The Fairgrounds.

Since it's getting colder the masses seemed to have slowed down at the fairgrounds, thank goodness! It seems to be back to the crowd where everybody keeps their distance from everybody else and, most importantly, their dogs listen! Boy, what a concept!

So Izzy and I are going to be there a lot more as that is the best place for me to let her run and to work on her reactivity training. I went out and bought a really thin 50ft clothesline and attached it to her harness, so that's what she's on when we're there. It works really well, but if I try and stop her, rope burn! Thankfully she very rarely decides to keep going when I call her, and if she does it's always because I've pushed her past her threshold.

I took her down yesterday morning (Black Friday) and it was completely empty, woot! I still made her wear the line didn't even bother to keep her close. It's a good thing too because since my bike was stolen she has been driving. me. crazy. because I can't give her the exercise she needs through walking alone. We were down there for probably about an hour and a half and I don't think she stopped once, she just ran and ran and ran and ran and ran. We did recall work and she was spot on, every single time. My favorite is to call her when she's in a full out sprint away from me because she turns on a dime and it's adorable! All of her recalls though are sprints back to me, there's none of this trotting or moseying back, she has to race!

I take her dinner along as treats because if the treats are really good she refuses to exercise and sniff, she just follows me around. *sigh*

We went today as well, though I wasn't at all suprised that there was some people there as it is Saturday. There was a young guy there who had a shepherd mix who I was super jealous of because his dog was all about the ball! I don't think Izzy even saw them though. It took her quite a while to realize there was other dogs there, not surprising as the area is huge and there's small hills and the wind was blowing. We practiced recalls a bit before she figured out that there was other dogs around and I held the end of the line just to be safe.

The first dog she saw, a cocker with an elderly couple, she didn't make a huge deal about. The only issue we had was that she went to the end of the leash and when I recalled her she took 2 steps towards me then turned around. I reeled her in and made her sit. She was definitely tense and aware of the dog, but she was able to listen to commands and after about 30 seconds we were able to keep going. She was still tuned into the other dog as we walked, but she recalled fine and was able to control herself.

As we were walking we ended up parallel to an old man and his black and white springer spanial. The dog was gorgeous and bouncing all over the place. Izzy somehow didn't see it for quite some time, despite my even pointing it out! Then when she did eventually see it, she wasn't too happy. She barkgrowled a bit while I walked over to her as she would not come when I called. I put her regular leash on and asked her for a sit and then eye contact, neither of which she was willing to do. So I backed her up a few feet and this time she was able to sit and after a few minutes was able to make eye contact with me. I praised and treated and she was able to also do a down stay while the dog got closer. Her attention stayed on me for most of the time and she was able to do as asked while we watched the old man and dog go past.

I'm not going to lie, I was disappointed that she reacted, but it wasn't really bad so I should be thankful for that.

We walked around some more and eventually we were there alone and I let her run as far as she wanted and after a bit of that we headed home.

"He may be small...

...but he sure is aggressive!"

-Lady who scared Frodo with her noisy ass garage door.

:(

Le Purpose o' de Blog.

Now that all of you, my (non-existent) readers, have been wooed by my fantabulous picture introduction, I guess it's time to bore you now...

Training - when I originally decided to stop posting Izsheflyingyet? and start this one, it was because there really just wasn't enough information to update regularly when the focus of the blog was solely on Izzy and her flyball training. So although much of this blog will be about Izzy and flyball, I also plan on focusing a lot on Frodo's reactivity issues with people and (to a much lesser extent) other dogs. I'd like to be able to look back once we've gone as far as we can with this issue and see how far we have come. I'll be using a combination of decensitization, having him focus on me, and the Look at That! game from Leslie McDevitt's Control Unleashed (amazing book, I highly suggest it to everybody). In addition to these two main components of the training section of this blog, I will also post regularly on stupid little tricks they learn and eventually, I hope, our Rally practice sessions.

Feeding Raw - As of today Izzy and Frodo have been fed a raw diet for 43 days. I'm trying to feed as close to a prey model raw diet as posssible, with 80% meat, 10% edible bone, and 10% organ meat (with 5% of that being liver), though right now I'm feeding more bone and no organ meat as both Izzy and Frodo have sensative stomachs and enjoy making this hard on me. I've been feeding Inky raw (though it's only been cut up bits of meat for now) for 3 days, and he seems to really like it. I'm gradually going to work him up to chunks of meat and eventually bone. Mollie started her raw diet yesterday and ate like a champ, though all today she turned up her nose at it. We shall see how long this strike lasts...

Pictures - Because all good blogs have pictures! Right now I only have a Canon Powershot S3 IS, and I don't see that changing anytime soon, though I would love a DSLR. I go through phases where I take pictures of everything and then I lose interest and won't pick up the camera for weeks, so that's pretty much how it will go.

Rants - Everybody loves a good rant. I think this is pretty self explanatory.

Misc. - Like the AKC I will have a group where I just throw random stuff.

I think that is all...