learnings

Hey! So, to take a break from agility for like, 5 seconds… I’ve been teaching myself a language. And it’s completely impractical because it’s a language that like, 98% of people have never heard of, but some of my kids at school speak it and I think it’s really fun to be able to say little things to them in their own language and the more they teach me the more they open up to me so that’s really fun, plus I just find language fascinating. I find learning new sounds fascinating, and new letters, and new ways of pronouncing things. I find figuring out how to put words into sentences fascinating, and I love watching them teach me. One of the kids who’s in year 6 is becoming the most awesome teacher – he knows to speak nice and slowly and clearly when he’s teaching me new phrases so I can watch his mouth to get the sounds right and then he’s so stoked when I pick it up on the first or second try. I know how to call someone a dog as an insult, so that’s handy, and they’ve now told me how to tell someone to be quiet (which they then laughed and said it’s more like ‘shut up’. Yes, I have VERY easy-going relationships with my kids. I’m not strict AT ALL and that’s how I like it). I just taught myself a few ways of asking how they’re going (though, they told me the “cool” way of saying it already) so I’ll go in tomorrow and ask and see if they understand me or not, hahaha.

It’s difficult though because I’d like to continue learning, and actually work out how to make my own sentences rather than just getting sentences made for me, but I don’t know if I’ll be teaching there next year. I’m currently driving an hour each way to school and I love it there – I love the philosophy, I love the kids, the staff are cool, the Principal is great, we laugh in staff-meetings and have wine in the 1st grade room on Friday afternoons… but… I’m a teacher… one of the brilliant things about my job is my ability to work 5 or 10 minutes from home. Think what I could do with an extra 50 minutes a day!!! All the hiking I could do, maybe I could actually train Lumen sometimes! When we get another dog (in a couple of years) I could actually have time to train all 3! I could write books! I could actually do my own exercise, or go to a yoga class and not feel guilty because it’s a “one or the other” scenario (dogs or me). But it’ll be sad… I have such a nice little bunch of kid-friends at my school and I really have them trusting me… I don’t want to abandon them. And what if a different school is all strict? And what if they don’t like how I do things and they want me to do worksheets? And what if kids don’t walk around at yard duty chatting with you about things and teaching you how to count in another language? Sad times.

Speaking of learnings though (I can’t keep away from agility can I?) – Loki has his first seminar ever this weekend. A FULL WEEKEND OF AGILITY. His face is going to melt off. I can’t even… he’s going to explode by Sunday. I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned it. It’s OMD. It’ll be fun. I think I’ve mentioned it.

Lovely DW hits tonight. When we finished I took him for a walk around the paddock then we came back and worked on tight turns off the DW. Although he wasn’t targetting his target, he was hitting consistently every time, collecting up… so maybe it will all be ok.

And his weaves are nearly there. Entrances are BRILLIANT. I can hardly trick him with left entries now from what we’ve been doing (always work to do) and the middle poles are ALMOST closed. Oh, so close. I have them at an angle now as Silvia says in her DVD but as soon as I make them straight his little brain can’t compute. Not sure how to get to the next stage here apart from ‘keep trying!’. He can do the first 5, then misses 2, then does the last ones.. just those 4 in a row of straight poles are very hard for his brain. Maybe I just close one at a time instead of the 2 middle ones. That might be a better idea – then he’s still doing 3 closed poles in a row, then slightly closed. Yep. I’m going to do that. Thanks everyone for your input.

Everything else is super funtimes. A-frame/tunnel discriminations are good to go. Tunnel threadles are still a work in progress but usually ok. Bars without wings BAAADDDD NEWS but we’ll get there. Backside-y, wrapp-y jumps are looking lovely… did a sweet backlap to a far tunnel the other day… Oh here, have a video. Lots of learning going on!!!

sunset photos

There was a beautiful golden light the other evening so I took some photos of the dogs but of course then they come out all yellow and weird so don’t look as pretty as in real life… except Mal, he is the most beautiful sunset dog ever. The sunsetty yellow just makes him all golden.

If only beautifulness was a predictor of good agility dogs…! 😉

Always the prettiest…

Telling her to “Back back back” to get some happy photos.

Loki, you’re such a dork.

Lu does OK sunset photos…

He does the best sunset photos.

“Oh God he’s trying to steal my stick, noooooo”

This is called a “border collie”. They enjoy working.

Sort of didn’t get the effect I wanted, but still ok.

Om nom nom delicious fibre.

Sunset sticks

Such a golden fellow

This is his serious face

30 Days of Mallei

Day 15:

 

I might have posted a comparison photo like this not too long ago but this one is more like the original. Not exactly just Mal, but I think that’s ok for today!

 

April…

August!

30 Days of Mallei

Day 2:

Today I couldn’t choose just one.

Here is Mal halfway through a 9km hike at the YouYangs, at the highest point of the hike on the lookout.

bend & go

Funny title given the talk about Lu not being able to bend well. This post isn’t even about that. It’s cos the trial was held in Bendigo. See.

Anyhoo. Here’s some video of our runs. I left out the Gamblers run because I spent nearly the whole allocated time trying to get her to weave all 12 damn poles and not pop out somewhere random, and I don’t have the video of the last jumping run which is perfectly ok too because I didn’t walk the course so threw in a blind but the timing didn’t work so she missed a bar. Or 5. I don’t remember. Doesn’t matter.

Bushwalking with dogs: RJ Hamer Forest Arboretum

 

Lu was obviously useless at looking the camera, and I couldn’t say anything to get her attention or Loki would break his stay.
She was hoping there was something she could run off and hunt.

So we love taking our dogs bushwalking all around Victoria, but I always find it challenging to find places to take them! So I’ll document our walks here and then if people are searching for places to go, hopefully this will help.

Where: RJ Hamer Forest Arboretum, Olinda

Difficulty/fitness required: Umm… Depends… if you just go along the Mathias Rd track, you’d need maybe 2/10… If you go off to either side, I’d say 8/10

Hilliness: Quite hilly

Leech-factor: Not that we encountered, however I wouldn’t put it past some of the muddier areas.

Animal/Wildlife factor: Low-Medium – I suspect there are rabbits around, and there are certainly signs of wombats, and there’s probably roos, too, but we only saw birds.

Interesting bits? Well, it’s quite interesting because it’s an arboretum, so there’s clumps of different kinds of trees that you go through/past, and so you get sort of different ‘atmospheres’ as you’re walking. Oh, and if you park at the main carpark off Chalet Rd, there’s a beautiful view across the arboretum and the hills.

Map: Oh, probably, I didn’t bother.

On/off lead? On, sadly.

 

 

I really wanted to go somewhere close to home this afternoon so I sucked up the onleashedness of this forest, clipped on my Urban Walkjoring belt (it’s just a regular belt), harnessed up the Lumen (must get a harness for Loki) and off we went. We parked off Silvan Rd because I wanted to avoid doing anything too hilly, and knew that if we parked on Chalet Rd, we’d be hit with a downhill (and therefore, eventual uphill) straight away. But in doing so, we found a cute little track off into some trees that went straight downhill, so we took it. We found ourselves wandering through different groves of trees, like the oak grove pictured above. There were cute little single-tracks through here that went down down down. I suspect eventually it looped along at the bottom of the hill and eventually worked its way back up but I chickened out before then because of my calf injury and the fact that I’m not supposed to walk up hill. Whoops.

So we worked out way back up and followed Mathias Rd along for a while, considered taking another side road but it, too, went downhill – that’ll have to be for another time. There’s plenty more exploring to be done in here before we move, I think, and will be good for our fitness to do that hill walking (once it doesn’t hurt to do so!).

This place would be really gorgeous in autumn when the leaves are changing.

 

That border collie is totally on leash….

dog of iron

Part of our “Let’s Play” class was to do some “Iron dog” tricks, to make sure they’re fit and strong enough to be able to run full speed.

What you’ll see below is the result of all Lu’s food play over the last few weeks as she obsessively wants to stand up on me because this is her new favourite trick, and the fact that she is now so intensely interested in the food that her brain is trying to explode a little. The whole sit pretty-stand-sit pretty bit where she’s basically just losing her shit is just her not being able to get her brain together to do the trick like I know she knows how to do. Bye bye thoughtful thinking dog!!

 

And look, she’s not Loki-like in her absolute frenzy of behaviours in the way that he is, but she’s so much more animated and keen than a month ago. It’s really cool.

mock

This Saturday we went to a mock trial fundraising thing where Lu ran a lovely Novice Jumping course even though it was roundy-roundy with not many opportunities to send and move and get in good positions, and then there was an Excellent Agility course (the 2nd level of competition) and I went in it because I wanted to see what she’d do about dogwalks in competitions, and also weaves.

It wasn’t until I was walking the course that I remembered that A-frames were in agility, too. Oh yeah.

Oh, and also, while I’d been wishing for a nice easy exit off the walk, the judge went and put it into weaves from the side. Dogwalk to weaves? Never done that before. Dogwalk to weaves on the side? Yeah, really not done that.

Anyway, I’m pleased to report that although she didn’t manage to nail the weaves the first few times off the DW she did eventually do it. It went like this: attempt 1: beautiful contact, got the entry, was collecting for the next pole- I was SO excited that she’d hit her contact AND got the entry that I went YAYYYY! ANd she said: “Oh good, I can stop what I’m doing now and come party”. Whoops. Did the weaves by themselves then and that was fine. Flew off the A-frame, did it again twice – verbally rewarding those two good ones…

Then did the course again: 1st go: beautiful contact, kind of crashed into the 3rd pole of the weaves as she went around a little wide and I went “YAY!” again. Went back to the tunnel before the walk for 2nd go: beautiful contact, beautiful entry, got around tight enough and as she went through #10 I thought she was on the home stretch so I said “YAY!!!”… came out of the poles then. Went back to tunnel before dogwalk for 3rd attempt: Beautiful contact, got around the poles, kept my damn mouth shut as she was weaving until she came OUT of the poles and THEN said “YAY!!!” A-frame was spectacular but a hit, though I should have probably redone it because she needed an extra stride. I don’t think they’re meant to clear the apex, hit the colour and get off- there’s meant to be something inbetween right?

 

And in the meantime I’m hobbling along like a fool because my calf went TWANG in the jumping run on the home stretch and I now feel very broken. So I’m giving myself at least a week off from any kind of running, and possibly 2 if I can maybe modify how I do weave training… hey… maybe I can just work on lots of me being static, her driving ahead! So, my dog is finally READY and I am broken. For Christ’s sake.

Anyway… I have video from the runs but because nobody was there to film me I had to put it on a chair so it’s stuck in one spot to catch the weave entries and so you miss the nice side view of the dogwalk and half the course so it’s really a bit useless but here it is anyway.

Given this was Lu’s first time doing her contacts in this kind of environment – weaves, too, I’m so so happy with her. She did fantastically. Loki, after getting out of the car and wandering ‘the trial’ for 30 mins, has crashed out on my lap. It’s way too cute.

 

run & weave!

So, because my husband is wonderful and amazing, he let me go and train Lu while he continued to get the house ready for sale. Isn’t that cool?
And I’m very glad I did because 2 wonderful things happened:

1) Lu did her beautiful normal ‘back-to-pre-surgery’ dogwalk running, as you’ll see. So, the question is now: how does she know it’s Penny’s dogwalk even when in a completely new location, and/or what is it about running on a downhill slope that makes her style all strange? But, it’s wonderful to know that it’s still there, just for some reason not coming through where we’ve been training. Definitely needing a tour of dogwalks now. It’s funny – I actually think her running here is better than it ever has been… Less overreach of her hindfeet coming off the down-plank, and more rear-feet hits because of it.

 

2) We got closed weaves!!! And so fast and awesome! I started by just closing 2 of the middle poles… then the next 2 along, and then the last two (since every 2nd closes)… And she did it! And I ran off on her big time as she was going through but she did them all anyway! What a good girl!!! It’s so funny though because up until now she’d been single-stepping consistently… as soon as the poles closed, she’s bouncing them.

 

So that’s all amazingly exciting because it means that in a month when the next trial that I haven’t entered yet is on, I might be game enough to enter her in agility, too. Speaking of game, there’s also ‘strategic pairs’ on that weekend, too, and Penny and I are going to put both our guys in that together. Oh, it’ll be fun if nothing else.

 

Sorry about the camera boucing around- we had it sitting on Loki’s crate and he was barking and carrying on, a lot.

 

 

jumbled

It’s half past midnight, which is about 3 hours past my bedtime, but I’ve had a very full on night and lots of thoughts are racing around my head, and I find the best way to deal with anything is to write it down.

Firstly, there was a fun evening down at the dog club, meaning they set up a jumping course, you could choose whatever heights, it was a full trial environment, someone in the ring as a judge, etc, but you could have toys and do whatever you wanted. I wanted to put Lumen in on some very low bars, do 3 or 4, maybe a tunnel and celebrate. No big deal, despite the surgery. She does much, MUCH, MUCH worse fence-running at home. Got there and was told on no uncertain terms by someone who was helping organise the event (maybe?) that there was no way I would be allowed to do this. She might rip her internal stitches!!!!!!! And basically suggested I was a horrible, horrible person for even thinking of it, and that this person had left their young dog at home because she’d only be able to do a few jumps and a tunnel so what’s the point? (um, trial environment… playing when she does something good? just getting used to the idea of doing it ‘for real’….?). So anyway, I didn’t run Lu.

Then when everything was over we took all 7 dogs (Penny’s, Kim’s and my two) out the back for a run- Lu’s first run with the pack in over a month. Happy girl. We noticed Mal was a little lame but didn’t think much of it. Next thing, we hear a ‘thud’, and the most horrific screaming of a dog. It wasn’t ‘dog-fight’ screaming, but it was horrible. Pitch black, with just a little torch, we all ran over to find my gorgeous boy on his back/side, rolling around, panicking, the dogs all hovering around not sure what to do as he cried and cried. We grabbed dogs, I grabbed him and saw his front leg hanging limp. I thought he’d broken it. Kim (a nurse) checked him over. Not broken, she said, just a muscle, probably in his shoulder.

He’s very sore now, lots of limping, had an anti inflam pill earlier and got carried up the steps into the house….

But what I find most interesting is how shit fucking happens.

Doesn’t it?
Like, I couldn’t run Lumen over 3 measly jumps because maybe, possibly, she’d hurt her stitches, yet my perfectly healthy dog goes out and runs around and gets terribly injured- the most injured he’s ever been, I think. And it could have been any of them.

Stuff happens. That’s just how it is. I’m not going to stop my dogs running around just incase.

 

Ok, next. I spoke with someone today who was my very first agility instructor about getting a puppy. He was actually good to talk to in that he offered a different opinion to most people, who seem to get ‘puppy excited’ but maybe don’t stay as rational because of it? We talked a lot about expectations, about confidence, about relationships, about time. About doubt.

He suggested that if I have doubts about getting a puppy (or buying a house) then I shouldn’t do that thing. But that’s not how I work. I will always have doubts, about everything. I will always want to see if there’s better options. I will plan and plan and plan and find the most perfect (whatever) and keep looking and researching incase there’s better. If it weren’t for Nic, I would never do anything, I would just research all the time. So the idea of not having doubts is so foreign to me at this stage in my life. Maybe it wasn’t always (eg. choosing Mal: Mal sits on my foot when meeting him the first time. “I like him!” Played with Mal for a while when all the other puppies were off doing stuff. Mal seemed to like me. “Mum, can I get him?” done deal.), but it certainly is now. This is sort of similar to what Kim says which is that “your gut knows the right answer”, to which I replied that I don’t think I have a gut response about anything – I need facts, rationale, clear outcomes. Intuition doesn’t mean anything to me, it tells me nothing. But how can you apply facts, rationale and clear outcomes to something as unknown as the pros and cons of getting a particular puppy? Which is why I find it so stressful. And I think there are possible positive outcomes, and possible negative outcomes, or both. Hmm.

In the end, he seemed to suggest that it would be best if I stuck with just Lu to see how she’d go when we started competing, and I agreed to a point, but as I drove home I realised that this was coming from someone who was happy with their less speedy, less drivey dog the way he was (and look, I love Lu, but I don’t currently love how we do agility) and that was ok for him. Will that be enough for me? I’m not sure. Long story short? Still thinking about Tink, still not sure. Is anyone ever sure? Maybe people with more intuition are sure. I’ll never be sure.

I’m trying to get to the bottom of the feeling of why I’d like to win. Maybe if I can get that in words, I can move my focus from ‘winning’ to ‘feeling a certain way’ or ‘doing a certain thing’ (eg. running fast with Lu, but that doesn’t have the same effect, cos I could run fast and not win..).

Also, I was wondering if I could teach Lumen to read.

Not like, books… but has anybody ever taught a dog to read symbols? Surely a hand gesture is just a symbol. If you held up a card with a plus sign on it, for example, and cued ‘drop/down’ to your dog a bunch of times, I wonder if you could get it to the point where you could show a plus sign and it would drop. And then you could get a dollar sign or something completely different and cue a sit, and then you could show one card or the other and they’d do what the card meant. Surely if reading is just a form of giving symbols meaning, then by giving symbols meaning for your dog, they are, in a basic sense, reading. I wonder if anyone’s ever conducted an experiment on a dog like that before. Might have to google that one. I don’t see it why not.

 

And lastly, I’m finding this whole conception of introspection (is that the right word? It must be, as in intro (within) spection as in – spec (I would assume something to do with ‘seeing’, like ‘spectacles’ (glasses) but then I wonder about ‘spectacular’ unless it’s something fabulous to behold/see. And then there’s speculation which would be made up of spec+ulate+ion – so then i wonder what ‘ulate’ would mean, if you speculate something, you’re seeing the possibilities. I like words) so – seeing/looking within oneself – quite interesting. I quite like finding out the reasons my brain works the way it does – it helps me explain the way I feel the way I do and why I stress the way I stress. Mega stress over puppy possibilities? Oh, that’s because there’s no clear pathways, no rationale, no facts, no plan.

I should go to bed now. More puppy visits tomorrow. I got lots and lots of photos and some movies of tug times today so I’ll upload that tomorrow sometime. Maybe.