Stella completed her conformation championship in November and to say I was thrilled was an understatement. I have found this whole process a great learning experience but often frustrating, political and confusing. Anyway we were super excited to have finished and I had the official picture taken as shown below.
UNFORTUNATELY when I phoned CKC to confirm all of our points as I am hoping to spay Stella soon they were missing one of our points. It appears a major screw-up happened at a show last april and the judge wrote down the wrong number as winners bitch. I have the ribbons showing us as winners bitch and best of opposite sex and when I contacted both the owner and handler of the other bitch they agreed that I had won that day and are willing to vouch for that fact. I provided that information to the judge but he has opted not to change his decision and correct the point.
ARGHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I am pretty pissed off about the whole thing. I understand that mistakes happen but find it quite appalling that he isn`t wiling to admit the error even though I have evidence stating otherwise. Anyway I will give it one more shot and write a letter to CKC outlining everything but I am not holding out much hope as they have not been helpful at all so far.
So this is our picture which now probably turns out to be a big waste of money as we will probably have to go back in the ring this spring in search for one more point.
One year ago today I took a huge leap of faith and dropped Riley off for his major surgery. I was scared to death that I wasn't making a good decision but equally terrified that if I didn't do it his quality of life would continue to deteriorate. Some readers might not know that Riley had a hemilaminectomy procedure to remove a cyst pressing on your spinal cord. Today Riley still has some lingering after effects of his condition (mild ataxia) and a bit of a wonky hip but for the most part he is healthy, happy and pain free. I am forever thankful that the surgery and recovery went well. Past blogs on the subject can be found here. It is also the USA thanksgiving and because I missed the Canadian version in blogging I also want to share some other things I am grateful for. - my wonderful husband for supporting me on my crazy dog adventures - my dogs for bringing much laughter, fun and challenges to my life - my cats for all the cuddles. They are the finishing touch to make a house a home. - my friends who are always there for me. - my mother, brothers, sister and various niece, nephews, aunts and uncles. - health for myself and all those (human and animal) I love and care about. There is so much tragedy and challenges all around us that sometimes it is important to count the good stuff.
Oh my dawg, where have the last two months gone! Life has been very busy as we have just downsized my mother to a smaller house from the huge house that I grew up in. Thankfully that it almost done now so life can get back to a more normal.
I have also been having great fun recently with dog training. Stella and I have been enjoying more on-line courses with the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy plus I got to attend the APDT conference which was five days full of all sorts of wonderful dog trainers (Ken Rameriz, Denise Fenzi, Nicole Wilde, Ian Dunbar etc.). It has been lots of stuff to learn that I now need to blog about :).
First up was the fact that we participated in August/September as a online working spot (video submissions) for Ob-ility with Denise Fenzi. This is from the course description:
"But...what IS Ob-ility? In the teaching phases, Ob-ility is simply a way of breaking the exercises down so that the movement parts of the exercises are separated from the other parts - this makes the work a lot more fun and "flowing" for the dog. "
Stella is not a "high-drive" dog. She might be different if we were working in agility or field stuff but overall she is not one of those dogs that just loves to work. She does however find movement and play reinforcing so this type of training helps me to put some fun for both of us into traditional obedience. It has a great side benefit of helping build duration to training periods without needing to use a lot of regular rewards.
The basics of ob-ility (fly, thru) build into the higher level obedience exercises. Fly is used to eliminate stay positions which keeps up energy and allows lots of repetition in short time frames. Recalls, go-outs, drop on recall, broad jump, directed jumping can all be modified to be done "ob-ility style".
I have seen good carry over so far with added in the finishing parts needed to compete in the ring. We are still a long way from competing in formal obedience but it feels good to get some of these foundations in such a fun way.
Here is video of Stella and I training for some of the ob-ility course lessons:
We are currently a working spot for "Bridging the Gap" at the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy and so far that course has been amazing. I am officially now a fan of online dog training courses. A new session starts in December and there are many great instructors and courses I am considering for audit spots. I still love working with my real-life instructor but I am enjoying viewing all the different teaching styles and absorbing all this great information.
This is my 100th blog post and so I am taking a few moments to reflect on my dog training journey to date.
I did some basic puppy stuff with Lucy but it wasn't until Riley began to develop some issues as a two year old dog that I began to get interested in training. We had already done the basics but registered with a trainer to address the problems we were having. We "fixed" the issues in what I thought was a positive way but with my knowledge today I regret some of the choices. I am lucky that he is your typical hard-headed labrador with high tolerance and a very forgiving personality. I try not to dwell on past mistakes and I am thankful that this was the start of wanting to learn more about behaviour and training.
My first step was purchasing a few books to read. Lucky for me I picked two from authors that I still think are amazing. Patricia McConnell "Other End of The Leash" and Suzanne Clothier "Bones Would Rain from the Sky". I have now seen both those authors at seminars and they are just as wonderful as the books they have written. I also stumbled upon Susan Garrett and her very first online Recallers Course and she introduced me to a new approach to joyful training.
Lots more reading followed and I decided I wanted to do some more training with Riley. The dog gods led me to working with a local Karen Pryor Academy trainer who introduced me to rally obedience and encouraged me to try competing. I really enjoying the work with Riley and could feel how different our connection was with these methods. My trainer has now become a good friend and we often travel together to seminars and competitions. A strange twist on "small world" is when I discussed getting a vizsla puppy and the breeders I was considering it turned out she knew Stella's breeder and agreed to vouch for me.
My conversion really kicked in when my trainer dragged me to my first Clicker Expo. I was now fully hooked on learning about dogs and how to apply all this wonderful positive knowledge to both Riley and puppy Stella. I jokingly said to my trainer/friend the other day that I must be driving her crazy because I should be taking better advantage of all her knowledge on how to train our way to obedience titles but because of the world she helped me see I really want to explore things in my own way. With Riley I was happy to follow instructions on how to train the exercises but I want to inject more of my own "style" with Stella. I'm still figuring out that "style" so I'm not totally stupid and will take advantage of her knowledge and experience but will also have fun figuring things out. Thankfully I know she is there to help fix my mistakes!
I will not pursue more obedience stuff with Riley as it is to hard for his body but there are other roads we will travel. Stella is only two and we have a long way to go and will enjoy the journey getting there.
Here are a few pics from our most recent camping trip. All this training stuff is great but really just enjoying life with these wonderful dogs is what is important.
