Software Issues, Ontario Regionals and Baby Dee

No there is not connection between my software issues and the Ontario regionals (sorry if I scared any of you:)).  I was hoping to post the first installment of my latest 2×2 training webinar however my program crashed yesterday and I can’t figure out why.  

I can tell you I have divided the posts/questions into roughly 4 categories; speed, trial behaviours, failing and miscellaneous.  Oh yeah I did include another category on success stories so anyone reading the blog won’t think that EVERYONE has issues with 2×2 training! The miscellaneous category covers things like poles skipping, footwork, weight shift etc. Right now I have  total of 26 good weave pole questions. Sorry I couldn’t leave you with an installment here, but I promise one way or another I will answer then (even if just the old fashion way of typing:)) in the next two weeks.

I leave today for the Ontario Regionals in Ottawa. I am a bit sad as this my first regional event ever that I will not be running a mini dog. I made the decision to retire DeCaff from competition, likely all competition. She is only 9 years old but at 5 was diagnosed with degenerative disc disease and it was suggested then that her career was over. With the help of Prolo therapy we got 3 1/2 more years of doing agility together. I will definitely do a blog post on the “wow” factor of prolo therapy in the future. It is nothing short of miraculous (Encore has also had it for her hip that is a bit wanky).

It is difficult to make the decision to stop running DeCaff because she is still loving it and still winning. However I know it is the right thing to do so as difficult as it, is De-dog and I will be finding joy in our walks, swimming and just hanging out together (she is turning into a bit of a pork-pie though!)

Today I am so grateful for all the amazing runs DeCaff and I have shared together during her career in agility. In her seven years competing she made to the USDAA finals 6 times winning once, coming 2nd twice and placing in the top 5 every time except once. She place in the Steeplechase finals every year except one and was the  IFCS World Champion two times  with countless individual medals along the way. It has been a great journey but agility is only a small part of the life I share with my dogs and I don’t want it to jeopardize her quality of life as she grows older.  So now a new chapter of our life together will begin.

Continuing with Life’s Processes

I am continuing the topic I started yesterday, describing how I have emotionally coped with the advancing progression of my dogs lives.

Denial and Grieving. The day after losing Stoni I had to leave for 3 weeks of teaching in Australia. Stoni had been sick for over a year. We all knew she was living on borrowed time, so her death was not a shock, you would have thought I would have been better prepared. I thought it was a perfect scenario for me, as I was getting on a plane, I could leave all of the memories of giving her those Sub-Q fluids, of the big adventures and come back and just start my life from that point. Not so. Once I settled down for my 26 hour journey, I started sobbing. Poor guy next to me on the plane. I thought to myself, this is not going to work, I need to be happy to be an effective seminar presenter. I got the idea to pretend Stoni was still at home with John. Remember how I said I can visualize myself anywhere?  Well, here is where this came in very handy. I got to Australia and had blocked the event, entirely from my mind. I didn’t send out the email announcing Stoni’s passing, even Greg and Laura Derrett, who are my good friends and who were staying in the same house with me in Australia,  didn’t know. I would call home and ask John how everyone was and, although he was concerned for my mental well being, he played along for me.  That period of denial helped me a lot. Part way through the month in Australia I was able to come clean. I wrote the email about losing Stoni and thought that was the end of it. It wasn’t. I got back home and all the memories were stirred up, it was as if the month away hadn’t happened. I had to start to grieve all over again once I was home with all my memories of Stoni. Unfortunately my relationship with Buzz and DeCaff really suffered during the following few months. Twister and Encore, my other two remaining dogs, were always very good with Stoni as she as grew older and weaker. Twister would clean her eyes and Encore, even though a puppy, was very respectful and often would curl up on the same bed with Stoni. Buzz and DeCaff took a far more feral approach and would growl at her if she came near them, it was as if the pack instinct to remove the weak, older dog had kicked in and they treated Stoni as if she had no right to stay. As guilty as I felt for it, I held that against those two when Stoni was gone. For the next  two months I wouldn’t train either of them. In April of that year I went to a big USDAA event in Myrtle Beach and not surprisingly my performance with those two dogs was terrible. I had to heal my relationship with my dogs. I did it by bringing them down to my work out room in the morning and just gave them treats for staying on their beds while I worked out. From there I gradually was able  to do more  with each of them and eventually we were once back to our normal training routine.

Recovery. Guilt really is a waste of emotion. I think it is normal to ignore one (or more) of your dogs when you lose another that was so special to you. It doesn’t make the other dogs any less special, just not as special at that moment in time. I think my recovery would have been faster if I had allowed myself to feel the way I did and not judge myself for it. DeCaff and Buzz forgave me, I just had a harder time forgiving myself. Forget guilt and do what you can, your dogs will appreciate any amount of time you can give them and when you are ready they will be waiting to start back to your training once again. When I lost Speki it was a sudden accident, with no time to prepare. Shelby and Stoni were there and saw Speki’s lifeless body and my outpour of emotion. Stoni had difficulty with it and for the next few weeks any time I would cry, she would run and hide. Shelby, on the other hand , was amazing. This will be hard for you to believe but any time during that period I cried, she would go over to my dog training bag and sit pretty beside the utility articles,  holding that position for an hour if it took me that long to get up of the couch. That is not a lie or even an exaggeration, she really did that. She had never done it before and never did it after those few weeks of me grieving.

Stoni, Shelby and Twister on a Christmas card in the mid 90's (no this was not photoshopped:)).

I know people that lose a dog and have to remove all of the pictures of that dog from their home, for at least for a year or two. For me it is opposite. I make sure I have a picture somewhere I will see  everyday. Seeing pictures of the dog never makes me sad, quiet the opposite, it always makes me smile. I think once again, you need to follow your heart and do what is right for you. When I lost Twister (less than a year ago) I was so grateful to have my puppy Feature. Feature is comedian and you can not be sad for one minute with her in your presence. I know that is a big part of the reason why I had to go all the way to England to get her. Another thing that has really helped in my recovery from the grief of losing a dog, is something that was recommended to me by Jo Sermon. She suggested I start a journal. What I did was to write only one line that would remind me of a funny story with that dog. I love to look over my journal, it really makes laugh, I mean belly laugh when the memories of those funny stories come back. Who knows, maybe one day it may turn into a book, one that has nothing to do with training, but everything to do with joy. For now it is a great reminder of what awesome dogs I have been blessed with and how they have enriched my life so very much.

Today I am grateful for Speki, Shelby, Stoni and Twister, my four, now passed, great teachers that have all left their mark not only on my abilities, but also my heart.

“I think God will have prepared everything for our perfect happiness. If it takes my dog being there in Heaven, I believe he’ll be there.”  ~Rev. Billy Graham

Meet My Dogs

Today I am going to start right off with gratitude. I think gratitude is my favourite emotion.  Doesn’t it always makes you feel good to be grateful for someone or something?  Today I am being grateful for my dogs.  Each of my dogs personalities are unbelievably different, but that is what makes them so special.

Buzz, (Buzzy, Boo, BooBoo boy, Ba-zoo, mama’s special boy) is now 12 years old. You would have learned all about Buzzy if you read my book Shaping Success (if you didn’t read it, why the heck not?). He is just as enthusiastic about life today, as he was as a puppy, although he is deaf as a post. A long-time friend of mine says it is a Pete Townsend thing. Pete (of the rock group “The Who”) damaged his hearing after playing music too loud, for too many years. I am convinced Buzz, similarly did-in his hearing by continuously rehearsing  his own version of ‘loud music’. I always told him his barking was deafening, now I have proof!

DeCaff, (D-dog, Deek, My-D-Dog (said very fast is mighty dog), Whirlie), at 8 1/2, is currently my only little dog. She is my shadow and feels she needs to be with “da mama” at all times. She has been a very different dog for me to train and I am sure I learned more about dog training from her then any other single dog I have owned. All of my dogs have loved agility. They would just go crazy to play. While DeCaff enjoys the sport, I think she mostly does it because she knows it makes me happy (and of course because I used alot of good dog training to grow her drive for the sport). But at the end of the day, she just wants to do what I do, and is not at all pleased with me if she is left behind when I go out to teach or train.

Encore, (Cory, En, Coriander, Miss-E (said very fast is “Missy”), Missy-En), my 4 year old, is a serious, studious, workaholic who is the only one of the four that has a genuine soft spot for John. She just goes crazy for him. She is a big softie, that submissively smiles and will crawl onto the lap of anyone that will have her.

Feature, (Feachy, Peachy, Fee, Pee, Feach-en-ador, Nador, Ralphie), my 18 month old puppy is just a crack up. She makes me laugh out loud, like no other dog I have ever owned. She is such a character you would think she was a Jack Russell not a Border Collie.

Encore and Feature are great pals, they wrestle together in the house and run together non-stop outside. If the two of them were teenagers Encore would be the bookworm type, sitting at the front of the class, constantly querying the teacher, “will this be on the exam at the end of the term?“.  She would spend time each evening with 4 different coloured highlighters marking up her notes from that day’s lectures. She would often ask the teacher for extra homework on Friday afternoon and empty every book out of her locker to take home each weekend. Feature, on the other hand, would be the pot smoking, jock that all the boys and the girls would want to have as a friend.  She would know the maximum number of classes she could cut before losing her varsity status, often serving detention for being the class cut-up, would  sit in the back row of any class and rarely takes a note, yet somehow, always manage to get straight A’s on her report card at the end of the term.

Here three of my dogs show off their true personalities. DeCaff is saying: “I love you mama”, Feature is wondering: “Are we done with all of this yet?”, Encore asking: “Have I got this right? Is there some other way I could be doing this for you?”

Man, I love my dogs.