right at the entrance … and then we just couldn’t get them in. I’m pretty sure it’s me, but I’m not sure what I need to do differently. It’s also a good opportunity to make sure the boys can get way out on their flanks when they need to – I feel like they were doing their job, anyway.

Navarre did shed a sheep this week! We were up against a fence, and it was a sheep that was the ‘outsider’ of the group, but I’m taking it. He wasn’t doing a good job holding the single though, he really has been programmed to PUT THE SHEEP TOGETHER. I don’t blame him, and we don’t have any immediate need to shed, so hey. Still, it was nice to see, as the last time we attempted to shed with what SHOULD have been two groups that did not want to be together, I couldn’t get a hole to save my life. Navarre and I are much better at THEORETICAL sheepherding than actual sheepherding. We need to work on more practical tasks where we actually have to get things done. It’s too easy for both of us to fake it when we’re just toodling around the field.

As for Asher, he is growing up in leaps in bounds these days, we worked our inside flank exercises and he’s really starting to get it. Driving is getting so much better (though I didn’t attempt all the way across the arena!). Once again, I think we would benefit from attempting actual tasks, instead of theoretical. I really need to start solidifying what whistles I want to use for him as well.

We’ll see how much herding we end up doing in the summer, don’t want to kill any sheep or dogs and it’s not something you can do early in the morning or late in the evening (whistling is loud!). We’ve been trying to get on sheep at least every week, and we have been doing well so far. Hoping to head out to Idaho again in the Fall, maybe do a sheep camp type thing with Ron and attempt a mock trial at Maddy’s. Then depending on where we are and what the world looks like, maybe some real trials next winter. We shall see. We’re having fun anyway, and training is always more fun than trialing!