last night was class - unfortunately the power went out and we couldnt do obedience- they had the first two obedience classes (attention and novice) and i had planned on putting berlin in novice, but i went to get dinner and we were late so then i was going to put her in open, but open and utility were cancelled. which rah says is ok since he couldnt train anway!

so all we did was agility - and berlin found her groove again and kicked some butt. though i REALLY need to work on her offside weaves - a lot of the akc nov JWW courses ive been seeing have offside weaves and she's not putting 2 and 2 together - she is so methodical while onside she's just flying through.

i was most proud of her for two things:

1) holding a down stay each and every time i walked the course!!!! even when i had my arms up to practice cuing crosses, etc (she often would come to me for those)

2) in one of the courses, the "out tunnel" she nailed!!!

the map:

first sequence (blue i think?)

started on the table, and just worked a huge serpentine - i chose to stay on the far side of the teeter and not put any crosses into it. the hard part was calling them to you from the table and then sending them into the tire - the dog had to square up to the face of the jump on their own - berlin handled it well. the other issue was jump 4, which was recessed so you really needed to be close where they landed on 3 to push out, and it was a very tight sequence since the jumps were only 4-5 feet apart.

second (black?) - able to lead out to just past the tire, send to the teeter and she nailed her contacts every time and held them - i then did a landing side front cross on 3 (she did SUCH a nice tight wrap!) rather than trying to serpentine all from one side because i needed to be at the weaves for her entrances (OFF SIDE UGH) - then we had to flip them off the entrance of the tunnel at the end of the weaves in front of them but to the entrance to their right. berlin at first needed ... shall we say, a little physical help :)

last sequence (red) - we had two choices, and we had to choose before we ran - we could let our dogs do either end of the tunnel, but still had to get to the weaves. one led to onside weaves (but bitch of a tunnel entry since they had to run past the open end!), one to off side (but easier tunnel entry). but picking my poison, i knew my dog would rock the onside weaves so i had to go for the difficult tunnel entry. i led out to just past the tire, called her through with a lead out pivot, and then pushed her through 3/4 - they really were that close and she bumped those jumps, no stride in between- and did another landing side front cross at 5 so i could block the incorrect entrance - and gave a very firm "OUT TUNNEL" she looked for a split second as she ran by the other entrance but saw immediately where i was sending her, and then i backed up, told her to weave and she flewwwwwwwwwwwwww single striding it, and then soared over the triple (lydia said it looked like she was about 36 inches on that one minimum, and she had her legs so high and tucked.

so she nailed that one. so happy.

now if she only had some heat tolerance for outside :)

the tooth of doom

the tooth of doom is gone! he was taken in as an emergency to upenn today (they fit us in last minute!) and they weren't able to save the tooth - so they pulled it. it apparently had been dead for awhile but he just fractured it recently.

he's home right now, passed out and drooling on my lap, a little swollen but handled everything perfectly, no VPCs during the procedure and im so happy to be done with this!!

the hardest part will be that he can't have any toys or retrieve for 2 weeks!!!!!!!

TWO WEEKS.

so there goes our trial this weekend.

i dont know how on earth i will keep him quiet.

cant resist

i cant resist this background, i just cant!

i know ive been remiss in posting updates. berlin is still out of obedience. she came back to agility class this week but it was clear she has NO endurance and we need to work on that - she ran 4 times and by the end of class she was in her crate with her nose pushed against the crate door, snoozing. i was running her tentatively so she was running slower than normal, and we ran her at 20 inches.

this weekend i worked some jump grids, worked weaves, (forgot to work entrances, bad me) and worked wraps, rear crosses. need to work more cues for front crosses too.

this weekend i also dropped the metal base for 6 weave poles on my foot. its not broken, but it sure feels like it.

she comes back to class (obedience) this week, i think.

rah and utility - mixed bag. we've really been putting pressure on him at the signal stay because if this is hard in training, the simplicity of it all in the ring should make it easy on him. hopefully. gloves - WHY CANT YOU LOOK AT ME. need to slow down the article pile. moving stand has been ok. and go outs have been ok this week too...

but my bigger concern is that rah broke a tooth. yes, dog with heart disease, that just had to have anesthesia to get stem cells, broke a friggin tooth. not only that, but i was prepared to ignore it - but now its abscessing and i cant ignore it - he's hesitant to chew on that side.

so now i need to figure out how i am going to get this tooth out. he has entries this weekend, but i may blow them if he has surgery this week, because he may not be able to retrieve. i need to figure out where he carries the db in his mouth... im not sure i ever looked.

i cant believe i have to put my dog under stupid anesthesia AGAIN. i cant decide if i want to try to save this tooth or just pull it. i cant even decide where to have it done...

the play by play

long story short: NQ :)

the long story itself:

wake up at 4 am, get gas and coffee and im on the road by 5 am... got there faster than predicted and ended up there at 6:30. building opened at 7 and they wouldnt even let me in to use the bathroom early, so i almost peed myself.

was too afraid to do any go out practice because there was only one ring, and the judge was there - and the ring didnt have stanchions anywhere except the go out side. so i had nothing to send him to, even if no one had been there. go outs were to the big door that opens up - so the stanchion was there, but it was up against a wall of 42 (yes i counted) round metal plates on the large door that would open up the warehouse.

rah was last in the class - only one dog qualified. set him up and started signals - his heeling was beautiful. easily predicted pattern, i had the fast into the left turn halt, so i could be prepared for it and he nailed it. left turn into stand your dog. stood him, took a breath to pause. gave him the wait signal, dropped my arm and took a breath, made sure i was NOT taking off too soon. walked away and only focused on counting - i had already worked out that it would be 15 steps by walking the ring - i was on step 14 and rah comes breezing past me - he bolted. FAIL! but the heeling was BEAUTIFUL - actually very good position lovely left turns. judge said he was a LOVELY heeler.

moved onto articles. i always start with metal - did them towards go out, next to the high jump. nailed the first article. sent him for the second one and he is searching and working the pile and he picks --- the leather article right next to the right one. judge even says she doesn't understand what happened as he was close. but he had perfect attention on me while i was scenting and after she took the article and this time he didn't try to leave me to follow his article out :) great pivots too - but drops his head the minute we turn to look at his articles. OH AND HE JUMPED ON ME after i took the metal article. damned dog was like "oh, this is the right one GIVE ME COOKIE!"

hold him back a sec to let them pick up the articles, move to gloves. its glove 2, should be easy, right? we're there for awhile waiting for them to pick up the articles, im reminding him to keep his eye on me. she says glove 2, i pivot him (back pivot, since i didnt want him to see glove one, his favorite) - and it was perfect - i made sure not to stare at him but he FELT like he was in the right position, i dropped my arm and sent him... and the!@#!@# ran to glove three. brings it back, blah blah blah. judge commented that the pivot was PERFECT so it makes me think that rah was lined up for 2... his head was up for the pivot part so he shouldnt have seen 3, but i am fairly certain he picked his own glove. well, i mean, clearly he did.

moving stand - idiot nails it. others did 20-30 foot moving stands!!!!! i double checked rules to make sure it was 10-12 feet and counted that it was 5 steps (2.5 mats) - im not going further than i need to with this dog! tell him to freeze, walk away and he locks up. doesn't even FLINCH when she comes in, doesn't move a muscle, eyes on me. she even pauses after she finishes (longest pause on earth) and says "FINISH!" and i call him in - he nails the finish. YAY WE PASSED SOMETHING.

go outs... i set him up, tell him ball- and he's scanning, can't find his mark. i pull his head back up, drop him down for the mark, and he can't find it again - now he's confused. cannot find his ball. he starts to mark the jumps, looks outside the ring at a dog, i bring his head back up, she asks if we are ready, i say no (hey, we're already NQ'd, im going to try to do this right) drop him again to mark the ball and i think he's got it and then he takes off... for the bar jump. takes the jump on the way out, heads out to go out area and runs back in. we try it again, i think he has the mark, and this time the idiot goes and takes the OTHER jump...

at this point she's laughing at him and calling him a loose cannon - he's flying all over the place. almost took out the steward going after the leash, tried to pick his articles back up.

speaking to another owner with a dobe coming out in utility A that i train with - we came up with the following proposals:

1) dobermans should be able to obtain UD's by qualifying in ONE exercise in the utility class three times.

2 a UDX should be attainable by a doberman by qualifying in open 10 times, but the entire utility class once on any one of those given days (alternatively, 10 times in open and on those 10 tries, qualify one of the utility exercises for a total of each exercise needs to be qualified at least once).

3) doberman owners should be allowed to have handicapped license plates because of our dogs.

for those that wanted to know, while we show tomorrow (as i mentioned in the last post), and i havent updated the training blog aspect in a week or two, we did have REALLY good news on the cardio side of things....

http://doberheartbeats.blogspot.com/2010/06/waiting-on-holter.html

hugely nervous because we have our next utility showing tomorrow - which would be our second time in the AKC utility ring - this is our first time in an all breed trial, since our first time was a dobe specialty...

eeek.