i am full of fail

yes, i am full of fail.

this is a very long, convoluted, not-necessarily-involving-training-my-dogs-full-of-fail-story so bear with me.

for those who don't have access to my actual lj (where rah's OTCH journey/blog really started, and then moved to it's own LJ, before it ended up here), i had to go to the dentist yesterday. i started having tooth pain on sunday when i crunched down and it was SHOOTINGBLINDINGOUCHOUCHOUCH
and i spoke to my mom and she got me an emergency appt even though her boss is in italia so i had to see a new dentist.

i have never had a problem with going to the dentist - probably because ive never had tooth problems. (cant say its just because my moms an assistant, because my grandfather being a doctor certainly doesn't make going and getting blood taken any easier... but thats a novella all unto itself). but the entire thought, even the notion, that i had a cavity, had me in knots all week. nauseous. on the verge of tears. i barely slept all week.

so i get there, get cleaned, they take full mouth xrays. i think im in the clear, the dentist comes in, and he sees the tinest, teeniest, little cavity. ARGH@#$!@#$!@#$. and he also thinks that all my sealence/resins that are getting discolored may be harboring decay (dun dun dun).

i popped a xanax adn told my mom i needed gas for this - they lightly sedated me (i was still able to talk, just out enough to not feel the novacaine) and they numbed me. went to work on 29 and 30 (on the lower right)... we're holding off on the others because my mom wants my regular dentist to give a second opinion :) but lydia got a front row seat and watched the entire thing over my moms shoulder.

anyway, i got home after we went out for lunch where i numbly ate some food, and passed out on the couch... AND SLEPT THROUGH TRAINING CLASS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i woke up at 8:30, which was right when utility started - i missed novice and open! i didnt feel like getting up and going, i was so out of it - so i just hung out on the couch. my mouth was uber sore and where i got the needles it ached like hell.

woke up this morning and just couldnt get out of bed - sore jaw, migraine, and didn't really feel like driving 2.5 hours to a dog show (one way) ... even if it would have been a lovely CDX leg and i felt we were ready for leg 2!!!

and then its ok... because I LEFT MY TRAINING BAG AT the center!!! i had no db! ha ha ha ha - i had to call teri and ask her if she could meet me at the training center for the bag - we ended up glueing her dogs foot (she ripped it open) and then went to dinner, and then we went back to the center for a short training session (especially since i missed thurs). i mainly worked a short open run through, and then did go outs with rah at all sides of the ring, down and back multiple times.

for those that actually want training info from wed night:

we actually started berlin's foundation agility class, which is awesome and debbie's a great teacher. berlin's very clicker savvy, so it helps a lot - we did target, name recognition, coming to sides (behind the leg), fast table performances, hoops (that will end up being contact trainers), and running on either side but not crossing the plane of my body. berlin had fun and later on that night at novice (yes, we ALL spend all night at the training center it seems like) debbie said she's a spitfire!
later at open - started heeling and rah was a little off. for some reason he kept dropping his head and looking at something, and i have no idea what. i backed out and "oops!"ed him, and within a minute he was back to himself. then we broke the class in half and had partners for heeling - one person acted as a very intrusive judge and while kathy called the heeling pattern, your partner had to go next to you, around you, behind you, cut in front of you - be a judge that was near you while you heeled your dog and you had to keep your attention on your dog. of course, i was paired with debbie who has the crazy bc shane, because our dogs are a special sorta insane.

broke into individuals - worked ROF - he did a nice job, worked it in between two broad jumps and the db kept going under chairs and in hard places, and he still hit nice fronts. good boy!
worked DOR - and since last week he anticipated it all week, i just did regular recalls for the first 4-5 ones - and since he did them perfect, i gave him one DOR. in the future i think im going to have to work on my signal - in the B classes i may be hit for having a signal up too long? i dont know - i should watch some others and see how long they leave it up.

ROH - im going to have to make sure i get that damned db out at least 8 feet past the jump - when it comes in short and if it takes a turn to the side, its simply too close for him to make it back over the jump. he tried to save it but he just couldnt. kathy said sometimes you just throw up your hands and say it was a bad through and take the NQ graciously. *nods*

broad - beautiful. absolute perfection. i set it up and played some set up games. as i was getting ready to do the full bj, kathy had luna doing the db retrieve next to his jump. i sent him at the same time she threw the db - and rah soared over the jump, took one look at the db in passing before he landed, and kept all eyes on me afterwards and came into a perfect, absolutely perfect, front. elsie said it was WONDERFUL - i didnt ask for another, just played bj games.

stays were uneventful. good. solid. woohoo.

tomorrow we show at pam dennison's place for the ASCA trial, and i think i might enter berlin in novice to see how she does. too early, but since i haven't matched her, might as well try. i think our downfall is going to be waiting for the recall, she thinks they are all games now and breaks early. but since there are day of show entries available, and she's got an ASCA number, might as well do it! rah's entered in open.

sunday we are entered in the CDSP trial - berlin is going for her last CD-H leg, and rah is going for open legs (with go outs, EEK!) as well as CD-HCH legs (championship class). full weekend, im not really upset we didn't show out in york, 1231231231 hours away.

the media

here is the video of the last half of rah's run - the first two parts are cut off and i have a video of just the first step after the set up, i have a video of the second stand command, and nothing else until this. don't know what happened.




this is berlin working out front. i apologize that you have to 1) view us through the ring gates and 2) that i heel off screen. it happens - the area on screen isn't very big and i couldnt get the camera any further back.



all your ribbons iz mine.

the trial yesterday went well!


Today we went back and Berlin got her second Q with a 209 and first in her class! Just one little point off for a crooked sit going into a pivot. And Rah, just to outdo his little sister, took first place in both his classes with two perfect scores of 210! He also finished his RL1X !!!! He was on in both classes, fast and accurate. I heeled to the point of giving my legs cramps on that floor.

I've got pics of them with their ribbons and video for the next post. we're all exhausted.

day one trial updates

got back from the trial this afternoon - the dogs did well. silly mistakes with rah cost us perfect scores in both runs (argh!) but all three runs were 207's, which is funny - berlin equalled her big brothers scores :)

rah went first in level one - and he was completely staring at me when i gave him the stand command and he just stared and me (maybe moved his butt?) but didn't stand... so i had to give him a second command and retry that station (bye bye three points for our 207) - everything else was good, but we were heeling slow because the floors there are super squishy and hard to heel on!

berlin was last in the class - it was a HUGE course and the entire ring was the size of TWO AKC rings, and it was more heeling that she's ever done in a show, but she handled it well. lagged a bit on the very last straight-away, and she had two crooked sits, but she did everthing else nicely. i was too close to the gate for her lateral front for the bonus and she was crooked and couldnt do it straight because of the ring gate!

rah's level two class - again, huge course - and we had a perfect score up until the bonus... and it was the moving down where you have to down them while you move away -- and for some reason i decided to do it differently all of a sudden??? and because i did it that way, he didn't view it as the same exercise so he downed immediately, then started heeling again - so i had to retry, and he did it perfectly the second time, but we only got 7 points for it. the bonus doesn't count AGAINST you but i didnt get all 10 points for it (weve never screwed thatone up before!) so there went our 210 - i cost him that one.

rah was out of the placements in each run, he was 6th place i think each time. miss berlinaroo though took 2nd place (first place had a 208), so i was proud of her!

i got a video of rah's run, and i have some video of berlin heeling outside from this afternoon. it's ungodly hot. i set up some ring gates and jumps and tried to work rah with utility and just frustrated both of us so i brought out berlin instead.

a few things.

first, ever since i got hit in the face with the db, ive had a muscle twitch in my lower lip. weird, no?


second, berlin let a strange man in black molest her without any protest from her. what a good girl :)


third - i think i found a way for some of our things to get out to nationals, since they wont all fit in the truck. im going to steal some space on their RVs :)

i should probably train in a bubble... or go to the ER afterwards, either would be effective.

novice went well with berlin, after i handed over the worlds largest check (*cry*) to pay for classes this session. started with some attention work and set up games for getting into heel position - berlin did well because she considers the front set up game just the multiple front game, and we've done some of the games before. need to work on the side pass game with her, she needs more hind end awareness (which is what some of the book/box work was for - need to work on that!)

then we went to fig8's - terry said i need to remember to drive through on this, it really makes a difference for berlin. its very different heeling berlin and rah - i dont have to drive through for him because he's driving HER and i have to be slower and methodical and be in control - but for her it's a different story because she's not pushing me and controlling the situation like he does. but she's good, she's there - i need to be there for her.

we moved onto SFE - need to really work on her popping out to the side!!! up against barriers for her... ive made halfhearted attempts, but i have to work on it more. linda sperco did her exam today and she moved her front feet - right now she's apparently like rah - linda let her sniff her hands and she moved her front feet for the exam. its the whole sniffing thing - when they have to sniff someone, they lose their attention on me and it just completely blows their mind that this is happening- berlins eyes got all wide and she shifted her front feet. her transitions were awesome though.

then we did some heeling in two groups, short spurts of fasts, slows, turns and halts, trading off between the groups- also had chances to work the transitions to and from. she did really well, though the fast - normal - about turn- halt got a butt out sit! she's not perfect! but her about turns were dead on.

did recalls with heavy distraction - four of us in corners, toys all over the floor, and they had to recall through them. she heavily avoided all toys, and still hit a perfect front (go figure?). then we did across the room recalls and berlin blew her wait (bad girl!) and terry thinks she had too much tension on her prong so we moved to her flat collar since i had her on a flexi to make sure she didn't break again.

did stays with both dogs - rah on his own and berlin with me. they both did perfectly. woohoo.

went to open with the dogs. some heeling, rah was very forgey and his normal self- i really need to work on that again, ive let his heeling slip. his halts have been much better, but i need to get his heeling back where it needs to be. im going to have to retrain that if we will be going for an OTCH or UDX legs.

then we played DOR games- but the night before, rah started REALLY anticipating the drop and slinking in on his recall, dropping when he thought he should - so he didnt get a drop at all. instead we did recall games and i did straight recalls with him and heavily rewarded those - he doesn't get to call the shots! then we played recall games where we threw the db's and half the class worked really hard to distract the dog to get them to not pick it up or not come back - lydia actually stood on rah's db and he still went out and took it! good boy (but he missed front all the time!).
we worked fig8's and rah wasn't bad - but i need to work on his inner post - he is doing something weird with his head on the inner post and pushing my arm up. lydia said he makes it look like such hard work :)

then we broke down to individual high jumps and broad jumps, and he did well. wed night he wasn't watching and he fell flat onto the broad jump but tonight he showed no lasting problems from that, so that was good. his broad jumps were nice, butim working on the distance i am from the jump to get his best front. his highs were nice, i did a few off to the right and reminded him to go back over the jump and he did well. his last retrieve had the dancing hamster out there and he ran right past it and ignored it to get his db, so that was nice.

futility... ugh, where to start.
DJ - his first one was nice, his second one he ignored my signal and went for the same jump again. i dont know if i missed him ignoring me or if he saw my signal and them blew me off. he got the next signal perfectly.
he wouldnt mark the go out spot for the life of me, so i had to take him out, but once he would look at it, he did wonderful go outs and lovely turn and sits. but clearly he doesn't fully comprehend the "go straight out and go until i tell you to stop going" - i need to work on this outside of the concept of the stanchion.

moving stand was terrible because his stands were nonexistent - he kept moving and he decided to come straight to heel when terry said it, instead of when i said it - i forgot to work on it from last week, BAD ME. i got the clicker out and it seemed better within a few minutes, but i DO need to work on this - getting him to lock in IMMEDIATELY. i also need to work on which signal/verbal im going to use for this, i dont think im being consistent - stay/stand/wait? which hand? thats probably why he cant do it (notice a trend here? ME!!! im screwing him up).

gloves were a distaster - i pivoted badly, gave bad marks, and rah was all over the place. thats all i want to say about that.

articles - not bad! he missed one, but we had heavy distraction and he worked th epile and everyone thought it was the right one - but it was last weeks article :) but he did three others right after that (i think - maybe 2) - and he had a toy in the pile. good job for him. his sniffies are back! he's working the full pile, too.

signals... terry noticed my wait/stay signal sucks and we changed it - and it really helped his moving front feet/taking steps issue he's had. but he kept missing the sit signal and instead was going straight into the front. i didnt call him in at all - and at one point i dropped his clicker and said "shit" and he sat :) i fell on the floor laughing... terry commented his heeling was forgey. only rah forges still 2.5 hours into class after all that...

so what you've all been waiting for:
the injury tally. rah jumped up with the db and hit me in the chin
rah gave me leash burn with the slip lead
rah jumped up and knocked the wind out of me when i was laughing
and when he said when i said "shit" i fell to the floor laughing and hurt my already hurt right knee.

the chin is what really hurts the most right now- i hope i dont get a bruise!!!

i really need to put more daily effort into the training for utility, it's showing. ive been focusing so much on open...

a berlin request

someone requested some roo pics and such, so you have some berlin coming atchya.

ive been working on random things with rah. ive been trying to shape a "matt" behavior with him, and it just reinforced that rah is unable to relax, ever, and that i am a poor shaper. lure, yes - shape, no. i have to review some of the "its yer choice" steps because we started that and he had a blast with that - but seems to think that pawing my hand is necessary before he goes into a down, and then he can ignore food. he's suspicious.

anyway, berlin - she's got a rally trial coming up so we had to work some about turns and such, and who knows what else. i should look and see what else is in level 1.

so here are some berlin training videos. please ignore me yelling at destiny to shut up if it shows up in any of the videos ;)

schutzhund turns and finishes


berlin working stands and pivots - and getting confused :) yes, my shirt is dirty with muddy dog prints. i learned to not wear black in my training sessions that i video :)


working on berlin with her foot box/targetting - i will have to stop moving it, but because she slides it all over the place, i try to keep it in front of me. but i dont want that to become the cue for her to touch it. she's clear that interacting with it is what i want, but still it's 100% on what it is. this is the first time she's ever done it, so im pleased to have gotten the behavior i want (standing with two front feet on it) in the first 2 minutes!


and finally, working the db with her.