Last week our training and blogging friend KB waxed poetic about how much she loves the smell of her beautiful, brilliant lab K. I chuckled because I feel the same way about Lilly. Don’t get me wrong. After a day playing outside in the pastures, creek, and pond, she definitely smells like a dirty, mountain dog. BUT, her day-to-day scent is sweet. It must be individual, though, because Tom could not disagree more. …
After class on Sunday, which was a bit of a rough one, Lilly and I made our first visit to PC’s Pantry in Boulder, which comes highly recommended by several of our training and blogging friends. Lilly stayed in the car since off-leash dogs are welcome in the store, and there are several cats hanging out, etc. I bought some training treats, some organic shampoo and such, but I also went for some EXTRA SPECIAL treats — raw bison bones from Boulder Dog Food. PC’s keeps them in a freezer. (And, P.S. …
Temps began dropping below freezing here overnight last week. While our unheated greenhouse can hold some extra warmth during these early shifts, the vegetables inside began showing the strain. So, with all that excess time I have right now, I began our final harvest. I am NOT one of those people who wax on about the beauty of autumn because frankly this time of year makes me sad. It’d say melancholy, but that’s a word closely related with cornucopia — which is forbidden in our house. (That’s a story for another day.) So, it’s with a hint of seasonal boo-hoo …
Two summers ago, I wrote full-on rant about loose, poorly fenced dogs who were ruining my ability to take Lilly on a decent walk in our rural neighborhood. Today, I can report: 1) I was right about the danger. 2) Things have improved. …
When we last spoke about The Scary Kitchen Window over the sink, the one that has the nerve to slide side to side when the others go up and down, I had resigned myself to never opening this window again in Lilly’s lifetime — another 10 years, give or take. Even as our customized Relaxation Protocol work continued for weeks in 2008, I’d given up on using the window as trigger/stimuli examples because it broke my heart to see Lilly flip out. Essentially, I stopped paying attention to the window at all, and so …
I just read on KB’s blog that K (her beautiful, brilliant chocolate Lab) is very sick and hospitalized with a potential mushroom poisoning. I just poked at our pal SMRP for an update, and she heard from KB that the latest thought is pancreatitis (like what happened to Ginko recently) but perhaps from mushrooms and maybe a few other tummy troubles. We may never know why she got so sick Monday morning. Let’s just hope she gets better. So, please send both of them good thoughts, prayers, mojo, magic sprinkles, …
In early 2009, I pitched and sold a magazine feature article about Van and Bobaji (the sidecar dog), whom we “met” when I first posted photos of Lilly in a motorcycle sidecar back in October 2008. I’ve posted a couple of their videos before. You can see many of them on YouTube, just search on “vanschannel”. Well, the article on them was originally slated to run in May 2009, then in July 2009, but it finally ran in the current issue of Fido Friendly (Sept-Oct 2009). Savvy readers will …
After posting that series of photos and video from the training Lilly perspective last week, I threw together a little tribute video for Betsy that shows tiny LuLu showing off skills that will come in handy in her future a quest for an agility championship. Enjoy! …
I took Lilly to her usual drop-in training classes with our Rock Star of a dog trainer Gigi Moss a couple times recently. Overall, they’ve gone well. Our separate work at retraining arrivals may be paying off at class in the form of a shortened warm-up time before Lilly seems relaxed. Still, we continue to practice going places, getting out of the car, and getting into Relaxation Protocol mode right away. Here is a bit more info on all accounts. …
You know I had to dissect the one instance from our time with LuLu where Lilly gave the youngster a correction. I’m glad I got it on video so that I could really look at the sequence. I’m calling it Anatomy of a Puppy Correction. While I’ve broken out clips and added transitions, which make the video around 2:30 minutes, the actual encounter was just over 1 minute in real time. I’m not sure if it’s a matter of too many running bumps in quick succession or if there may have been razor-like puppy teeth used. I tend to think …
