I Want a Border Collie

I am turning to the Dark Side. I want a Border Collie as my next working/performance dog. I am not giving up on training with Shibas at all, but there are these great Border Collies enrolled in my Rally and Focus classes that I am mesmiraized with. It's been great fun watching how they learn and speaking with their owners, and seeing what great dogs they can be to work with.

Beebe, my Flyball/Agility Shiba, is not as physically sound as she needs to be in order to safely continue with Agility training, which is why I am getting back into Rally with her. Her conformation is terrible and I don't want her to injure herself on one too many jumps, although bless her little heart, she is an enthusiastic worker.

So, I am looking for a sound dog who is built to work and wants to work...down the road of course, not right now.

Fit Paws and My Favorite Pet Supply Stores

My guilty pleasure lately has been online shopping at dog supply companies. I'm not looking for generic things, my interests are leaning towards specialty items with time and experience. When I was supporting 1-2 dogs and myself only, money was no object and with lack of know-how, I spent wildy and in excess. As a consequence, I have cupboards and shelves full of dog supplies that are basically useless and turned out not to be good purchases. It's always a bit iffy buying online, but over time, I have learned to be a smarter shopper for my discriminating canines.

Today I got in my first order from Clean Run. This is an online company dedicated to the performance hound, with a heavy focus on excellent training materials and sporting/training equipment. From left to rightish, there are Ice Pods for the up comming summer shows, a book on building Agility equipment, The Focused Puppy, Puppy Sounds for conditioning working and show puppies :), the DVD Calming Signals, Fit Paws for all the dogs (which Farrah was trying to steal for herself), and a Balance Pod for Beebe's conditioning and new babies :) The nobby textures on these last two items and wobbly undersides will help puppies mental development and confidence on uneven surfaces I believe.

 Pay special attention to the Fit Paws label and you will see why I HAD TO HAVE THIS!

Ike does Agility, part Deux

Ike tries the weave poles "Look at me Mom! I did it!"

Ike pauses before conquering the tire...and again looks at me instead of at the camera.

"You want me to do what? I don't bow for just anyone." Ike practices a down stay, in super slow mo, while on the table.

This was just a short little workshop for basically novice dogs, so most of the equipment wasn't full height. Yawn, his highness became bored because the other dogs were too stoopid to learn it as fast as he did.

Ike like Agility

It's been 1 year with Ike, and to celebrate, he got to spend a day just with mom at an Agility workshop. As usual, it's hard to catch the little guy in motion, so my Mom came and tried. We didn't have much luck as you can see. He seemed to really enjoy himself. It was a great confidence booster (not that he lacks any at this point), and helped us to work on focus just before his last show. This boy is no wall flower!

Beebe's Agility and Flyball

Here is video of her doing a pretty basic Agility run in her beginners class. She really enjoys it. The training has really made it much easier for her to transition to a Flyball student. She loves that too, but after a few runs she gets a little distracted and looses interest in retrieving the ball. It helps then, to run along side her and get her motivated again with treats and her favorite laserlight at the end.

The person who is mentoring us thru Flyball training, remarks that Beebe is a natural, but it really was the Obedience foundation and mega focus work that is making it possible to do this. Can't wait to begin Rally next month, it should help us polish up that Obedience again.

Beebe's Cross-training Schedule

I got to thinking after a discussion on another forum, about what activities constitute work for a dog. Is the designation limited to LGDs that actively guard livestock, to bird dogs that still hunt or only to traditional Schutzhund breeds that police/military use in tracking, protection and drug detection? While certainly noble jobs for a dog, what about the dogs that pursue other venues of sport and well, are gainfully employed outside those fields, like mine? Is this still work?

Our training schedule, not including walks and at home training:

Tuesday: Conformation handling class-I've been taking Beebe for the practice

Wednesday: Agility followed by Obedience

Thursday: Rally starts
Saturday: to work with me or to a show or match

Sunday: Flyball lessons or to a show or match

So, is this work or recreation? It seems like a lot of hard, exhausting work for simple recreation even though it is really fun and the dogs love to do this stuff. Of course every breed has it's history, but I think the key difference is that this is not a working breed selected to fill a traditional role. It is however, a versatile dog and capable of working. Shiba were once quite wild and capable hunters independent of people, and still retain many of those feral traits. It has only been very recently, that human beings have been shaping them into more of a companionable house dog. I appreciate that my girl Beebe is still somewhat in touch with her roots at least.

Weekly Shibatudes: Shibas at Work

We've been a little down here this last week, our miss Peach went back to her mommy in the country for a while to blow her coat and take a breather from big city living. We didn't have much time to be sad, because we have a new beautiful girl in her place here for training. Ike is in pig heaven with all these gorgeous females falling into his lap. Beebe would rather pounce on them and play dirty, but these country girls just don't play like that, and don't understand her big city ways yet so we have some snarking every now and again followed by time outs.

New little cousin is quite a gal, and was very well behaved at work (I take my dogs with me). People must think we run a Shiba daycare on the side by now. She has also enjoyed hanging out with big cousing Ike and Beebe during their lessons, and was even joining in on some Agility which really helped her confidence. As an awesome bonus, we were able to have some 1:1 private training on focus exercises and calming techniques (with Beebe's very favorite trainer using positive techniques that have so greatly improved all of my dog's focus and attention and ability to tune out stresses). She suggested using a little clicker training, positive name association with a very high value food item (chicken livers-eww) and "watch me" commands.

We all spent the day today at the fairgrounds in Shelton for another show, followed by a visit at grandmas house. It was beautiful weather, hail, rain, high winds, thunder and lightening with some noisy flapping tent canopies to top it off. What more could a bunch of reactive dogs want in an outing? Needless to say, we wrapped it up early and made a very short day of it following Ike's Reserve win against the amazing Specials dog. Upon arriving home, Ike and the others quickly undid my half hearted grooming attempts by rolling in a pile of regurgitated Crow worms! Thanks Shibas!

Weekly Shibatudes: an update

I will try and post a weekly or so update about our goings on.

Ike: We went to the breeders and I got a very good lesson in ring handling and proper presentaion. Long and short of it, if I am careful with how I move and present him, Ike should be fit enough to officially start doing some shows.

I entered him in the June 6-7th Puyallup cluster, so we will see how it goes! I have a few weeks anyways to iron out the kinks and go buy something suitable to wear for myself.

Beebe: Week 3 of her CGC class has gone by with good progress. She is showing very good focus and attention. She still can't seem to keep the "bark" inside, every once in a while one just slips out. She is doing extremely well with heeling and sitting to be pet. The instructor told me she had way too much obedience training. With shibas, you can never have too much training.

Agility class is likewise, going very well. Beebe has really "turned on" with this type of training and her obedience work has improved 10 fold because it's turned into an awesome game now. Tunnel-okay with that but sometimes she decides to back out of it or jump on top of it, same with the chute. Weaves poles-would rather try and jump over them (I don't know how this works in her brain). Aframe-loves it! Dog walk-my shiba may be a mountain goat. Tire-does ok. Teeter-umm, it moves when she touches it so she would rather it didn't exist.

We may be taking some time this summer to enter some Obedience/agility competitions, and will post dates later.