Wordless Wednesday: Sunset jump lesson

 

Wordless Wednesday: Dreamboat

 

Wordless Wednesday: Superman pose

Dog sports with Rosie

I'm definitely partial, but Rosie is basically a dog genius. She is ridiculously smart and LOVES to work. It has been so much fun to train her and try all the things with her. 

Agility
Last August, after my husband and I separated, I introduced her to agility at the grand opening of the main training place we go to, and she took to it right away. She LOVES it. It took her a while to go through the tunnel, but apparently this is not unusual, since it's scary and dark. Now she's obsessed. But her biggest obsession is the A-frame. Especially when it's in the middle of the gym. Exhibit A:

Basic and Advanced Obedience
We started in Puppy Obedience and then moved to Basic when she aged out, and then quickly moved on to Advanced Obedience. I love an Obedient dog and a smart dog, who wants to work and is excited to work, is SO much fun to train. So we were practicing at home a lot. Advanced Obedience focuses on a lot of life skills, and a lot of skills needed to pass the CGC test, which we are working towards. We did take it once already and we failed the "walking in a crowd" portion. Walking in a crowd is not actually a problem for Rosie - the challenge was that the "crowd" was made up of her favorite people and I had not anticipated that particular issue being an issue. So, we have been practicing impulse control around people she loves. I was more concerned with the face to face greeting with another dog handler, which she aced!

Practicing our place command at a local bottle shop during trivia night

Rally Obedience
Rally is kind of like obedience and agility merged. It's basically an obstacle course of obedience commands. Rosie LOVES it - way more than a regular obedience class. A week or so ago, we did 3 courses in class off leash and she was the only dog in class that didn't get the zoomies while off leash. She stayed focused on me and did the course nearly flawlessly. Safe to say her mistakes were due to handler error!

Tricks
When it was super cold over the winter, we worked on tricks and practiced obedience. Rosie is quite a performer and really enjoys learning tricks. 

Her trick arsenal includes:

• Paw
• Wave
• Paws up (front paws on something - or someone! - this is needed in agility practice sometimes)
• Back feet (putting her back feet up on something - for back feet awareness)
• Beep beep (back up)
• Speak
• Rollover
• Bow
• Spin left/spin right (turns out, this is needed in Rally sometimes!)
• Center (she comes between my legs and sits)
• Crawl (she army crawls)
• Be a bear (sit pretty, for most people)
• Play dead
• Going left or right on command (handy during walks, on a Rally course, and on complex Agility courses)

Things we are still working on and/or haven't started:

• Shaking off (ie, after a bath)
• Putting her toys away on command
• Crossing her front paws (while lying down and/or standing)

Scentwork

Last fall, I signed up for a 6-week scent workshop. I figured, I have a scent hound, let's see if she likes it. But I had never done anything like it, so didn't know what to expect. Rosie took to it right away and she is SO GOOD at it. We've done 3 workshops/classes now - 2 at our main training place and 1 at a different place. Once she's in the groove, she is unstoppable! I just got her a collar with her name tag built into it that I plan to use exclusively for scent stuff. I am hoping that that helps her get into the zone faster and faster once she puts it together. And I have absolutely NO doubts that she will put 2 and 2 together.

Happy Ratters

This past Saturday, Rosie and I did a Happy Ratters trial. It was a lot of fun! I was a little worried that she'd be nervous about the boxes and trash bags used to simulate an "urban" environment in the first 2 events - because she's not super thrilled with those things at home - but she didn't even care! We did 6 events total. She got points in all of them, and placed in 3 of them - including 1st in her second event ever! In the first event, she was kind of like, what the heck are we doing, mom? But she's so smart that when she found the rat tube and alerted, she got rewarded for it, so when we immediately went to the next area to do the second event, she was like, "ok, I understand the assignment - RAT!" By the 3rd event, when the signal to go in went off, she dragged me to the door, and when I opened it - she dragged me to the ring like a sled dog pulling a sled. She was SO ready to go! Safe to say, she had fun! She was completely wiped out by the last event and was barely alerting. I had to have her go back and show me again to make sure I was reading her right - I was - but that cost us some time! I think next time we'll skip doing the short morning walk and just chance that she is going to be a little hot at the beginning.

Post-Happy Ratters exhaustion

Barnhunt

We haven't tried this yet, but based on how she took to Happy Ratters, I think we'll probably give it a shot in the fall!

Rosie turns 1

Rosie turned 1 on Saturday! My little 6.1lb puppy now weighs 51.6lbs. I think she'll finish somewhere between 55-60lbs, since she has another 8-12 months of growing and filling out to do. She's very petite (especially compared to Jazzy), but also very muscular because we are very active! 

Throwbacks to tiny, baby Rosie!

During a normal week, we walk for 45-60 minutes every day, rain or shine - we really only postpone for extreme cold (she doesn't seem to mind, but I do LOL) and then go out during my lunch break instead of in the morning. On the days that I ride after work, I tend to walk her in the mornings and then take her again at lunch to play on the long line at the park for a little bit. We also average 2 obedience classes and 2 agility classes per month, and we did a 6 week scent workshop from November through December which was a ton of fun. And, she's SO good at it. Am I surprised? Not really. She is a scent hound, after all! The next workshop starts up next week. She's also really good at agility and LOVES it. We are working toward a CGC certification in our Obedience 2 classes and may even pursue a therapy dog certification eventually. I haven't decided yet. She's very sweet and goofy and I think she'd make a great therapy dog.

The birthday girl

Not impressed at being asked to pose for a photo before playing with her birthday toy

The sweetest, cuddliest girl

She likes to walk on the wall at the park and practice her agility skills

Sitting with me on a swing at the park - she's not scared of standing or sitting on moving objects since she's been doing agility!

Unfortunately, her birthday wasn't all celebrations. After our walk, we were playing in the backyard. When I called her back into the house, I noticed she was tracking blood, so I immediately called her back to me and started looking at her feet. It didn't take me long to find the problem - a laceration on the outer edge of the large pad on her left front paw. We ended up spending 3 hours at the emergency vet, where they cleaned it, put 2 interrupted stitches in, bandaged her up, and sent us home with a bunch of meds and strict instructions for no activity for the next 7-10 days. :(

Not how her 1st birthday was supposed to end :(

She's doing well and is being a good patient, thanks in part to the trazodone. The foot is healing already and while I was waiting for them to finish with her, I bought her some medical puppy socks on Amazon to help keep it clean/dry and germ-free, so those have been really helpful and a lot easier than trying to wrap it daily (because that wrapping job was really excessive to keep it from slipping 👀)!

I'm not positive what she cut her foot on, though I have been finding stray pieces of glass working their way up in the dirt in the yard with all the rain and extreme cold we've been having, so I'm guessing her foot found a piece before I did. Not cool that people that lived here before apparently used the yard as a dumping ground. I have a plan in the works to try to help remedy the issue and make it safer for her, but since I've made some big life changes recently and I'm currently renting, this is a temporary stop in our journey. So I don't want to spend an arm and a leg fixing a yard I don't own. I just want it to be safe enough for her and I to play in and not get injured! The struggle is real. 

Anyway, happy birthday to my best girl! It's been a whirlwind year, but I can't wait for all the adventures we are going to have this year!

Rosie (Rose Dublin)

I know it's been a long time since I posted. And I keep meaning to recap lessons, but it seems like I've been mostly doing the same ole, same ole. I've been having great rides, though!

I might have done a thing last week and put an app in on this little girl with all my fingers and toes crossed. It all happened very quickly. I didn't even tell my husband about her until the app was approved because I didn't want to get his hopes up, but then the app got approved less than 12 hours later and I was like, uhhh, I did a thing, are you on board?!?! He was, so...welcome Rosie the Plott Hound to the family. She is 9 weeks this week and was born in rescue. We picked her up last Thursday. 

She's had a rough few days getting used to being without her mom and 8 siblings, but every day gets a little bit easier. She's slept through the night a few times, which is amazing at her age -- and has a very distinct howl for when she needs to go out to potty vs when she is just scared and lonely in the middle of the night. She is VERY smart and is already problem solving in a rather scary fashion. We are definitely planning to rebuild our fence to a 6 foot fence sooner rather than later LOL. She has big paws to fill, but I am pretty convinced based on the dream I had right after I saw the litter on the rescue's FB page (I was holding a Plott pup and Jazzy was driving my car) that Jazzy had a helping paw in getting her home to us.

Jasmine Aloysius (aka Stripes, Jazzy Wazzy - 05/05/2011-07/26/2022)

M and I are absolutely gutted and beyond heartbroken to have lost Jasmine suddenly on Tuesday to complications from an aggressive mast cell tumor. It seems like one moment she was fine and the next she was anything but. We rushed her to the vet hoping that surgery might be an option, but she was given a 50/50 chance of coming out of it, and so we decided it was better to say goodbye on our terms.

The house is far too empty without her huge, sweet personality and amazing sense of humor, and much too quiet without her old lady hound snores and her jumping around like a crazy woman because she has to poop. She was getting into trouble and making me laugh right up until bedtime on Monday evening, giving me no indication that anything was wrong beyond the obvious.

I am so grateful to the rescue group in FL for trusting my mom and I with fostering Jasmine and 1 of her brothers 11 years ago, even though we had no experience with hounds and no earthly clue what a Plott Hound was at the time! My life has never been the same since Jazzy came into it -- it would have been far less fun and with a lot less laughter in it if we hadn't decided to keep her. I am so glad we didn't make that mistake!

We miss her so much already, but we know we made the right decision for her. Cancer sucks! And it sucks even more that most of our options were taken away from us by a disease that had other ideas for her. We know she is free from any pain and discomfort now, and can play with Zaira and Kris again. I hope she gets to meet Harley and Promise, and can see her great grandmother again.

Rest easy, my sweet, beautiful girl. Until we meet again.

WW: Conquering anxiety 1 crossrail at a time

 

WW: Corolla's wild horses

A black stallion and 2 of his mares: 

This was moments before he jumped a 4-ish foot fence from a standstill to chase another stallion off, trying to get to the other stud's mare.

Am I doing this right?

 

During my lesson yesterday, T tried to stretch my left hip for me, because it just was not just moving with the horse. Her stretch helped and felt great until it didn't. After a lap or 2, with better motion, my left hip flexor and IT band felt like they were Charlie horsing. So, when she asked if my hips felt good enough to trot, I was like, uhm, I don't think so...not until this tightness is resolved. 

She had me bring Jo up to her so she could hold her, and told me to turn around on her and breathe. That helped, but I needed more. So, this photo was the precursor to me stretching forward across Jo's rump, an arm on either side of her, while stretching my legs up and back toward her shoulders, and letting my hips, back, and quads stretch passively. After about 5 minutes, something released, because the pain went away and Jo started to sigh, lick and chew, and close her eyes. I slowly sat up and turned myself to face forward before continuing with our class.