Oh no! There has been a terrible accident!

My fault totaly.

Weather was nice but windy the other day so I opened the back door to let the dogs have a zoomie with the fallen leaves.

My 'rehoming box' (where my sculptures live till they find a new home) was open as I was doing a photoshoot and a gust of wind sent some of the smaller critters flying.

I thought I had picked them all up but later in the day Mia wondered past with a little bit of gray hanging out her mouth.

She killed Dyllan! Cant blame her he was fully felted from shetland wool and my mum, as a spinner and knitter informs me that that is a strong smelling fleece.

Poor Dyllan - I remembered to take his listing down.

On a happier note I put up a couple of new listings, a red fox and a JRT

I have to admit with the Jack Russell I actually had in mind to make a newfoundland dog, I didnt have a photo just an idea in my head but the wool decided that JRT was what it wanted to be!

Not exactly the good life :D

Last year I planted some salad potatoes in a tub. They were pretty easy to grow and tasty too.

Guess I didnt get them all out the tub last year cos this year I got a few extra!!

I also planted up carrots and some beans. The beans suffered a 'accident' when someone cut down my greenhouse! but the carrots are doing good - here is one of them - there is quite a few more. Not the best looking in the world - but for me (who would love to grow bonsai trees but all plants seem to die when I look at them) I am quite happy.

Who knows - next year the plates the limit :D

and I solved another puzzle tonight as to where all my cranberries were going - seems little miss Mia has a fondness for the berries and was helping herself!!

I heart my dog contest update

Have a look here for some of the entries in the 'I heart my dog' contest.
Just a reminder that SkylarsCandyclips is doing a fab blog givaway for all dog lovers.

Get over there with some cute pictures of your dog and you get the chance to WIN one of my needle felted sculptures

What to say, when to say it?

Today in the park I was watching a whole load of people train their dogs to do the exact opposite of what they wanted.

One dog running off was called to come back when his recall wasn't good enough and the other dog more interesting, another being told to be quiet when it was barking.

As I have already covered, dogs don't speak English, although we like to think they do and then assume they are being bad when they don't do what we ask.

Dogs learn associations with things.

Person says 'sit' I put my bum on the floor person is happy, person says 'Fido come' that seems to mean when I get close to them they will shout at me and put the lead on.

The way a dog will learn best is to ask it to do the thing when it is already doing it.

So if you are trying to teach a recall and your dog hasn't really got it yet it doesn't help much to call the dog when it is running away from you, call it back when it has finished what it was doing and is already running back to you at full pelt.

I accidentally got a great emergency recall for Ben that way. In agility I have an 'in' command - it means come in towards me - it was taught when he was sent around a jump and I stood still or turned away he naturally turned in towards me - every time I did that I said 'in' and it became a habit for him.

Also as a pup when I came to a fork in the path and he had gone one way I went they other, just said 'This way' and carried on walking. He lost sight of me and so came running to find me, he learnt 'this way' meant I was about to disappear if he didn't keep his eye on me.

The same goes for barking. When a dog is barking people often tell it to 'shut up' or something. If you haven't taught what the word means then the dog will learn to associate 'shut up' to mean to actually bark.

It is really sad today that people think owning and training a dog is a battle of wills, that if your dog is bad it is because you are not a strong enough pack leader for it. This is simply not true, a dog is not bad, it is just being a dog, your job is to think like a human and figure out how you can train your dog to do what you would like rather than punishing it for either natural behaviour, or worse still behaviour YOU have taught without meaning too.

The Lockerbie bomber

I usually keep the blog well out of the way of politics, in fact I usually dont watch much of the news at all.
But I have to talk about this!

Scotlands law, rightly or wrongly, allow a person with a terminal illness to be sent home to die.
The Lockerbie bomber was imprisoned in Scotland under Scottish law.

That should be the end of the matter. If one of our people commits a crime in another country they are subjected to their rules. Our governments may petition for people not to get the death sentence or something but at the end of the day we have no power to do anything.

But no
America tried to bully us and England has turned its back on us and condemned us.

I for one am actually really proud that our politicians refused to be forced to go against our law.
I am happy that our small country isnt forced to shell out for the security that would have been needed to allow this man to die in one of our hospitals surrounded by police.

I am sorry that our compassion caused people to wish to boycott our country but I am so proud that we were strong enough to stand up for ourselves and not be bullied.

Scotland will not benefit from any oil deals or anything, if there was any deals (which I dont believe there was - else England would have been happy with us) then it would be England, as always, getting the money.

Scotts, be proud of us having the strength to stand up for our laws we can hold our heads up high.

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.