I heart my dog - photography comp with the chance to WIN one of my custom doggies

SkylarsCandyclips is doing a fab blog givaway for all dog lovers.

"So to celebrate the bond between humans and canines and the unconditional and unlimited love that we feel for them, I would like to hold a contest - an I HEART MY DOG contest.

This contest is only open to my blog readers so please follow my blog if you would like to enter. Two winners will be chosen. One for a comment entry and another for a photography entry. All photos submitted will be posted on my blog at the end of the contest. "

The winner of the comment entry will win a bag of Wendy's favorite organic dog treats from Grandma Lucy's Diner

and..

The winner of the foto entry will win a custom needle felted sculpture of their doggy from me :D

So please tell all the dog lovers you know to pop over to her blog.

Dundee agility show

Looks like this may have been the last show of the year, and Bens first show in grade 3
Managed to get a few vids as my mum came along (thanks mum)

A 2 day event with 3 runs per day
SatRun 1, Combined 1-5 agility - 5 faults but nice weaves and we got all our contacts!!
Run 2, Combined 1-4 jumping - Clear round - a bit time lost as I slowed him too much for the weaves and he bounced up at me But we placed 4th!!!


Run 3, Graded Jumping. Lovely right up until the last weave pole at the end of the run, even the judge went 'OHHHH' got him back in, 5 faults and a 4th place!!

Sunday - much less nice day - peeing it down with rain! But for 2 of the runs the judge was our trainer so nice difficult courses
Run 1, Combined 1-5 agility, clear round but again bouncing before the weaves so too slow for a place
Run 2, Combined 1-4 Jumping - again the last weave ment 5 faults for us


Run 3, Graded 1-4 jumpingLovely storming run, everything went perfect - except the timer broke!!!!!Ran it again for time - made a mistake and went over an extra jump so assumed we were E'd, went home as both mum and Mia had been stung by a waspFound out last night that the extra jump didnt count as we were only running for time and the clear round counted - He only went and WON it!!! Well done my wee man!!Heres the vid of our winning run - the jump we shoudnt have done was the 2nd after the tunnel (you can see I was daydreaming, happy we had got everything else right and not working the turn)

SoopSee?

Just discovered SoopSee
It seems a really useful tool for Etsy'ers - you can put everything (including your blog and tweets) together in one place - and get lots of stats with funky graphs.
It seemed pretty easy to set up. I will let you know how I get on.
My page is here

Etsy Treasury

Woohooo, I am on a treasury on Etsy (well not me my horse)

So is my mum and some of my blogger friends. Thats really great.

Treasuries on Etsy can make the front page if enough people click on them - so please even if you are not on etsy can you click the link and then click on a couple of the items on there.

I have never been on the front page and it would be really great if I made it there.

Thankyou for looking

Mia, Focus and the reactive dog

About time I did some more training posts.

As everyone who has been following knows Mia is a little reactive and so very easily distracted.

I have been working on focus with her using a method I have stolen and adapted from many different trainers.

Mia is not very good in confined spaces - she is always looking for ways to get out. I am lucky and have found a park that has a large field down a slope where the other dog walkers dont tend to go. It is pretty secure but because of the slope it dosent look like it has boundries so Mia is calm enough to play around in it.

First what I do is to just send both the dogs away to play and I wonder about. Any time Mia gets anywhere near to me I chuck her a treat and then just carry on walking about.
After a short while she actually starts comming over to me looking for a treat so each time I wait for a little more before I treat, at first it is just her being close enough to chuck the treat, then its her actually noticing me, then her getting closer to me. Basically I shape it until she is running right up to my side, giving good eye contact and walking with me. Each time I treat then I send her away with big arm movments and say 'GO PLAY'
Once she is really begining to focus on me and wants to work then I will ask for a few tricks - rewarding lots and lots before sending her away to play again. I always send her away before she gets few up and runs away - this means that I have to pay attention to stuff around us that might distract her and send her away before she gets distracted.
After a while of this both dogs really dont want to be sent away but really want to work with me

At the moment this is about where we end it - but hopefully soon I will get the agility stuff down the park, that level of focus would be just great for training.

It is also teaching Mia a habbit of checking in with me just incase fun stuff happens - and a command for to go away and have fun. I like dogs to be dogs and sniff around and stuff, but because of Mias reactivity problems everything has to be a little more structured with her.