Hiking - 'Tis the Season

I was exceptionally lazy this summer. I used Jedi's arrival this spring as an excuse to stop walking the dogs -- because he was too little to go along at first and I didn't want to leave him home. Once you stop a habit it's hard to start it back up again. The cool fall weather is a reminder that winter is around the corner, and this always seems to start my weird backwards version of nesting. Only my "nesting" involves being outside and doing as many outside things as possible before the snow comes and we are stuck inside until March. I imagine I'll start feverishly setting courses/drills and training the older dogs on the agility equipment that we've ignored all year while I have played with Jedi, but right now we're hiking!

Today was our third day out in a row. The last two days we hit up different sections of the bike trail. The mosquitoes were just god-awful thanks to all of the rain we've had lately. The section we hit up yesterday also had some nasty, stanky standing water along the trail that it was hard to keep Jedi out of because, you know, water.... The day before we went over the river and I was able to send Jedi and Secret down from the bridge for a swim to make them happy. Today we went up to the Experimental Forest and there was no water until we were on our way back to the van and encountered the nastiest puddles ever. A couple were scum-covered and gross, but of course those are the ones the dogs gravitate to.

Jedi has had his moments with regard to his ability to listen off leash. For the most part he's doing very well, but the boy just loves to RUN. This means it doesn't take him very long to get a lot further ahead than I'd like him to, especially when we are on trails where we might encounter walkers/runners/bikers (the latter of which can come up pretty quickly if you aren't paying attention). I've been bringing along a full treat pouch and basically playing a ping-pong game with Jedi. I let him run way out yonder and then call him, then he comes running, gets a treat, and then I say "go-go-go" and send him back out to run again. He seems to think this is pretty fun and it also means he's going over twice as far as the actual distance we travel and getting in a lot of running. Jedi also thinks it's fun to jump up and grab his leash from around my neck and start a game of tug, and once he turns on to this it's hard to get him back in running mode -- although this usually starts up about 40/45 minutes into the walk.

The down side to all of the fun hiking is the stuff we bring home with us. I've only found a handful of ticks over the last few days, but we've found more than our fair share of various burrs and sticky things. I try to pull as many out on the trail as I can, but on the bike trail the mosquitoes didn't allow me to stand still long enough and today Jedi couldn't be bothered to hold still for more than five seconds at a time. He does pretty well at letting me pick or brush them out of his coat when we get home. I'm not going to lie, I would have loved a smooth coat for my next dog as I'm not really one for a big fluffy coat. Jedi's coat really isn't that bad, though, and the burrs come out pretty easily.

I don't think we'll be returning to the Forest this year. That's a bummer since I really like walking the field roads and letting the dogs run, but it appears to be hunting season already. There were about 8 trucks parked up there when we arrived tonight, which made me a bit nervous, but I decided to go out anyhow. We stuck to the corn for the majority of our walk (and even flushed out a turkey at one point, which I'm guessing is what they are hunting?) but hung a left to go down the other trail for a bit before heading back to the van. It wasn't long before I saw a hunter at the edge of the woods and he appeared to be gesturing at me -- more or less a "get the hell out of here" motion. I have no idea what the rules are with public lands that are open to hiking and hunting, but I don't think we'll risk it anymore. That's a shame, especially since there weren't any mosquitoes up there. That said, the trails were absolute crap and completely ungroomed. This picture here was an actual marked trail. Yeah....

In other news, my new shirt arrived this week! I saw it posted on Facebook a while back and couldn't pass it up. The Star Wars-inspired phrase works for Jedi and it's got a split face like Secret.  :o)

Training, Trial & Trail Walk (29.5 lbs, 19.5")

Not surprisingly, having a foster dog in the house has been rather time-consuming and I have completely failed to update Jedi's blog for the last week and a half. That is not to say we haven't been doing anything -- while Link's presence added a bit of a challenge to various things, Jedi still requires a certain amount of daily activity and I made sure he got that. The amount of rain we've had over the last week didn't help at times, but we all survived. Yesterday Link left us to start the next chapter of his life, so things will start to return to normal around here.

Jedi did very well with our visitor, especially considering some of the behaviors that started to come out as Link settled into the pack. Much like Kizzy when she first arrived, Link has a bit of an issue with overstimulated/playful dogs. Jedi pretty much exudes this quality and I ended up having to do quite a bit of management because of this. One of our problem areas was the hose. Jedi gets very excited about the hose, and Link would use this as a time to come in with a "correction." He got Jedi in the back of the leg a couple of times -- Thankfully Jedi was a saint and completely ignored him. I managed this by keeping the dogs physically separated where the hose was involved. Link also started to have issues with Jedi's state of arousal while playing, so Jedi got solo sessions each day while I closed the gate to keep the other dogs out of the yard (or Secret got to play, too).

On Monday Jedi got to walk up to the vet clinic where we delivered Link for his dental appointment. Jedi thought the field trip was great fun and I always appreciate the opportunity to give him more positive experiences at the vet's office. I'm pretty sure he views the vet as a place to go to jump up on people (sigh...), play tug in the exam room, and sit on scales for treats. After we handed Link over I asked if I could stick Jedi on the scale before we left. He came in at 29.5 lbs. He was last weighed at the beginning of the month and registered at 29.2 lbs, so the growing is slowing down down. I also stuck him under the measuring arm at our trial this weekend and he was 19.5", so that's a 0.25" increase since our trial over Labor Day weekend.

On Tuesday Jedi got to come to class with me again. It had rained much of the day on Tuesday but had cleared up by late afternoon. I knew my plan was to get the classes outside, so I figured the walks would be good for Jedi. I took my crate screen downstairs with us and used that during class to ensure good behavior from Jedi (he dislikes it when class dogs stare at him, so I figured I'd just prevent that from happening). He was a good boy during the inside portions. I had the class dogs work on door manners on our way out and stuck Jedi in the corner while I pumped him with hot dogs to keep him from reacting to any of the dogs as they passed through -- it worked and he didn't notice/care about any of them. Our puppy group was small and we have bigger puppies this session so I initially let Jedi stay out to meet everyone. He got too rowdy for my liking with a lab puppy, though, so into his crate he went. He had been fine while doing on-leash greetings but was getting over-stimulated with the off-leash playing. Jedi was super for our walks outside with both groups and spent nearly the entire time at my side staring up at me while I occasionally fed him hot dogs and ignored him the rest of the time. As per usual, the moment I handed him over to a student to show her something with her dog, Jedi acted like an untrained heathen.

On Wednesday I set up an honest to goodness training session for Jedi. Bad Dog Agility was doing a series of live webcasts last week in preparation for the Agility World Championships. Each day they posted a short exercise that was based on a section of a course at a previous AWC and they would run it in numerous ways while comparing which option(s) worked best or were fastest. This looked super fun, so on Wednesday I took the exercise that they had done the day before and set it up in the yard for Jedi and I to play on. Using their suggestions pushed me out of my usual handling rut and forced me to work on a few things I haven't really done yet with Jedi. The one we struggled with the most was the blind wrap where I ask him to turn in my direction, go around the wing, and I pick him up on my other side. It quickly became evident to me that the cue I was giving him was clearly coming across as my tight switch wrap cue -- but only on the first jump of the sequence and not the second. So I'll need to look at my handling to figure out what I'm doing there. There is nothing more honest than a baby green dog! Other than that I thought he did pretty amazing. I would still like to set up the exercises from the other days that were posted.

Friday and Saturday were spent at an AKC trial at Camp Bandy. Originally I'd thought about staying at a hotel for this trial to avoid the 2 hour drive back and forth, but when Link arrived I decided the drive would be a better option than staying in a hotel with 5 dogs. It was a smaller trial so there wasn't a lot of time to putter around and get the non-running dogs out. I did manage to get Link and Jedi out for playtime in the back field each day, where I wore Jedi out by throwing his ball on a rope. I learned that I could mostly avoid catastrophe if I just threw it super high in the air because then he'd run out, circle around a bit, it would fall, and then he'd run to it without trying to kill himself. He did still manage a somersault of epic proportions on Saturday when I had a bad (low) throw, and we called it quits then because my insides immediately seized up in fear that I broke my dog (he's fine). I really wish this dog could play fetch without killing himself. On Saturday I took Jedi inside during T2B and played tug next to the ring while asking him to do tricks. He was blissfully oblivious to all that was going on around him.

Today we did something we haven't done in a while -- we went for a hike on the bike trail. I feel like we haven't been out hiking since our disastrous experience hiking up at Lake Wazee where we came home and I pulled more than 60 ticks off the dogs. I was a bit scarred by the experience, honestly, and have been completely avoiding all possible areas where we might encounter more ticks. The weather is cooling off now and this makes for nice walking weather, so I hope to start getting us out more again. It also occurred to me that I cannot recall the last time I had Jedi out and about where he had off-leash freedom. I figured today was as good a day as any to see where he's at in his listening skills.

We went to the section of trail that is a wide open straight stretch with not a lot of distractions (cows, roads, etc.). The weather wasn't super nice today, so we didn't end up running into anyone while we were out. Jedi is a LOT more independent now than he was on our previous trail walks, that's for sure. He used to stick pretty close and not venture off very far, although I do recall on our last trip that he was starting to follow Secret a bit more versus sticking closer to the Klee Kai (who are attached to me via flexi leashes). Today he was a man on a mission and just left us all in the dust, often traveling a good 10 yards or more out from Secret. The good news is that he often stops to check in with where we're at. He needs a little work on the speed of response to recalls, but he did come when called. Jedi ran straight over to the railroad tracks towards the beginning of the walk and started to run down them -- this is my absolute rule, that nobody goes near the tracks (Secret used to have an issue there) -- he recalled well and then stuck to the trail from there on out.

Thanks to all of the rain lately there was no shortage of water. Jedi pretty much was wet for the entire walk, capped off with a swim near our turnaround point where the water was deepest. I was happy for that, since just a bit earlier he'd gotten covered in mud... We were out for an hour and I think it was good for everyone. It's been a quiet night and best of all, I haven't seen any ticks yet.

7 Months Old! And a new addition

Jedi turned 7 months old yesterday! I'm a day late in posting due to something else going on here right now, but more about that in a minute. On Tuesday I ended up taking Jedi to class with me. It was the second week of classes so I thought maybe he might come in handy for demoing stuff to the advanced group. I also felt bad because Tuesday is an office day and he'd already spent half the day in his crate. I figured even if he was crated at class, at least it was a different location with stuff going on. I spent some time before class working on Jedi's heeling skills, something we haven't touched since our Silvia Trkman class. We were still working when the advanced students started to arrive, so this was a good opportunity to work through distraction. Jedi reacted towards the pitty types in the class -- I corrected him and he was easily redirected, but that was naughty. He did well in his crate during class and came out to demo some tricks at the very end. I ended up putting him in the van for puppy class so he wouldn't be disruptive -- I'm sure the puppies would have been super exciting for him.

Jedi didn't get to do anything super exciting to celebrate this 7th month on this planet. I consider it a pretty great achievement that we've made it this long without him breaking (badly, at least). Knock wood... Jedi was the 3rd to wear the super special sparkly seven hat. It was originally purchased for Kaiser's 7th birthday, then Secret wore it last month, and now it signifies 7 months for Jedi. I suppose now I need to put it away for a couple of years until Kizzy turns 7! That thing gets around. As usual, Jedi was a champ about posing with crap on his head. He's such a good sport.

I knew that my evening was going to be devoted to other things, so I opted to take Jedi out for a play session at lunch time to wear him out a bit. It's been a while since I've taken video of one of our training sessions, so I set the camera on a fence post and recorded it. I really couldn't be more pleased of Jedi's progress. He has picked up some fairly complex skills so quickly -- honestly, I'm pretty sure he's got a better understanding of some cues than my "trained" dogs.  :o) I tried to include as much of the stuff we've been working on in this session as I could remember. I'm so amazingly proud of his ability to leave his toy on the ground while he works -- and not even lose any speed! All it really took was that one session and he's been great about it ever since. Jedi is showing an amazing understanding of check-check and na-na, allowing me to get the backside from a bit of a distance. He has a great understanding of a backside push and can flip out around the wing. His ability to work and move away from me is phenomenal, at least with these simple pinwheel exercises. And the best part is that to Jedi this is all just play! He loves it so much.

My big plans for last night involved driving down to Madison to pick up a visitor. We have another Klee Kai in the house for a bit, which Jedi thinks is the best thing ever because, you know, he's a Klee Kai, too. They are his kin. Link is an older fellow, around 10 we've discovered, so he's not super into playing with Jedi, but they are doing well together. If anything, the new arrival is making Kaiser and Kizzy more playful and Jedi is benefiting from this. Kaiser was playing with Jedi right in front of me outside today! This is usually reserved for their secret one-on-one sessions when they are outside alone. Jedi was in heaven!

Jedi didn't get a play session today because I had a meeting immediately after getting home from work and then took Link to the vet this afternoon. We were outside for probably 4-5 hours this afternoon, though, so I figure it's all good. Link should be settled enough that tomorrow we can resume Jedi's normal schedule of playing while all of the other dogs mill around the yard. Due to our change in circumstances I'm going to guess that we will not be making it to Madison this weekend for the Pier Pups event. I'm really hoping we can get back up to Lake Wazee for a swim while the weather is warm enough. Maybe that's an option for this weekend? We'll see.

NADD Trial #2 - The Dog Tank

I've been slacking on the blog the last week! Apparently I never even updated after we went to Camp Bandy for an AKC trial last Sunday. I stuck Jedi on the table to measure him and he had sprung all the way up to 19.25". He's had quite a growth spurt in the last month. At the AKC trial we also wandered around and looked at the horses, sheep, and chickens, and Jedi got a chance to play on the warmup jump outside when nobody else needed to use it. He barked at a really fluffy Shepherd -- a reactive bark that I've never heard from him. Yesterday he barked at a Terv, so apparently Jedi is starting to have a thing for hyper-excited fluffy Shepherd breeds. Hmm.

Jedi continued to work on his agility skills this week, mostly because it's the main way I wear him out every day. Since I still don't feel like he can fetch without hurting himself, we have structured exercise in the form of sending around/through stuff in the yard. For the most part hoops, wings, and cones are in the yard with no real pattern and we just play. We go until Jedi starts including a dip in the pool as part of his victory laps. One night this week I made Jedi's day and brought out a tunnel. I put the puppy cannon in the middle of a circle of stuff, with cones on either end. We worked on sending, switching, tandem turns, tight turns out of the tunnel, and a tight rear cross pre-cue into the tunnel. I was pretty impressed at how quickly Jedi picked that one up!

This weekend we got to go play up at The Dog Tank for our second NADD trial. This one was a "normal" event and not a qualifier for nationals and it was a lot more laid back than the last trial. At the qualifier event the atmosphere was pretty charged and the dogs all fed off that (some in a good way, some not so much). There was none of that this time and that, coupled with some serious wind, likely affected Jedi's jumps a bit. He still managed to get all six of his qualifying scores in the Senior division, but we topped out at 17'6" as his longest jump on Saturday and 17'3" for his longest jump today. The rest of his qualifying jumps were in the 16's with one in the 15's yesterday. The picture here was posted on the Leerburg Facebook page to advertise the trial this weekend. I was like, hey! It's Jedi! I got video of most of Jedi's jumps, just missing the first wave each day.

Jedi did well in the van, but I largely opted to keep the door shut on him this weekend since it was cool enough to do so. There were a couple of times when I forgot to shut the door and quickly realized my mistake and went back to shut it, then he was fine. The format for this weekend was "go when ready," which was really a little unfortunate for Jedi. He doesn't do well waiting in line for his turn, it's a lot easier to walk up at the last minute. Today I brought his harness so that he at least wouldn't continue to gag himself. There was a lot, and I mean a lot of screaming while we waited our turns. Today during open dock time we went straight from the dock back into line (to wear Jedi out before going home) and I was able to keep him tugging on the bumper, but in general he cannot be redirected to the toy when he gets that frantic.

Jedi had a "quiet day" on Friday, with his only real activity of the day being a trip to PetSmart to go pick up more bumpers for the weekend (we ruined two more on our last trip to The Dog Tank and only had one whole one left). I think this actually made him way over the top for his first wave on Saturday (so much screaming), so last night when he wanted to play we went to town. The circle circuit was still up in the yard (minus the tunnel) and I just had him run and run until his little brain was happy and tired. What I learned is that Jedi doesn't need (nor perhaps benefit from) quiet days like my other dogs before events -- Even after a day of jumping and then running at home last night, he was still loonytoons today and ready to go.

I'm not sure when the pool will close for the winter -- I think we're still waiting to hear if there might be an option to move it inside somewhere for the cold months (wouldn't that be awesome?). Jedi is going to be sad if we have to wait until spring to start jumping again, although won't it be fun to see what happens with a bit more growing and muscle-building under his belt! Next Saturday Pier Pups will have their pool in Madison for their last event of the year. I don't currently have anything planned, but feel like we should stay home for a weekend after putting on over 400 miles this weekend. If the weather is nice we just may have to go, we'll see.

Pier Pups Dock Diving & CSZ Run-Throughs (29.2 lbs)

On Wednesday I ended up taking Jedi & Secret up to The Dog Tank for some midweek practice time. I was mostly going to see if Secret would jump outside of the competition (she did), but Jedi is always game for more pool time. We were the only ones there -- apparently for the entire day! -- so both of them got plenty of time in the pool. Jedi had some nice jumps and some dive bombs. Steve (the owner of the facility) helped me try something new. At the competition I found myself wondering what Jedi would do with a holder on the dock, since he's such a fan of restrained recalls -- but I wasn't interested in trying something new at a trial (and he might have gone over 20'!). Steve thinks he ran faster off the dock, I said it was hard to tell from my vantage point. We traded places so Steve could try to demo how/when I should throw the bumper. I never in a million years thought this would be an issue for Jedi. He went barreling down the dock the first time, tried to slide to a stop right at the end, and more or less fell into the pool. The second time he only got about 5' away from me and stopped. Well, so much for that idea. I was really surprised because I expected he wouldn't care who threw the toy.

I took Jedi along to Secret's chiro appointment yesterday afternoon to get a weight on him. He's up to 29.2 lbs, so he grew again! We're going to an agility trial tomorrow so I hope to get a height on Jedi there. Training wise, yesterday I introduced Jedi to a tandem turn. I was watching some videos on the OneMindDog page yesterday and decided to go ahead and give it a try with Jedi. We started with cones and moved on to an exercise with two sets of wings. The foundation work that Jedi has done made this exercise come pretty naturally to him and we were able to have a lot of fun with it. The only issue we ran into was when he would do the flip and then run all the way around the other wing of the jump instead of wrapping the near wing. He did this in both directions but probably had a little harder time when he was turning right. He figured it out in both directions and with a few different scenarios.

Today was a day of "do all the things." Knowing we are traveling over to Camp Bandy tomorrow, the best choice today probably would have been to stay home and rest (or do silly things like clean). There were too many other things we could do today, though, so we hit the road around 8:00 a.m. Our first stop was run-throughs at Canine Sports Zone. Jedi was so happy to be back there again! He was even more happy when he realized that he got to go play in the arena. I signed Jedi up at 4" -- he was the only one, so he got to play first. Unfortunately I'd only gotten there 15 minutes earlier and barely learned the masters course for Kaiser & Kizzy, so I went into the ring with pretty much no plan for Jedi. He didn't care, he had fun. I got the second time recorded -- at least I had figured out at least somewhat of a plan for that turn. Regardless, the point was just to get Jedi playing in a new place with other dogs around. He did awesome! He got lots and lots of compliments from those watching.

The other big fun thing happening today was dock diving in Hillsboro. Pier Pups, the same people that put on the stuff at the fair, is there all weekend for some firemen's festival that the town is having. Hillsboro is less than an hour from home (albeit in the middle of nowhere), so this was hard to turn down. I ended up swinging over on our way home from Middleton today. It's not exactly on the way home, but it was faster to go straight there than to take the Klee Kai home and then drive down. It's a good thing that none of my dogs get car sick, because those were some interesting roads we were on today. I think we took every back road between Middleton and Hillsboro, and we were never on any one stretch of road for more than 9 miles before we turned onto yet another county road.

My goal was to make the 2:00 splash, but that didn't happen because the run-throughs were really popular today. We left CSZ around 12:45 and ended up getting to the park around 2:20. This ended up working well because I had plenty of time to find stuff, sign up, park, and potty the dogs before the next splash at 3:30. They let me take Jedi up on the dock right after the 2:00 session ended, so we didn't have to wait for the practice time for the 3:30. For Jedi's first trip into a new pool I threw the bumper, walked him back, and let him go. He had absolutely zero hesitation going off the dock, so after that I took him all the way back and ran him like normal. He had some good jumps during warm-up but started to go flat, so I ended with a couple of pops to get him thinking "up."

I'm not a huge fan of how things were run, at least compared to our last experience. At the NADD trial you did both of your jumps back-to-back -- in addition, you could have a warm-up jump so long as you declared it and got it all done within 4 minutes. I think this format helps some dogs to jump better, since for some that first jump is a throw-away. With Pier Pups everyone gets dock time before you start, then once things get going each dog jumps once, gets back in line, then jumps again. The best of your two jumps is your official jump. Jedi pretty much thought this one and done format sucked majorly. I had to trick him into thinking he got another turn to get him back up on the dock, as he's gotten wise to me holding the leash and knowing that this means we're done with our turn.

Due to some structural issues with this location, the dock wasn't raised over the pool as much as we're used to. The standard distance from the dock down to the water is 24", but today I believe they said it was 18". This has to affect the distance some dogs are able to get off the dock. Even still, Jedi jumped pretty well today (considering the format and that he spent gads of time barking before each jump). His first round was 17' and his second one was 17'3". He jumped into their Pro division (15' - 21') but was out of the placement ribbons with his middle-of-the-division jumps. They played a game when we were done where they put like 25 tennis balls in the pool and each dog was supposed to jump in and grab one. Each ball had a number on it and afterwards they were drawing for prizes. Jedi was the 2nd dog to go into the pool of balls. There were a lot of balls in the pool. Jedi wanted them ALL. The announcers quickly realized that maybe this game wasn't such a good idea.  :o)  Jedi may have been swimming around the pool for several minutes grabbing balls, spitting them out, and grabbing a new one.... We finally managed to get him out (I showed him his bumper) and we had lucky #7, but it wasn't lucky for us today.

By the time all of that wrapped up it was actually time for the next wave to start. I debated signing Jedi up for one more but I figured we'd gotten what we came for -- experience in a new pool/place -- plus the bonus tennis ball swim. Jedi had been barking, and barking, and barking during the tennis ball game, so I didn't even know how much gas he had left in the tank. Knowing that we have a long day of more driving ahead of us tomorrow, I opted to head for home. I'm glad we were able to fit in both of our fun options today. Jedi sure had fun!