Vixey herding on April 1st 2015

Happy times!

This blog update has been in the works for a long time. I’ve been thinking about writing it since last December! Obviously it’s been busy, not only in the dog world but also in my personal life. During this past year, Vixey has developed into an amusing young adult, Vanilla has continued her career on the agility fields and Gin has finally gotten rid of valley fever meds and is doing great (more on valley fever in a previous blog post)! On the unfortunate side, Vixey too got valley fever this past April and is still on meds (only half a dose anymore). She is doing great though and got into treatment quickly so hopefully getting off meds is in the near future for her as well. Although, there is one interesting thing about her case which is that her valley fever titer keeps coming back negative. So can we even be sure it really was valley fever? Another scary event was when Gin either ate or licked a poisonous toad or got into some other kind of poison somewhere on our previous yard and again was at the brink of death spending a day at the animal hospital on fluids and meds and several days on meds at home. But yet again, she beat whatever it was and is still among us, as happy as ever! She’s one tough dog I got to say!

Vixey’s training has been going great, she is the fastest, most agile dog I’ve probably ever had. And I thought I’d never say this after having Vanilla. So beware fellow agility people, I own a rocket :). That is..  if I can ever control that rocket in a way that would enable us to actually finish an agility course! But competition is not in our near future yet, we are still training fundamentals. We just started training weave poles (we are doing channel method) since she’s finally getting old enough to do that and also only recently introduced the full dog walk and jumps at full height. We took it pretty slow, mostly practicing shadow handling, free shaping jumps and un-agility-related tricks, getting good contacts and cone work (out-command, front/rear crosses) with the excellent guidance of our wonderful trainer Denise Evans. Of course this has been paired by training with both treats and toys, clicker training and basic obedience training.

 

Agility aside, the other interesting venue we’ve been doing lately is sheep herding. Watching Vixey literally gives me goose bumps! She is a natural! I will post a couple videos on this site later so you can take a look :)  I can’t wait to get my own sheep! Oh wait.. I wasn’t supposed to say that out loud! I’m still working on the hubby.  But you get the point, I’m excited, Vixey is excited. Right now I’m just working on trying to find a place to practice somewhere closer than Tonopah, which is almost 3 hours away. It’s a great place though, run by Maci McGraw and her family. They are the most welcoming, wonderful people one could meet! They really inspire me! They offer great clinics a couple times a year, one of them being with Vixeys breeder Patrick Shannahan which was one of my dog training highlights last year. He has real talent and a way with dogs that impresses me over and over again. His style gives a lot of room for the dog to learn to read sheep on its own, with guidance from us handlers.

Other good news in the dog world is that Vanilla is, finally, after years of (not so focused) training, competing in the 3^rd class in agility (putting it the Finnish way). Here in Tucson it’s called excellent class in AKC. That has always been my ultimate goal with Vanilla and I’m so excited we got there! I wasn’t sure if we ever would and hadn’t really put any pressure on it, which makes me appreciate it even more! Go Vanilla! I’m so proud of that little fur ball of energy!

Our year has been full of other kinds of activities as well and the dogs are almost always with us enjoying life to the fullest! Gins favorite activity by far is sailing and then roaming the empty beaches hunting fish! This goes for any lakeside/river trip as well and she has successfully been able to catch some fish! While she’s hunting the Border Collies usually enjoy running full speed on the beach, possibly chasing birds or bringing us sticks to throw in the water. One of the greatest things to notice has been seeing Vixey grow up into a really stable, confident young dog. She loves sailing (and the boat) and even swimming is now in her list of fun activities even though her first couple times weren’t so great. Blame on me! We were swimming from the boat to shore one time when the boat was anchored and miscalculated the distance to shore (at least from a point of view of a little puppy) and she got pretty tired and we had to take turns swimming with her. Luckily she is tough and forgot about the whole incident the minute we hit the beach. 

We have done a bunch of long road trips as well. Another trip to Grand Canyon, a trip to the mountains in southern Colorado, a summer trip to see family in northeastern Oregon and several trips to San Diego and Mexico. The dogs seem to love the exploring and the excitement and are always waiting at the car ready to go when we are packing! They pile up in the back of the car, fall asleep usually on top of each other and then wake up right before the activity starts. If I didn’t know better, I couldn’t tell I was traveling with three dogs. People always ask me, how we deal with the dogs on all our trips, and I have to say, so far there’s never been a time I would have rather left them home. Sometimes dealing with dogs is tough, like when you go eat in a restaurant on your road trip (especially since we don’t usually do any fast food). But it’s pretty remarkable how many puppy friendly eateries there are out there! Of course there are times that you just need to park the car in front, leave it running with the AC on or the other person in the car, and go get food as quickly as possible and eat in the car. Then at night we either book a room in a dog friendly hotel like La Quinta which doesn’t charge a dog fee or go to a camping spot and sleep in our tent which we always have with us. It can get a little crowded in there with the pups but I sort of enjoy having one dog warm my feet, one my side and use one as a pillow ;). 

Trips are only a small part of life though. Our everyday life is what counts and there has been many improvements in it lately from a doggie point of view. We moved to a house with a walled yard that sits right next to a wash which enables long, mostly off-leash, morning runs! I am absolutely thrilled about it and so are the dogs who have pretty much become wild (or at least they might think so)! We also got a little kiddy pool for them for the hottest summer days and they love playing in it!

In my opinion, we’re truly living the happy times! :)

Puppy classes and BAT training

This past month Vixey has grown and developed quickly. At 16 weeks she weighed 16 lbs and is now almost the same height as Vanilla. She has continued to be the brave, open and loving puppy with a couple boogieman phases added to the mix. I haven’t taught as many new tricks this past month but instead we’ve focused on life skills. After getting all our vaccinations in order we went to our very first agility foundation lesson and got a lot of homework with the cone. I’ll be teaching “out”-command with the clicker and the cone and also use the cone to help her read front and rear crosses. We also started a puppy socialization class which focuses on introducing all kinds of dogs, people and environments to the puppy. In the same class we also make them familiar with different surfaces and little obstacles like a ladder on the floor that they need to walk through or standing on a stool or go over an air mattress. This is great also when I think about the skills she will need for agility or even our sailing trips in the future. 

Of course you can’t learn everything on a class so I’ve tried to make sure that every week we do something new with her. This week’s agenda is to take her to the stables to see horses. Last week it was a nearby dog park to go on a puppy play date. I’m a little weary of dog parks though, so I’m not sure how much we will be going unless it’s to meet someone we know there. I’ve also tried to take her for walks in different places with different people and dogs including next to kids playgrounds, heavy traffic zones etc. She has always done great. But more than any of that I’ve tried to take her to places she can be off-leash. We’ve gone to Mt. Lemmon every weekend for a walk or a hike. She absolutely loves the forest! Our everyday walk around the neighborhood is on nice dirt roads which is great for having her off-leash and teach recall. Also there are cotton tails and quails and other critters that run across the road or nearby all the time so it’s been a great environment to learn to not chase anything.

 

Vixey in Sedona, AZ

Grand Canyon.

 

Our only issues have been the boogieman phases which usually involve some barking. For example, just on a normal day home she might all of a sudden realize that there are all kinds of sounds that she can hear from the outside. There have always been noises and most days she doesn’t notice them yet some days she thinks that every time the neighbor’s dog barks she needs to bark back. My first plan was to just ignore that. It didn’t help however, so I now have a squirt bottle next to my desk and it does make a difference. She hates the thing! Once in a while she also barks at dogs she sees on our daily walks. I think its half excitement and half insecurity. When she gets closer and can meet the dog she is great and meets dogs in a very nice manner and quickly gets into play mode with them. So far there has only been one dog that she has been timid about. It was another puppy, a lot bigger and more muscular than Vixey and very high energy and dominant in her play. Vixey did finally warm up to her enough to play a little but you could tell that she wasn’t totally comfortable with her. 

 

On the occasion that she barks or gets ready to bark to another dog on our walk, I’ve been using a method that is nowadays often referred to as BAT (Behavior Adjustment Training). The basic idea is to walk with the dog ideally using a long lead (I’ve often had Vixey off-leash though) and when you see signs of a possible reaction, ie. barking, you gently turn around before the behavior happens, maybe call your dog and treat. The idea is to replace the initial reaction to a situation with a new behavior like sitting, sniffing, looking away, whatever seems to work best for you and your dog. I’d used similar methods before and even started on with Vixey but never knew the name of the official training method until I had some conversations with the owners of Vixeys siblings. It’s been great for us and has made our recall even stronger. It also makes you have to pay attention to your dog’s body language in order to prevent the situation where reactive behavior could occur. And of course involves a lot of good treats when everything is going great. 

All in all though, I have to say that Vixey has been a really good, easy puppy. She travels great, sleeps through the nights, loves her crate, is basically house-trained with very few accidents, learns amazingly quickly, absolutely loves people, has a wonderful off-switch for a Border Collie and is really the most snuggly, loving little creature I can think of. And the bonus on top of it all is that she is not only best buddies with Vanilla but she has been able to melt Gins heart as well. How great is that! 

PS. I can’t wait for the agility season to start again in Tucson! Vanilla and I have learned a ton of new stuff since our last trial in April!

 

 

 

Twelve pounds and growing!

First weeks with Vixey have flown by faster than I expected. She is already 3 months old. A lot has happened since Vixey first came to us and I’m not talking only about her growing way too fast! But growing she really has done. She is all legs, ears and teeth right now and weighed a little over 12 lb at 13 weeks! A little devil running around the house, grabbing plants and shoes and mail while just passing by. Of course there’s been many great developments too. The most wonderful one is that Vanilla figured out that I “bought her a new toy”. Every day she and Vixey play around the house and the yard for hours, making my life so much easier. While Vanilla is playing the babysitter I can concentrate on work and other things I neglected for the first two weeks Vixey was around. After their morning play is done there is several heavenly quiet hours of three pups snoring around the house! Got to love their cute faces!

Photo by Maria Järvinen

Photo by Maria Järvinen

Training wise I’ve been trying to be more organized with Vixey than I was with Vanilla. Well. Obviously I didn’t know as much back then either. Right now one of our main goals is to extend the time in sit, laying down or standing. I’m using the clicker pretty much with all of Vixey’s training and it seems to be working really well. I’ve been also trying to get more and more away from the luring technique and add more of what’s called free shaping. It’s hard because I’ve done luring my whole life and I can feel myself being a little impatient sometimes when I wait for Vixey to figure out what is wanted. It would be SO easy to just show her and be done with it! On the other hand when she finally does the results are amazing! Also this will make us achieve the greater goal of Vixey learning to learn and offer different behaviors herself instead of waiting for me to show her what to do. I think this will be very helpful later on in everything else we do. I would love to hear some experiences of this though from people? Have you tried free shaping and has it been better?

On the socialization part Vixey has not met quite as many dogs as I’d hope she would’ve by now. She’s probably met around 15 different dogs and luckily none of the experiences have been bad. Some have not been very much into her but Vixey’s been pretty good at respecting them when they tell her to stay off their face. I’m still looking to finding some playmates for her even though there is a lot less pressure now that she and Vanilla are such good buddies. On the other hand Vixey has been traveling and going around with us a ton meeting many different people. We even did a 5 day trip to San Diego. The 7 hour car drive both ways went great, she was asleep pretty much the whole time. She loved playing in the grassy yard all day long and I’m sure coming back to the hot desert was a small disappointment! Vixey has also been to Apache Lake twice here in Arizona and last time she already figured out how to swim on her own! And long ways too! At 11 weeks old. I was pretty breath taken. I can’t wait for her to have all her vaccines so I can take her to our boat in Mexico and introduce her to the ocean. She has also become quite the mountain climber on our frequent visits to Mt. Lemmon. She runs after the big dogs as if she was born in a high alpine pine forest! 

 My plan for the next couple of weeks is to increase training a little bit and concentrate on recall, playing skills and some agility foundation work. She’s really good with toys with almost a natural fetch and she has a really good release from anything that’s in her mouth already so I’m hoping to add toys to her reward selection soon in a more structured manner. I’m so excited to go to our very first agility foundation training session at the end of the month! I’m sure Vixey is too since so far she has mainly been watching Vanilla being trained and she is not very happy with that situation :). Many things to learn before then though!

Here's a couple photos of Vixey since she was about 9 weeks old to today!

Photo by Maria Järvinen

Photo by Maria Järvinen

Photo by Maria Järvinen

Photo by Maria Järvinen

Photo by Maria Järvinen