Friday, November 23, 2012

The Accidental Agility Dog - Chapter Four

I am home briefly between seminars – we just completed detection seminars in TN and IN, last weekend I was in NC for a tracking clinic and I have another one in SC next weekend. I have also been busy with another “project” but I can’t talk about him, at least not yet….In the meantime a bit more about Amber....
After taking her into my house and socializing her and spending time with her I have become rather attached to the little space alien. She is not overly outgoing with strangers but she is VERY bonded with those people she knows. However, having three dogs already, I was determined to find a good home for her. A person came along who I thought would work out and took her home for a trial visit. That didn’t work out so well for a variety of reasons so she ended up being returned to me. Sort of like a little boomerang.... she keeps ending up with me.
I am still looking for a good home for her, provided it is the right one. However I have not been working very hard at finding one. She is a tough dog to place because it is hard to get to see her real personality initially and she needs a LONG time, like weeks, to settle in. I left her with my friend Dawn for three weeks while I went to Australia. I guess initially she was beside herself but Dawn wisely ignored her and let her retreat to her room/kennel whenever she wanted to and after about a week she decided that since I was gone she had better align herself with the new leader!
Without actively seeking a new home for her though the question is – what am I going to do with her? Along the way, although she hasn’t completely overcome her environmental issues, she learned to channel her inner Malinois and discovered she has DRIVE. This development along with her high energy level meant that I needed to do something with her.
Since we were teaching a course at the time I took her through one of our detection trainer’s schools and trained her for narcotics detection. Although her role was to be an example of the problems with training improperly selected dogs (environmental confidence is our most important trait when selecting dogs) she didn’t do half bad. She continues to perform very well as we travel around the country teaching detection classes. We have had numerous people attend our detection seminars who are interested in the sport of nosework and I am considering adding those odors to her repertoire and titling her in that venue. While teaching tracking clinics I also started her tracking and she quickly picked that up as well.
Amber detecting narcotics:

Amber tracking - first hard surface crossing:

However there is one sport that she both LOVES and seems to be naturally adept at and that is agility. So the plan, until a new home comes along, is to train her for agility. It is also a bit of an adventure for me because, although I have trained a lot of obstacles for other reasons, I have never trained agility with the intention of competing in it. So the goal of the "The Accidental Agility Dog" blog posts is to chronicle our journey into the sport of agility. In the next post I will clarify the "rules" of our little adventure and provide a synopsis of where we are so far....

Thursday, November 1, 2012

It's that time of year again!!!

We have an annual tradition every year a few weeks after Steel's birthday. The start of this tradition is a long story involving a $14.00 plastic pumpkin, lots of driving in circles, Tylenol with codeine and a tiny little puppy that I had no intention of taking home....That day ended with this pic...I was toast and the puppy went home with me a few weeks later.


So it has been an annual tradition to update the original pumpkin picture.
This year, in light of our achievements over the weekend I came up with this brilliant idea:



Steel however, being his father's son, was less than amused.
To him this was a waste of a perfectly good pumpkin (and ribbon).
Don't you just love the pained look on his face?

He did hold his stay though and of course I had to reward good behavior
(plus take about 200 pictures)