Spread the Word! Border Collie looking for Forever Home, Amazing DISC DOG Potential!

So my foster dog is just about ready to start looking for his new home.  Mac (a.k.a. Macaroni Man) is just about 1 year old (born 12.1.11 I believe) and a purebred border collie.

He is 10-12 pounds overweight and hasn't fully grown into himself yet.  He has been limping due to a yet unknown shoulder injury/strain.  We are awaiting results on a serious set of radiographs (20 different views) that were sent out to a specialist Tuesday.  We do not believe anything is broken or that he has OCD (my personal opinion is that he is butt-high still in his growth stage combined with being significantly overweight is the cause of anything in his shoulder).  I have had  for almost 3 weeks (it will be 3 weeks on Black Friday) and his limp has peaked and is getting much less noticeable as he is losing weight and getting proper conditioning while slowly uping his activity level.  Today I barely noticed a limp in his movement.

The vet said he will probably have arthritis in that shoulder when he is older.  I feel he would not make a good flyball prospect or serious agility prospect as these activities put too much strain on the shoulders, but I'm sure he would love agility and be able to play in the preferred or elite classes with lower jump heights.  I have not yet taken him swimming, but he was training to be a goose dog in his former life so I imagine he would be awesome as a dock dog.

However, Mac's greatest thrill in life is chasing and catching a frisbee!  Mac LIVES for disc!  He is a natural and is already tracking and jumping for the disc.  He is very biddable (although he can be sticky-eyed and obsessive which might make freestyle training more challenging).  He is a natural toss and catch rockstar!  He learned to go around behind me to run out for the disc already.

Mac is wonderful with other dogs (although he does have a very in-your-face playstyle that some dogs may not appreciate.  Mac is also wonderful with people, he has never met a stranger (although I do NOT know how he is with children).  Mac has shown polite curiosity towards cats and small dogs, although he would probably chase if they ran.

Mac is available through Multiple Breed Rescue in Elyria, OH.  you can contact them through their website.  http://www.mbrohio.com/
Video of Macaroni's disc prowess:


Video of Mac playing at Daycare:


Video of Mac hanging out at Daycare:

Twice is Nice!

Was lucky enough to have not one, but TWO flyball practices yesterday!

First, our normal Saturday morning practice with our team.  My friend Megan, who is going to be traveling with us to the tournament in York, PA in December and running Trophy for me came to learn how to pass.  Now, this is a really difficult task considering our building is not tournament length and so she's going to have to relearn on the fly at the tournament, but she needed to start getting the overall flow of running a dog down.  Eventually she's going to be bringing her Aussie back to practice with us, so she needs to learn it anyway.

I've been working with a client's dog for several months to get him out of the hosue and work his little brain in adition to giving him extra exercise.  We're starting to have a break through with him.  He has already chained the jumps and loves to do jumping.  Now we are working on box work and taking a ball off the box while maintaining a nice turn.  I took some video for him mom to see since she can't be in the building while I work with him (he used to be able to work for me, but suddenly because worried/protective of her).  I've been working on boxturns for months, and finally got him to do a nice turn off the box with no ball (using his butt on the box and not being lazy) so now we're trying to add taking the ball off the box.  This dog is going to be a ball spitter, I can just see it, but that's another issue (chasing is also going to be another big concern of mine with him, but one problem at a time!)



Demo was getting some pretty crazy turns in and coming up high off the box.  I didn't take my video camera, so I can't replay it and see what was going on.  Pan was awesome, as usual, and since I had a prop in the whole time Trophy's turns were nice.  which brings me to my second flyball practice, which I'm calling "remedial box turn practice".


Remedial Flyball practice was held at another facility slightly closer to my house (by like 5 minutes) with a woman who runs her dogs on a team from Michigan.  Her dogs are amazing and fast, so I took Trophy to get a second opinion and some ideas on how to re-re-fix his boxturn and get him to engage his butt on the box.  He's gaining speed while his turn is getting worse. If I can fix his turn I just might have another dog who can run under 5 seconds and not retire early with shoulder issues (the latter being my primary concern).  She gave me an exercise to work with him to 1. build confidence taking the ball and 2, get him to lower his turn slightly on the box without using a jump board (as it's high with a prop and non existent without a prop).

I also took Demo along to analyze his turn and brainstorm what he was doing in the morning practice, which of course he wouldn't replicate.  Practicing at another facility was good for him though and instead we worked on getting his turn off the box to be snappier and also worked on making it tighter since he's such a looong bodied dog.

And in a non flyball related news, here is a picture of my Foster dog, MACaroni. Ain't he a handsome dude?  He has a shoulder injury we're still trying to figure out, so no flyball in his future, unfortunately.

More Flyballin' Fun!

A few weeks ago I got a call from my team captain. They had a dog pull out of the upcoming tournament in Davisburg MI, would I like to go to fill in?

I didn't really like the facility the first time I went.  There is a minuscule 55 feet of runback, and the way the building in constructed one lane is up practically up against a wall and the first time I went they had up running back into basically a box. Very claustrophobic.  And the first time we went over new years Pan and Harley collided which started my worries about running Pan in the right lane because she looks left to watch the start dog.

Also, Davisburg is 3 1/2 hours away, and since it's indoors most tournaments there are when it's cold out, which means I have to stay in a hotel. Trophy was a total jerk in the hotel at the NYE tournament, he barked and growled alllll night long. I literally slept with my hands clamping him mouth shut. And by slept I mean I got about an hour. Total. All night long.

All of the above flashed through my head, but so did not having to pay a tournament fee. And that this would be a great run through for hoteling with Trophy if we ended up going to the tournament in York, PA in December.

So I went. And I was able to take two dogs.  Trophy, my rock solid dog, and Demo to earn some more points.

I was going to alternate them for two races each day.  And then in the last race on Saturday Demo jumped up for his tug, got his hocks tangled together and took a hard fall on his back legs.  He screamed and came up limping.  I walked him around until he had almost stopped limping, and then put him up and got Trophy.  Two heats into the race our start dog came up limping - she's 11 after all.  Our back up was Demo. Who hadn't raced in that lane and who wouldn't get a warm up.  Amazingly, he did not let me down.  He went out and ran his heart out and didn't mess up. :)  I'm so incredibly proud of him, and Trophy ran so nicely for my teammate.

Hotel was interesting with the boys.  They both curled up on the bed and passed out.  I found an NCIS marathon and did a little reading until my eyes got tired, then I turned off the light. I was going to leave the TV on to help mask the outside noises from Trophy.  Didn't matter. the second I switched out the lights, Trophy woke up growling and prowled the room and wouldn't shut up.  So I locked him in a kennel in the bathroom and Demo and I slept in the bed.

Sunday was similar with only one little bobble.  My teammate was running Trophy in start and I was going to run Demo.  She was late getting to the warmup, so I ran both dogs out and I don't think Trophy knew who he was supposed to go to after his first heat.  I'm passing him with Demo, and when he saw me run up with Demo he turned and tried to rerun. Luckily he didn't crash into anyone on our team, and when he didn't have a ball on his side, he checked out the other lane.  Once we got him back and he she started feeding him cheese he never made another error.

We played the raffle, I wasn't going to since I haven't been lucky yet, but I put in $20, and man-o-man did I come out a winner!  A new x-pen, RV mat, and a $25 gift card to BP!  That gas car proved instrumental to the rest of the evening.  I started out following a teammate home, and she stopped right before the highway and pulled into a BP station.  I almost continued on as I had 3/4 a tank, but since I had that BP card I figured I would also stop and fill up.  Turns out my teammate's breaks had gone out! So i topped off my tank (the card perfectly filled it up) and then the boys and I waited with her.  She has a tracphone, so I gave her my phone to use to call AAA and her husband so she wouldn't use up her minutes. Then I moved stuff around so she and her dog could ride home with us as they had to tow her van 187 miles home.

It took over an hour for the tow truck to get to us, just as my battery died from not running my car for the past hour, so he gave me a jump, and loaded up the van while my teammate and I started home.  I finally got home at 11 after dropping her off.

It was a a great weekend.  I love my team and I'm glad I could be there to help out in more than one way!

~~

In blog related news, wow! Over 2,000 views to my little blog.  who knew? :)  Thanks for reading!

Random musings on my life with my dogs

Yesterday I had several small, odd, things happen while spending time with my dogs.

First.  I found a dead blue jay while poop scooping the back yard.  This was odd because usually Trophy finds dead birds before me and they had been running around for almost 45 minutes before I started poop scooping.  So I loaded the bird (it was much bigger than I thought!) onto my scoop and walked it over to the bucket and dumped it in with the rest of the poop.  As I'm walking away, THAT's when Trophy decides to take notice of said bird, and tried to crawl into the poop bucket to pull the bird out.  Yuck!

Second, Baxter is obsessed with light reflections.  Trophy, Pan and Koda all have mirror finished tags on their collars they wear to work (which they were all wearing yesterday outside).  The shiny tags are VERY good at reflecting the sun.  Baxter spend most of the time outside following Trophy and trying to catch the light as it bounced on the grass.

Finally, once we were all back inside, one moment Pan is chewing on a Nylabone and the next she's chowing down on poop.  I have no idea where the poop came from.  It was not from the litterbox.  Eww!

Yep. my dogs are really weird. :)

I can't decide!

Photos just went up from the official photographer at CanAm.  I can't decide which 3 to buy and frame.

The problem is that the only photo that works for Demo is the SAME for each of the selections.  The first (Vertical option) features all 3 dogs in the exact same pose (which also happens to be the same pose I have Trophy and Pan in from last year).  Pan is in the middle facing the opposite way of the boys.  Second (Horizontal option) features the 3 dogs in different poses with Trophy facing the camera in the middle and the other dogs running towards the center.

I have no photos of Pan facing the opposite direction and ALL of Demo's face in the other direction.

So... which of these two options would you choose?

Photo proofs pulled from http://furfetched.zenfolio.com copyright 2012 Fur-Fetched Photography

CanAm2012 - It was everything I wanted it to be!

I'm still in recovery mode after this weekend.

Last year, for CanAm2011 I was so, so, so, so sick.  Picture the worst cold you've ever had complete with sinus pressure, sore throat, the works.  Now mix that death cold with the plague.... and you've just about got the picture of my suffering.  Last year we also ran 4 teams on Saturday and Sunday (3 on Friday), and it's a long hike from our crating area to the entrance side of the rings...

Needless to say I was pretty miserable feeling last year running 2 dogs on two teams and boxloading a third... and CanAm2011 was still one of the best experiences of my life.  Trophy's team won the Division 8 Championship race.  I have the trophy (not Trophy) sitting on my shelf.  Coming from a team who really doesn't care about placements and running very fast (we rarely run under 20 seconds. We make time, we earn points, we are happy), it was totally unexpected and amazing!

Lori and Bandi, Me and Trophy, Melissa and Harley, Deb and Cruz, Carol and Rhona

I begged to go back this year (this is, of course, after I had infected my team with said plague that everyone else was suffering with for 2 months after CanAm... whoops, sorry guys!).  Begged.  Literally. I believe I got down on my hands and knees and/or threatened to go on several different Open teams if they didn't take me to CanAm again.

Fast forward.  This year we only ran 3 teams on Saturday and Sunday (2 Friday).  I was not sick.  Our Sunday schedule was rather enjoyable.  We once again made it to the Division 8 regular finals and against a team from our region, a team we race against all.the.time we went to 5 heats and we defended out title!  This time Pan was on the winning team. It was an amazing feeling.

Front: Me and Pan, Melissa and Harley, Carol and Rhona, Kris and Dodger, Kandice and Hershey. Back: Sharon (boxloader) Deb and Cruz.

And Video!



Other major accomplishments for the weekend:

• Trophy ran his personal best time in start of 4.761
• I greatly improved my starting split times. I'm still no where near good, but i went from a .9 to consistent .1's so i'm pretty proud of myself.
• Demo earned his FD and FDX titles!!
• Demo ran a 4.33 in start
• Demo never crossed over and for running with 5 other simultaneous rings of flyball around him I am REALLY proud of him.
• Trophy also earned his FDCh-G title officially, since there was a snafu where he lost 100 points at an earlier tournament this year... so it's kind of a hollow victory, but we did it.
• Pan has stopped scaring me to death and didn't try to cross over to the left lane all weekend.
• Pan has backed up to 50+ feet for passing.

Now I have to sit back, relax, continue to recover, and wait for the photographer to get all the photos posted online!

Lots of Updates

I was going to split these up and do several smaller updates, but I don't care anymore.  My desktop computer is not connecting to the internet, and my netbook is a total P.O.S. and makes typing difficult to say the least as the cursor likes to jump around randomly when I'm not touching the touchpad AT ALL.  So that is why updates have not been happening. Because, trust me, the dog sporting goodness has been fantastic lately.

September 22-23 Flyball Tournament in Monroe (U-FLI)

So this tournament was slated to be Demo's big debut in Flyball.  I was going to run him in singles and pairs and then have him on a warm up spot so if he warmed up well I could pull Pan and put him in a race or two.

Only problem was that he was still *totally* not getting his boxturn down, more on this in a moment.  So I pulled him from everything except the warm spot.  Trophy and Pan did their usual awesomeness.  Trophy was on two teams, full time on one and part time on the other.  By Sunday night he was pretty tired.  I watched his boxturn get pretty sucktacular by the end of the last race, but he had to fill in a lot more than we had planned.

Both dogs earned their next titles.  Trophy now has his TFE-I (4,000points) and Pan earned her TFE (2,500points).

Agility Practice September 25.

I didn't get Trophy in to the Chiropractor on Monday like I had wanted (he went the day after agility) but honestly, I couldn't tell. He was on fire tonight.  The ring had two big pinwheels, and our course had 5 different pinwheel sections in it as well as weaves and two tunnels.  Did I mention Trophy totally rocked this course?  My handling is the only thing slowing him down, but we're working on staying positive and having fun.  Since this course was so jump-centered, and since a classmate's dog is having jump-phobia issues, I let her run Trophy at the end of class. It was amazing.  I wish I had been videoing it.  His weaves were FAST - the fastest I've ever seen him weave.  It was like watching a high end sports car traverse a race track watching him go around the pinwheels.  Beautiful.  I invited her to show Trophy any time she wanted that didn't conflict with flyball. :)

Flyball Practice September 28 and 29.

Ok, back to Demo's box turn issues.  In the flyball tournament the prior week, I took Dem out to warm up twice on Sunday.  Both times with no props he was doing PERFECT turns off the box and coming back for his tug.  It was amazing.



However, in practice he would not turn on the box if there was a ball in the box.  After some major brainstorming with friends we figured that since he will take a ball off the practice board, the ball shooting at him was the problem.  So we devised a way to make the box not trigger so Demo had to manually get the ball.  Then it was a small matter of backing up and re-luring him through the turn for a few days and BINGO.  he got it.



After two days of practicing with a "dead" ball his hang time on the box was getting worse, so i switched him to a live ball and we've never looked back.

Flyball Practice October 6.

Last practice before CANAM!  And Demo rocked it!  I did a few full runs with him by himself with a live ball and he didn't hesitate.  His turn is a bit lower than I would like, but he was also on a new box, so I believe that had something to do with it as well.

Then we practiced passing with Trophy and Pan.  He didn't care at all.  He didn't even look at them.  So we brought out the dogs that would be running on his team at CanAm if I pulled Pan to run Demo. Again, no hesitation.  In fact, he started watching the dog tun off the box and get into his playbow "ready" position all on his own in anticipation of my signal!  It was awesome!  So Demo is going to run at CanAm, and my dream is going to come true!



.... Well provided he stops trying to eat the cats, because I just might have to drown him in the bathtub if he touches the cat again.