Eevee updates

Well, in our hiatus, Eevee turned a year old.  And if I do say so myself I think she's grown up pretty well.  But I might be a little bit biased.  I'm also getting ahead of myself.

Shortly before I stopped blogging, I had started a new job for an amazing company.  We're allowed to bring our dogs to work with us!  This is, of course, beyond fun.  It also meant that I could keep up with Eevee's socialization.  She's the most friendly and outgoing dog ever.  She's never met a stranger (she's definitely never read the aussie breed standard).

She usually goes to work with me 2-3 days a week.  She has everyone wrapped around her little paws.

Unfortunately sometimes her manners suffer as some people let her get away with way more stuff than i let her get away with.

At the end of October I came home from work and found this on her. (The shiny white thing is a quarter for reference)

My best guess (watching her play outside with my other dogs a few weeks later) is that Shiner got a bit too grabby playing with her.  Took her to the vet the next day and they stapled her back together.  She had to wear a thundershirt for a while which turned her into a fluffybutt monster.

Going to work 5 days a week had her pretty tuckered out.  Once healed she resumed flyball training.

She started agility training in February.  She really wants to try all the things.  She's a lot of fun to work with, even if she barks constantly.  She's more fearless than Demo on contact obstacles.  I didn't think it was possible.

She turned one in mid-february.

She debuted in preflight in April.  Now we're just working on her boxturn as she has her first singles races in July!

I have no idea how this is comfortable.

Eevee Does All The Things!

Eevee turns 8 months old this month, and she is really starting to mature into one amazing dog.

Saturday in flyball practice jump sequencing started clicking into place.  I believe she really only tried to run around the jumps once, then she started plowing through the sequencing and even single strided!  Still only doing two jumps in a row since i'm not in a rush, but I'm really excited on how fast she picked this up.




Then on Saturday afternoon I'm throwing frisbees in the back yard to Baxter and E is SUPER interested.  Like, chasing down Baxter as I send him around for his disc - to the point that Baxter royally told the little shit to leave him the heck alone or next time he would eat her.  So... I pulled out another disc and threw one for Eevee... and she caught it... in the air... and she brought it back to me.

I've literally NEVER thrown her a disc before.  Not even rollers when she was a wee pupling.  I like throwing discs for Baxter, but it's not something I'm ever planning on competing in.  So I've been busy building her flyball foundation and her agility foundation, things I actually plan on competing with her in, and yet there is just something oddly satisfying about being able to throw a good throw with good disc placement and watching your dog kick butt in snatching it out of the air.  I'm really tickled that she is picking this up.

I took this video on Sunday.  I can't throw well and film at the same time, it just doesn't happen.  Usually my disc placement is much better (not always, but usually).  I don't want her jumping for discs yet, most of my throws she can just snag out of the air while she runs up to them, but again, i can't throw and record!



I'm looking forward to seeing her continue to grow up and be such an amazing little companion in everything I love to do!

Eevee's Death Wish

Thursday July 25 started out normal enough,  took Eevee to work with me.  Tasha was going to drop off Demo and Trophy for me before agility and take Eevee home.  Well, she made plans with a friend so my Dad brought up the boys and I sent Eevee home with him.

At 11 or 11:30pm she started trying to throw up and couldn't bring anything up.

I took her outside and she peed, then she refused the treat I gave her for coming inside.  Eevee never refuses treats.  I picked her up and that's when I felt how absolutely bloated she was.  Her chest was puffed out and everything inside her rib cage felt like it was about to burst.  Her abdomen wasn't as bloated, but she was definitely feeling stuffed.

I freaked out.

I woke up my mom, I woke up my sister and we rushed her to the emergency vet.

She tried 6 times to vomit on the way to the vet and couldn't bring anything up.

The vet took her back to get some x-rays and this is what we found:

The red circled area is her stomach. You can see it literally trying to squeeze out between her ribs.

It turns out that despite already having fed E dinner at work, but my father took the Kong Wobbler I have and FILLED IT TO THE BRIM with dog food (it holds about 3 cups) and gave it to Eevee to go to town... and didn't tell me.

OMFG I was so mad.  $300 emergency vet bill because no one can stop feeding the puppy.  She weighs 22 pounds!  She only eats 1 cup of food TOTAL a day!!

My sister volunteered to stay up all night with E.  Good thing too, as she started vomiting up food after we got home... and of course the pig would IMMEDIATELY try to gobble everything back down if you didn't clean it up instantly.

I took over at 8am.  This is what her night looked like, let me just say it wasn't much better for me all day until about 6pm:

It was hell.

Now, Eevee is fine and appears to have no long term ill affects... other than she is ALWAYS HUNGRY AND SCAVENGING FOR ANYTHING THAT MIGHT POSSIBLY SORT-OF RESEMBLE FOOD.

On Wednesday she climbed up onto the table in the sun room to chow down on cat food.

Thursday night she was outside for 5 minutes, came inside and puked up a large amount of DIRT.

This kid is going to kill herself........and now I have to go invest in a basket muzzle for her to wear any time she's not IN HER FREAKING KENNEL.

Ugh.

It is a damn good thing she's so freaking cute.

Spring Pole Fun

A few weeks ago when the pups over at So Fly: My Life with Flyball Dogs got their own spring pole and shared the tutorial on how to make one, I was inspired.  I wanted to make one for a LONG time.

So this weekend I did.

Actually I made two.

My dogs are bigger than Koira from So Fly, so I went with a much heavier duty spring as I not only foresaw my 40-50 pound dogs going to town on this thing, but I also wanted to eliminate anything breaking from more than one dog tugging on the same tug.

I got heavy duty Carabiner clips (rated for 200 pounds), heavy duty eyelets (rated for 190 pounds) and porch swing springs (with a max load of something like 320 pounds).  I used some long fleece tugs I had on hand at first, but ended up braiding a new really long one so the puppy could play more.

 Koda (on the pink tug above) loved it and spent the most time on it.  I thought for sure Demo would love it as well, but we had to hide his jollyballs and encourage him to play, although you can see that he did get into it for a bit.

The tugs are on carabiners so I can easily unclip them from the spring and bring them inside so the dogs are never unsupervised with the spring poles.

In all I spent $45 on the two, not including the tugs since I had them on hand.

Agility Wrapup

The kids have been doing really well in agility lately, even Pan!  She's still a bit of a spaz, but slowly -ever so slowly - she is getting her head screwed on correctly.  A few weeks ago she refused to focus on me at the start line and totally pushed my buttons in all the wrong ways, something that she had never managed to do before. I walked her off the course to prevent running the progress we are fighting for. My instructor took her at the end of class to prevent leaving on a bad note and she did well. Every week she has fewer and fewer shut down moments. This past Thursday she only sniffed the ground once and only for a few seconds and then she immediately refocused on me.

Trophy is suddenly having problems stopping in his 2o2o lately, but only on one obstacle at a time. Last week it was the dog wall, this week it was the a-frame.I don't know what his deal is. In general he is doing well. I'm pretty impressed by his weave entrances lately. Not perfect, but I'm baby sitting him less.  My biggest problem with him is thathe is in love with a classmate because she brings things like meatballs and ham. If she says his name he takes off to her and couldn't care less that we were in the middle of a course. At least I know if I ever can't run him he will do backflips for the chance to run for her.

Demo is doing really well.  My instructor says he has "contacts to die for". Unfortunately, despite me finally trusting in my dog to not kill himself and relaxing when I run him, I have inadvertently slowed down his performance. Not that he is slow by any means. Now we are working on getting him weaned off his target discs and to hold his contacts no matter what I do until he is released.  He is so much fun to work with. He's on the fast track to move out of his beginners class. He basically ran a full course last week, with a little help on the teeter. Have I mentioned how much fun he is? I'm hoping to get our a-frame out of long term storage and work on contacts at home.

Eevee (bet you weren't expecting to see agility updates about her) is learning to go through tunnels already. And I borrowed my instructor's babydog teeter board. She has once again proved her fearlessness as she ran across it several times without blinking. Then we started started working on hitting her contacts. She is one smart cookie.

I got to run my instructor's sheltie in a practice run too. That was fun. She ran him first so I got to see where his problem spots are. Then I ran him twice, the final run being pretty good, the only error being where he turned right and took an off course jump instead of heading left into the tunnel I was cuing. His mom was sitting to the right so I didn't take it personally.  It's neat running a dog who totally understands his job on course (not having to baby sit weaves at all, for example) and gives you time to set up the next obstacle, but will show you where all your handling errors are.

Always so much to learn.

Eevee at 12 weeks

I can't believe it's already been 4 weeks since we brought her home.

Demo is her current idol.  He plays with her the most, and she hangs on his every move.  

Her ears keep going up and up and up.  I wonder if she's going to be prick eared, which would be fitting with how much she looks up to Demo.  But, I like her tipped ears and I've considered gluing them down to keep the tipped look.

She's getting faster too, although she tires quickly.

This week she started showing herding behaviors this week too, stalking Demo as she chased him outside.

I had been having major problems getting her potty trained, as she would pee in her crate every single night.  I spent a lot of time trying to rule out behavioral aspects cutting down on her crate space, etc, but nothing worked. While in start contrast she was totally getting potty training in regards to pooping and even rang the bell to go out this week. At her vet appointment this Monday we brought in a urine sample and discovered she has a UTI.  She in on antibiotics and today she finally woke me up to go pee and did not mess in her crate over night.

She is learning to spin, bow, and put her back feet in a box.

I love her more and more every day.

Spring Photo Drop

Already growing up too fast.

Everyone's playing Chase Demo (a favorite game) around here.

High flyin' Panda Bears

Tug wiff me!

She has her own little water bowl, but she wants to be a big dog.

Bossy Aussie Pants

When i started researching some breeders late last year as options for my next dog, i had some goals in mind, as this would be my first dog purchased from a breeder.

-not looking for a litter prior to fall 2015 (So Demo would be around 4y.o.)
-one of the following breeds: English Setter, Mini Aussie, Border Collie
-preferably bred from a sport dog background, able to compete in flyball and agility, but a breeder who is in touch with the history of the breed and their instincts (herding or hunting as the case may be)
-must be male
-highly prefer black and white (black tri only if a mini aussie, as full sized aussies can be bi-colored black and white, but minis arent, for some reason).

And, um, well.... we brought this thing home Thursday.


This is Eviction, or Eevee for short. Eviction as in I'm seriously in contention for being evicted for getting an 8th dog, and Eevee is my favorite pokémon (judge me, i dont care :-P).

She is an 8(ish) week old red tri Aussie.

I'm hoping she will be under 25 pounds full grown, but the jury is still out.

Still working on her full name, as my sister and I are co-owning her and we're fighting over which prefix to use, and im not sure (prefix)'s Get Da Fuq Out is quite acceptable to put on all her paperwork. Maybe (prefix)'s Time To Move? (Prefix)'s Clothes On The Lawn?

She is the sassiest little munchkin with the sharpest teeth ever. She is also the most fearless little thing EVER. And i do mean fearless. She in infatuated with Baxter, for goodness sake! The other dogs are doing well with her, Pan in jealous, Demo is surprizingly curious and polite, Trophy is the only one to play with her yet, Baxter is trying his best to be nice, and the others have just ignored her.

We are alternating feeding her out of her bowl and using her kibble for training time. She almost has sit on commandand, and is working on down and release. Also been working on body awareness with a paw pod, both flat side down, and curved side down so she has to balance on the wobbly thing. She also attended her first flyball practice already where she did a couple chase recalls for a tug on flat ground. Potty training is going really well so far. At 8 weeks old she will sleep for about 6 straight hours overnight. One accident in her kennel, 2 in the house, but she's pretty easy to read when she has to go.

She is a rockstar, please dear doG let me not mess her up and help shape her to her true potential!!


ETA: her full official name I have decided to be BrokenButt's Notice to Vacate