petek, 31. julij 2009

Wi's first hike above 2000m

Yesterday Wi conquered her first mountain top above 2000m.

We went hiking on Debela Peč (2014m, Julian Alps) with my friend and her aussie Ginny yesterday.
Both dogs behaved nicely (except for the time when Wi stole yet another sandwich from a poor unsespected victim, but I blame the victim, she shouldn't gave her that piece of cheese in the first place...).
The weather was really nice and we had a lot of fun.

torek, 28. julij 2009

No luck with health

Sadly Wi got another bug bite reaction, but this time it wasn't local as with her eye.
She's on Synolux and Plivasept baths for at least 2 weeks. She's itching horribly so she has to wear the plastic cone to prevent and licking the wounds.
She's shaved on her back and chest:

ponedeljek, 20. julij 2009

nedelja, 19. julij 2009

The Current Pack

Our curent pack consists of 4 dogs right now. One week ago there were 5.

Along with Wi and Dora there is also Olivia (aka Oli aka Girly Whirly aka Little Lady) , the aussie girl:
Krepko
And BammBamm (aka BB aka The Other Red Dog), mix, "border collie":


And former pack member Lyra, BC x aussie mix:


Both red dogs get along really well. Oli is in heat right now and a little moody so Wi is keeping her distance with her.
Dora loves to tug with BammBamm. She finally has someone who can go on and on and on. And I'm sure BammBamm likes this too (sometimes he even brings her the stick).
And I'm really starting to think that crashing into trees is a red dog's thing...first Wi and then BammBamm...

We're swimming a lot (I try to go every other day down to the river to our little spot by the shore) and there's also a lot of walking and running in the woods.
I'm also training a bit with Oli and BB. It's mostly just shaping games, to get them to start thinking. We also do ex. on the ball and balance disc, we even did some ladder work a few times, TTouch, balance tricks and a lot of playing.


And on to some Wi updates...

Agility
We had one agility trial on the 11th. It was held at the Slovenian coast and unlike other trials this one started in the afternoon and finished around midnight. I took all the dogs with me and the red dogs got to have fun and swim in the sea for almost an hour.
The courses were pretty simple, short and fast. In agility we lost a lot of time on the teeter (scary!) but we got a clean run. Except for the last jump where she barely made it over (I gave her a verryyy late signal) her jumping looked better then I expected (we haven't trained in ages!).
In jumping she ran nicely, no mistakes again but she's still holding herself back a little. But she was not all that slow either. Her average speed in jumping was 4,6 m/s and I think her usual speed in jumping last year was around 4,1 m/s so she's definetly getting faster.
Overall we finished 2nd in A1L.
Also she surprised me with her tugging intensity before the jumping. She was swimming a lot so I was worried she would be a bit tired and wouldn't want to tug as much so I took food with me instead. But when we were waiting she grabbed the leash and started to tug really hard and even made some noises while doing it! My crazy little red dog.

We also managed to have one training last week (yay!) and it went really well. She once again flew off the teeter. And the next time she almost did it again so I think we're finally getting over that whole "teeter = scary, have to go slowww" thing and she stays in the position no matter where I am or what I'm doing. She also had a couple of really nice dogwalks. Hopefully the weather will be fine this week and we'll be able to go training again soon.

The red dogs relaxing at home after the trial...in the red bed.
Frisbee
Wi had her first frisbee competition just a few days ago. My friend Gaja was competing with her and they did well. They need a few more trainings (they only had one really short tranining before the competition) but the important thing is that Wi liked it and had fun.
Almost got it!
Tricks
Here's another good generalisation of the "bounce" trick:
I tried to see if she would try to climb a tree at an agility trial in Domžale but she offered me a bounce off the tree instead (untill then she only bounced off me). We repeated it a couple of times and at home I tried with a wall and she bounced right off it. Now I can send her from a distance to some object and she will bounce off it and run back to me. Sometimes it looks like a swimmers turn (flyball) if she does it really low (she can do it from just a few cm off the ground to 1m).
And I have some new trick ideas so we're really busy learning them. :)

sreda, 1. julij 2009

Cool new trick

Actually it's not a "new" trick but a pretty good generalisation.
Here it is:

Yap, she actually weaving through children's legs. It took us a few tries to get the right spacing and to keep everyone still but she did it! What's more, I could stand away from her (like in order to get this photo), give her the command and she would do them by herself.

I don't have to say how much children loved this?

She also jumped over them while they were kneeling, walked over their backs, ran through leg tunnels, jumped over their arms, searched for them all over playground, played with them...