It's been a while since we did an update, so I figured I'd share what's been going on with us so you all can laugh at my pain a bit
For one, winter just needs to end. It's either extremely cold or warm and extremely muddy and I think a lot of our woes come from doggy being too cooped up. Cooped up meaning she only gets two hours of walking a day, weekly agility, and trips to the Barn on weekends. Clearly, she needs more exercise and mental stimulation, and winter is killing that for us.
Since we finally had success teaching her the agility tunnel, she now spends much of her free time trying to tunnel under random things- like the play nook under the stairs, open cupboards, and the deck. Oh the deck! The deck has one open side that had maybe a foot and a half of clearance. Several times she would stick her whole face under there and look around, but she couldn't get her rump under there. Until...last weekend I was playing with her and turned around for a moment to clean a fresh poo. I turned around and my dog was just gone. I panicked, checked all the gates, looked behind everything, called her... then heard a shuffling noise from under the deck. Yep. Dog was under the deck. She was sliding around on her belly, back legs extended all the way behind her like a frog. She shimmied 40 feet across all the way up to the house and under the stairs. She spent half an hour stuck under there while I shook a food bowl, called nicely, called not so nicely, bribed her, threatened her, threw food at her. Also, it was the most frigid cold day ever, naturally. I finally did get her out, and barricaded up the deck. A lot of it is video'd because I could actually see her better through my phone camera than I could with my eyes, maybe I'll post it for your enjoyment.
We had been making really good progress with the reactivity issues and had weaned back to walking on just a martingale collar, then randomly out of the blue she pulled a huge reaction at a dog that would have typically been far outside her threshold, even as I was following our protocol for seeing a dog. Caught me really off guard and I was on ice so I kind of skiid behind and fell and my butt and used my dead weight to stop her. Scared the crop out of the other people, I was pretty mortified. I yelled sorry, even though I was the one flat on my ass in the snow subduing a crazy dog. So she's back to the head halter for probably at least a month before we try the martingale again, and I've readjusted how I define her threshold again. One step forward, two steps back but I hold out the hope we'll get there eventually.
She's doing really well in her agility. Jumps are great, tunnels are great, and more recently, weaves are great. She's following me really well and it's really starting to click. There is a but though. On class days I keep her food really basic, don't feed dinner until after class, walk her before hand, make sure she's peed and pooped before we go in, take her out every 20 minutes. Well, despite my best efforts last night, she went in, ran three laps, and with no warning squatted and let loose a huge diarrhoea poo. I was so mortified. So our poor trainer and her volunteer had to try to clean the turf while I took my beasty outside again. I think it was just a lot of nerves and anxiety, she gets super ramped up about going there, she had to wait in the car for a half hour, and I think she had just kind of a high anxiety week in general.
So it's been an up and down few weeks for us. I love this dog to death, but she will be the death of me. Good thing she's cute
For one, winter just needs to end. It's either extremely cold or warm and extremely muddy and I think a lot of our woes come from doggy being too cooped up. Cooped up meaning she only gets two hours of walking a day, weekly agility, and trips to the Barn on weekends. Clearly, she needs more exercise and mental stimulation, and winter is killing that for us.
Since we finally had success teaching her the agility tunnel, she now spends much of her free time trying to tunnel under random things- like the play nook under the stairs, open cupboards, and the deck. Oh the deck! The deck has one open side that had maybe a foot and a half of clearance. Several times she would stick her whole face under there and look around, but she couldn't get her rump under there. Until...last weekend I was playing with her and turned around for a moment to clean a fresh poo. I turned around and my dog was just gone. I panicked, checked all the gates, looked behind everything, called her... then heard a shuffling noise from under the deck. Yep. Dog was under the deck. She was sliding around on her belly, back legs extended all the way behind her like a frog. She shimmied 40 feet across all the way up to the house and under the stairs. She spent half an hour stuck under there while I shook a food bowl, called nicely, called not so nicely, bribed her, threatened her, threw food at her. Also, it was the most frigid cold day ever, naturally. I finally did get her out, and barricaded up the deck. A lot of it is video'd because I could actually see her better through my phone camera than I could with my eyes, maybe I'll post it for your enjoyment.
We had been making really good progress with the reactivity issues and had weaned back to walking on just a martingale collar, then randomly out of the blue she pulled a huge reaction at a dog that would have typically been far outside her threshold, even as I was following our protocol for seeing a dog. Caught me really off guard and I was on ice so I kind of skiid behind and fell and my butt and used my dead weight to stop her. Scared the crop out of the other people, I was pretty mortified. I yelled sorry, even though I was the one flat on my ass in the snow subduing a crazy dog. So she's back to the head halter for probably at least a month before we try the martingale again, and I've readjusted how I define her threshold again. One step forward, two steps back but I hold out the hope we'll get there eventually.
She's doing really well in her agility. Jumps are great, tunnels are great, and more recently, weaves are great. She's following me really well and it's really starting to click. There is a but though. On class days I keep her food really basic, don't feed dinner until after class, walk her before hand, make sure she's peed and pooped before we go in, take her out every 20 minutes. Well, despite my best efforts last night, she went in, ran three laps, and with no warning squatted and let loose a huge diarrhoea poo. I was so mortified. So our poor trainer and her volunteer had to try to clean the turf while I took my beasty outside again. I think it was just a lot of nerves and anxiety, she gets super ramped up about going there, she had to wait in the car for a half hour, and I think she had just kind of a high anxiety week in general.
So it's been an up and down few weeks for us. I love this dog to death, but she will be the death of me. Good thing she's cute
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