Mischief Monday - A New Trick

The only real mischief this week is that as Lady tries to adjust to the old-new world of actually working while maintaining some of the healthy habits (mainly a reduction in screen time which is hard because most of her work now involves a screen) , she has not been to visit you all. We are hopefully over the next couple of weeks we can create a better routine.

Now Phod will share his new trick.

The air is now hot enough to make our peeps think that swimming in the lake is a good idea. As you all know, I love to fetch on land and water. In the water, my preference is to stand at the shore and run into the lake while my peeps stand on the shore. I will not swim out with my bumper and chase it in. My peeps have been teaching me to come up the dock and jump in from there.

Dropping my bumper for the Man

 I don't love it, but I will do it to humour them.

Walk up the dock past the neighbour's boat

Get ready to chase it! 

Make a big splash

Swim back with it

What do you think of my new trick?

Sepia Saturday - Our New Trick

We are working on a new trick for both the pups, balancing things on their noses. They don't love this and often cheat, but we are more consistently getting 2 seconds of waiting. 

Often when Phod flips his off, Hailey steals it

Still needing a little support so she doesn't take it too early

Training Thursday - A Game of Find It

One of the games we like to play in our house is find it. We lock the dogs away (if we don't Hailey watches and cheats), hid treats around and tell them to "Find it".  They both love to play!

Mischief Monday - They Work Hard for Treats Here

For some reason I got into my head that I should do agility with all 4 dogs.

First trick (sorry no pictures) was jump over the broom stick. Hailey and Barley excelled. Hailey kept showing off that she could jump over it when it wasn't her turn. Phod did it once and decided it wasn't worth the payment. It took a long time for Tendra to figure it out, she kept trying to go over but she did get it.

Trick 2 was the tunnel. When Tendra and Barley took agility, apparently this wasn't a favourite. Hailey again showed off her mad skills but whipping in and out while I was trying to coach the others through it. Phod went a few times, including a very funny time through the middle to get some cookies. It took some coaxing but Barley did it. It was hard for him as he is such a big boy and it was a little tight for him.  Tendra got quite good at this and was soon running through it.

It was a lot of chaotic fun!

Phod Can Jump Too!

Phod won't jump on command like Hailey, but he does have his own great moves when the frisbee is thrown.

New Friends and New Tricks

It took a few days, but Barley and Zaphod have figured out how to play. They like to have play time after their morning swim. Here is a sample of it.

During our morning swim on Wednesday, Phod learned a new trick. It goes like this:

I have one ball, can I get 2?

I have 2 balls can I get 3?

No I can't, but don't worry little ball, I will be back. No ball left behind.

Phod learned he can catch and swim with 2 balls. This was great when the other pups missed where balls went because he would bring them back to shore, and he was good at letting the other dogs get theirs if they were around.

Note: While at times the dogs go out far to get balls, it is not very deep. As far as they go is likely only waist deep on a adult so if someone got into distress (although we watch closely for signs and end play before anyone gets too tired) one of us could run in. 

Phod has had a wonderful time at the beach. He has been his gentle, quiet self, although he has been slightly more dominant (perhaps because there is a second male here) and a bit more confident (he managed to take himself for a second swim).  He has been wonderful with all the kids we have met, but slightly cautious meeting new men (especially a neighbour with a cane, very unsure of him). Overall, he has been wonderful, and my parents are not worried about having him at all in the fall for 2.5 weeks. (The same can't be said for my beloved Hailey, but they will all be fine). There was a little mischief, we will share next week! 

Today we take the long journey back home. Wish us a smooth trip!

Training Tuesday - Our New Tricks

As part of Project Hailey, we are working on new tricks everyday. They aren't perfect yet, but we will share how they are going! 

1) Over

I have always wanted Lee to do this, and she has always been sort of resistant to it, but we have some progress. It is not perfect yet, but is improving.

If you remember in the winter we tried this with Phod and he freaked out. I am happy to report we have worked passed this and he is doing much better with this trick.

2) Staying and only coming to your name

This is a short clip of the new game we play. One dog sits, the other comes. We repeat this around the kitchen/dining room.

We are looking for ideas for more tricks - if you have any, please share.

She can sit, stay, wave, paw, bang, down, paws up, pray, dance, sing, bow.

My Dock Dog

On Sunday, we ventured back to the beach for the first time since Phod cut his paw. Both dogs were sooooooooooo excited!

Our lake access is a small beach we share access to with 2 other homes. This year one of our neighbours installed a dock.  The first time we went to the beach and Hailey saw the dock, she barked, and barked and barked at it.  Now she is brave and will go on it.

Phod wasn't scared and on the weekend discovered he could jump off it! I so wish the car wasn't so traumatic for him (he gets soooooooooo sick) because this would be his sport.

FYI: Re the ball debacle - his current favourite ball is a chuck it ball. It is just a different one. He is now reluctantly playing fetch with the new ones, but I think he intentionally misplaced the new orange one in hopes of getting his precious back.

Training Thursday - Where the Lady should go - by Hailey

First, the picture from yesterday is Phod watching the deer in our yard. They are back and we see them almost daily. We missed them over the spring and summer when they moved away, and are happy to have them back. Lady and Man are being mean and don't let us chase them like we should.

Secondly: Lady gets a big fat FAIL for training this week. She did some maintenance trials, but she didn't do any hard core training. She has excuses like with the Man's party and she had a busy first part of the week with work (working 15 hours one day is no excuse). She also says we went on extra long walks and she took us to the lake too cool off last night cause it has been so hot instead. I say FAIL, FAIL, FAIL! When Lady doesn't do hard core training, I don't get enough cookies. When I don't get enough cookies, I am forced to do things like counter surf and steal things like the Lady's muffins. I can't help it, she makes me.

Because of her failure as a person, I think Lady should end up here with Emma:

She promises this week will be better, but I don't believe her.

Your starving and deprived Hailey Bug

New Feature - Training Thursday

In an attempt to make myself more accountable with spending time teaching my dogs new tricks, I thought I would make a feature on the blog called "Training Thursday". Here I will feature our progress or lack there of.

This week was an interesting one which may have scarred poor Phod for life. I decided I wanted to do some clicker training (known as TAG - teaching through acoustical guidance in my line for work). I got out my clicker and started with Phod. Turns out poor Phod is TERRIFIED of the clicker. He acted like I was going to beat him. Perhaps a clicker was tried in his last home or it reminds him of something horrible that happened. He ran and hid. Hailey is not scared of it and in fact likes it, but it so stresses Phod out right now, we have put the clicker on hold.

The tricks we are working on:

Take it
Receptive Id of Dish (for Hailey only as this trick also terrifies Phod. I show him running to hide in one of the videos).

Pardon the video quality, I did this on my phone.

Video 1:  This is Hailey receptively identifying her dish in a visual field of 1. You will see Phod hiding.

Video 2: Hailey's Take it

Video 3: An outtake. This is what happens when I don't do training in the bedroom with one dog! 

Feline Friday - Baggy's new old trick

We have neer been successful at keeping the cats off the furniture. After 18 years, we have really just given up. It has been less of a problem as they have gotten to be senior cats and have been less active. However, Baggy, who is always full of surprises, has started something he hasn't done in years. He has started getting up on the dining room table. It is different then in his youth when he would hop from the floor to the table. Now he climbs up a chair. I am sort of proud of him for still doing this. You go Baggy!

The King in his new castle

Today also marks 1 year since we left the city and moved to the country. The pets couldn't be happier.

Thank you all for your kind words yesterday.

Emma's new trick

Emma has been with us for 8 weeks now. We have about one more week before Chris is back from the military exercises he is on.  She has been a much better girl. She has the occasional accident, but 50% of the time it is likely our fault. While she likes to be near us, she can better entertain herself and we don't need to held all the time. She is doing better at sleeping in (although today she wanted to go out at 5:45 am - ugh)

I have taught her one new trick, which is cute. Here is a little video of it. Pardon my outfit, this is post my Saturday of yard work! 

Find it

First: We were excellent walkers yesterday. We pulled a little at the beginning when we saw the deer but after that did a great job. We are just trying to make Lady seem like she tells untruths!



Our people think this is a fun game. Lock us in the bathroom so they can hide cookies and tell us to find it. We are very good at this game. We don't mind it because we get cookies.

Here is a clip of it.

Flyball

Thank you for all your comments. Lady is feeling much better and is now trying to catch up on the life she missed while sick. Today is also the last day Emma is here without Uncle Chris. He is back and coming over for Easter tonight. We are sure we will miss her.

Ok, now to our post.

The Lady got this bright idea that it would be nice to be in an activity for the end of winter. Looking at her schedule and the school schedule, she decided to put us (Lee and Phod) in flyball. Well, really she thought Phod would love this and Lee could go along so she wouldn't destroy the house when home alone.

As you regular readers will know, we missed the first class because someone had kennel cough.  The next obstacle was getting Phody into the car. He is taking a pill called Cerenia to help with his motion sickness. He hasn't thrown up the 2 times he has tried it but either it or the stress of the car is giving him diarrhea (once in the car, the other time not in the car). However, he is happier to go in the car and doesn't have to be forced.

Our Lady didn't blog about our first class because she was too embarrassed with our behaviour. We were too excited to really focus. We really wanted to play with the other dogs, but the teacher won't let us. She says in competitions you can't play, so in her class you can't play. Our Lady wonders if this is a little strict for an introductory class where most won't go on to compete, but she tries to keep us away from potential friends.

Lady says we were much better the second class, but both need to work on waiting.   She is very impressed with how well we both due when it is our turn to go. We can both be very focused then. Here is Phod showing off his mad skills working on turning.

Our biggest challenges which we will be working on over the weekend are when the ball is introduced. Zaphod loves the ball and doesn't want to drop it and Hailey will chase the ball, but doesn't care to pick it up.  Practice will hopefully help!


 Our Lady's favourite part about our class - how tired we are after.

Have a good one

Our Alarm System

First: Thank you all for your kind words yesterday. You will see that Aunt C posted a comment yesterday to thank you all.

Second: As always, we are hopelessly behind. It doesn't help that we didn't have power for 9 hours on Thursday and Lady had to travel for work and other crazy things happened. We hope to catch up more tomorrow (and will write a catch up post then). Today we are busy helping the Man get ready to go away for a week. We may have time today, but we will see how it goes.

Now for today's blog:

There is no picture to this video. It is just the Lady's phone sitting on the island in the kitchen while the dogs are on the other side of the house.

Lady's guess as to what caused this sound:  the wild turkeys walked by. We don't need an alarm when we have these 2!

Dealing with all this mischief

As yesterday's post indicated, last week was NOT a good week for me and the pups. Besides the running away incident, someone peed on the guest bed, Hailey peed on the floor out of spite while Phod was at the vet, and 2 times they got stuff from the counter and destroyed it.  We got to practice patience a lot. I really need to start to get this under control now as starting Sunday, this is a 3 dog house . . . . .

The plan:

1) Increase exercise. We haven't been walking as much because it is winter. Now that it is getting warmer, it is time to get more exercise in. We are going to double our walk time.

2) Increase mental exercise. While we are doing some training, we could be doing more. I am going to make a chart [I love a chart] and work in at least 3 training sessions per day. 

3) New toys: I am going to look for new things that will keep their minds busy. 

4) I am going to remember to breathe.

This is by our front door . . . .

Getting Ready for Valentine's Day

We has had crazy weather this week: snow, rain, freezing rain, and sun. The temperature on Wednesday of +10 C or 50 F was a record high and is stark contrast to the coldest day in 8 year low one week before. In one day the temperature dropped from a nice +7 C or 44 F to -22 C or -4 F and the wind nearly blew us away. We caused some mischief but we will talk about that later.

One of the things we have been doing this crazy week (besides celebrating the fact that the lady was smart and bought her icers for her boots so she hasn't slipped on the ice once), is get ready for Valentine's Day.

First, in case you missed it:  Ann at Pawsitively Pets is doing a Valentine's Day fundraiser called Share the Love. For a donation of $1 she will make you a Valentine. Where is the money going? That is the cool part. At the end, everyone who donated will be entered into a random draw and one person will pick the charity that gets the funds. Pop over and help out if you can.

Here are our Valentines.

Secondly, we have been working on a new trick. It was nicer this week and cause Lee can't have as many cookies cause of her infection (which seemed to have a minor flare up Friday night, but she is ok), we only worked on one trick. We thought this may help at the ball if the band plays a song we love.

Have a great Saturday!

Tricks and Treats

In case you missed it, it has been very, very cold here this week. Our Lady laughed Friday morning cause it was only -22C and not -27 C and it felt warmer. Because it has been so cold, we haven't been playing outside as much. Our Lady did a great job and we went for walks 4/5 mornings. We did our 1.5 km loop in record time all 4 days. The only day we didn't go out for a walk was Wednesday, the coldest of the days. We thank our Lady for braving -40 C with the windchill to get us some exercise. One of the things we have been doing instead of playing outside, is working on our tricks. Here is a little video of what we have been up to inside. Enjoy!

A special thanks to Dachshund Nola for this great award!

Jump

Sunday we went off to the dog park for a date with Emma. I realized I was a bad aunt and didn't get pictures of Emma. On the walk, we found a great way to tire Lee out!  Enjoy!

Agility I is done!

Last night was week 6 of Lee's Agility 1 class at Ottawa Canine School. She has done exceptionally well this time, a lot of this has to do with the fact that her man is a much better handler then her lady:) She has been asked to join an agility 2 class and will start this on Sunday.

Here is her last run in agility 1. She made her lady proud!