Just doodling….

I was recording some things with Leo last night for an ADP entry, and afterward, decided to do some doodling. No, not the kind you do with a pen on paper while trying to stay awake during that horribly boring History of Magic lecture that Professor Binns is droning through…. I mean the heeling kind of doodling.

I’ll admit to slacking on a lot of things with the girls, heel work being one of them. I honestly can’t remember the last time I even asked them to heel. Well, Leo evidently still remembers something about it…

 

In other news, the next session of the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy starts on August first, with enrollment open now. I originally wasn’t going to take a class, because I’ve got so much going on in the month of August, but now that people are posting in the FDSA Alumni Group on Facebook about the classes they are taking, I’m tempted to take a class. Possibly two. Or maybe five or six…

Take a peek, and see if there is anything that looks good to you. The little game of “spin into heel position” that Leo and I are doing is one of the things that I learned in Julie Symon’s OB320 Obedience Starter Games, running this session. https://fenzidogsportsacademy.com/index.php/schedule-and-syllabus  Tuition starts at only $65, and lectures stay in your library for a year after the end of class.

 

Leo and Lily are Experts!

Well, Expert Trick Dogs, anyway.

Yes, I finally got around to finishing up their Do More With Your Dog Expert Trick Dog titles last month. Leo’s first trick was approved in January 2017, and Lily’s first trick was approved in April 2017. We started on them, and then got sidetracked with other things, mainly ADP. I decided last month that by golly, I wanted to get those done, so we did them.

Rather like her ADP Level 5/Championship title, I had serious doubts about Leo ever getting her ETD. But, once again, she surprised me. Maybe one of these days, I’ll quit being surprised by what she accomplishes, and start just assuming that “Of course she can do this!”.

This is a compilation of all the tricks Leo did for her ETD.

 

For whatever reason, I just assume that Lily can do things, and sometimes she decides to humor me.

These are her ETD tricks.

 

I’ll submit for their AKC Performer Trick Dog titles somewhere down the line. So far as I know, the AKC has no plans to quit converting DMWYD titles any time soon, so it’s not a priority.

Once I did their compilation videos, I decided that what the heck, I’d do one of Ilka’s ETD tricks, as well. I had a different CTDI for Ilka’s ETD, and she allowed us to do two “handler’s choice” tricks.

 

Next month, I think I might send in for Leo’s International Dog Parkour Association Novice title. I’m pretty sure we’ve finally gotten all the clips we need, and she has to have that before we can start working on their Specialist titles.

Dragons indeed….

In my last post, I wrote about how excited I was to get Drake after having waited forty years to get a Doberman Pinscher. I love Drake, and he is a wonderful dog for the most part. Sadly however, Drake is no longer a part of Team Hellhound. You see, it turned out that Drake did not like my cats or bird. Well, maybe he’d have liked them for a snack….

After bringing him home, Drake’s reactions to my cats and bird went from mildly interested to the point where I locked all three cats away in my bedroom before I let him out of his crate. Even then, he would try dragging me to where they were, whining and crying. If he was crated and saw one of them, he would have a total meltdown, screaming at the top of his lungs (which was quite loud, in case you were wondering) and trying to claw his way out of the crate (yay for sturdy old MidWest Metals dog crates, as well as extra snaps holding the latches closed). He acted pretty much the same towards the bird, a Senegal Parrot.

Between the fact that my teenage son has autism, and doesn’t always understand why things like “Don’t let the cats out of my bedroom!” are important, and the increasing intensity of Drake’s reactions to the cats and bird, I felt that it was beyond my abilities as a trainer to keep everyone safe and happy. So, as much as it broke my heart to do it, Drake has been turned over to a breed specific rescue a couple of hours away from me, and went to his foster home this afternoon.

Drake is not a “bad” dog, nor is there anything “wrong” with him. Let me repeat that… Drake is not “bad”, “broken”, “messed up”, “damaged goods”, or any of a number of other negative things that people might imagine about a shelter and/or rescue dog. Drake was simply not the right dog for me. He wouldn’t have been the right dog for me even if I’d gotten him directly from his former owner. He will, however, be a fantastic dog for someone else. With a lot of training by someone who is better than I at dealing with behavior like this, it’s entirely possible that he will even be relatively safe around cats and/or birds.

So, one of these days, I’ll be looking for another dog. Maybe even another Doberman Pinscher. And yes, there is a very good chance that my next dog will also be a rescue.

Meanwhile, I’ve set a goal for myself and the girls. An All Dogs Parkour Premier Championship, which is a Level Premier at all five levels, requires a total of 40 legs. Leo has 24 legs (regular ADP-CH plus  Premier for Levels 1 and 2), and Lily has 21 legs (regular ADP-CH plus Premier for Level 1 and part of Level 2). My goal is that both of them will have their ADP-PrCH by July 2020. I’ve built in a cushion to account for months where we submit for something else (or don’t do anything), and the fact that we can earn Level Premier titles along the way gives us a lot of smaller goals to meet along the way.