Announcment - Mia update

I wrote this blog as an update for my felt animals and Bens agility training. It was written by a dog lover for dog lovers. When Mia came along I though it would be a good place to update her progress aswell - and lots of people were very supportive and asked for updates for her.

It has been brought to my attention however that there are posts on this blog that might be seen by non dog lovers as me condoning agression in dogs.

Which as all of you that know me will know that is not the case.

To that end I am slowly looking through the blog and removing any references or fotos that can be missread.
That includes fotos of playing where teeth are showing - of course all dog lovers would recognise these as dogs playing but it seems that can be missread

I would like to point out that Mia is not an agressive dog
Mia is a fearful dog, her fear manifests itself like Scrappy Doo with lots of shouting but on a walk she has NEVER attacked another dog - she shouts from a distance. On occasion other dogs take a dislike to her and have charged her and pinned her down, although there is a lot of noise in these situations NO BLOOD HAS EVER BEEN DRAWN - it is all show.
Mia is also not in any way agressive to people, on the couple of times when another dog has her pinned on the ground when myself or the other owner have gone in to break it up she has turned round as if to snap then seen that it is not another dog and inhibited her bite

Her and Ben had a few spats in the early days - this was due to her resorce guarding and me missreading situations. With training and them building trust with each other that is now not and issue - and again with these spats no blood was drawn. To demonstrate the extent of the 'problem' they have had one 'spat' this year that was broken up v easily and they were lying paw in paw washing each others faces in no time.

I thought that posting of Mias progress would be a good reference to me to see how far she has come - and it has been, I also hoped it might be helpful to people who might be going through the same issues.
It never occured to me that non dog lovers would have any interest in reading the blog, or that if they did my words could be missunderstood to such an extent.

So I am sorry for any missunderstandings. It will take a while but I will check every post and edit it if needed.

Help the other Irish pound doggies

I am sure some of you rem that my Mia was rescued from the Irish dog pounds by a fantastic Irish charity

As a reminder here is the foto that won my heart - the little lady herself in the pound with less than a week to live


Dundalk dogs is a charity with no government help, they do such heartbreaking work visiting the pounds and trying to find homes for the dogs they see - and then hoping they can get the dogs out and somewhere safe in time
They then foster the dogs, quaranteen them and get all the medical work done before shipping them off to their new homes

My agility club is doing a sponsored dog walk this Sunday
Around Strathclyde park 10:30 am if anyone wants to say hello

and to make it a challange I am taking Ben and Mia - we have been working with her fear agression but it will be a big challange to manage the walk without putting her under too much stress

But I am rubbish at getting sponsorship! cannot ask people face to face!

I wondered if any of you kind hearted people would help?? I need to raise at least £5 to enter - and we are hoping between us all to raise £1000 - which is the amount the charity needs every month

You could either donate directly to Dundalk and let me know how much - or if you have paypal then you could send to me and I can send it all over in one go (and save them the processing fees)
There are so many kind hearts on here that even 50p would be fab


Paypal me on pamduthie @ hotmail.com (remove the spaces)
I will (if I can work the camera and 2 dogs) to post up fotos of our walk

Thankyou all in advance

Avon agility comp - well done Ben

This weekend was our 2nd ever agility comp and our first ever outoor one.
and the sun was splitting the trees - with my pail Scottish skin I covered myself with lashings of factor 50 - and I am glad I did, lots and lots of lobsters about.
It was pretty tough to try and keep the car and Ben cool as well. I parked the car almost in a tree and I wrapped ice cubes in a bandana for Ben and dipped his paws in water whenever I could (dogs only sweat through their paws)

It was a 2 day show with 4 runs a day.

Satarday

Run 1
For a little warm up I decided to go for the grade 1-7 Olympia qualifier - not expecting much at all!
Lots of people told me it was a tricky course but we went for it anyway and he ran really well
Only problem we had was the weaves were right after the longjump so he was flying into them - and just popped out and so we got faulted - and time faults too
But really not bad considering!

Run 2
Graded agility
Nice fast flowing course. 12 weaves - Ben popped out on the 11th so I tried to put him back in but got it wrong and we got a big fat E

Run 3
Combined agility.
Course a little tricky looking with quite a few turns - I knew I should have done a front cross before the tunnel - but didnt so Ben spun round to check I ment him to go in there - bless, and he nailed his weaves!!

3rd place

Run 4
Graded jumping
Everyone was saying this was a difficult one - but when I watched they all seemed to be taking a silly line - so I remembered our trainer telling us to ignore what everyone else was doing
I did and we really went for it

1st place!!!

Not a bad day 1

Sunday

Run 1 combined agility

Did a not bad run - Ben was not so good on the weaves but a few hand signals from me ment we didnt get faulted - a fairly good clear round
Then we got called back to run it again cos someone had made the long jump too short - so we ran again, Ben popped out the weave and when I put him back again we must have cut through them or something cos we got E'd!! - appart from that it was a better run!

Run 2
Graded jumping
Heat was getting to me a bit and I wasnt giving clear instructions to Ben - great weaves but he ran past a couple of jumps and we were faulted

Run 3
Graded agility
A nice tricky course for us, I went a little wrong and I thought Ben had run past a jump a little - but when I checked in the book later not only did we get clear but also
we got another 1st place!!!

Run 4
Combined jumping
v tricky course, lots of twists and turns - I made a couple of mistakes - bet it didnt look pretty to anyone watching - but wee went clear
5th place

all in all not too bad a weekend
and the scary thing - in his 2nd show that is my boy up to grade 3!! pretty amazing!

Border collies and a border terrier

My latest orders.
A border terrier - a breed I have never seen in the flesh yet so I had to guess a bit but I think it came out OK - they seem to be going a bit Disney at the moment :D

and a pack of Border collies. Usualy I do one dog at a time and have many fotos from many angles - this time I had 3 dogs to do from one foto
To try and keep the sizes similar this time I used pipe cleaner frames as my sizes can be a little random sometimes

Mia, agility and focus

Thought I better give another Mia update.

Today she seemed v unfocused and just wanted to run about.
As her recal isnt v good I only have her offlead in safe areas with fairly few distractions.
So as this evening was agility - outside!! I though I better get some focus on her

I did this in a couple of ways
1st - I sent her and Ben away to play and run around a bit - just to calm down.
But then I called Ben back and started working him, anytime Mia showed any focus to me I just gave her treats and kept on playing with Ben.
After about 20 min of this she started to really pay attention to me so now I asked for a trick or 2 and then released her to play before she got bored and wondered off herself.
After a short time of this the dogs didnt really want to be released and on their 'free time' they were following me around - I actually had some great heeling around the field with great eye contact without even asking for it.
So now I did some stays and played with the toys and then we headed home.

So did it work??
Really well, at agility Mia got her 'were here to work' head on really quickly, she only ran off once the whole time and only wasnt staying well once - much better than last week where 50% of the time I had to go and fetch her.
The next class started coming in early and the GSD Mia hates was actually at one point about 10m away from us when we were about to do a run - she barked a couple of times but calmed down and did her job without running off

Really great progress! One step closer to a happy dog - and who knows mibby even one who can compeate at agility one day!

Stan the rottie

Heres my latest little guy up in my Etsy shop

Stan the rottie

He was lots of fun to make, I wanted to show how Rottweilers are not big nasy dogs but they also have a v fun playfuls side

I hope I captured that in this guy.

Please, all you peeps who can do great fotos, any way I can improve my shots of the fuzzies, I know that is one area that is really letting me down!

What did your dog learn today??

I try and do a little with my dogs every day, sometimes just going over things they know quite well making it a bit better and sometimes working on a specific trick.

A training sesh is usualy about 5-10 min per dog and I tend to structure it like this

a couple of mins doing stuff they know quite well

a couple of mins working on a new trick

a couple of mins working on stuff they already know



We also have a great 'Do something' where I ask them to do something and every different trick they do gets a treat - like the lazy mans free shaping :D



Sometimes I get a bit lazy and we dont focus on anything new for a while, but then I have a wee nozy at some blogs or you tube and I get inspired to do something again.

The latest trick I found that I have been working on for a wee while came from here

So whats your latest trick??

Mia again

Just a quickie - realised I havent really updated Mia for a while.

On Wed there her agility class moved, we were now OUTSIDE in a public park with 6 dogs she does not know.

and she did waaaay better than I expected.

She barked a little as the new dogs came to class but settled quickly and once class started she was pretty well focused and only showed her teeth to a dog who came up to her when I was giving her a treat for being good - Ben would have done the same, and agian it wasnt totaly reactive and she calmed down.

She even dod some offlead work quite well - 2 zoomies but didnt go more than about 15m away - so really no worse than in the barn!

What a wee star!!

Of course its not all perfect, Mia and Ben had a little fight today - think Ben actually started it - but anyway thats the first fight this year - I have to focus on that and the fact we used to have fights several times a week. Gave them both a time out and they were kissing again - no grudges

Featured shop, BeaulyBen

Just thought I would big up this Etsy shop BeaulyBen

She is my mum :D

She has been on Etsy for a wee while now but still waiting for that elusive first sale.

She has just started making dressy hair clips, fascinators and bobbles at totaly bargain prices, I think they look fab!

Also (she is very crafty) Fabby knitwear and lovely original encaustic art

Encaustic art is the process of heating vividly coloured wax blocks and applying them to the surface with an iron, heated stylus or an air gun. It is a really fun way to create totaly original works of art.

The process involves taking vividly coloured blocks of wax and heating them and applying them to the surface with either an iron, heated stylus or an air gun. The striking images produced really let the imagination run riot as the more you look the more you will see - like looking for images in clouds.

And the beauty of it is if you dont like what you have made just run the iron over again and something different appears.

We have both also been working on our website, thankyou all for your kind words so far. Any suggestions as to how we can improve this are welcome.

Practise makes perfect

Interesting that I am posting very similar things in my driving instructor blog and this blog.

I really do see similarities in teaching people to drive and training dogs.

One really important thing to remember is

Practise makes perfect

That is true on practising something you want your dog to do, practise in as many different locations and build up the distraction level and over time the behaviour will become perfect.

But it is more important to consider when your dog is doing something you dont want it to do.

For example - jumping up at people

Every time your dog jumps up at someone it is practising the behavior that that is how it greets people.

Yes you have to think of the different behaviour that you would like to train - but at the same time you must stop the dog practising the behaviour you dont like, so while you are retraining you might have to keep your dog on a lead or send to another room or a crate so they do not get the opportunity to practise the unwanted behaviour

and remember the longer the dog has been practising the undesired behaviour then the longer it will take to retrain, no matter what the TV shows seem to tell you dog training takes time - if it didnt everyone would have a champion obedience dog