New Dog!

So, after my SMASHING success on Wednesday, I got assigned a new dog to work with. But this is not just any new dog. He belongs to one of the powers that be here at Triple Crown, who is, by the way, a DOG TRAINER. Yes, I've been charged with training a dog trainer's dog. Weird, no?

This was what was said about him: "you're getting [dog]. He's a little sharp [a personality term here, not referring to how smart he is] and he's bitten a couple people, so watch out for that. He'll be a different kind of dog for you. He already has basic obedience to about the level you're at now."

I spent way too much time trying to analyze how I ended up getting this dog: is he a holy terror and they're setting me up to fail since I did so well so far? Do they really think I'm THAT GOOD that I can fix the dog trainer's dog after only 5 weeks? Are they trying to break me? Am I on Candid Camera?

It turns out, from what I've gathered, that the dog was going to be boarding anyway, and so my best guess is that I'm a glorified babysitter for him. And as flattering as it was to think that they thought so highly of me that I could cure this biting dog when his owner couldn't, this newest assessment is a big relief. I'm not meant to fix anything. I'm just going to learn some things from this dog (who is quite different from my other two), maybe teach him some agility obstacles and a couple clicker tricks if he doesn't already know them, and mostly just keep his busy little brain occupied while his dad is away. This I can handle. Next week I'll take over the world.

Dog for sale!

So, if it isn't apparent from my posts, I am in love with Miss Sugar. She is a sweet mush of a dog, and everyone tells me how much she adores me. Having said that, this is a far less than ideal time for us to add a dog to our lives, so the best outcome would be for me to find her a home before I leave here. That's now three weeks away!

I really can't stand the idea of giving her back to the shelter. First of all, she doesn't make a great first impression. She barks like a lunatic when anyone other than me walks into her kennel building, and truly sounds like she is out for blood. It's all a crazy act, but try telling that to the nice family coming to pick out their new dog. Second, she's a pit bull, and that alone is a huge strike against her. And third, I've heard that the place where she came from is a big warehouse full of dog crates. They are a "no kill shelter," but honestly, do I want her to spend the last 6-10 years of her life in a crate? So, like I said, if I found a home for her on my own and brokered the adoption, I'd be really thrilled.

So let me tell you about Sugar. She is a total lazy goof. We can be in the middle of heeling and I'll bend down to praise her and she'll fall over on her back for belly rubs. She isn't terribly high energy, but every once in a while I'll take her to a fenced area to run around and she'll galavant around like a nut for 10 minutes, then be all "whew, that was hard work." She has the sweetest temperamant, and can be a little nervous about new situations, but with the obedience work we're doing I'm finding it very easy to go back to familiar tasks (sit, down, place) to get her to chill out and accept what's going on.

She is going to be a dog who just wants to lie on her bed and chew a bone, get petted now and then, and go for a nice walk every night. I would take her in a heartbeat if I could, but I can't, so this is my plea to the world: does anybody know anybody who wants this dog? I will deliver her to anywhere between Texas and Maine...well, OK...Massachusetts. Seriously, if you can think of anyone who wants a dog, please let me know, or have them contact me.

Dave's visit

Dave came up to see me at the end of week three. It was wonderful. The wonderful-est part was how totally normal it felt. We walked around Walmart looking for something for school, we swam in the hotel pool, we ate Chinese buffet...just like home, only 15 degrees hotter!

It was a little difficult to balance my school responsibilities and my desire to spend time with Dave. I had someone taking care of the dogs in the morning, but I still stopped by campus twice a day for quick training sessions, just so my charges wouldn't forget who I was or what heel meant.

I brought him to campus once or twice, showed off what my dogs could do, introduced him to my roommates, and gave him the grand dusty tour. It was fun, and he acted appropriately impressed with the whole thing.

I dropped him off at the airport at some ungodly hour on Monday morning, came home and crashed out for half an hour, and spent the rest of the day a bit melancholy. Lucky for me it gets so busy so quickly around here that it's difficult to hang on to a mood for more than a day. You just get so distracted that you can't help but forget why you are so bummed out...unfortunately it means the really happy moods are also short-lived, but that's how life works, I guess!

Test time, yikes!

We’ve now had four written tests and our first practical/hands on exam too. I did great on three out of the four written, and got an 80 on one that I think was pretty poorly written and unfairly graded. But written tests are only 10% of our total grade, and I’ve done well enough on the others that I don’t think I’m going to care. I do plan to write a note to the instructor just to get some things off my chest (nicely!), but I don’t care if she doesn’t change my grade. It doesn’t help at all that I got that test back on what had to be my worst day here. More on that in a separate post.

So, that practical exam…whew! Here were the requirements:
Heel on leash
One minute sit/stay
Three minute down/stay
Five minute place/stay
Sit at the door
Sit while friendly stranger greets handler
Recall

The down was the scariest. We were taught to train it using treats, and we had about a week to go from “yes, my dog will lie down when asked” to “my dog will stay in place as long as I leave him there, up to 3 minutes.” That’s a pretty significant leap. Joker turned out to be the bigger nightmare. Sugar seems to have figured out that, even when I step more than 3 feet away, I still almost always come back, and I bring food with me when I do, so she’s pretty chill about the stays.

But Joker was a lunatic. He got the sit pretty quickly, and we’d been working on place for so long that all I really had to do was phase out the treats, which wasn’t to hard. But down was a disaster. He would mouth all over me as I was putting him in position, he would bounce up the second I moved, he would roll on his back and throw a tantrum, he even learned to army crawl towards me when he started getting bored. So we worked REALLY hard at down, and on test day I would have given about 50/50 odds that he’d actually do it.

We had to test both dogs, and I did Joker first. My thinking was that I was much more nervous about him, and Sugar is much more sensitive to me, so if I went in nervous with her, she might screw up too.

First was the five-minute place. We all placed our dogs and all hell broke loose: barking, whining, dogs breaking. Blessedly, the instructor gave us a redo, and told anyone who wanted to move away from a dog that was antagonizing their dog to do it now. The second round went much better for everyone. Joker was perched, as is his wont, on the slippery edge of the place bed looking at me, and suddenly he started to slip. So I stood there helplessly as he scrabble-scrabble-scrabbled his little feet on it, and somehow he managed to stay on. Phew. Actually, I was even able to appreciate in that moment how cool this was. Not only did he not break his place stay, he very clearly demonstrated that he gets it. He knew the rules well enough to work hard to stay on the bed when gravity was working against him. Good little dog!

During the place exercise I was next to roommate M, whose dog, Heath, decided that this would be the day that he discovered how delicious leather leashes are. So we both stood their amazed as he chewed right through the leash. She totally deserves extra credit for an off-leash place, because he spent the last minute or so totally not connected to her, but stayed right where he was. She had to borrow a leash to finish the test.

The sit was next and went fine, and the down was similarly uneventful. I could not believe my good fortune. In fact, the whole rest of Joker’s test was astoundingly good, and the instructor told me that his recall was the best one she’d seen all day. Woohoo!

So we did our victory lap and I walked back to put Joker away and get Sugar, thinking “this is going too well, what kind of crazy stunt is she going to pull?” But she was her wonderful reliable goofy self, and did everything nearly perfectly. She was a bit laggy on her heeling, but kept catching up with me, which I also found pretty cool because it made me think that she actually does know what heel is supposed to look like, even if she's sometimes to lazy to actually get herself there. The only other thing was that when I put her into a down, she popped back up slightly, and I had to readjust her. If anyone saw it happen, I probably lost a point or two.

But all in all, I could not have been more proud of my dogs and myself. We all worked really hard in the week leading up to the test. Of course I know there was a fair bit of luck in it too, because there were plenty of dogs who didn’t do nearly as well as I expected them to based on past performance, so I’m thanking the stars as well.

More on clickers

Wow, I am so behind. I will try to hit a few of the most relevant topics, and then hope and pray that I can get back on a daily schedule. First, a word about clickers.

Several of you have asked me what this clicker business is all about, and I will now do my teacher proud by explaining it to you in scientific yet understandable terms.
The clicker is a “marker,” in that it marks a behavior. It works much the same way as a “yes” or a “good dog,” but it has a few advantages – it is very short, so takes a snapshot of the exact moment the behavior is taking place (if you’re timing it right – see previous post about box-peeing for an example of a poorly timed click). Also, it is totally consistent, because it always sounds the same, while your voice might change.

So, you pair the clicker with a reinforcer (food, usually), something the dog understands inherently to be good. You could also pair it with a swat on the nose if you wanted to use it to stop behaviors from happening, but that’s not what we’re doing here. So you make the good association: clicker = food/yay. Then you can use it in a number of ways that are too complicated to explain, but for example, you can sit around watching your dog and waiting for a desirable behavior to occur, then click it. That’s called “capturing.”

Right now we are using it for a bunch of different things. First is “target,” where we ask a dog to put two front feet on a raised box. We started by rewarding any acknowledgement (other than peeing on it) of the box. Then increased it to movement towards the box. Then it was touching the box, then finally putting the feet on the box. Then we started adding the command “target.” I think eventually we phase out the clicker, but I’m not positive, we haven’t gotten there yet.
We’re also teaching “spin,” which is just a cute little trick where the dog literally spins around once. Joker does this at 80 mph and about two feet off the ground. Sugar moves at her own sweet pace, but she still seems to be enjoying it.

We’re also teaching “back,” where the dog just takes a couple steps backward. As I understand it, this will be useful for a number of different obedience commands later on.

Finally, we are working on “touch,” which is when the dog puts its nose to a target (a plastic lid for Joker, and my hand for Sugar, because she’s scared of the plastic lid…weird dog). Joker already has the command for this pretty well down. Sugar is a bit slower at all of this, but she’s making progress. I had basically written her off as a clicker dog, but she had a breakthrough with target and touch this past week.

Speaking of poorly timed clicks, I’m deeply embarrassed to report that Joker’s first pee-on-the-box episode was not his last. And, bless his wee heart, the second took place in front of the entire class. We had just done dthis AWESOME session, everyone was very impressed with us, and I was all proud of myself, and then right at the last second, he lifted his leg and emptied out on the box. Much laughter ensued. It really was pretty funny, but I was a bit embarrassed, and when the teacher asked how I was going to fix it, all I could come up with was “potty him before each session.” The correct answer, class, is “don’t let him do that again.” He almost tried one more time, and I caught him, so I believe we are safely past the box-peeing portion of Joker’s training.

July 21 and 21, 2008: An embarrassment of...mortification

Things continue to be very much up and down (and up, and down and up, and down and down and up...) around here. Some training goes really well, some crashes and burns.

We've started talking about puppy imprinting, and I totally love that stuff. It's so empowering to feel like "next time I'll do it right!" And also, puppies are cute. We haven't played with any yet, but I'm promised that it's coming soon.

We've also taken the next steps in clicker training, trying to get the dog to put its front feet on a target. I volunteered to be a guinea pig for class yesterday and in the first round, I must confess, I rocked the house. I was so pleased to have impressed our teacher in front of everyone, and Joker even seemed to carry his head a bit higher. When it came time for us to do a second demo, all was going quite well, until Joker decided to do a little repeat performance of the weekend's pee on the box incident. Everyone laughed, and I was mostly amused, and partly humiliated, but then as things progressed I got more humiliated and less amused, and as is true of most things lately, I ended up in tears. Luckily that part wasn't in front of the whole class.

Anyway, lesson learned...that little fucker was gearing up to pee on a box AGAIN today and I caught him before it started. I hope that nipped the whole thing in the bud. He is doing totally awesomely with the clicker still, and I think I even made a breakthrough with Sugar in that area too.

Sugar is showing some increased fear responses when we're outdoors, especially in the kennel area with all the barking dogs. It seems to be getting worse, not better, which is disheartening. I am hoping to talk to a trainer about it tomorrow. I think I'm doing everything right...ignoring her when she acts scared and praising her when she feigns bravery...but I'm sure I'll find out I'm totally wrong about that.

I created a virtual tour on flickr for anyone who's curious about the campus:
Check it out. It's hard to get a really good idea of what things look like until you get here though.

I guess that's plenty for now. I have two tests in the next two days, so I gotta get some studying in.

July 17-20, 2008: One day at a time? Ha!

Well, the grand plan to do an entry every night has clearly fallen to pieces. Maybe I can just offer the highlight reel for the past few days, and then recommit to a 10 minute typing session every night.

Lessee… Thursday and Friday we learned a fun way to start training the recall (come when called). You have on person hold the dog while you stand in front of it with something very tempting. You can back up a little but you need to keep the dog’s attention. Then, when the dog is raring to go, you say the word (“come” or “here” or whatever) and the helper releases the dog. We were assigned to do this 100 times between Thursday night and Sunday night. It would be fine except it can be tricky to find a partner. We’ve all really tried to help each other out, but we’re not on any kind of similar schedule, so you’re really relying on the fates to bring you someone to help you, or you have to set up a bunch of recall party dates.

Two of my roommates and I did a session late on Friday night after a few glasses of wine, and then decided it would be fun to bathe three dogs. Heck, it actually was pretty fun! We were so productive we felt it necessary to reward ourselves with a few more glasses of wine. Next thing we knew it was after 1 a.m.! I was pretty exhausted on Saturday, but still had a productive day.

We also had a great lecture about dog aggression on Friday, and since roommate A has a dog-aggressive dog, we are now helping her with a desensitization system, which involves walking past him and pelting him with chicken. Awesome! He had an OK session yesterday and a great one today. They want her to do this 5 times a day, which is pretty much impossible, even on weekends when there isn’t a whole lot going on. Just getting people with calm dogs together in one place when it’s not ass-blazing hot out is a challenge.

The dogs are doing fine with their current commands: sit, heel, place, and come. We ended up not learning the down yet. I think it’s going to be challenging for Sugar, whose only down is a flop-down-roll-over-please-pet-me-now maneuver. Joker is going to take to it fine, I’ll bet, but the problem will be keeping him down. That dog is spring loaded.

Ha, funny story. The clicker assignment this week was to get the dogs to show interest in a box, so you click whenever they look at the box, walk towards the box, nose the box, paw the box, do anything to the box. I was doing this with Joker today in the Club House, and he was doing so well: he put a foot in the box, and I clicked. He put both feet in and I clicked. Then he put all four feet in the box, and just as I clicked, he started to pee in the box. Fabulous. I then tied him to a chair so I could throw out the box.

July 16, 2008

I am only barely avoiding the temptation to start my entries with “Dear Diary,” just so you all know.

Anyway, today was a pretty good day. I had at least one good training session with each dog, as well as several frustrating ones. I also realize I’m not as far behind in my various skills as I thought…I assumed my dogs were supposed to be good at stuff already, and they’re really not. But the first obedience test isn’t until week four, I think. So there’s lots of time to figure out how to get them to keep their damn four feet on the damn bed. Damnit.

We didn’t learn any new skills today, and I was grateful for the chance to kind of rehash what we’d been doing, ask some questions, and watch another student working with their dog. It’s so easy to see what’s going on when it’s not you doing the work.

Today I also proved that you can drink wine that has previously been frozen. If you really want it bad enough. Which I did.

I’ve taken some photos around campus and will post them to Flickr sometime when I’m smart enough to bring the camera and the computer to the place where the internet access lives. They aren’t interesting enough to go here, but for those of you who are just dying to picture me in my natural habitat, they’ll be around, I hope by tomorrow but definitely by the weekend.

Nine days until I see my husband!! Whee!!

OK, it’s late, and I’m starting to even bore myself. More tomorrow, when we introduce the down. I almost feel ready for new information, so I’m kind of looking forward to it.

July 14 and 15, 2008: The ups and downs

Look at me, already cramming two days into one entry. Some nights there just isn’t enough time to sit and reflect. So I’m going to try to piece yesterday together the best I can, and then talk about today.

Yesterday we learned a “place” command, which we were told is one of the easiest and most valuable things to teach a dog owner. Valuable? Yes. Easy? …ish. You basically tell the dog “place” and then guide it onto a raised platform bed. If it comes of, you put it back and re-say the command. Easy enough. You gradually increase the distance between yourself and the dog as it is more willing to stay put. This is where it gets tricky. I brought Sugar out for our time with the instructor, because I was afraid she would be afraid of the bed, and yes, she was. At least my instincts were good! Anyway, we worked through that and I got her to stay on as I moved around the bed about 3 millimeters away from her, but anytime I tried to extend the distance, she came off the bed. She doesn’t like to lie down and get comfortable, so she’s very precariously perched on this thing.

Joker took to the place bed right away. He bounds onto the bed when I give the command, and sometimes when I don’t. His big problem is that he likes to get as close to the edge of the bed as possible, but the sides are this slick white plastic PVC-like material, so sometimes he falls off. And I laugh at him. Hard. They say you’re supposed to smile while giving a correction, so I tell myself that’s what I’m doing.

Today we got a ton of stuff thrown at us, and I admit I got really overwhelmed. We started working on heeling in a way that I believe is going to be very effective, but at the moment it’s awkward and difficult, and the rule is we’re basically ALWAYS to be doing it when we have our dogs on leash. This means that I pretty much can’t take my poor dogs for a normal walk. They can go out for pottying, but after that it’s all business all the time. I have to remember that, at the rate we’re going, this will only be awkward for a few days, and then this behavior will be on command so we’ll be able to release from it and go about our normal business…more or less. But it’s so hard to feel like everywhere I go there will be a leash wrapped behind my legs, a treat in my left hand, and every time the dog forges ahead I’ll have to convince it to walk backwards. Yes, BACKWARDS.

We also started working on “sit” in a way that is new to me, and we got a new set of clicker behaviors to work on. Joker, who is usually my stand-out clicker dog, was totally oblivious to the intended object of his attention, since we were doing this in our backyard, a place he has never been. He was content to sniff the porch, sniff the stairs, sniff the grass, pee in some places, etc. I didn’t even try the clicker work with Sugar today. I didn’t have it in me. She turns out to be my special needs student as far as heeling is concerned. It seems to really stress her out to be doing what we’re doing, and she shuts down a bit when she’s stressed. Joker, on the other hand, is an absolute champ. I never thought I’d say this, but I am way more looking forward to tomorrow’s training session with him than with her. He is one effing smart dog.

Instead of clicker time, I took Sugar to the beach club again, and this time she fell in the pool! She did fine, but clearly wanted out fast. I was prepared to go in after her (learning from my roommate V’s mistake, I had removed my cell phone from my pocket). Just as I decided she needed to be rescued, she hopped out. So I was in water up to my waist for no reason. She ran around like a loon after she got out of the pool, frolicked with a dog in the next yard over, and had a grand old time. It was the perfect end to what has definitely been my most difficult day here.

Oh, and there’s some nasty dog bug going around so a bunch of dogs had to be quarantined. Major annoyance, made worse by the fact that there was a lot of unauthorized socializing between dogs going on, so when one dog came up sick, multiple dogs from multiple houses ended up being involved. Ugh. Anyway, it doesn’t sound like anything dire, just a nuisance for all involved.

And oh again! I aced my first test! It was a super-easy multiple choice exam, but still I’m very pleased! I started out thinking “who on earth cares what grades I get in this?” and quickly realized that 1) I am incapable of shutting of the part of my personality that wants to be good at things and 2) my instructors will care, and the training that I receive can only benefit from their perception that I am a hard-working and dedicated student. Actually, to be fair, my roommate A was the one who was smart enough to point that out. So, there you have it, I’m geekin’ it up old school here in Hutto.

July 13, 2008

Today was a mixed bag. The high point was playing with Sugar in the “beach club,” a fenced area with a doggie pool. She ran around like a nut, got into the water up to her elbows or so, and dunked her whole face in to play around. She balked just short of going all the way in, but I think eventually she’ll be a great water dog. Next time I want to get in with her and see what she’ll do.

Joker and I also had a particularly excellent training session this morning. He gets so hyper-tuned in to me after we have clicker sessions that he’ll just stare at me waiting for the magical mystical noise to return.

The low point would have to be spending an hour cursing myself for losing all the grooming tools I just bought yesterday, driving myself and my roommates crazy looking for the stuff, only to find it in the back seat of my car. Grrrr! I drive myself nuts with that kind of thing – just ask Dave.

A second low was being informed that Sugar was found this morning eating her own poop. Delightful! This can be a sign of any number of things. The most likely answer, I am guessing, is that we recently switched her to a higher calorie food (she’s quite underweight) and so she’s excreting more nutrients and wanting to get them back. That doesn’t make it any less gross, though. Anyway, I’ll talk to someone about it tomorrow if it happens again, and then decide whether or not to be worried.

I was saying to one of my roommates that while the weekend has been heavenly in a lot of ways, I do have this sense that I’m not working hard enough, that I should be doing more training sessions, or longer ones, or studying, or watching other people train or study…something! So going back to the regimented weekday schedule where you go and go and go until you can go no more will be a bit of relief from that guilt, if nothing else. I’m also looking forward to getting some feedback from instructors on how my dogs are progressing. I think it’s going well, but it’s hard to say for sure. I don’t know if we get officially tested on what we’re working on so far, but it’s kind of a more ambiguous skill than “sit” or “come,” so that makes it hard to measure how well we’re doing.

Anyway, it’s dinnertime. For me…the dogs already ate.

July 12, 2008: Clickers and grooming and name recognition...oh my...

Ah, the weekend. You know, as much as I was looking forward to it, there was a chance that it could turn out to be a huge let down, but you know what? It was, if it’s possible, even better than I thought! The extra 2 hours of sleep were awesome. Having the morning to be all by myself running errands at my own pace was so great it brought me to tears. OK, I’m also a little PMS-y, so that probably had something to do with it. But still, it was that good.

I had excellent training sessions with both dogs. Joker took to the clicker like a Jack Russel to…a clicker. They’re known for being great with them, and he didn’t let me down. I think he is going to be a really awesome little dog for someone. He does that thing in his cage where he bounces up in down in place. It’s an excellent trick…very athletic. If there’s a way to take that power and use it for good, he’ll be a rock star of a pet. Or an actual rock star, for that matter.

I also introduced them both to some basic grooming tools. I have the sense that Joker is a former pet, and Sugar might be a lifelong street dog, and they responded accordingly when it came to grooming. Joker was fine with it, but impatient and wanting to play. Sugar was very wary, and I could only do about 5 minutes of alternately bringing the grooming mitt near her and giving her praise. She just got too nervous, and I didn’t want to push it, because the relationship is way too fragile at this point.

Sugar is less excited about the clicker. The sound makes her a little nervous, I think. But, she’s very consistently walking super-politely on a loose lead. After three days! I’m thrilled. I’ve seen no further sign of her food aggression, but I still have an eye out for it. I added hotdogs to my repertoire of treats and both dogs approve wholeheartedly.

There’s a little drama in the group because a few students are partying pretty hard and not really pulling their weight, and in some cases breaking rules that risk getting other people in trouble. It’s some of the ridiculous crap that I was afraid of because I thought the class would be full of 22 year olds, and I have to say I am so grateful that it is all happening outside of my little double-wide. The people I live with are all awesome, and we’re just kind of watching it happen bemusedly together.

Tomorrow is another day with the potential to be just like today. I hardly know what to do with myself.

July 11, 2008: The day my high horse died

I spent a good part of today feeling terribly holier-than-thou after hearing someone make a blatantly homophobic comment in front of the entire class. Man, it’s comfy up on my high “judge no one” horse. Of course, I was judging her, but that’s different. She deserved it!

But then I realized that twice in the past two days I have thought to myself “gee, at first I thought that person was a real dolt, but it turns out he’s actually quite interesting and I hope to get to know him better.” Then it struck me that both of those people have southern accents. That’s right. Apparently I think everyone from the South is Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel. I guess I’m not so perfect when it comes to the old open mind…

Anyway, today was less eventful in terms of dog handling. We’re still working on name recognition and general building of the relationship. I think Sugar definitely sees me primarily as a treat dispenser, but I’m told that will change. We had our first weekly health check, and Sugar is absolutely terrified of the grooming building. It didn’t help that the person in charge didn’t have the patience to go slowly with her and probably freaked her out more. She’s been fine in every other indoor area, so I’m not sure what about this scared her. She was back to normal in her run for dinner, and was fine again tonight for her potty break, so I don’t think there was any harm done.

I had to spend a long time standing around waiting with Joker for his health check so we actually got to do some bonding. He came and sat in my lap of his own free will and I got my first face lick from him. He also flopped over on his back for some belly rubs, and when I started to get a little rough and tumble with him, he got pretty mouthy. I think it was all in fun, but I couldn’t be sure. It was yet another moment where I realized how utterly clueless I am. Any of my instructors would have seen the instant he turned from goofy mouthiness to overstimulated alligator and been able to tell me where I went wrong. Of course there were no witnesses so I’m left wondering.

I haven’t been this excited to see a weekend in a long time. Of course, having to get up early to walk/train dogs before class has been great in terms of avoiding the heat, but I will sacrifice a little extra sweat for an extra two hours of sleep. I think I’ll get up around 8:00, go feed breakfast, and then come back and take care of my own business at a leisurely pace. I have a ton to do this weekend, but it doesn’t feel unmanageable.

Oh, and there was a 4H show in our event center today, and it continues tomorrow. It totally brought me back to my 4H days. There was even a drill team! I never in a gabillion years would have thought back then that I’d be wanting to make a living at it now. And so much of what I learned was so…wrong…I mean, not terribly horribly destructively wrong or anything, but just so regimented and inflexible. And I am realizing how many mistakes I’ve made with my past dogs. It’s all very humbling, really.

July 10, 2008: They weren't kidding, this s#]t is HARD WORK!

Today I woke up and had to get two 45-minute walks in before class at 9:00, so long gone are my days of sleeping in while others take care of their dogs! Game on, it seems. I decided to do the walks first and then come back and shower and eat so I’d feel human for class today. Even at 6:30 a.m. it was unpleasantly hot. Mostly humid, I guess.

I had promised myself I’d take Joker out first. I am hyper-aware of playing favorites, trying harder with one dog, investing all my physical and emotional energy towards one, so that seemed like a good plan, but somehow it failed. I think I was worried about the timing of feeding Sugar and in my head it worked out better to take her first. Also, she had shown a good food drive after dinner last night, and I was curious to see how it would be before a meal. Cue ominous foreshadowing music…

Off we went for our 45 minutes. It was pretty similar to last night’s, except she seemed somewhat more interested in me, I guess. The excitement came when I brought her back to her run and her food was already in place. She got in and started eating before I could get her slip lead off, and try as I might, I could not get her away from that food to remove the collar over her head. In fact, at one point when I pulled she growled so hard that I saw the skin on the back of her neck crinkle up, and so I stood there like an idiot while she finished her food, then pulled her back out, removed her lead, and let her back in. I felt like a fool, but there wasn’t much else I could do without risking getting hurt.

Mental note: Sugar is food aggressive. Let’s work on that, shall we?

Joker was next, and our walk was similarly…similar…to last night’s.

Today we learned how to teach name recognition, which basically involves getting the dog to pay attention to you and saying its name and rewarding it. The timing is tricky, but otherwise a pretty basic but extremely important skill. I brought out Joker because I figured he’d be worse, much more distractable, and generally a lunatic. I got him into the training building and realized his leash was on backwards, so like a genius I took it off to correct it and lost control of him. Loose dog! Big excitement. Major embarrassment. When we did the exercise, once he was back on lead, he did OK. I think I had the timing down pretty well, but I felt like right at the point where I was supposed to be cuing and rewarding, he would get re-distracted, which left me wondering whether or not to praise him or start over.

We got a 45 minute training session in during the day, and for that one I spent most of my time on Sugar. She did similarly OK. When we worked again later in the night, I worked both dogs a bit. Joker had about a five minute stint where he was totally awesome. Of course, I had just introduced him to Bil Jac, the wonder treat (aka Bil Crack because some dogs like it so much), but eventually he get distracted and forget all about me again.

I did a shorter session with Sugar, basically a walk reinforcing name recognition, rather than a training session. She was weird. First, she jumped up on me very enthusiastically about 3 times, I think looking for food. It was super-cute and NOT something I want her to get comfortable with. Then, later in the walk it got to the point where every time I gave her a treat she would kind of frolic away and bolt to the end of the leash, which is, unfortunately, the point where you’re supposed to re-give the “command,” say the name, and give the reward. So I was basically constantly doing this exercise, and no one was particularly enjoying themselves. She got very headstrong the closer we got to her kennel, and ultimately I just gave up. I think she associates that place with food, and since we’ve now learned how excited she is about food, my guess is she just wants to be there.

Anyway, we have until Monday to get our dogs walking on a loose leash and always paying attention to us. Three whole days…no problem!

July 9, 2008: We Meet Our Dogs

We got our rescue dog today! As I had heard, because I don’t have my own dog, I was assigned TWO. Whew. And so I would like to introduce to the world...

Sugar, a 2 year old female pit bull:

And Joker, a 3 year old male Jack Russell terrier:

When I heard I was getting a JRT, I went “aw, crap!” which is how I know it was an excellent assignment. They are very strong-willed little beasts, and not my favorite breed, for that and many other reasons, and I’m very nervous about how I’ll handle him. Clearly an excellent choice for me. The pit bull was a big relief, and she turns out to be a polar opposite of him, personality-wise: a bit timid, skittish at certain noises, not terribly effusive. She is a dog who seems to need a bit of a confidence boost, and that’s another thing I feel wholly incapable of handling. Which only leaves me wondering how these people got inside my head and picked two dogs so ideal for my needs.

The truth is, probably any dog they picked I would have been like “I have NO IDEA how to deal with that, this will be an excellent learning experience.” But I’m very pleased with what I got.

Our first assignment was to simply take the dogs for a 45 minute walk each (separately, there is no socializing yet). I took Sugar first. It took about 3 minutes just to get her out of the cage. She was very nervous and kept stepping up, then back. I was very nervous too and I’m certain it didn’t help. The whole event was captured on tape, including me turning to the person holding the camera and saying “any tips?” and her saying “just keep trying” with a big smile on her face. To which my reply should have been “so that would be a ‘no’ on the tips, then…” but that would have been sassy, even for me.

Our walk was uneventful. She spooked at a couple loud noises, peed like 5 times, and generally was pleasant to walk. She showed a good amount of interest in the kibble I had in my pocket when offered, but wasn’t overly enthusiastic. She pulled some, but we were not to give any kinds of corrections or commands. The few times that I bent down to pet her, she almost immediately fell over onto her back, and I couldn’t really tell if it was out and out submission or an earnest desire for a belly rub. I tried to get it from body language. Her tail seemed to say submission, but otherwise she seemed very relaxed. Mostly she was just panting like a fiend so it was hard to read much of anything. I convinced myself she was scared of cars, and then she promptly didn’t blink at another one the entire time we were out. Mysterious.

On Joker’s walk, he was quite energetic, and immediately earned my favorite term of endearment: wingnut. Along with Champ, Big Guy, Little Guy, and Whackadoo. He’s gonna be really confused before this is all over. He also showed a moderate interest in food, and when I bent down to pet him he immediately offered me his butt for scratches, which was pretty sweet. He is the king of prey drive; he chased a rabbit, several birds, the stone I kicked out in front of him, and the armadillo (!!!) we scared on the main road by the school. He was also quite excited by other dogs. And he ate a whole mess of crap that was on the ground, some of probably including actual crap. Why do I like dogs again? Anyway, by this time I was ungodly hot and tired, and so he got the less enthusiastic walk.

My analysis at the end was that I had one dog who would teach me a lot and one who I would fall in love with. But we’ll see what the coming weeks bring.

Technical Difficulties

I'm finding it difficult to get on the internet on a regular basis, and that was impeding my blogging, among other things. So, I have started journaling in Word, and I will probably upload multiple days of entries at one time on weekends, but as separate posts, just identified by the date.

Everyone who was reading for witty title names alone, you're out of luck. Go find another blog to read. For the rest of you, my ramblings are getting long as I try to keep track of the minutiae of my days. Important for me, possibly boring for you, but there you have it.

Days 1 and 2

It’s on! I’m officially here, like, learning and stuff.

We arrived bright and early Monday morning and had orientation. Everyone’s dogs were there, and there was a particularly terrifying moment when a Cairn terrier ended up with its neck in the jaws of a dog 10 times its size, but everyone made it out with no more than some lost fur. I had the perhaps unfortunate reaction of running away and covering my ears…honestly, my thought process was “if I see a dog killed on my day 1, I will not survive the next 55.” Cowardly, yes. But I wasn’t in a position to help anyway, so I’m trying to let it go.

We got dismissed around noon to go get settled and unpacked, and it was HEAVEN to put my stuff in drawers and organize my things and make my bed and look around at a place where I’d be for more than 24 hours. HEAVEN. I met my roommates: A, M, and V. I am the only one without a dog, and so far I’m finding it really nice actually. There’s a lot of stress about having to leave the dogs crated when we’re gone and not having them out in common areas, and it’s nice not to be dealing with that.

A, M, and I (I is my code name for me, naturally) had lunch and then went grocery shopping together and got trapped in the pouring rain, so we arrived home soaked but well-stocked. It’s so weird to shop for a totally empty fridge. I forgot a few things, but got the remainder today during lunch.

Today was a long day of lectures. We had kennel stuff and learning theory in the morning, then bite prevention and how to safely approach a strange dog in the afternoon. I can honestly say I learned a ton, and got the first sense of “yes, this is what I came here for,” which was so incredibly gratifying. There was also a rather impressive Schutzhund demonstration, which simultaneously thrilled and terrified me. More on that at another time.

We don’t meet our rescue dogs until tomorrow. Word on the street is that I might get two, since everyone else is caring for a personal dog and a rescue. So it would only make sense for me to have two as well. I’m so excited and nervous to meet my dog(s). I’m also looking forward to some days that involve less than 8 hours of sitting in a hard wooden chair, and more than zero hours touching an actual dog.

I’m typing this sitting outdoors in the dark using the wireless connection outside the clubhouse, so I need to call it quits for now. Hopefully more tomorrow when I meet my canine friend(s) tomorrow!!

Travelin': Days 2 through 497

I was planning on writing long, thoughtful posts for each day of my trip, as I got closer to my destination, farther from all things familiar...clearly that didn't happen. Instead I've gotten crankier, sorer, and more frustrated, and decided that I didn't need to share that with the inter-world. So instead I just bitch to Dave about it every night on the phone. Lucky man.

The last couple days I've felt like I'm "almost there" every day, which ends up being frustrating when the next day I'm not actually there. But this is what I planned, and all of the stops have been both necessary and delightful. I'm just impatient at this point, in that "put me in, coach" kind of way. But I can officially say that in 24 hours I will be less than 24 hours from the start of school, and I can't wait.

I can't wait to unpack the car and put stuff in drawers. I can't wait to stop spending 6-8 hours in the car every day. I can't wait to see where I'm living, meet my housemates, and start classes. I can't wait to meet my dog. My loyal readers (all 2 of you) probably feel the same way: "please, give the poor woman something interesting to write about!"

OK, off to shampoo my aunt's hair, which is a topic for a whole other blog. Maybe next time.

Travelin': Day 1

I left home this morning around 11:30, only an hour and a half after I'd planned, so really right on track for me. It had been a teary 24 hours or so leading up to my departure, getting ready to say goodbye to Dave for 9 weeks, and just feeling totally overwhelmed at what I was about to do.

I recently learned about a phenomenon that is considered the opposite of deja vu, called jamais vu. It's sort of like that out of body experience where you're looking down at your life happening before you, with this detached sense that it's not really happening to you. I've had that for the last week or so. It's nice to have words for it, other than, "dude...surreal..."

I have been telling everyone that I thought it would start to feel real when I actually pulled out of the driveway. Turns out, not so much. I mean, the leaving felt real, especially once I'd done the three errands I had to do on my way out of town and was actually on the highway. But I'm still not convinced I'm going to end up at dog training school. Perhaps actually getting there and moving in will be the thing that smacks me back into reality. But who's to say, really.

Anyway, the traveling: the goal was to make it to Roanoke or thereabouts, and I overshot by about 60 miles, so I find myself in Fort Chiswell, Virginia at a Hampton Inn. They have free cookies and wireless internet, hence the late-night blogging.

It was a great day for driving - cool, sunny, not too much traffic. I alternated listening to audio books and mix CDs, and only cried when I thought too much about what I was driving away from. Somewhere around Blacksburg I was overwhelmed with gratitude for so many things, so I figured I should write that down, in case I forget and revert to my normal ingrate self:

Today I am grateful:
1. to Dave, for understanding how important this is to me, and supporting me even though it means being without me for so long, and for loving me hard enough to let me go.

2. to the US government (no, seriously) for loaning me the money to go.

3. to the universe, the cosmos, the stars, or whatever for aligning properly so that this could happen.

4. for the beautiful weather and scenery I got to drive through today.

5. for the travel gods who kept me safe through the first 460 miles. Stick with me for a few more days, 'kay?

6. for the random dude who highway-hit-on-me today. You were super-cute, and I'm sorry I wouldn't give you my phone number, but at 65 mph, I wasn't really sure how. And also, you know, I didn't want to give my phone number to a stranger, especially one with West Virginia plates. But many thanks for the huge ego boost you gave me; nice to know this old married lady's still got it. ;)

7. to everyone at work who has been so ridiculously supportive. You do realize that everyone who hears about this thinks you're nuts for letting me do this, right?

OK, seven is enough. I have anticipatory gratitude for the folks I'll be staying with the next few days. Being in a hotel room alone is, shockingly, pretty lonely.

I'll try to take some pictures on the drive tomorrow so that there's actual photo documentation that this isn't all a very elaborate episode of Punk'd.

The final countdown!

Haven't even gotten to school yet, and already slacking a bit on the ol' blog. Oh well. Not much has really happened since our big weekend of boosting the US economy. Dave is away at a conference until Sunday, and I've managed to pack these days full of fun stuff so I don't miss him too much. Last night was my going away happy hour for local folks. We started out at a way-too-loud and way-too-crowded bar and quickly ended up at one of our two default locations where things were slightly less loud and crowded. It was a fun night! Today has been a less fun day as a result of how fun last night was, in fact.

Tonight I am getting a massage...ahhhhhhhhhhhh. I've been waiting for this for weeks!

Tomorrow I head to Baltimore to spend the Friday night and Saturday with my friend down there. I'm hopeful we'll do some more economy-boosting - I need a new purse and some sports bras.

Sunday is my day to do laundry, pack clothes, print out some maps, make a few more lists, amend some existing lists, burn 40 mix CDs for my trip, and retrieve my husband from the airport.

Hi, my name is Adrienne, and I try to cram too much stuff into a day.
Hi, Adrienne.

New toys!

We had a big weekend, money-spendingwise, with the purchase of my new laptop! It's beautiful. It's a Toshiba Somethingorother with all kinds of impressive specs. The tough part is this means we've finally gone over to the dark side and embraced Vista, which neither of us is thrilled with. But as my wise IT friend said, time to embrace the future...

I had much more fun picking out the new case for my laptop. There were two super-cute ones that ultimately weren't all that great in terms of functionality. So I ended up with a boring black one that will hold not much else besides the laptop and its power supply. And maybe a pen or two.

I also got some kickin' new shoes, they're like what you'd get if sandals got eaten by clogs and then gave birth to sneakers. And they're red! I hope they'll be my all-purpose who-cares-if-they-get-wet-or-dirty-or-peed-on shoes for kennel cleaning and running around with my charges at school.

The best gift of the weekend was from Dave; it's a binder with a great big list of everything - what to pack, what's left to be done, a bunch of maps and phone numbers and important stuff like that. I had been telling him that every time I had a single thought, it was immediately followed by seven other related thoughts of stuff I had to do, and that it was feeling overwhelming to try to keep it all in my head. So he made me a binder. Love that boy!

More getting ready...getting readier?

I've already failed my goal of posting something at least every other day, but the last few days have been a flurry of power outages, doctor appointments, power outages, errands, and craziness, so I'm giving myself a little slack. Did I mention the power went out?

We've tried to buy a few things for the trip, but we keep failing rather miserably. Who knew it would be so hard to find a windshield sun-blocker-reflector thingy for our make and model of car?

I'm trying to decide about the third leg of my trip, which was supposed to land me in Little Rock, Arkansas. I have an offer for a place to stay that's a ways north of there, and would add about 200 miles to my total drive. But I still wouldn't have any single leg greater than 450 miles, so that's not so bad. I think this trip could go one of two ways: I could either die of boredom from all the time in the car and just want to go the shortest route possible. Or I could die of loneliness on the nights that I have to be in hotels. So, not knowing which way it'll go, it's hard to say if the chance to drive 200 extra miles to stay somewhere with friends is going to be preferable to the chance to revive the bloodflow to my ass in a lonely hotel room.

So, three weekends left. Two full work weeks. The temp starts Monday and there is TONS to do with her before I go, so I fear/hope the time is going to fly. Either way I am greatly looking forward to this weekend and throwing myself into preparations.

First day, new blog

I'm bloggin'! Oh, the pressure to be witty and interesting is mounting already.

I am about to embark on a big adventure: 8 weeks in Hutto, Texas (in July and August, thank you very much!) where I will be learning to be a dog trainer. That's right: dog trainer training. This is something I've been planning to do for over two years now, and circumstances have aligned against it until recently.

To make up for the years of misaligned circumstances, I have now been offered the sweetest deal ever: my current employer is holding my job for me for 10 weeks (including travel time) so that when I return I can continue to have a salary, health insurance, a roof over my head, and other creature comforts, while starting to build my dog training business on the side.

My adventure began this weekend. First, I started making a list of all the stuff I need to do, buy, pack, etc. before I go. Second, I was able to cross my first item off that list with the purchase of a 2008 road atlas. Did I mention I'm driving to Hutto? Third, I put a box in the living room and started randomly throwing stuff in it. Based on the contents of that box thus far, during my time at school I will:

Have beautiful skin
Not get pregnant
Not get a yeast infection
Not get lost

I'm gonna need a bigger box.