Smiling at your dog

I was reading a devotional this morning, and I came across this section:

We can affirm with eye contact, too. Try smiling at your child with your eyes. We often convey discipline through our eyes; but we can also communicate warmth and affirmation with our eyes.

It reminded me of my first obedience lesson with the late Al Breece. He lived outside of Columbus, Ohio, and trained seven or more CH OTCH Belgian Sheepdogs and Tervurens. His great CH OTCH Houdini sparked a love in me for Belgian Sheepdogs, which resulted in my getting Houdini's nephew Ian a few years later.

I took Reece to Al for obedience lessons. Reece was only about a year old, and he had some fear/reaction aggression issues, which he grew out of by 2 years of age through training. The first thing Al did was just look at Reece and smile. Reece relaxed his body posture and wagged his tail. Al looked up at me and said, "Well, good. He knows what a smile is."

I wish I had not been so intimidated at the time and asked Al why he did that. Today, I can make a few guesses. But it has always made me smile at my dogs, just to tell them I think they are great. I caught myself doing it just this morning, in fact. It usually makes that dog wag it's tail, and then another pup (usually Devon) will be jealous that someone's getting attention and they come to me for attention; leading to me being surrounded by everyone wanting their share of attention.

But I still think it's nice that my dog knows what a smile is.

Reece (April 4, 1997-May 19, 2011)

Reece was helped across the Rainbow Bridge this morning. My Novice A dog; my strong-willed, independent border collie who always questioned my judgment. From Novice A and trained thru utility, plus agility and rally and even a little herding. What I would give to have you all over again, now that I am the trainer you deserved. I’ll see you again someday.

Devon's adventures in the rally ring

This winter I decided to pursue Devon's Rally Advanced title. I was chairman of a local obedience and rally trial, and I didn't want to be 'bored.' Devon is a very environmentally-aware dog. She tested this way in her puppy test, and Gayle warned me I'd love it for field work and tracking, but it would be difficult for obedience.

As wonderful as Devon is in training, she is very distracted in new environments. She sees the smallest things I never notice, and that nose has gotten her in trouble! At a show and go this fall, she was obsessed with the high jump during and open run thru. She was so obsessed, I could not get her to heel at all even on leash. I decided to try a retrieve and go back to heeling later. As soon as the leash was off, she took off across the ring to the far standard of the high jump - there was a black wheel on the metal jump! I had not even SEEN the wheel, but she did from outside the ring. She had to go see it.

And as I mentioned, that nose gets the best of her, too. Here is her first attempt at Rally Advanced. The off-set figure 8 was 30 feet across the ring, and she had not been in that area at all, but she spied it off the startline and took off to have lunch!


Needless to say when your first run ends in being excused from the ring you have no where else to go but up! And this run became legendary during the weekend, with the judge even telling the utility B competitors about it the next day!

Devon's second trip in the ring earned her first leg with a 92 and a second place. She was better, but I think she was still trying to see if she would get lunch in the ring. She was also very distracted by the chalk in the ring mats. I'm not planning to "fix" this until she earns her VST, because sniffing chalk is something we've encouraged in that sport. But after the disaster of the day before, I was pleased she was with me and tried.



Devon's third trip into the ring came at a local Sibe specialty. It was a very small trial (19 total entries in all 6 classes). I had taken the girls to a show and go in Dayton the night before and got home at midnight, but it was worth it to continue taking Devon to new places.

I tried a new strategy at this trial to take her up to the ring and show her where she would be working. This was a great idea, because when she walked into the ring, she was more focused than I'd seen her in the past. She had a really nice run, with some sniffs and wide turns in the beginning. But she finished strong, showing what a nice working dog she is. Devon earned a 94 and first place for this run.


On May 8, we went to Ft. Wayne for Devon's forth time in the Rally ring. it had been 6 weeks since she'd been in the ring, and we'd done less training in those 6 weeks. I was concerned about how she'd do. I shouldn't have been.

I used the same philosophy of showing her the ring before we went in, and I worked her in that area. This was clearly her best run yet, with only a couple of sniffs. Darn that sniff before the jump causing her 3 points, because she ended up with a nice score of 96 and 3rd place to finish her RA!


I'm really proud of Devon earning her RA. She progressed well with each time in the ring. I feel like we learned a lot about each other, and it gives me good insight into what she'll be like preparing for obedience (which is a long way off).

Photos from an agility trial: Page

More photos from the Pawsitive Partners USDAA trial on Sunday. This is Page. Awesome candids!

Photos from an agility trial: Devon

Thanks to Virgil Sweeden of Paw Prints Life who took these awesome photos of Devon in action at the Pawsitive Partners USDAA trial on Sunday. It tops off a great day of Qs and placements!

Funny, funny girl

Page has a sense of humor, and she's very smart. Yesterday she had some extra time outside to enjoy the sunshine and lack of snow. She also took some time to, well, "clean up" the yard a little. We had agility class last night, and we were about 10 minutes away when I heard something in the crate behind me ... then I SMELLED it!

Yep, Page had thrown up in her crate. Even though it was cool outside, I instantly cracked all the windows. I thought, oh great! How am I going to clean this up and will the smell ever come out of my car!

I glanced back at Page, and she was contemplating her situation. Gross poop puke in her crate. I thought, oh great! She's going to be a mess and the car will never smell the same. We were sitting at a red light and I looked back again to check on her. Page was taking her nose and flipping her crate blanket over the puke. I watched as best as I could as she systematically nosed the blanket over the mess and even took her paw to give it a pat. Once it was completely covered, she laid down in the crate giving herself a couple of inches distance from the blanket as if everything was normal. You could almost read the thought bubble over her head: "Momma will NEEEVER notice!"

I wondered where I could stop to clean up the mess and was scoping out a Walmart when I saw a Goodwill store. Perfect! I went into the store, looked for the "color of the day" (it was yellow), found household goods and grabbed two twin sheets and a small baby blanket. The total was $5 and I asked for a large bag for my items. Out in the parking lot, I realized what a great job Page did in cleaning up and keeping herself out of the mess. I cleaned up the crate using just the small blanket I purchased. I stowed Page's stuffed animal, crate blanket and soiled blanket in the bag and tied it up tight. I put one sheet in Page's crate and had one to spare! All that and I was only 5 minutes late to class! And the bonus: my car doesn't even smell!

Thanks, Page, for cleaning up for me! What a funny girl!

ACI trial Feb. 19-20, 2011

I'll try and get posts up of previous trials during the next few weeks, but I have a minute to blog so I wanted to get this up. This is our third trial this year and we hadn't trialed since October 2010 due to Devon's heat cycle. I'm pleased with how things are going! Devon is training very well, and her teeter and weaves are solid. She's still having some stress in the weaves at trials, but we have been showing progress.

Saturday Excellent B JWW
Saturday was Devon's 5th birthday, and I can't say our first run, Excellent JWW, was a gift to her from me. I planned the opening so she would see the poles really well, but then I praised her in the poles and scared her to death! My voice was too strong and high and she popped right out. She went back in fine and weaved strong until a hand movement pulled her out and then we fumbled a rear cross on the flat. Poor Devon! She was so confused and stressed, she just stopped and shook herself off. You can see by the video I apologized. What a kerfuffle!

What I really like about this run is how she recovered. She took a couple of wide turns to say hello to the ring crew, but she is happy and fast. We were well under time even with the chaos at the weaves. Devon was still stressed, but she performed well.


Saturday Excellent A Standard
I wondered what Devon would do with the teeter as the second obstacle. She does prefer it early in the course, but it was against the wall and pointed into the wall. Although she looks strong on the video I felt she didn't charge it as she usually does. I was pleased that she was confident, because I think the teeter placement was difficult. It made me wonder what the Open and Novice dogs did with it later in the day.

No surprised after the earlier run that weaves were an issue. I did want her to give them an effort, and she did that for me. The rest of this run was fantastic, including her table performance. Devon slipped on her take off to the table, although you can't see it on the tape, for a split second I feared she might miss the table and crack her chin on it. Thankfully she recovered and you can't tell there was a problem.

Devon handled the A-frame to tunnel ending like a dream even though I had wanted to do a front cross before the A frame. What a good girl!


One thing different for Devon is that she didn't want to tug at this trial. That was unusual for her, since at past trials even in January I was able to get her tugging all the way to the gate. On Sunday I played with getting her more amped at the start. I think this really helped, and I could tell by her body posture she was more up. She also did less scratching before her runs.

Sunday Excellent B JWW
This was a really, really nice run. I was super pleased with Devon's weaves. She did pop the second pole but got right back in and weaved them strong when I asked. I actually got several compliments on Devon's weaves from folks who didn't realize she skipped two poles!

I was reminded watching the video that Devon is super sensitive to motion into her when I pushed her off the jump after the triple. I was distracted by the leash runner's position as Devon came around the loop at the front of the ring and held my position to make sure she wasn't also distracted. Devon did a great job, but I forgot the conversation I had with Kathy about running that line as a push after the jump to the tunnel if the dog was too far behind. I wish I had done the push to see how she would have handled it; considering it worked really well for Kathy and Emma I bet it would have for Devon.


Sunday Excellent A Standard
I think this was the best run of the weekend -- of course, if you ignore the weave poles as Devon did! I can't blame her, and I let it go because the run was so beautiful. Those weaves will come. What I was thrilled about was how well we both handled this course. She was very up for the run (again I did different things in our warm up and pre-startline), and I was super pleased with her speed. While this looks like a straight forward course, there were a lot of NQs on it.



Usually the end of February is our last agility trial of the "season" since we usually only do agility from October to February due to field training all summer. However, this year I'm going to focus on Devon's agility career and continue trialing. Now that Devon is pretty much done with her training issues and has a lot of confidence, we are a lot closer to Q'ing. I want to keep the momentum we have going and continue trialing to see if we can't work on those Excellent and Masters titles.

What is really thrilling me is the speed she's working on. Even with our mistakes, she's consistently 5-8 seconds under time in JWW and she was 15 seconds under time in Standard on Sunday. She is faster than Ian was by just a few seconds now, and I know she has more in her. As we relax and become a team, I can't wait to see where we go! Devon is just such a fun dog to run!