Tish and I went to All Dawgs Academy for CPE agility today. She went 3 for 4 and it was HOT inside! We’re having teeter issues still, but she is running nice and fast, driving lines, developing some nice obstacle focus, and the few puppy brain moments we had were almost all her driving off to another piece of equipment, instead of going visiting. Very happy with her…just need to sort out that teeter! She finished her Level 2 Fun Games title (CL2-F) and is now in Level 4 Fullhouse!
Nina didn’t get to come and play agility, and I know she is feeling pregnant because she barely complained about it. I’ve had some lovely feedback from other Vallhund folks about what a nice choice of stud Tempest is. She was six weeks along as of yesterday, just three weeks to go! I’m getting the shopping underway for supplies (you can NEVER have too many towels!), Jim dragged the whelping box down from the attic, ready to be cleaned and freshened up, I went through my big box o’whelping supplies, threw out expired things and ordered replacements. I will move downstairs into the guest room (AKA the “whelping lounge” located off the family room) with Nina soon, so she is happy and comfortable in there well before the puppies arrive. She is quite round, but not enormous yet, the puppies do most of their growing in the last two weeks. I can feel them moving a bit now, just little fluttery movements, not the comparatively rowdy bumping around they’ll do in there in a week or two. She is having a bit of trouble navigating being a lap dog with her tummy, but she is still very much in the “content” stage of pregnancy, eating well (she loves getting lunch!), very cuddly and mellow, sleeping a lot but still has energy to play with the others (she and Tish had a good-natured jaw wrestling session on the couch when we got back from the agility trial this afternoon), being the queen about having the choice spots on laps and on the bed. We forgot her lunch one day last week and she SHOUTED at us until we realized and sheepishly served it up! She is HUNGRY. I am cautious about overfeeding her, since excess weight can make whelping more difficult (and can give you enormous puppies, too), but I won’t mind if she gets a little bit plush at this stage, since last time she ate very little in the last two weeks, except for bits of scrambled egg and Nutri-Cal that I begged her to eat.
Just added some great agility pictures like this one to Tish’s page!
Nina is doing great, she is very mellow and cuddly, which is not unusual for this stage of her cycle, but it does seem like she is MORE mellow and MORE cuddly than usual. She is also licking everything and anything in sight – she is always a licky dog, but she is REALLY licky just now. If she is pregnant, she is three weeks pregnant as of yesterday, already a THIRD of the way through!
We had a very nice visit with my cousin Susan and her daughter Rebecca (my god-daughter) this weekend. Tish always loves having company, since she’s a social butterfly, but she was absolutely enthralled with Rebecca, sleeping on her lap and following her around and buzzing at her for pats and attention. Nina opted to sit on Rebecca’s lap and be cuddled and admired and needy rather than play with Tish and Rakki outside for a while yesterday…I hope that means she’s pregnant! I’m looking for signs and omens like a crazy person just now!
Tish earned her first AKC Q today in Jumpers with a lovely run! The timer malfunctioned, so you hear the buzzer go off before we’re finished, so we were given the option to take standard course time or rerun. I reran…won’t do that again! Our rerun was a disaster, so since you can’t do WORSE on a rerun, we ended up with standard course time anyway!
Tish JWW (first AKC Q) – look at those weaves!:
Tish Standard (she knocked the first bar, and that threw her off from the start, I opted to just work on speed and end on a really up and happy note, so I didn’t fix anything after the second try at the weaves. REALLY happy with her table performance and the speed she was showing near the end! Need to reward the teeter a TON):
THANK YOU MARI AMIOKA! I had my camera with me but forgot to ask anyone to record, but Mari happened to record us on her iPad, awesome!
Today was great, no Q’s, but Tish was really starting to work like an agility dog. Still puppy brain here and there, and inexperience, but she is working really nicely, I am thrilled with her.
Jumpers:
Standard (I told her to stop too early on the dogwalk, but she sure listened! Another teeter bail-off, we obviously have some work to do, although she’s been doing it really well and consistently in practice, but look at that table!):
Tish and I attended Western Lakes AKC agility today, Nina was completely outraged to be left behind, poor baby!
This was Tish’s first “official” AKC trial (she ran one day at the National Specialty last year, but that was just for fun, she was nowhere near ready). I was THRILLED with how well she did today! The FAST send was really hard, the Open one was easier than the Novice. She did her teeter in FAST just fine, but I could tell she was worried about it in Standard. BUT!!!! She got her weaves in Standard on her first try! You can’t quite hear it on the video, but I was shrieking with delight at her! And look at that table! You don’t make the same mistakes twice, you just make new ones…
Tish Novice FAST (look at her go!):
Tish Novice Standard:
Very happy with this one, she came back and worked after going to the teeter and dogwalk (I think she was worried about the teeter).
Yesterday we started off with a bang – Nina earned her first Open Standard Q with a gorgeous run. We scored 95, would have been 100 but her ABS failed when she hit the table at full speed and she slid off it half on her side.
Here’s her Jumpers run, would have been a lovely Q except for the bar down (Lisa apologizes for the butt shot at the beginning, her leash got stuck! And that’s not me holding her up by her collar, she was standing on her back legs trying to get going!).
(thanks Lisa for recording for me on your iPad!). No Q’s today, but we had a crazed crack monkey run in Standard, but then she settled right back for another almost-Q in Jumpers (one bar again). Really fun weekend, lovely courses, great weather!
Day 1: Nina finished her Novice Weavers title today, and qualified in Elite Tunnelers and Open Hoopers. Tish qualified in Novice Hoopers and ran a great Tunnelers run for an NQ, but a fast, responsive Personal Q!
Nina’s Elite Tunnelers Q (leg #2):
Day 2: Nina finished her first Elite title in Tunnelers (now we get national rankings!) and finished her Novice Chances title to put herself completely in Open/Elite. Tish was the star of the day – she won the Most Memorable Run award for her lovely Hoopers run last night, she’d never run Hoopers before and had only seen hoops at all a couple of times. She also qualified in Jumpers today (her second leg), went visiting in her first Touch N Go run, but came back and worked, and on her second run, she worked beautifully.
Nina’s Jackpot run, lovely run but knocked a bar in the gamble so NQ:
Tish’s Jackpot run (a Q):
I dropped Tish back down to Level 1 in Standard, to see if I could get some more speed and drive out of her on simpler courses, I think it worked!
Standard Round 1:
Tish earned her first level 2 title (CL2-S) AND her first level 3 Q (in Fullhouse). She is not trial-ready for Level 2 courses yet (weaves and teeter aren’t there yet), but I need her to start seeing weaves and teeters outside of where we train, so I will keep running her in Level 2 for now.
Nina did OK, I pulled her once for a really egregious start line stay break. We have one day of AKC next weekend, we will see how we do.
Videos to follow (I am LOVING my new Sony Bloggie camera that Santa brought me! It meets all my requirements: not so expensive that if it went walkies it would be a disaster, easy for anyone to use, takes good video).
