a busy weekend for a young dog

I have a post planned in my head, but I need to pull photos off my home computer to do it and I haven't powered it on since the thunderstorms last week.  Hopefully tonight I'll get around to doing that, as I do have bills to pay and that's something that can't wait any longer!  We've had a busy few days, especially for the young dog, so there's plenty to post about today even without the planned post-to-be.

Last week I decided to be brave and try taking both of the merles out for my short run together.  I'm using the CanaCross belt, harnesses, and leash that Chris ordered to use for his runs, and they work really well together (although the belt is a bit big for me).  The dogs were nicely responsive, even when a couple of dudebros were ignoring their little yipdogs who raced out into the road after us, and I didn't fall, so I count this as a win.  We did about a mile and a half according to Runkeeper, which is enough for Martok at this age but not nearly enough for Ezri, so she was annoyed.

Martok also got his first sessions with the Manners Minder, which is basically a remote control treat-dispensing robot.  He wasn't scared of it at all, unlike la princessa who still thinks it's evil incarnate, and he was sold when he realized it dispensed treats.  Martok stayed quietly on his bed (or next to it, he's kind of flaily like that) for well over an hour while we played board games with friends, rewarded every couple of minutes with a treat.  It's such a great training tool!

On Saturday we joined our friends from the Jet City Jumpers to do demos at the Riverdog festival in Issaquah, and we had a great time...once we got there.  While traveling down 405 on our way there, one of the back tires on the truck blew out entirely!  I safely got us to the side of the road, and we were all set to change the tire but the wheel refused to come off - which according to the internet, is a common problem and just needs a sledgehammer to knock it loose.  Seeing as we don't keep one of those in the truck routinely, we had to wait until AAA showed up an hour later - two taps of his sledgehammer and the wheel was off and we were ready to go just moments later.

The demo was a lot of fun, although the grass was damp for the first session so only the older/slower dogs were able to race safely.  Jadzia was happy to fill that role, and Ezri ran in the second session after the grass had dried out a bit.  Our friend Paul got a great shot of her leaping into the box, I just love the concentration on her face!  Martok did training as well, including single-jump recalls on the grass without gates, and over/back training with the jump board and touchstick.  And to wrap up the event, both Ezri and Martok tested for and passed their Canine Good Citizen tests, which will add the CGC title to their names as soon as I send in the paperwork.  First title at six months - not bad for a little border collie boy!

Sunday morning brought flyball practice, of course, where Martok did very well with his training and we'll be adding more to his plate next week.  After practice was over, Gallia and I headed out together to take the ferry to Vashon to go to the herding trial. This trip involved a lot of new things for the puppies, including their first time on a boat!

Martok was a little unsure, but did pretty well and was happy to walk around outside on the deck and up and down the stairs inside.  I think he liked the breeze from the movement of the boat over the water.  And of course, a game of tug with the brother makes it all better - Gallia got this great picture of them playing!

We had a good time watching the herding at the trial, and we stayed for about three hours and enjoyed the event, luckily without getting rained on.  The boys at first were way more interested in playing and romping with each other (much to the other attendees' amusement), but eventually they both caught on that there was something else going on in the field, and then there were lots of pictures like this as they watched intently.

Both puppies did very well, and got to meet a sheep up close as well as see a horse, so it was a big day of firsts for them both!  They were passed out in the car on the way home, and were both tired the remainder of the evening, so it ended a great weekend in a nice calm manner.  Sadly, no such big plans this weekend, but soon there will be flyball tournaments again and lots of fun with friends we haven't seen in a while!

photos, memories, and knitting

Here at long last is a photo of the cowl that I've been working on since April.  It's been a bit of a struggle at times, as it's the first lacy thing I've made, but it's coming out well.  This photo was taken after I completed the second mesh lace panel, so I'm over halfway done and working to finish it up now.  The project has seen two sets of needles (started on Signature fixed circs, moved to Chiaogoo interchangeables and sold the Signatures), seen my first rip-back and pick-up (after I screwed up the first lace panel), and three flyball tournaments so far.  I really love it, and I can't wait until it's finished.

At the tournament last weekend, I got to pick up Martok's new crate tag, which is made by the same awesome person who made the other three a couple of years ago.  I decided to leave Curzon's tag on the crate and just add Martok's below it, as I'm not ready to take it down and I kind of like leaving it there as a legacy.  Martok looks so tiny in that crate...

This week I also was able to pick up our finished prints and digital images from Artis, from the photo shoot we did two days after Martok came home and nine days before we lost Curzon.  The new banner bar is the dog family shot from that session, and the one below is my favorite one of me and Curzon - I just adore how his ear is flipped up against my face.

It's also pretty amazing just how many changes Martok has gone through in the eight weeks since the photos were taken - of course I know he's grown, but the changes are so subtle it takes photos to recognize them.  Here he is last night (his sixteen-week birthday), next to one of the prints from our photo session (age 8 weeks four days) - such a difference!

Monday was also Martok's last day of puppy class, which of course he passed with flying colors.  Chris took a great shot of him with his blanket and graduation certificate - the first of many to come, I'm sure!

One of my teammates posted some photos from our after-racing hangout/BBQ at the tournament three weeks ago, including this shot of Ezri snuggling with me in my awesome camp chair.  She earned that relaxation after running a bunch of 3.9's that day!  The pattern has continued, with her running a 3.905 on Saturday last weekend in the first heat of the day and then running a 3.950 in the last heat of the day on Sunday.  Overall I think she had more sub-4 heats than not, and I'm pretty excited and happy about that!

I'm still working on finishing up the photo book for Curzon, and I've made it through 2011 in our collection of digital photos, so I'm nearly done.  I found a bunch from that year that I want to include, so I may end up adding more photo pages before I call it good.  Meanwhile, this is one of my favorite photos - taken at Lake Whatcom in 2009, where we spent our summer shutdown week at the cabin owned by my best friend's in-laws.  It was a great week.

Oh, how I miss my handsome brave boyo. It's starting to be less of a constant hole, but random moments still catch me off guard whether I expect them to (picking up the photos) or not (the way Martok curled up in my lap last night).  I'm wearing my locket every day, tucked under my shirt next to my heart, and I do take comfort in that as well as in all three of our dogs.  I'm trying to focus more on gratitude for what I have now, what we had with Curzon, and the gifts and memories and lessons that he gave to us with all of his heart.  It's a process, that's for sure, but I wouldn't have it any other way.  He deserves the best of everything I have to give him, even now that he's gone.

herding lesson one: sheep are toys!

On Sunday, I took Ezri and went along with Ben and Deb to join them for sheep herding lessons with Diane in Carnation. She's the one who bred Epic, and they've been taking Indigo there for quite a while now both before and after Deb's stint in Boston. I've done HIC tests with Jadzia and Curzon before, and they have both had a chunk of herding instruction with someone else, but this was to be Ezri's first time seeing sheep.

The first thing that happened when we got there is that Indigo and Ezri were tied up while Ben and Epic worked sheep in a big field, and Diane introduced me to herding in a small pen using her oldest bitch Tessa (who is Epic's dam). Ezri was not so pleased about this, especially with the size of the chain as compared to her! After all, princesses do not get chained to a fence in cold weather with frost on the ground, the very idea is abhorrent!

Shortly after she was tied up, however, she was provided with a new distraction as the large male turkey living in the pen behind the fence was very interested in her. Ezri was really unsure what to make of this particular creature, especially with his strange noises and being about three times her size!! She soon decided that he wasn't a threat, and commenced ignoring him and whining at Deb and I for not playing with her or otherwise paying attention to her. My time in the pen with Tessa was instructive and quite helpful, as the concept of a space bubble as well as the positioning needed for "come bye" and "away" are much better experienced than simply explained. And as with flyball, it seems that having an inexperienced handler work with an experienced dog to start can be quite helpful!

Ezri's first session in the pen started off quietly, as she was more interested in the sheep droppings than in the sheep themselves. The sheep, however, knew that she was a Sheep Dog even if she didn't realize it yet, and were avoiding her with the same alacrity that they had evaded Tessa earlier. Diane encouraged me to grab a sheep's back leg and play tug with it to get Ezri to realize that she could interact with them - and I saw the light bulb go off in her head when she realized that sheep were toys! Ezri then got to spend another few moments getting excited, barking at the sheep, and chasing them a bit before her first session was over, and she was back to being tied up while Indigo and Epic took turns again. As this photos shows, she was not happy to be pulled out of the pen and away from her newly-discovered interactive toys!

Our second session was spent with Ezri on a long line, learning to walk quietly near the sheep and go into a down when she got close to them. As she was still very excited - and still quite young, at not quite fifteen months - Ezri tried to lunge for the sheep almost every time. Diane had me be more forceful in my commands, and use a flag as a correction, which Ezri responded to very well, and by the end of this session we had one walk-down sequence that did not involve a lunge and quick correction. The first photo, however, is definitely from one of her lunges!

Second photo: learning to listen, and respecting the flag.

And final photo: a hint of the sheepdog that Ezri may become one day!


I really enjoyed our lesson time, and Diane is exactly the sort of knowledgeable, no-nonsense instructor that I prefer to learn from. With a lot of training and practice, Ezri will probably be a good sheep herding dog, should I wish to take her that far. I definitely enjoyed exploring a different aspect of border collie handling, and I want to continue that to some extent with Ezri, as well as Jadzia and Curzon. However, while I might trial in Novice once or twice for fun, I'm pretty sure I'm not interested in going to high levels of competition, and at least for now I'm definitely not interested in herding in the cold, wet, and messy Northwest winter months. Assuming there is space available, I'd like to take Ezri (and possibly the other two) herding once or twice more this fall, then pick it up again for fun next spring.

But for now, Ezri passed her herding instinct test with flying colors, and has justifiably earned her new title of HIC. Congratulations, Ignited's Ezri Dax FDCh HIC.

pack resettling progress

So as I posted a while back, our dog pack has been reorganizing itself with the advent of Ezri's adulthood. Phoebe decided to take the opportunity to attempt to move up in the pack order, or at least to force the border collies to acknowledge her. This led to multiple spats where Phoebe would attack Jadzia, Jadzia would defend herself, and sometimes Ezri would also jump in to defend Jadzia. What a mess!

Curzon is a smart boy and has been staying out of the girl fights raging around him.

Originally we were separating the dogs and punishing Phoebe, but that was not solving the problem on a long-term basis. So about two weeks ago, I decided to take the "supervise and wait" approach where I would simply watch the fight occur, keep Ezri out of the fray, and not interfere unless someone was seriously injured. In one day Phoebe initiated two fights and Jadzia decisively won them, bringing a measure of peace to the house with only two injuries to Phoebe and none to Jadzia. Since then we have only had one fight in the house, which was shorter than the previous ones and which Jadzia also decisively won. Phoebe has been much better behaved as a result, typically hanging out quietly on a dog bed or playing when we're active and able to play with the dogs.

Unfortunately, we are still having problems when we are at flyball. At the Gig Harbor demo two weeks ago, I was running Jadzia while a friend was running Phoebe, and Phoebe got pissy over this and decided to attack Jadzia in the ring. I couldn't let them fight it out in public, so Phoebe was removed from the situation and I alternated who ran for the rest of the day. This past weekend at practice, Phoebe would not run if Jadzia was nearby - not in the same lane, and not in the lane next to her. Jadzia will run but will blow jumps to give Phoebe a wide berth when she returns, probably afraid of another attack. So for the moment at least, Jadzia won't run around Phoebe for fear that she'll attack her, and Phoebe won't run around Jadzia for fear that she'll finish the fight.

Again, what a mess!

This will hopefully be resolved soon, as they both ran perfectly when not around the other dog. I'm hoping to run them in a full group this weekend to see if they are OK running on the same team as long as they're not passing each other. They're not only on different teams for the Auburn tourney, but in different divisions, so they should not be running against each other at all. Our next tournament is in December, however, and chances are good that they will wind up on the same team, so we're going to have to settle the problem sooner or later.

time flies when you're having fun

It's already July, and it's now less than a week until Ezri's first birthday marks her eligibility to compete in flyball tournaments. The past month of practice has been spent refining and solidifying her flyball talents and abilities, and I'm pretty confident that she's going to be debuting with flying colors on the 17th. I'm able to cross-pass her with most dogs in the club, I can swap lanes without doing a new holdback, she will run in any position, and she's not mouthy at the rest of the team but is instead deadly serious like Jadzia. She's no longer having issues with dropping her ball, and comes flying back to her tug like it's the best thing in the world.

And last Sunday we timed her at 4.36.

This weekend will be the last tournament Ezri does not compete in, (Muddy Paws are hosting in Salem, OR) and she will debut in competition pairs and singles on Friday, July 17th and in NAFA team competition on Saturday, July 18th (RF Revolution hosting in Truckee, CA). Ezri will run with her big sister Indigo in pairs competition under the team name "Ignition Sequence," both at the fun runs in Truckee and in UFLI competition at the end of August. For Truckee, I seeded them at a time of 8.4, but that may be too slow - if Indigo runs a 3.8 and Ezri runs a 4.3, that's an 8.1, and if Ezri speeds up in competition they are easily capable of breaking 8.0 together. It will be quite exciting to see how it goes!

Last week was my company's summer shutdown, and I spent two days at Lake Whatcom with Christy and Jason in the house that his parents use as a rental most of the year. I had dogs in the lake within 3 minutes of arrival - Curzon and Jadzia remembered it from our 2007 visit, and Ezri needed only one push to commence with flinging herself off the dock in pursuit of a ball. Phoebe of course is not fond of swimming and really not fond of jumping off of a dock, so we played "Terrier Bowling: Dock Dogs Edition" where she was gently pitched off the dock after a ball was thrown for her to go get. Ezri got to go on her first hike as well, as we did a short trail at the foot of Mt. Baker, and learned the "rules" of hiking from Curzon quite well along the way. Finally, we had a speedboat ride with Jason's dad, and Ezri thought that was incredibly awesome to the point of simply pointing her nose forward into the wind as far as I would let her lean. There are indeed pictures and video, but I don't have them accessible right now for posting, so hopefully I will get those up soon.

Work, flyball, and Warcraft keeps us busy in a smoothly rotating schedule. Our 25-man raiding team in WoW is working on the final boss in Ulduar (Yogg-Saron) and beginning to try the hard-modes on other bosses. Work is going pretty smoothly, with my new project behaving well so far, and Chris' job is busy and stable as well. We are looking forward to the remainder of our summer, with three tournaments straight to finish off July, a visit from friends in August, a trip to Blizzcon in Anaheim, and a UFLI tournament to round off August. PAX is the first weekend in September, and my brother-in-law's wedding is the third weekend in Ohio. It will be busy, but I am looking forward to all of it!

the pack is reorganizing

Over the past few weeks, Phoebe has been increasingly pissy, and has been specifically picking fights with Jadzia. That combined with my annoyance over her issues with the cats impelled me to find a trainer who specializes in terriers, to hopefully get some insight into her behavior and some tools to work with her. I intrinsically get border collies, at least the ones that I have spend signficant time with, but this little terrier is much more difficult for me to understand.

Jennifer Schneider of Pick of the Litter Training is a terrier specialist, with several of her own, and so I had her come up to our house on Wednesday to assess what's going on with my pack. Her observations were quite illuminating, and helped point out some things that were not obvious to Chris and I as we are part of the family and not easily able to see everything objectively. There are a few things going on, which will all need some work to improve.

1. Phoebe is not part of the pack - the three borders are their own pack, but Phoebe just sort of orbits around it without actually being part of it. This could be due to any number of reasons, including that she's the only non-border and that she had a rough few years of being moved around with a lot of instability in her life. Now that Ezri is approaching eleven months and is becoming a young adult, the dynamics of the border collie pack are shifting and Phoebe is seeing this as an opportunity to find a place for herself, by force if need be.

2. My attention is the most important resource for the pack right now, even above food and toys. Most negative interactions between Jadzia and Phoebe come from Phoebe being annoyed that I am giving Jadzia attention, when it is attention she wants for herself. This is visible to a lesser extent when I give attention to Ezri or Curzon, and when Chris gives attention to Jadzia. The solution here will be to simply ignore them all when there is a disagreement over who I am paying attention to, i.e. removing the resource that they are fighting over and leaving them to deal with each other.

3. Phoebe is generally unsure of her status, and gives off lots of calming signals because she knows that Chris and I are usually annoyed at her. Interestingly, Jadzia gives off withdrawal signals to Phoebe, not calming ones, which is another facet of the issues between them. The best way to deal with this would be to do an activity with just Phoebe, such as rally-o or even just an obedience class.

4. As far as Phoebe is concerned, the cats live in "CatLand" that may or may not be attached to her house, and they are sometimes there but not always. This is why we could make progress for a while with getting her to leave them alone, but then have a spectacular backslide where she would try to go after them. Desensitization will be key here, so that Phoebe learns that the cats live in the house, they are always here, and they don't do anything that terribly interesting. We will do this by putting up stacked baby gates in the basement doorway, so that Phoebe and the cats can see each other without danger of getting to each other physically. This will also allow Phoebe to observe them without being restrained, which is not something that terriers like or handle particularly well.

I'm going to look into rally-o classes in Woodinville, and also to buy a second baby gate so we can implement the cat plan as well. Hopefully this will assist Phoebe into integrating better into our house and becoming a calmer member of the family...or, at least as well-adjusted and calm as a terrier can be!

nine months and ready to rumble

Well, Ezri isn't technically nine months old until Wednesday, but she's close enough that I'm not going bother counting the days. Last night at flyball practice I started her off easy with some on-off exercises on the box, in order to get her head back in the game from her brain farts at the tournament last weekend. Once we had those back down, we progressed back to loading the ball, then finally up to full runs. She ran in start or solo for her runs last night, due to what we were working on with other dogs, and next week I'll be sure to put her in 2nd or 3rd to give her more practice with passing.

Everything looks really good right now, and she's channeling her older sister Indigo with her current pushing of the limits of when she can drop her ball. She's holding it until right at the line when running with a group, but solo she was trying to drop it as early as jump six. While running solo I made her go back and get it every time before she got her tug reward, and I think I'll add some more retrieval-to-tug work at home to help reinforce that. Indy grew out of it with some work by Deb, and I'm sure Ezri will do the same.

Now, for videos! First up is a full scan of her running in the close lane, with her brother Curzon running against her in the far lane. Her stride is looking pretty good and heaven knows she's got truckloads of drive for both the ball and her tug!

The second video is of her boxturn taken from the side where she turns, and it looks really nice. The camera isn't good enough to truly capture all of the detail, but in the frame-by-frame I can verify that her right front foot does not move until she leaps off the box, and those back feet look pretty planted until she leaps off as well. This is excellent, as foot-moving is difficult to fix.

We timed her last heat of the night, which was the sixth heat straight and at the end of practice, and she still ran a 4.58. I'm guessing she's running in the 4.4-4.5 range when fresh now, as she did beat Curzon on one head-to-head race earlier in the evening. Pretty good for nine months of age! Now to just refine her technique and keep her motivated until she can race for real in late July.

And to close, here is a disgustingly cute picture of Curzon and Ezri being tired and snuggly Saturday night at the hotel in Cloverdale a week ago.

teaching puppies to swim

This past weekend we went up to Langley BC to have a flyball training retreat weekend at the Run Free Canine Centre that is owned by our friends Karl and Jenny from the Run Free flyball club. In addition to the covered flyball arena, they also have a covered 4' deep pool for swimming the dogs, complete with a current generator for resistance swim training. The setup is very clever, with clear plastic greenhouses enclosing both the flyball arena and the pool, leaving them both able to be used despite the winter weather. My only complaint is that it is awfully cold in there if it's not sunny outside, but I think Karl is planning to put in a few space heaters in the future, or it would be trivial to bring some of our own.

I took the dogs swimming three times, twice on Saturday and once on Sunday, with Chris' job being to trade me dogs every 10 minutes or so. My big goal for the weekend was to teach Ezri to swim (and enjoy it), and I think that I managed to accomplish that. Along with the help of Chris (the swimming instructor), we wrangled Ezri into the pool for the first time and just walked her around a bit to get her used to the sensation, then Chris sent her to swim to me over larger and larger distances until she swam the length of the pool without hesitation. We soon moved on to fetch with a tennis ball in the pool, and Ezri was happily bringing the ball back, spitting it out, and turning to swim back for another go without any commands. She's still not a big fan of getting -in- to the pool, but that will come with time, and she'll have way more practice this summer when it's warm enough to swim at the park or at the lake. Jadzia, Curzon, and Phoebe all got turns in the pool with me as well, with the girls both happily playing swim-fetch with me without getting out of the pool. Curzon insists on getting out of the pool after fetching his ball, however, and only swam for a longer period when we put him on a leash to make him swim laps rather than run out of the pool with the ramp. I tried using the resistance current with both Curzon and Phoebe, and that worked great for Phoebe but Curzon quickly gave up figuring it was way too much effort for just a tennis ball.

Ben also brought in baby Teal for a few swim sessions, and although she was pretty much terrified she was a great little swimmer and was almost able to pull herself out over the edge of the pool. She's too young yet to have the deeply ingrained ball drive that my older dogs do, so I mainly just let her swim from one side of the pool to the other before picking her back up to repeat it. At least at just 9 weeks and 10 pounds or so she was easier to move in/out of the pool than Ezri was!

Of course, the one downside of swimming with the dogs is that they have strong legs with sharp toenails, so I have a wide variety of bruises, scratches, and welts across my arms, legs, and hips. Next time I think I'm wearing a wetsuit to at least protect me from the scratches, even though there's not much to be done about the bruises!

The flyball parts of the weekend were also really helpful, and I think Jeff did a good job with arranging drills and doing some timing and video work that we don't get the time to do at a normal practice. Boxturns for all dogs were videotaped and we watched them on Saturday around lunchtime, so that we could better determine what work each dog needed. I'm happy to say that all four of my dogs have firmly fixed feet on the box, i.e. they're not repositioning at all between landing and launching, which was a worry I had especially with little Ezri. Jadzia's turn looks very clean, Phoebe is fine, and Ezri has got one fast snap off the box. Curzon is still having issues catching the ball, which are due to a combination of him smashing his nose into the box and not opening his mouth far enough to catch the ball entirely. The girls all got some box-aid turn work, with Ezri getting extra attention with the snap on - snap off drill, and Curzon practiced catching/grabbing the ball with an entire bucket full of them.

We also did plenty of full runs, and after an initial confusing try Ezri had no problems running as part of a team for the first time. She had a perfect pass with Phoebe, and didn't give Tango a second look when passed wide by her, so that is looking promising for introducing her to full team runs. And as long as I hold up her tug, she holds her ball, which is a bit of a problem with Indigo right now so I'm trying to be very careful to not let Ezri develop the same issue. One of the last exercises we did before leaving on Sunday was to set up the "SuperJump" course with 8 jumps in a row, to assist dogs in firming up their footing and timing for going over the jumps. Jadzia, Curzon, and Phoebe had no issues with this, having done it before, but I asked a bit much of Ezri the first time by putting her in front of all 8 jumps. After several tries with her including chase with Curzon and blockers, all unsuccessful, I gave her a break to run Jadzia while we figured out what to do. We brought her back up, started her at 3 jumps, and then increased one at a time until she did all 8 with flying colors. She's almost singlestepping all of them, and I'm sure she'll be moving right into that as her body finishes growing and strengthening.

We did a lot of work this weekend, but it was spaced out as we only had two lanes and also had the pool to use, so Ezri was not overworked. I would have loved to have done more boxwork with her, but realistically she's doing great and still has six months before her debut so no need to even remotely threaten her development with more of that. All four dogs were tired and slept most of the evening after we returned home, only moving when one of us changed rooms. Even Phoebe slept all evening and didn't even blink at the cats meowing for dinner downstairs! Now, if I could only get that sort of exhaustion every weekend.....

puppy girl keeps on growing

I took this photo of Ezri this morning right before I went to work, and it's now the wallpaper on my phone. Her ears are utterly perfect this morning, and I wanted to immortalize that should they change again!

On Wednesday Ezri weighed in at 26.0 lbs, gaining just 1.2 lbs in the past three weeks. She seems to be stabilizing pretty nicely at her current size, and while she is skinny as a rail her height doesn't seem to be changing much. Last Sunday I asked Jeff to help me measure her with our practice NAFA wicket, and she came in right at the line of 18", which is the same height as Jadzia. That seems off somehow, she doesn't seem like she's as tall as Jadzia, but maybe the 10-lb weight difference is enough to skew my perceptions! We increased Ezri's food up to 9oz per meal as of last night, matching what Curzon gets and now a full 3oz more than what Jadzia gets. She's skinny enough and active enough to use it all, though, and I'm watching her like a hawk so we don't have a repeat of Jadzia's current FatDog status.

Speaking of Jadzia the FatDog, she weighed in at 35.8 lbs on Wednesday, down from 36.6 lbs on December 30th. Her thyroid levels were tested and her T3 is measuring normal, although I don't have the exact number. Hopefully the final cut in her food and the support with Thyroid Guard over the last two months is enough to drop that weight off her, as I really want her back down to at least 32 lbs and preferably 30-31 lbs. Four pounds doesn't seem like much, but when you are only supposed to be 32 lbs that's a whole 12.5% of your total body weight, which is like a standard 150 lb adult human gaining 18 lbs!

Ezri's flyball training moved up a notch last weekend, as Jeff and I transitioned her over to a regular course with 6" jumps and a real box with a training platform on it (to minimize movement when activated). The jumps gave her no trouble at all, which is unsurprising given the height she's been jumping over the 3" jumps - one photo I have shows her clearing a good 10" or so! The real box was a little more trouble, however, as it's smaller than the training platform and the ball position is a little different. We're working on her on-off technique and that was coming back nicely by the end of practice, and with another week or two of work she will probably be back to taking her ball and doing full runs. The big bonus of this is that when we go to the flyball retreat next weekend, we don't have to take a full set of puppy jumps or that big training platform!

Finally, last week I spent a half-hour and trained Ezri to do "paw" which is shake hands. She's almost got the "other paw" command as well - I love having smart dogs! Now if we can just get "Come" solidified into her spazzy little brain, we'd be all set.....

from puppy to young dog

Tomorrow Ezri will be six months old, and she's definitely made the transition from puppy to young dog. The picture to the left was taken on December 30th, as she played with Christy's puppy Edison, and it's not only a good shot physically but also captures her spirit and attitude quite nicely. She weighed in at 24.8 lbs that day, and has pretty much plateaued at her current size (height and weight) for the past few weeks. Her right ear has been down for over a month now, and her left ear alternates between up and down depending on the day.

Training-wise, Ezri is doing very nicely with learning manners, tricks, and flyball. We haven't had an accident in the house in about two weeks, and the change was almost like a light switch so I think that is tied to her maturity in some way. She's picked up so many general commands just by watching and learning as we go about our day that it's been easy - I know for sure I never specifically taught her "off," "out," or "upstairs" but she understands and responds to them all. We still need a stronger recall outside, especially if Curzon is around, but inside and at flyball she is doing well with recalls. At flyball she is nearly to single-stepping every single jump, and at practice last Sunday ran a 4.94 on the puppy course with a full single-step run. Next Sunday we will move her to a real box with a training board, so she won't be triggering the box just yet but will be modifying her high turn slightly to fit better on the actual box. I'll move her up to 6" jumps when she hits 8 months or so, although she can probably run them now with no danger I'd rather be safe and keep her on the 3" puppy jumps for a little longer.

Personality-wise, Ezri is a sweet and inquisitive little border collie who is a joy to have in the house, much like her big brother Curzon was at this age. She definitely has her opinions, especially on when she wants to be fed, but we can redirect her into toy-chewing or naps without too much effort. Her current idiosyncracy is chewing on my desk chair to get my attention - hard to just ignore that one, so I redirect her to a toy and otherwise ignore her, then a moment later give her some pets and attention as a reward for -not- chewing the chair any more. She's still definitely destructo-puppy, able to chew just about anything into pieces and often happily ingesting said pieces. Right now there are only two safe toys in the house that we don't have to supervise - a hard plastic ball with holes and a soft rubber ball inside it, and a medium-hard plastic ball. She'll shred fleece, defuzz tennis balls, and even chew pieces from Orbee toys. If she didn't eat everything she got loose, I almost wouldn't mind, but she does do so and thus we can't let her have such things unattended.

Next Saturday (January 24) Ezri's cousin Teal will come home to live with our friends Ben & Deb, who also have Ezri's sister Indigo. It will be great fun to watch the three interact when Deb and Indigo return home from Boston this June!

flyball crazy at just four months

As usual, we went to flyball practice this past Sunday evening. The last two weeks, and probably for the forseeable future, we went early to be there at 5pm in order to work with Ezri during lesson time. This week was full of interesting new things, that's for sure!

Ezri is big enough (19 lbs or so) that she can make the training board slide, whether it's on the floor or on someone's knees, so it was time to move her up to the training frame. This is a big fake box sort of thing that Ben made last year sometime for Ari and Indy, and it is basically a fixed-angle board, much larger and higher than a real box, with velcro spots on it to hold tennis balls. This lets the young ones learn how to run up on the box to get a ball without having to deal with the shock of hitting the pedal or having to catch that fast-moving ball as it's ejected out of the box. Regular training aids (jumps, barriers, etc.) can be used with it as the dogs' age and abilities allow, and for now we have Ezri using just a little piece of something in front of it to visually cue her to jump up, she's far too little for a regular jump aid of 6". So the first thing Ezri did at practice was decide she wasn't going to turn left anymore, she wanted to turn right. I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to handle this, as a left turn is faster but if the right turn is natural that's safer. We switched her over to the right after she kept turning that way anyway, and she proceeded to have a perfect turn just about every time.

Ezri did plenty of "full runs" on the puppy course consisting of 3" jumps and the fixed box-trainer, run in sets of five with at least 1o and usually 20 minutes between sets. She ran two sets for me, two sets for Chris, and one set for Julie with successful runs in every set. Next week I hope to get Jeff and Rudy to run her for some experience with additional handlers, especially since Chris is the only guy she's run for. She's doing pretty well holding her ball and going over the jumps, with a reminder holdback at the beginning, but does occasionally get too excited and drop her ball before she crosses the finish line. We're being careful to make sure she's not rewarded for that and the incidence of that particular foible lessed over the course of the evening. She has got the whole "border collie stop" down pat as she hits her tuggy toy at full speed and swings out without ever braking. Hopefully I can switch her from the TugIt with the squeaky toy to a regular fleece tug in the next few weeks, as if Ezri gets much more invovled with the tugging the trainer TugIt isn't going to last much longer.

Finally, we learned just how much Ezri loves flyball now...she climbed out of the e-pen! We were running the second set of tournament lineups, with Jadzia and Curzon both on the same team in start and cleanup, respectively. During the last heat I recalled Jadzia and looked over to see Chris drop Curzon's harness and race over to catch a flailing Ezri who had climbed up to the top of the e-pen and was about to drop out over the side onto the concrete - a four foot drop. I grabbed Curzon and ran him while Chris dealt with the puppy, and luckily nobody (and no dog!) was hurt. Ezri tried the climbing escape again a few minutes later, and Chris saw her and leaned the e-pen wall backwards so she fell off without warning (landing on the thick dog bed safely). She looked rather emotionally wounded and pathetic for the rest of the night, but didn't even try to stand up against the e-pen wall again so that's just fine with us. If need be we'll leash her to another dog when she's in the pen, like another teammate has to do with her bouncy girl border collie, but I'm hoping she has learned her lesson.

four months old in puppy world

Last Saturday was November 15th and Ezri's four-month birthday. She's thoroughly out of the infant/toddler puppy stage and is probably pushing the late child / early pre-teen stage judging by her behavior. Physically she's slimmed down a lot due to growing and has completely lost the puppy pudge she originally had, and looks more like a small dog than a baby puppy. She's got a waist already, from both side and top views, and her tail is flagging out more each day. Her nose has lengthened and her ears are fully pricked, leaving her looking so much like her sister Indigo it's a little surreal. As for coloring, her merle is darkening more thus making it much more visible, and her eyes have held steady at the light honey top / light ice blue bottoms, which is a very striking combination. All in all, Ezri is quite a pretty little girl.

Last Monday (11/10) was her last puppy kindergarten class, and she passed with no issues and is approved for Intermediate Puppy if I choose to take that option. It has been interesting to watch how she interacts with the other puppies, as she seems to be unsure what to do with them and is much more comfortable around adult dogs. If she wasn't getting enough attention in class (say while the instructor was talking), she would yip to get attention, so we spent a lot of time working on "good quiet" and "treats from heaven" for lying quietly. Command-wise, Ezri has a firm grasp of sit, wait, and spin (both directions) and is improving her down, beg, come, and bang commands as well. She still needs more work on leash to walk politely, and attention work outside especially with Curzon around to learn that she needs to pay attention to us and not to him. It's handy to know that she will follow him right back to us if we are working offleash, but that's not a crutch I want to keep for much longer - she has the habit of watching him exclusively while ignoring us, which is not good. Curzon has always watched Jadzia more than me, but he will watch me if I ask for his attention, and that's where I want to get Ezri. Of course, it is amusing to think of the border collie chain - Ezri watching Curzon watching Jadzia watching me!

As for useful behaviors around the house, Ezri has fully mastered the "sit and wait" for her dinner, so that we can have all four dogs sitting quietly and waiting for release to eat their meal. She also understands that she has to sit (and sometimes wait) before going outside, and she's now sitting and waiting quietly with the other three when I open the garage in the morning before releasing them to run out into the kennel. We can now confidently let her potty offleash in the front yard, although I wouldn't leave her completely unsupervised just yet, and she hasn't had any avoidable accidents in the house for a couple of weeks. Last Monday she did have an incident where I had let them out of their crates and gone directly to the front door (as per our morning SOP), and she just couldn't wait for me to get downstairs and peed a little in front of the door. That is a physical housebreaking issue and not a mental one, so we aren't counting that as a major problem. We are still gating the dogs close to us to cut off any avenues of sneak potty attacks, but I almost prefer doing that and may continue to do so even after Ezri is fully trained and trustworthy.

We had flyball practice for the first time in four weeks on Sunday, due to two tournaments and a scheduling conflict, so Ezri needed a little reminder to go over the jumps before she was running happily again. She needs more work on her baby boxturn on the board, so I plan to work on that a lot next Sunday and maybe borrow the board again to work at home. She definitely has the idea down of going over the jumps, getting a ball, and returning over the jumps to her tuggie toy, so that's great! I do need to have other people handle her, as she's bonded strongly to me but also needs to respond better to Chris as well as other teammates, so I think I'll work on that next week as well. Training is neverending, after all!

vet visit and behavior training

Yesterday I took both Ezri and Jadzia to the vet, with the latter tagging along to see if she could be squeezed in during my trip. I lucked out and Jackie had time to see Jadzia, saving me another trip out to Mercer Island later this week.

Ezri is sixteen weeks old today, and weighed 17.2 pounds yesterday. This is an increase of only two pounds over four weeks, but I think she has been putting most of her energy into lengthening and less into putting on weight, so that's fine. She's well under Curzon's weight at that age (about 22lbs) and just under Indigo's weight at that age (about 18lbs), which tracks out very well. She got her distemper shot yesterday, which is her last vaccine until her rabies at a year of age, and also got microchipped. I updated Facebook with her 12/13/14 week photos on Sunday and will put up her 15/16 week photos tonight after I take the 16 week set.

Jadzia got to go along because she is fat and cutting her food hasn't done much good, so I wanted to get her thyroid checked out. She weighs 35 pounds, which is [b]well[/b] over what she should weigh at about 30 pounds. They did a blood draw on her and will send it to California for a comprehensive endocrine panel, and I should get the results back in a week or so. Meanwhile I'm going to cut her food slightly more to just 7 ounces per meal and see if that produces any change. Jadzia also got a chiropractic adjustment, with her L4 vertebrae being stuck and limiting movement, so that will hopefully help improve her flyball times at practice and at the December tournament. Jackie said that everything else looks really good joint-wise, and she's very muscular and strong despite her extra padding. So that is great news, as I was a little worried she was falling apart on us at just 6.5 years of age!

The last week or two have really shown great strides in Ezri's behavior and learning, with her really following the house rules very well especially in the last few days. She is sitting and waiting for her food with the other two border collies (Phoebe is under special "shut-the-heck-up" training at meals right now), and also sitting and waiting at the door when it's time to go out. She has learned that some mornings we sleep late and not to fuss when we do so, and also has had very few accidents in the house in the past week, and those were all our fault. It's still very frustrating that she holds #2 until she's back inside at times, but if we keep her tethered to us that nixes her instinct to run off and do business elsewhere in the house. I'm hoping that by Christmas she will have free run of the house and be fully potty trained.

thirteen weeks -and- three months

Yesterday little Ezri was thirteen weeks old, and today is her three-month birthday as well. As it turns out, the ground rubber floor at our puppy class is an excellent backdrop, as evidenced by this photo, taken on Monday. Over the last five days or so her ears have been standing up more and more, and as of about yesterday they're pretty much settled in a fully upright position. I'm a little sad about that, and have been threatening to tie weights to her ears to make them lie back down again. It doesn't really matter, her health and performance are what matters most of all, but all the same I'm just slightly sad that her ears popped. In happier news, her tail started flagging last week and is showing a nice little fringe already, and her adult coat is already starting to come in along the lower part of her spine. I wish I could somehow record how soft puppy fur feels, but I suppose only pictures and video are available to us now.

She's doing quite well with puppy class, flyball training, and general housetraining. This week in puppy class we did a handling exercise involving dressing the puppies in a t-shirt and socks, which led to this picture of a slightly confused and embarrassed border collie puppy. I wasn't fast enough the first time, but she did have four socks on initially but they slid right off with just walking, so I didn't get a photo. At flyball this weekend we worked on recalls to a toy, chase drills with Riker, and box motion drills on the flat board with a tennis ball. Julie had a new Tug-It, which is basically a mesh pouch that you put food or a toy inside to train tug drive, and with her squeaky toy inside it Ezri went nuts. She's not quite up to tugging on a fleece tug at flyball yet, so this is a perfect way to reinforce the tugging behavior until she does understand it, and I've ordered my own set of Tug-Its to help. Maybe later I'll even see if I can transition Phoebe to a tug!

In the housetraining world, Ezri has been going out in the kennel after Chris gets home for a week now, and it is going well. She is mostly quiet and not waking him up now, and spends most of her time chasing Phoebe as the terrier bounces around watching squirrels. Between the activity and the chilly weather, Ezri has been pretty tired and sleepy during the evening, which is an odd thing to see in a puppy! Housebreaking is going very well although we are still being very careful about regular potty breaks and keeping her within sight or on lead at all times. She has learned to sit before eating and going outside, and is picking up plenty of other household behaviors and cues. She and Curzon spend quite a lot of time playing with each other as well, and she loves playing with a tennis ball although we are still working on the fetch part of that game. So all in all, a happy, healthy, well-adjusted three month old puppy. I love her to pieces and am enjoying every minute of watching her grow.

Time to Play?

Play and work are both very important to dogs, with each having a place in their lives. There are so many kinds of play that it's hard to list them all, as nearly every dog has their own preferred way to play. Some dogs like to play with their owners, some like to play with other dogs, and some like to play with toys on their own. And some dogs don't play very much at all, preferring only to do serious work. I have known border collies who fill all of these roles, and routinely play with my dogs or watch them play with each other.

This photo is of Ezri and Riker playing with each other in a small e-pen last Saturday (September 27). These two don't want to play with toys, no they only want to play wrestle and chase and bite games. In an enclosed area like this pen they simply weave and tumble over and over, but in an open area they will dodge around people and obstacles as they ferociously chase each other. As of last week Riker was required to use fast turns and obstacles to keep ahead of Ezri, as she is nearly his equal on flat open ground already. It will be interesting to see how they interact this weekend!

At home, Curzon is the only dog who will play with Ezri, and we've even been teaching him the command "Play with Ezri" as a code for "go babysit your sister." They will play wrestle/bitey games, and also play tug with various toys together, but there's not enough room in the upstairs for a good game of chase so I don't know if he would play with her like that. Phoebe used to tug with Curzon when she was bored, but she is now trying to avoid Ezri so I haven't seen her play games with him since the puppy came home. And Jadzia has never liked playing with other dogs, much preferring to simply play fetch with one of her humans. She did play tug when encouraged while Curzon was a baby, but once he got older and stronger she quit doing it at all.

Working with the dogs on commands and tricks blurs the work/play line, at least in my opinion. They enjoy the treats and the attention, but they're also being asked to think and do various actions on my command, so it's really a mix of the two. I am currently working on teaching Ezri the standard commands (sit, down, bang, roll over, spin, stand, weave, wait, leave it), and intermittently working on more advanced tricks with the other dogs (back up, bow, paw, beg, dance, over, leave it+). Phoebe is very stubborn and really only will do sit and lay down reliably, although with treat-leading she will do stand, dance, and spin. Jadzia has the prettiest beg of any dog I know except Bear, who crosses his front feet while he begs. And Curzon is just lightning fast at anything you want him to do, as if he figured he gets more rewards for doing the requests at hyperspeed. I enjoy working with the dogs on their commands and tricks, as it is good bonding time and reminder of who is in charge in the house, and ending it with a good session of tug or fetch makes it truly fun for everyone.

Now, if I could only train Phoebe to leave the cats alone without using that zap collar.....

Eleven weeks old, still learning...

Yesterday was Ezri's eleven-week birthday, we took the standard pictures and they're up on my Facebook page. I'm guessing she is about 15lbs now, and she is significantly taller than Phoebe and just a little bigger than Obsidian at this point. She's getting better at going up and down stairs, although she does keep trying to stretch on the way down sometimes which means she slides down the stairs frog-dog style. I swear she grows when she naps in the evenings, and her harness fit much better yesterday than it did at puppy class on Monday, so she must've done some growing at least overnight!

Her training is coming along in bits and pieces, and she's definitely a smart little girl who is always trying new things and new ways to annoy us. She and Curzon have regular play sessions which involve tugging on toys and also wrestling and "nom-ing" each other, which is quite entertaining to watch. She's pretty much gotten the idea that pee should go outside, although she hasn't quite figured out how to tell us this to go out, but she will usually go pee on command outside. Getting her to understand that poop also goes outside is harder, but I caught her just as she was squatting this morning and whisked her outside, where she got lots of praise for going outside so hopefully that will help. Ezri is also settling in to the family routine of playtime interspersed with quiet time, such as when we're playing video games or watching a TV show. Thankfully she hasn't picked up any of the bad habits of the other dogs (Jadzia's beep fascination, Curzon's shredder/vacuum herding, Phoebe's whining for food), although I'm sure she'll come up with some habit of her own sometime along the way.

The first photo in this post is Ezri sleeping in the living room last week, in the corner of the couch with the settee, and I have *no* idea how she managed to sleep for at least a half-hour in that position without injuring herself. The second photo is her first meal on the bowl riser we use for Curzon (it's a shoe rack!), which is exceedingly cute as she's standing up on it to eat because she's not -quite- as tall as I thought she was.

Puppy Flyball Training, Week Two

Last night was Ezri's second flyball practice, and she learned more new stuff this week to build on what she started last week. We have a set of "puppy jumps" which are flyball baseboards cut down to 3", which is below the elbow height of most puppies (including Ezri). We also have a training board (flat board the size of the box pedal, covered in matting and tape to match the box), extra jump slats, and a training platform (large fixed-angle immovable box-like object with velcro to hold balls), all of which are used in various phases of flyball training.

Ezri's first week of flyball was spent doing two things - learning restrained recalls and learning how to go over a puppy jump. She did very well with the former, although she is more interested in squeaky toys all of a sudden rather than her tug, and thought the latter was pretty fun as well. Her shining moment was picking up a loose ball as she ran back to me and over the jump! The short video I put together of her first practice is up on YouTube.

So last night I started reinforcing the basics and building on them, after a short play session in the puppy room with her buddy Riker (6-month-old rat terrier). We worked on restrained recalls over one jump, then used treats and back-and-forth with another club member to work her up to two and then three jumps. Next up was starting to use the training board flat on the floor to learn the snappy u-motion that will turn into a swimmers' turn off the box later, which I am teaching with a treat lure onto the board and then quickly swung around off the board. Jeff added a small taped-together stack of 1" slats to give her a tiny little barrier in front of the board to get a "hop" on and off the board, and that worked quite well. Ezri quickly got the hang of this and was moving very nicely in a snappy u-turn for her cookies, but wasn't interested in following a ball for the same motion. Finally, we did some more restrained recalls over the jumps, and she's already faster than I am (!) so I have to have enough of a head start to beat her past the last jump or she'll blow around it to get to me faster.

Sadly, this morning was the same as last Monday morning with a unhappy puppy who had messed her crate badly. I am wondering if this has to do with the cookies and excitement/exercise of flyball, since this is two weeks running. She has been really good about crying to be let out for both potty needs, so I'm guessing this was a surprise to her both times. I still wish she would cry, though, maybe I could save having to give her a full bath and hose out the crate later...