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! :)

Introducing Redtop Vixey

My little dirt eater!

Please let us out to play!

I had been looking for a puppy for a year. First it took me months to find a couple breeders that I really liked. I had preferred to find someone in Arizona and I did find a person that I would have loved to get a puppy from but she wasn’t planning on having any litters either at the end of 2013 or in the coming year. So I started looking elsewhere, found many breeders with great dogs, and finally a half a year later decided on a combination I thought was everything I was looking for. Fabulous herding skills with plenty of drive but calm at home and fantastic structure. Unfortunately that litter never happened. I got lucky, however, and there was going to be another try with the same dad and a different mom. I signed up for that immediately. The new mom was in some ways even better than the previous one. Now, I’m so happy and grateful to, after a year of waiting, officially introduce my new companion for life: Redtop Vixey (Redtop Riggs x Bell)! I feel very lucky to have met Patrick Shannahan last December at a herding clinic to make this all happen. Vixey has been home for 6 days and I couldn’t be happier. She is absolutely everything I wanted and more!

Puppy kisses!

When I first met Vixey she climbed on my lap and gave me the most wonderful puppy kisses one could hope! I had had my eyes on her already previously but wasn’t sure if we would “match” before meeting her. Stars were aligned and we connected right away! I spent hours with her that first day, watching her play with the cats, her dad and her siblings. She was so fearless and bold! Spicy little thing, I thought! Independent also, but not in a bad way, just enough to go around “herding” good ol’ papa Riggs. Then she would come back and spend time saying hi to me or chewing on my shoelaces. The whole litter of puppies seemed to have great temperaments and were so much fun to be around that I was reluctant to leave for the night. But I wanted to leave Vixey “home” with her brothers for one more night before taking her away. 

This really reminds me of Vanilla for some reason!

Going to herd papa!

Following the leader!

Kitty attack!

Relaxing with Blanco!

Daydreamer!

The next day our first adventure together started and I worried how it would all turn out. This was the first time I’d flown a dog in the cabin of the plane. I was worried about whining and barking or her being anxious but I have to say I wasn’t even half as nervous as I was flying Vanilla in the crate in cargo from Finland. And it all ended up going fabulously even though the plane was an hour late and our total time in the airport and flying took almost 6 hours. I was really surprised that there were no accidents and that she slept the whole way! It was actually a very pleasant trip down. Even the 2-hour car ride from Phoenix to Tucson went well. The only whining she did on the whole way home was right after we left Patrick’s place and lasted less than 5 minutes. I put the radio on and she fell silent and was quiet the whole way after that.  

Introductions to our older girlies went well. They were interested in her and she in them. After the first batch of curiosity went away, though, our two ladies decided to ignore the puppy. I suppose they figured out she might be staying and decided that running away from her or watching her from the top of the bed was much better. I was expecting Vanilla to behave this way since she has always ignored other dogs. The only dogs she ever loved playing with were her siblings that we saw regularly when still living in Finland. Since then she has gotten along with many dogs and even played a little with Gin, but never with the same enthusiasm. Surprisingly Gin, who normally LOVES to meet and play with other dogs, was also behaving this way. I suppose it’ll just take time. Luckily they are both treating the puppy pretty nicely. And Vixey doesn’t seem to care. She is endlessly persistent trying to make her way closer to Vanilla and Gin. Today she was already hanging on Vanilla’s fur when they were outside and lay next to her inside and as long as she stays away from Vanilla’s face everything is good. Gin is tougher but slowly warming up to her also. I remember my older BC Dani being like that with Vanilla for almost two months. So I guess I’ll just have to wait and see. Sometimes it’s just hard to be patient when you want something to happen so much! 

Since Vixey came we’ve started practicing our daily routines like house breaking, sleeping and waiting in a crate, being behind a gate, sitting and laying down, being alone for short periods of time, traveling in the car and waiting for food. I’ve found both Susan Garrets crate games and Mary Ellen Barry’s agility foundations to be extremely helpful in the first days of our coexistence! She has done really well with everything so far and is definitely comparable to Vanilla as a learner! 

I have a little fenced area in our backyard to keep her from roaming around, since we have plenty of coyotes running around and besides being dangerous themselves they can also carry parvo. Parvo is a little bit of a problem in Tucson and there has been several puppies that have been brought to the local shelters that were affected. It makes me nervous to take Vixey out so for now we are staying very close to our house. To make up for the lack of yard time (which has to be short anyway just because of the heat!) I have carried the puppy in a carrier around with us wherever we have gone. To the restaurant on Friday, on a hike on the mountain on Saturday, to agility practice today and all the little things in between. She has already met plenty of new people and loves to say hi to everyone. Now we just need to find some nice pups to play with.

I’m so excited to see what the future holds for us and ready for some new challenges!

Little monster!

Land of Saguaros

"The saguaro (Carnegiea gigantea) is a large, tree-sized cactus species, which can grow to be over 20 meters (~70 ft) tall. It's native to the Sonoran Desert in Arizona, the Mexican state of Sonora, and the Whipple Mountains and Imperial County areas of California." -Wikipedia.

I never thought life would bring me here. To the land of Saguaros, endless heat, epic dust stroms and unique wildlife that is fully adapted to the hard desert life. I'm not sure how Tucson originally became a town but as Rango, in one of my all-time favorite animated movies, puts it: "As long as we got water, we got ourselves a town". I'm sure the dogs are as surprised as I am to leave the leisurely lifestyle of boating and end up in a totally new environment and totally new routines once again. Just when we had two fully adapted boat dogs they need to do it again and now get used to the dangers of the desert. Instead of cool morning swims it's a morning walk at dawn, just before the blazing sun makes you sweat, being wary of the rattle snakes, coyotes, tarantulas, scorpions. You name it! And it's not just the animals and insects you need to worry about, it's the plants too. We've only been here a little while and there has been many a days when I have to pull out the tweezers after our walk to pull out cactus spikes from the dogs paws or muzzles. I hope that with time they'll learn to be more careful. It's just that the little lizards, ground squirrels and road runners are SO very interesting. Of course you need to put your nose into the hole and sniff everything, and if getting to the hole means going through a prickly pear cactus, so be it!!


Some things have gone more smoothly than others I suppose. So far our biggest issues are definitely outdoors! But what comes to being house dogs again, it seems to have gone naturally! I thought they would miss the boat and being outside all day long, but here they have actually seemed to enjoy the cooler indoor temperatures to the very hot outdoors. Maybe winter time they'd want to spend more time on the yard. Since we do have that. A yard. Not that it's exactly the kind of yard that I always dreamed of with green grass and apple trees but it's a yard nevertheless! The amount of wildlife we're able to follow is mindblowing! Many different bird species include road runners, gambel's quails, mourning doves and northern cardinals for example and we have many little critters like round taled ground squirrels and desert cottontails but we've also seen a tarantula, rattle snake, a coyote and many lizards in our very own back yard! So life is definitely not boring for me or for the dogs who spend most of they wake hours in front of the windows following the animals around :).

As fascinating as it is having all these animals around, it's also terrifying. I worry about the dogs getting bitten or myself getting stung when putting my feet into my shoes for example (scorpions like to hide in your shoes!). I heard that there is a little fence thing called snake fence which you can put below your actual fence to prevent snakes from coming. We might consider something like that if we fence an area for the dogs. As it is now, I'm outside at all times with the dogs watching them. It's very far from being in the somewhat safe landscapes of Finland where moss and peat covered forests surround beautiful little lakes and yards grow grass and trees and the biggest thing you usually need to worry about is ticks! And even the amount of ticks can be somewhat non-excistent, just depends where you're at. It's also very different from the urban setting and the rolling oak woodland hills at the Bay area or our life on the boat or the many beaches and coastal towns we visited underway.

I guess I could say me and my dogs have seen many places by now, and I honestly think Vanilla and Gin have both benefited from seeing the world. They are easy to travel with, they have learned many things and are very confident dogs. The experience shines from their eyes and I think there's many dogs out there in the world who could learn a thing or two from these guys.

Sonoran Desert. From Wikimedia.