Rottweilers Ate My Laptop

It’s so quiet here without Freya. We’ll be leaving on vacation ourselves tomorrow, so this afternoon Freya started her own vacation at Best Friends American Pet Motel. We have been using this “resort” for our dogs for many years, and it’s one of only a few places I recommend without hesitation when someone needs to board their pets.

Freya will be doing a board and train with her pal Allan Ross as she does every November. It gives her something to look forward to every day (she gets a nature walk on the days that training is not done) and it keeps her focused to do some obedience almost every day.

I don’t do board and train unless I’m going to be out of town, because I much prefer to work with my own dog in a group class or private lessons. This is a pretty good situation, because Allan leads our regular group classes, and I’m comfortable with his training methods. Freya also adores him. She may even enjoy her vacation more than we do ours!

(NaBloPoMo | November ’09: 18 of 30 | 75% Challenge: 263 of 274)

One of the reasons I was so concerned about making sure our rally obedience trial entries were for Sunday, and not Saturday, is because I wanted to do Freya’s regular Saturday morning class. I don’t know yet if this was a good idea or a bad one. It did give us one last pre-trial opportunity to work in a training situation indoors with other dogs. Plus even though this is not a rally obedience-specific class, we do practice a lot of rally moves like the circle turns, finishes in both directions, and about turns of all three styles. This was not one of her best-working sessions, but it wasn’t terrible either.

Tomorrow’s trial is at a facility we’ve trained at in the past, located very close to home. It will probably be pretty small unless they get a ton of day-of-show entries. My van is already set up for a one-dog show trip (as in crate, extra folding crate, crate covers for different weather conditions, towels and blankets) and all I should need in the morning is dog, leashes, water and treats.

Best case: we get a new title with placements. Worst case: we fail, but I am right there to turn in a pre-entry for the trials on December 5-6!

(NaBloPoMo | November ’09: 14 of 30 | 75% Challenge: 259 of 274)

As Axel’s departure date gets closer and the days get shorter, I don’t always have the chance to set up our practice rally courses in the yard, especially when the weather does not cooperate. So I am just trying to fit in little bits of practice wherever I can throughout our normal day.

Here’s the back sidewalk between the house and the garage:

Not very long as the entire lot from street to alley is only 125 feet long, but a few trips back and forth after each potty break time will allow us to practice heeling at all paces, 1-2-3 steps forward and backwards, all three types of about turns, and 360° turns.

The kitchen is small even after chasing the cat into the living room or dining room:

Small as it is, there is still ample room to practice all varieties and combinations of sits, downs, and finishes. Since the dogs are fed in the kitchen, it is a location where they are even more motivated than usual to do what I ask them to.

It all adds up, right?

(NaBloPoMo | October ’09: 14 of 31 | 75% Challenge: 236 of 274)

It seems like Axel just got home from his last road trip and now we’re getting ready to send him back out again. He’s been home since March 16, but it sure doesn’t seem like seven months have gone by.

Since he’s still current on his immunizations and licenses and hasn’t changed handlers, my list of things to do to get ready isn’t that long. I picked up his health record at the vet on Saturday when Freya went in for her nail trim and medicine refills, and I’ve already put it in an envelope with photocopies of his registration, pedigree, microchip information, license, and emergency and non-emergency contact information. I hope I remember the envelope. Not too much shopping to do either: enough food and topical flea preventative for a couple of months, and a couple of new toys that will take a couple of months to destroy.

This may sound silly, but we always practice a few things just before a trip. They normally have warm water and sometimes miscellaneous goodies mixed in with their kibble. I make sure they’re ok with eating it plain and dry, and not just in the kitchen, but in their crates, in the van, or in their crates in the van. They normally have the run of the back yard for potty breaks. Just before a trip, they get some of the potty breaks on leash, and get rewarded for speedier output. After standing in bitter cold with one of “those” females who thinks they can only potty in their yard in their special place while no one is looking, I will never again underestimate the value of teaching a dog to go on command.

Julia will spend a week or two on a show training “refresher course” before Axe’s first time back in the ring. And I have these last two weeks to make sure he’s learned all of the AKC Rally Novice exercises well enough to get through any trials that might be available at the shows he is going to.

Even with the relatively short list of things to do, this will probably still turn out to be a busy couple of weeks!

(NaBloPoMo | October ’09: 11 of 31 | 75% Challenge: 233 of 274)

Here we are at the end of NaBloPoMo for July 2009. I didn’t write much on the month’s theme of “routine” although the struggle to establish an effective routine is an ongoing concern.

At the beginning of the month, I had hoped to establish some better routines for blogging, dog training and computer maintenance. I think I succeeded in one area only, that of computer maintenance, and particularly if success is equal to having current backups of everything important.

NaBloPoMo has gotten me into the habit of writing daily, but unfortunately I’m having difficulty shifting my writing time from extremely late night to early evening. Early morning was considered and rejected as a good time to write. One must be awake and alert to write. That is not me in the morning.

The dog training routine is now high priority. Freya and Axel both need to be ready for rally obedience trials in October or November. I’ll be training very few totally new exercises to either dog, so the challenge is to keep them (and myself!) from getting bored and sloppy.

(NaBloPoMo | July ’09: 31 of 31 | 75% Challenge: 188 of 274)

Something for people: Fried Rice

I am of Japanese ancestry, so there is always rice here. I used to make fried rice from leftovers quite often, especially during my younger and leaner years. The ingredients change depending upon what leftovers are available. The only constants are rice, egg, and soy sauce. The rice absolutely has to be leftover cold rice. If you are making a new pot of rice just for frying, sorry. You are not having fried rice until tomorrow! Freshly cooked rice is too moist and sticky to fry.

I had a taste for fried rice the other day. There were some shredded carrots left over from a pasta salad, some green onion stalks left over from Korean short ribs made earlier in the week, and some of those Korean short ribs. Perfect. The shredded carrots were a bit longer than I prefer, so I took a large handful and chopped them up a little more. I chopped up one green onion stalk, using both green and white portions. Then I chopped up the short rib meat. I didn’t use very much meat, maybe 1/4-1/3 cup. This all went into a frying pan to cook until the carrots and onions were soft and everything was hot. Short rib meat has enough grease, but if I’d used a leaner meat, I would have added a tiny bit of oil to the pan. Then the rice went in (I had about 2 cups) and everything stirred around until the rice was warm and the meat and vegetables were distributed evenly throughout. One raw beaten egg and some soy sauce to taste went in next, and stirred and tossed until the egg was cooked. If I had oyster sauce, I would have used some of that instead.

Yum

Something for dogs: Training Treats

The short ribs were a little too greasy to use for this, but any leaner leftover beef will work just fine. Cut it into small dice, spread them out on a paper plate, cover with waxed paper and microwave for 1-2 minutes, until they are somewhat dried out. Allow to cool completely before storing. They will last a few days in the refrigerator and a very long time in the freezer. I put just enough for a training class into each zip-lock baggie so I can just grab a baggie out of the freezer before heading to class. The treats thaw out on the way, and my dogs seem to consider them a high-value reward.

(NaBloPoMo | June ‘09: 15 of 30 | 75% Challenge: 142 of 274)

Saturday is obedience class day for the lovely Freya. I consider group training classes a lifelong activity for my dogs, and I’m always happy to find those classes, clubs and instructors that can make those classes a good experience for both me and my dogs.

We like our current class very much. It is an intermediate/advanced class, which means some of the dogs are fresh out of beginner class, some are more experienced and some are working on off-lead or competition. Class size is small: 10 dogs when everyone is there. We use mostly positive training with food and praise, but correction collars and corrections are not forbidden. After owning six rather stubborn Rottweilers, I no longer believe that all dogs can be trained solely with pure positive methods. If you do, that is fine, and we will just have to agree to disagree.

What I really like about our instructor is that he is able to help reactive and unruly dogs work in class, without undermining the experience for the other dogs. The hall is large enough to provide enough space for dogs to work at a comfortable distance. Over the past few weeks, an extremely reactive dog has gone from working outside the group at one edge of the training room, slowly moving closer to the group, to being able to work with the group for at least half the class period now. Freya is reactive herself to small hyper dogs, so this has also been a good opportunity to get help in teaching her to work through what to her is a huge distraction. This has been so much better for me than having to rely on random public encounters where I have no control over the skill or intelligence of the other dog and its handler.

I need to set up some specific training goals for Freya, and make them more real by picking out some actual trial dates to shoot for. She is a pretty smart dog whose lack of working titles is due mostly to my own procrastination and somewhat weak dog training skills when it comes to competitive obedience.

I am so glad there is such a thing as Rally Obedience now. When our first Rottweiler Heidi came to live with us in 1994, the sport did not exist. All of our Rottweilers go through obedience classes, and we actually did trial with Heidi and her little brother Oscar, but never did title them. Traditional obedience competition demands a lot of precision, which is something I am terrible at. Rally Obedience requires the same routines and exercises as traditional obedience, but it is more relaxed for both dog and handler. This I can probably do, so this is what I will work towards.

My real dog sport love is Schutzhund, but I don’t know if I will ever get back to it. It requires even more commitment in training time and practice time than many other dog sports. Since it involves a protection component, you really cannot do this without a club with an experienced and safe helper. With the current legal climate for all dog owners, there is a particular responsibility for dog owners participating in protection sports and unfortunately, that is not something that can be ignored these days.

Did I not mention Axel yet? No, apparently I did not. I am still deciding on what his activities should be while he is taking a break from conformation showing. We were doing private lessons before he left in December, and I’m not opposed to continuing those, but I also feel he needs to get back into group classes so he remains accustomed to seeing dogs of different breeds on a regular basis. I won’t even think about working titles for him until after he completes his championship.