How is it June?? A look at our accomplishments this year and what we still need to work on :-)

How is it June already? The year has been very busy for us and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Sophie is doing great! She had her yearly exam and the vet says she looks great and in wonderful condition. Most days she has the energy of a puppy but I do see her slowing a bit and long hikes/lots of wrestling take a toll. She will be nine this year. Just like I can't believe it is already June, I am not sure how 9 years has gone by so quickly.

Since we are half way through the year, I always like to check in on our yearly goals:

Goals for Sophie
- earn her Onyx Flyball title

Sophie received her Onxy title this past weekend at a fun filled but incredibly hot weekend tournament. She did awesome and powered through despite the heat. Our team had a lot to celebrate as we had 5 other dogs receive titles ranging from 2500 to 40k. Our two junior handlers also did amazing, one completing her second full time tournament racing a dog and the other box-loading for the first time all weekend long. This was Sophie's last full time tournament which made this weekend incredibly bittersweet for me and also very thankful for my amazing village.

- compete in more barn hunt events and get her RATO title (x)

A few weekends ago, she got her third open Q in barn hunt and her RATO title with a second place finish. All three Qs were with placements (1st and High in Trial, 1st and High in Trial, 2nd). Beyond proud of her. She would probably be faster if she didn't go around saying hi to the spectators and judge but my girl is social and hopeful they have treats LOL.

- compete in Rally Novice event - to do

- Swim more - to do


Goals for Swyatt:
- learn to weave - more work to do!

- full runs in preflight or singles at Ufli event XXXX (he has done this multiple times now at preflight)

Photo courtesy of Jason Largent (copyright of Jason Largent)

He has even run side by side full runs with three different dogs. Also run warmup at the last three tournaments. We are getting closer to racing!

I am very thankful for my teammates - they have been so helpful in getting him ready to race. It takes a village to get a green dog ready and I have an amazing village.

- try out a USDAA Quarterly event - Check! He yahooed a lot and we only got one Q, but for me the big progress was no reacting in the waiting area (despite how small and full it was) and being able to regain his focus when we lost it to complete most runs. I have a lot of work as a handler to do just as his focus needs to continue to grow but such amazing progress!

- try Novice at Barn Hunt event - Check....he peed in the ring after a few seconds. My fault for not giving him enough time outside before we went in. Next time!

- more hikes - to do

Syw has coming a long long way in the last year. His focus and drive is emerging which coupled with his speed and agility is making for some fun progress.

Goals for 2016

We have had a very busy year and I am looking forward to 2016 and new adventures.

I always have a list of goals, I hope to accomplish but the overarching goal is always to have fun with the pups. While Sophie is a sports competitor and Swy is in training, they are always first and foremost spoiled family members. I try my best to ensure that they are happy and engaged while we strive to meet our yearly goals. But if they don't have fun or never compete, its not the end of the world and we will just re-evaluate plans and activities as we move forward :-)


Goals for Sophie
- earn her Onyx Flyball title. She needs 3,058 points to achieve this title. We have a very small team with a lot of young dogs close to ready to race. My goal is to get Sophie her Onyx and then move her to part time or back up as needed by the team. I am sure she would keep playing the sport forever if I let her but it is a physically taxing sport and I don't want her to get injured or over do it.

- compete in more barn hunt events and get her RATO title

- compete in Rally Novice event

- Swim more


Goals for Swyatt:
- learn to weave

- full runs in preflight or singles at Ufli event

- try out a USDAA Quarterly event

- try Novice at Barn Hunt event

- more hikes

Wishing everyone a safe and happy New Years Eve and 2016!

RAT 1, RAT 2

We had our final Barn Hunt event of the year and both labbies did great!

Swy debuted in his first official dog sport event. I will admit, I didn't plan for him to try barn hunt this year because in practice he is doing better but still hit or miss on whether he alerts or just runs around. But Sophie could no longer do Instinct after moving up to open and I had already paid for the spot.

My goal was, no peeing in the ring, no reacting in the blind and just having fun. I really didn't expect him to alert to the rat. I knew he would find it but his alert is very light and usually our trainer has to cue me into it.

Well Swy blew me away. He was calm in the blind (eating a whole lot of hot dog and calmly checking in with me). Then he went into the ring, I released him, he ran through the tunnel and did his climb (not required in Instinct but encouraged). Then he ran around the ring, it looked like he was about to raise a leg so I called him. He came running and I reminded him to find the rat. He sniffed all three tubes and lingers on the last so I went with it and called rat.

Voila, please meet Shasta's Braveheart, RATI call name Swyatt!

Sophie also had a great day. Her first open run, she dug at a tube for a few seconds and then moved away but came back and then moved away so I called it. It wasn't her normal indication but sometimes in her first run she isn't as clear. My bad, it was a bedding tube she was just double checking so no Q.

Her second run, she ran around and said hi to everyone but then got to work. She found both rats and received her Q. She took first place in her height and High in Class! So proud of her.

She found the RAT!

Our last two saturdays were spent at barn hunt events. We did not plan to attend this weekend but my travel plans got cancelled and I was able to get us a spot in Saturdays trial.

Last week, we had two novice runs. The first one, Sophie hit on bedding. The second run, as soon as we walked in her nose was twitching. She refused to go through the tunnel and followed her nose straight to the rat. Then it took a few moments of coaxing for her to complete the tunnel and climb. She took first place in her height division with a 38 second run and our first Q

This past weekend, I signed her up for Instinct and she received her Q. She then went on to Q in both her novice runs earning second place in each run....and her RATN title.

I am so proud of her. I am working on keeping my mouth closed and letting her work. I try to only call her or talk to her when I see her trying to smell outside the ring or trying to engage with the judges and rat wranglers in the ring. Otherwise, I try to let her work and follow her nose.

We are signed up for one more trial in a few weeks where she will try open for the first time. I am hoping to get in a session with our trainer before then but otherwise we will just give it a whirl.

The other news is Sophie had been signed up for Instinct in the upcoming trial but now can not because she is in Open....so little brother Swyatt will be taking a try at Instinct. I am excited to see how he does and get an idea of how much work we have ahead of us before he tries Novice.

revisiting our 2015 goals :-)

How is it almost November? This year has flown by! I figured now is a good time to look at our goals from the year as I start to plan next year's goals.

Goals for Sophie in 2015:

- Earn her FMCH (Flyball Master Champion) 15,000 points. She needs 1,152 points -Successfully accomplished in March! Wohoo! 

- Earn her CGC - this has been on the horizon for numerous years. I always hesitated due to her leash reactivity but she has made amazing progress and I think we maybe ready --> Actually forgot this was on our list for this year...oops
- Finish her CAT title (Coursing Ability Title) - Accomplished! She definitely got the hang of it by her third leg and had a blast. We may do more events just because she really seems to like chasing the baggie lol

- Try out barn hunt - I think she will excel at this and as she gets older, I would like to start looking into events that are less taxing on her physically --> We have been taking classes since May and she loves it! We had our first trial a few weekends ago. No qs, but we had a lot of fun. Now just to work on generalizing and confidence in new settings.

Swyatt:

- Work on a solid stay - he has a good stay in his crate, usually waits to be released. But we need to
get him to hold that stay in other settings. Specifically at agility practice. --> Still a work in progress. But doing so much better! 
- Work on recall in distractions - he goes off leash hiking with the daycare and does great. I am not quite ready to let him loose when we hike. --> Always going to be one of those things we work on but he has made great progress. We are no working off leash in agility class and flyball practice. He has been doing great recalling and working.
- Introduce wall work and have a swimmers turn on the box - a biggie because given his size, I want to train a clean, tight swimmers turn --> Since we have seen a lot of maturing and focus on his part, we have just begun this work this past weekend. At the beginning of practice he was slamming into the wall and really had no clue what we were asking and no idea he had back feet. By the end of practice (he is learning to work through things and think a lot) he was doing four feet on the wall turns with a quick snap off. His jumps were at about my shoulder height. It was awesome!
- side by side recalls - he has successfully done this a few times but we need to vary the dogs and practice it more Some days this goes really well....a few demos and practices where he rocked this. And then this past weekend, he successfully completed three runs and then chased the border collie in the neighboring lane. Work in progress!
- Progress with his leash reactivity - this is more on me in that we need more training scenarios. I will admit, I have somewhat shied away from this. We have done several hike a bull hikes and he does well at those. But I haven't been as proactive at getting him out on walks in urban settings and working on his reactivity. But its time to do so. I was reminded recently of the progress Sophie has made and now it is time to focus on Swyatt making progress!  --> we took a reactive dog class and have seen progress. He still has his moments where he gets way over threshold but he is getting much better and is able to focus more on me or a task and work through his meltdowns.
- graduate to being loose in the house when we aren't home - his previous anxiety about being left isn't evident anymore, he can stay alone for short periods. But now it is working on him not counter surfing. Only if the counters are completely empty and nothing else in the vicinity looks interesting. He also must be tired LOL. Slow going for sure!

Both of my labbies have made amazing progress this year. I am so happy with their progress and the adventures we have had. I am excited to start planning our next year together and to see what we shall do :-)

Sophie is 8!

My Sophie turned 8 this past weekend! I can't believe how fast these last 8 years have flown by.

She is the first pup I have owned as an adult and I couldn't have asked for a better companion. She has her quirks and keeps me on my toes but I wouldn't have it any other way.

We spent her birthday at her first barn hunt. Unfortunately no Qs but we had a lot of fun and she was very energetic to work. More training ahead but I think we just need to build our confidence and will be good to go :-)

I of course had to make the labs pose for photos complete with props LOL.

It helps that Swy has learned to sit stay for photos :-)

Though he isn't always the happiest of participants LOL!

I haven't updated in forever but I will keep this update to just Swyatt's progress.

My boy is 50lbs of lab puppy. He is approximately 3 years old and still very much a spastic puppy. He is very loveable and funny but oh my can he be frustrating.

We have some great days, when it all seems to come together in his head. Then we have days where I am pretty sure his goal in life is to drive me crazy. LOL

Agility: Some days are great, we can do numerous obstacles in a row and he reads my body language perfectly. Then we have days, like last night, where he is so fixated on my hands (hoping there are treats) that he skips all jumps. He also had a hard time working off leash without wanting to do zoomies which in a class with 5 other dogs is a no no.

Working with our instructor, we decided to move to a beginner class so we could work on his focus without the pressure of learning new handling and obstacles. Two classes in and he has worked off leash with 5 other dogs and been engaged with me. So far the change to the beginner class seems to be going very well!


Flyball: down and backs over four jumps with a dead ball retrieve are going really well. We have transitioned to a compression ball instead of the chuck it rubber ball (I was envisioning having to buy about 20 of those for racing purposes and cringing at the price).

We have decent wall work going (again when he chooses to focus...otherwise he just slams into me to say hi). Now its time to transition to the box. We need to start adding a dog in the other lane which is a bit of a challenge. Most of our dogs are either older and not going to take kindly to a youngster chasing them or skittish and going to be traumatized at being chased (exaggerating a little but you get the point). We have a demo coming up and will be testing his ability to focus in a new setting. Fingers crossed!

Barn Hunt: He understands what he is supposed to find, but doesn't indicate very clearly. He will slightly nose and then move on (or try to pee on it). It is too easy to miss his indication, so we are trying to engage him and make the indication even clearer.

He is a work in progress for sure. These last few weeks have been good to us and I have seen some great progress from him. I have always said and stand by this, that we will keep working on all these classes and skills but that if he seems stressed or unhappy then I won't push him to compete. We will just have fun taking classes and building our bond.

 

Photos courtesy of Smilin Dog. Both labs go off leash hiking with this awesome daycare. They have helped build his recall and learning doggy manners :)