Jayda’s elephant training has been put on hold for a couple of weeks – she was spayed last week. Hated doing it, but she’s never going to see 16″ or less and even though she only came in season once a year, I already lost a few weeks of shows because of poor timing, soooo …

Her recovery is going well – she’s being quite the little trouper about spending a lot of time crated or on leash, though as we enter week #2 her patience is starting to wear a little thinner. To keep her from messing with the incision, the vet’s office sent her home with a little stockinette garment. I never saw this before but its a great idea! Kept it dry and protected in the nasty weather we had last weekend and no big, uncomfortable cone to deal with – its just like wearing a sweater. Only problem is as she gets more active the thin material stretches hopelessly out of shape which causes all kinds of problems – we already had to get a 2nd one and I’m not sure if that will last through the weekend so she may end up as a “conehead” yet.

Since she HADN’T been looking at the incision area, she had a few hours of freedom yesterday … then she discovered those kewl little string thingies on her tummy – argh! Back into her little outfit she went!

Her stitches come out Wednesday AM – we can’t wait!!

Here’s session #5 of Jayda learning the Elephant trick. She will now go all the way around, although she sometimes gets “stuck” especially when she gets so her back’s to me (though there are a few nice turns in this clip). And she still wants me up close, making it VERY hard to video!

So ALMOST! Next things to work on: fading out the intermittent reinforcers, smoothing it out and getting some distance.

We didn’t do any Elephant Training over the weekend. Saturday, Jayda and I went to a seminar with Leslie McDevitt. It was good although I felt that it would have been better with fewer working teams – she spends a LOT of time with each team so even though watching her work with different dogs’ issues was very informative, it made for a long day! Bryce had to stay home and was NOT a happy boy!

Not wanting to be left behind her trans-atlantic cousins, Jayda has started to learn the Elephant trick. Here’s a little video clip from her 3rd training session. She’s such a quick learner! She’s just doing a few steps at a time here, but by the end of this session she was offering from 1/4 to almost 1/2 turn on her own! (Bad video, and a pretty shabby demo of my training skills too – sorry, I can’t video AND clicker train at the same time!)

Note something not always seen on Jayda in public – a TAIL! And a very active one at that!

Bryce and Jayda ended up a nice season with a CPE trial up in our training building.

We did very well – Bryce Q’d 8 out of 10 runs, finishing his level 3 titles and moving into level 5 in Colors. Jayda Q’d in a very respectable 6 out of 10 runs, including the last run she needed to “graduate” from level 1. She missed 2 other Q’s (and the chance to finish her L2 standard title) by just a step – not qui-i-i-te making it out of the last tunnel in time in Jackpot and just missing the A-frame contact in Standard. That last was odd because she never misses contacts – I was watching her closely the next training session and even when I crossed in front (which I had done on that run) she was well into the yellow. Oh well – one of those things.

Not a bad way to end the season, and I was happy to be able to run my dogs at all, since I was running on a broken toe from about 10 days earlier!

Here’s Bryce with his Level Completion ribbon – its bigger than he is! Jayda got one too but was in no mood for posing – she insisted on sitting with legs in all directions, stuck her ears out to the side and pulled a face at me. Didn’t make for as nice a picture!

Skyline knows how to treat their exhibitors :)! We also know how to feed our workers – our secret is having a club member who’s a caterer. While other clubs survive on coldcuts and pizza, we have gourmet salads, multiple choice of hot dishes like sausage and peppers, eggplant rollantini, turkey tettrazini or chicken marsala, and fresh-baked white chocolate chunk cookies, lemon bars and chocolate cookies with peanut butter filling for dessert. Yum!

We have NO trouble recruiting help at our trials :)!

So now we have a break for the holidays. Jayda is going to get spayed so it won’t be all that pleasant a break for her. Then we start again with a couple of indoor CPE trials next year.

“Those are all MINE???”

“OK … if no one else is gonna claim ‘em, I guess they are!”

(Don’t laugh at my porch floor. Yes, the color is slightly reminiscent of something the cat yakked up. Believe me, it looked much better on the paint chip!)

This past weekend we went to another NADAC trial, this time on Staten Island. Saturday was freezing cold and very windy – miserable for people, great weather for dogs. Bryce was especially wild Saturday. Sunday was a beautiful, mild fall day – which brought out all the spectators (public park).

First, let me say it’s official: Hell HAS frozen over! Bryce finally got a qualifying score in Weavers, a comfy 10+ seconds under time and a 1st place at that!

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Weavers, it’s a course consisting entirely of tunnels and weave poles. Course times are tight and basically the dog is encouraged to run all out through tunnels then has to put on the brakes, check his stride, and successfully complete a set of weaves. There are a minimum of 3 sets of weaves on a course.

Bryce doesn’t find this amusing, hence our prior lack of success at this game.

He also got another qualifying score in Chances, unfortunately that was all he got the entire weekend. He had some other brilliant runs, but there was just “one little thing” that kept him him from qualifying in each of them. The most painful being an Elite Jumpers course, where he went over time by 0.03″!

Jayda had a more productive weekend. She stayed with me and worked every single one of her 8 runs beautifully, qualifying twice in Chances to finish her Novice Chances title (NCC) and qualifying 3 times in Regular to finish her standard Novice title (NAC). She even got a 1st place on Saturday!

(I was going to include a photo of Jayda posing with her ribbons here, but an image sensor in my camera went kablooey and it needs to be sent out for repair so you’ll have to settle for this one of the Terrible Twosome in front of the fireplace)

Sounds good on paper, doesn’t it? But the truth is the poor girl was SO stressed outside the ring the entire weekend! And I do mean really, REALLY stressed – shaking, trying to pull me back to the car in a panic… it’s not any ONE thing, its the WHOLE picture that upsets her. The sounds, the sights … she gets so overwhelmed, poor girl. I’ve tried keeping her busy to try to distract her, feeding her nonstop, massaging her … not sure which if any of these strategies are having an impact.

This is the dog whose tail is wagging ALL the time at home – I hate seeing her unhappy and feel so awful for her. The fact that she’s focusing and coping in the ring is a plus – this weeknd she concentrated on her job every single time she ran. But I’d be much happier to see her really enjoying herself!

Bryce of course has no such issues – to Bryce, life is one big party that starts whenever he gets there!