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| If you can spot Packing Tape...you're more on the ball than me! |
Well, move over Marvin, the ever-fleeting Pup has a new love of her life:
Used Packing Tape.
Apparently, Packing Tape is somehow MORE magical and wonderful than even Marvin.
Did you know that Packing Tape is both sticky AND smooth?
Did you know that he makes crinkling noises when you chew on him?
And best of all you can rip him into tiny pieces and maybe even eat some before The Leader catches you and takes him away.
Sigh. Forbidden love- so bittersweet. Nothing better on earth up until the moment someone finds you out and then suddenly it all ends up in the garbage.
At least she still has Marvin, though her burning obsession has cooled slightly. Not enough that she will stop yo-yo-ing at the counter to catch a glimpse of him, but enough that we can work with him. It helps if she is not ravenous when I put him out too. Lesson learned.
We did a bit of channel weave work using Marvin and back-chained through the channel easily by the end of it. After I get her solid with running though all the poles (though she’s pretty good at honoring the channel already), I will need to recruit Boyfriend to help with restrained recalls through and toy fun and all that to up the proverbial ante.
Aside from that, she hasn't done TOO much (she got herself SO worked up over Marvin she actually got a bit sick... so had to take it easy most of last week. Love hurts.) but I brought her on a field trip to play at the CPE national in town over the weekend. Stunning before and after:
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| Naughty loose Pup, but no attempted vehicular manslaughter this time. |
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| Love the lovely snoozy Pup, finally being GOOD in the car! |
And I experimented with some baby set point stuff and bendy grids. Meh. I don't know if I really get this method. Not entirely sure what to look for- with The Pup it all looks great. But doesn't every dog without any height on the jumps?
Oh, wait no, they don’t. The Dog is once again an exception to the rule. I really need to set up the lessons with my resident expert who agreed to help with understanding the whole jumping 'right' thing, but I'm feeling lazy. And...it discourages me greatly to think about going through this retrain with The Dog so I'm being passive and avoiding it for now. I know she needs some better understanding; I know enough to tell when she is failing at recognizing simple distances and can't adjust correctly to a jump chute. It's just all so depressing and not fun and she does struggle and that depresses me more and so we go inside and watch cooking shows instead and she gets the ball and happiness. Meh.
But anyways, back to the fun side: The Pup is learning a new trick for her last ST lesson: roll a ball while balancing on it! I will make her a Circus Pup yet!! She's very cute and seems to get it. I think she would greatly enjoy being a Circus Pup- lots of free popcorn we are sure.
And we DID make some interesting strides on The Dog’s DW retrain (or is it re-re-retrain?). I took her out for a real shot at plank work- distance and speed on the load and all that. Distance threw her off a little. She is SO my dog- she would run the plank then look at Marvin WAY over there (he was about 25 feet away) and go MEH, too far. YOU go get the treat and bring it over here. But we managed to get her back chained over two planks placed end to end with good strides before she got really lazy. At that point I realized that although I wish for her to have obstacle independence, I will probably NEVER stand there and try and send her for an entire dogwalk with me hanging out and the start, so I started moving some with her. Bingo. Then I thought, hey, she loves the toy, why shouldn’t I use it wisely? And then, hey why not load with a tunnel? So she did tunnel, planks, Marvin, TOY and it worked!! She did what she has never done before on the boards- she ran. Happy. No sticky. No slow down. Consistent, fast, running. Next step is to make this the norm, then raise it up a tad.
(Normally I would insert an awesome video here of the good stuff from a week of training, but I apparently filled my laptop to the brim and it refuses to have anymore videos or it will start barfing gigs up all over my living room. Time for a new laptop!)
Oh, and the dogwalk is nearly done! THAT’S actually the next step. Had fun adventures this weekend getting boards and painting. Just awaiting hinges now. Stupid slow standard mail. Stupid me for not realizing I should have just picked them up at the CPE Nationals. MEH.
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| Poor Dad, made him look through ALL the boards... |
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| Rejects. |
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| Yay for tie downs, but I'm NOT driving behind you... |
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| Beautiful 'Dogwalk Blue' |
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| Really makes The Dog POP, doesn't it?? |
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| Finished!! Euro-style color scheme. |
Darn straight The Pup didn't get to 'help' me with The Dog. Here's why: She escaped later that day and went into the garage...where she promptly placed her paws on the boards saying "can we play NOW??"
Oh, and while the paint was drying (like we were going to sit there and WATCH it) we went to the zoo! Now in addition to a bear and a loris I also want a big kitty and a leafy sea dragon.
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| Looks like she'd be great at agility... |
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| Can't say the same for him, but he's pretty! |
Not sure DAD would agree with you!!! G Love the colors!!
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