Rottweilers Ate My Laptop

Rottweilers. Computers. Cameras. World Domination. Not necessarily in that order.

Rottweilers.
Computers. Cameras.
World Domination.
Not necessarily in that order.

How did they know?

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Somehow the folks at Copyblogger knew exactly what was going to be in my head tonight when they published “The Most Horrible Blog Post Ever” today.

And I will take the advice to just go ahead and write something anyway.

I’ll still have at least one thing from today to push off into tomorrow, as I am just not getting a look that I’m satisfied with for the photo web page I mentioned yesterday. The other website update is finished, and while I didn’t make a large dent in the photo and movie archiving, I did make at least a little headway on the photo archiving.

I didn’t use my practice rally courses this evening. I wasn’t sure if the rain was going to come back (so of course it did not) and didn’t want to set up the signs if it was going to rain again. I did practice several exercises with each dog, though. Our fronts and finishes are very sloppy. I should have taken more time to teach accuracy from the get-go. Lesson learned, or perhaps that should be lesson forgotten from the days of the original Rottweiler wrecking crew!

I’m not sure yet what to plan for tomorrow, other than hoping my muse comes back and helps me to finish that photo web page. Dog training is a given, even if it turns out to be just 10 or 15 minutes for each dog. There are some new class sessions starting up in August, so I will put it on my list for this week to get the start dates and get us enrolled in one.

(NaBloPoMo | August ’09: 3 of 31 | 75% Challenge: 191 of 274)

Weekend procrastination with a very small side of accomplishment

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Weekends are made for procrastination. Or maybe that is just me. I’m definitely pushing a few things off until tomorrow that I had hoped to complete today, including two website updates (one very minor with a few additions to an event listing page, and one a little more involved with a number of photos to resize and crop) and getting some movies and photos transferred to DVDs and CDs.

The dogs didn’t get as much training as they should have today. It was a nice day and we should have taken advantage of the lack of rain, which I think is supposed to be back tomorrow. Axel should also try harder not to injure me. Very minor, mostly my stupidity and my fault, but still, ouch.

I spent some time tonight making some rally obedience practice mini-courses that will fit in the back yard and work for both AKC and UKC. Through the rally obedience Yahoo! Group that I joined recently, I found an extremely cool freeware course designer written in Microsoft Excel. It requires Excel 2002 or later. It is working fine so far on my setup with Microsoft Excel 2007 and Windows Vista Home Premium.

If the rain holds off, or avoids my sector entirely, those practice courses will be what’s on tap for tomorrow!

(NaBloPoMo | August ’09: 2 of 31 | 75% Challenge: 190 of 274)

Things I want to talk about

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I’m running on empty for no apparent reason, so I’m just going to make a few notes about some topics I want to talk about, before I forget about them entirely.

  • I got my invite for Google Voice last week. I did set it up, but haven’t had a chance to play around with it much, nor have I tried to set up its BlackBerry client. I’m sure at least a couple of you out there might like to hear about it!
  • I wrote a little bit about WordPress for BlackBerry when it first came out, but I should probably do a more complete review. There have been six updates since then, over the space of less than a month, so the developers really are working hard on bug fixes and enhancements.
  • As you all know, Freya is working on her rally obedience titles. When Axel goes back out with Julia this fall, he will also be working on rally obedience titles along with his AKC championship. That is, if I make sure he knows all of the Novice stations before he leaves. With about two and half months to go, we should definitely be able to do that, and get some training posts out of it, too!

(NaBloPoMo | July ’09: 30 of 31 | 75% Challenge: 187 of 274)

More of the story: Freya’s Rally-O trial

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I gave you the short version on Saturday. Now here’s more of the story of our first attempt at rally obedience, and a happy photo with UKC judge Patti Burgess (thanks to Tracy and Sharon for the photo):

This UKC Rally Obedience trial was held by Flying Paws Dog Training Club at Northwest Obedience Club‘s training hall in Cary, IL. This was an air-conditioned building with one amply-sized room set up as a crating area, and another with the trial ring.

I was running late, but my wonderful friends saved space for Freya in the crating area. There was a pretty large RO1 entry, so I still got there just in time to do the course walk-through before judging started. A printed copy of the course was also given to each competitor (which I understand is not always the case).

Freya was shown a few times in German-style conformation, and she also has her Canine Good Citizen and ATTS TT certifications. Obedience training has been a life-long activity for all of our dogs. But this was Freya’s first time at any performance-type trial, and my first time back in a trial ring in around 10 years.

It’s bad form to publicly post a course layout without prior permission, which I totally spaced on asking for, so obviously I won’t be posting it. But I will comment on a few things about our run:

  • Remember I mentioned that two of the exercises at the novice level in UKC Rally did not exist in AKC Rally, which is the version we had started training for? It is a good thing we made a point of training them, because both were included in the course!
  • After all of these years, I still don’t know my right from my left! I took us into “Spiral Right, Dog Outside” the wrong way. I actually was thinking “right” but to the right of the cones, which of course, put Freya on the inside. Fortunately, I realized my error after a few steps, asked to re-try and got it right. One repeat of an exercise means you can still qualify. Two repeats means you do not qualify.
  • Our other point deductions were also totally my fault, not Freya’s. They were all for having a tight leash. Freya was not totally with me on the first few stations, so I tightened up on the leash. If I had loosened up on the leash once she was back with me, or better yet, given her additional hand signals, more verbal encouragement or an additional command, we would have retained a few more points. Given my extreme nervous state, I am still happy to have ended up qualifying and placing with 91 points.
  • Most of the obedience training that I’ve done with Freya and past dogs has been for Schutzhund or traditional obedience rather than rally, and that both helped and hurt us. Freya already has a fairly good Stand thanks to the show ring and traditional obedience classes, so we were ready for the Halt Stand that was our fifth station on this course. But in the more traditional venues, you cannot use additional commands or signals other than the initial command. It definitely hurt us that I didn’t use those additional commands and signals. It has actually been difficult for me to get accustomed to being able to talk and move more, and I need to work on giving us every possible advantage. If we do compete in traditional obedience down the road, I’ll worry about phasing out the additional chatter then.
  • I had an extremely bad moment a few days before the trial when Freya would not do a finish to my left when given the command and signal that she’s supposedly known for at least a year. I taught her a new signal which used massive body English and both hands, and is surely illegal in any venue outside of rally obedience. Thankfully, it worked, because the only finish on the course was a left finish. Now that the trial is over, she once again understands the original command. Go figure.

And of course, a big factor was the moral support and advice from Sharon, Tracy, and Melanie. Thanks, you all kept my head from exploding!

I am making plans for a trial weekend in mid-November (there are not that many UKC trials in this area). There is another trial in October, but I haven’t found out yet if it is part of a breed (non-Rottweiler) specialty or if is is an all-breed event. I don’t know how far we will be able to go, but I do know that at a minimum, I want to finish this RO1 with Freya. I’ll keep you all informed on the journey.

(NaBloPoMo | July ’09: 27 of 31 | 75% Challenge: 184 of 274)

First Rally-O leg for Freya!

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Freya now has the first leg of her UKC Rally Obedience 1 title! She had a score of 91 (out of a possible 100 points) which was also good enough for third place in a very small Novice A group. I will freely admit that pretty much all of the points deducted were because of my screw-ups, not hers. I did tell you that I was the stupid half of our team, didn’t I?

Thanks to Sharon, Tracy, and Melanie, who all supplied moral support and good advice (unfortunately my paralyzed brain didn’t retain much of the advice) which really helped get me through my first trip back into any performance competition venue in almost 10 years!

More details tomorrow or Monday, and hopefully another photo, too.

(NaBloPoMo | July ’09: 25 of 31 | 75% Challenge: 182 of 274)