Foster terriers

looks cute eh?

Sally is THRILLED

Puppies are fun

and quite good looking too! /Cairn terrier fox terrier mixes this brindle pair is so so ready for homes of their own!

boy a year flies by ...

still love this happy boy 

still miss this happy boy

guess we always will 

“The afternoon knows what the morning never suspected.”

It is fun to be young. Fearless, foolish and invincible. All hold their attractions. 

But there is a certain wonder in maturity too.  It's DaBAD day - and this time the topic is aging! Dogs, People whatever we wanted ! My bet is there will be lots of great ideas and thoughts on this - click  RIGHT HERE  to go to the page our fearless Steve will be updating through the day!

Within  seven years of agility blog entries I have both seen my canine partners age and gotten a little older myself. (Hey a girl can dream right?).

I have reflected on Brody's aging here  (way back in 2009) and Sally's recent episodes have driven home the fact she is no longer anything but middle aged. Brody is over 13, Thea is 10 and Sally is 7.  I am much more than the combined total of all of them. And yet we all have fun. In fact I truly believe that, episodes aside, we are actually in better shape than we were when the blog started. 

Why? 

We 

are fitter - the foray into competitive agility has fueled a thoughtful, organised approach to being fit - farm 'gility, hill work, a little obedience, fartleks, road walks  all help the dogs, add in riding horses and bikes for me and we have it pretty well covered!

cross train both our fitness (see above) and our brains; learning scent work, meeting horses has all been great for the dogs of all ages, working outside of my normal gig (and outside) has been wonderful for me and I think the dogs have benefited too 

eat better, less processed food  - the dogs currently eat a limited ingredient kibble with home sourced enrichment  (our organic apples and tomatoes are real hits with everybody - Sally gets our fresh laid eggs twice a week). I think about adding supplements and would (and have) if there was need but generally we are (touch wood) in good health. I am feeding Brody carrots quite often  in the hopes that the wives tales about them being good for sight are true    because he loves them. 

spend more time together so it's easier to notice little things and treat them -  and of course we've had seven more years together so we all know each other that much better too ... so lucky! With my leave from work it's unusual for the dogs to be alone more than 4 hours in a day. 

train in brief meaningful doses - we used to go to classes once a week and that was wonderful for being social and for exposure to new things - but the power of short doses of targeted training is so evident. If we want we can work on something 4 times in a day. Readers of this blog know I am a big believer in short sweet training sessions. I think as we all age this becomes even more important.

The benefits of loving and playing with aging partners can't be overstated. I wish we had longer to love and cherish our canine friends in each stage but the aged stage is mighty special!


Aging can be fun if you lay back and enjoy it.
Clint Eastwood 

No one can avoid aging, but aging productively is something else.
Katharine Graham 

I'm a really happy person, I enjoy life. I think you see that on people. I think there's nothing more aging than misery.
Michelle Pfeiffer 

That Dawg is BACK!

We actually threw a stick for her twice yesterday. (She,of course, has been suggesting this was a GOOD idea since she was able to stand evenly on all 4 legs - and doubtlessly would have gotten the stick had I thrown it after carrying her outside).

This dawg is a whole lotta dog. Sometimes I forget.

This wild child is just nuts.11 months here already (where does time go?) and yesterday she jumped out of the kitchen window at the new house. And fell to the ground below with a pretty loud thud for such a wee thing. Luckily it is soft sand. Memories of Sally nonsense for sure with Yen!

sometimes you just gotta cry

I am not a crier. Certainly not in public. Not even in my house. Occasionally in my car but that's it unless they are tears of rage.

This week I keep tearing up. Sad tears.

I have a very very happy low stress life at the moment so the tears are aggravating me even as they make sense.

It might just be a week of endings .... and I can't wrap my head around either potential one.

Spot On is holding it's last agility trial on Saturday and my heart is breaking just a little bit .... nah, a whole lot. Many happy memories, much learning, and lots of fun on the hill for me. All the dogs love the hill too, Taking great sadness and turning it to tragedy is the fact that Sally can't walk at the moment - so running agility in four days seems entirely unlikely. To not be participating is heart breaking. To see Sally so sore I am carrying her outside is killing me.

Just a blip on the map but a pretty sad blip right now no doubt.

The back door ...

There are many ways to tackle an issue
A straightforward, head on approach is my normal mode when dealing with people but I have come to realize more and more that with animals sometimes using the back door is much more effective.

By that I mean working on training problems indirectly can lead to faster better results than pounding away at an issue.

Let's take Thea as an example

Thea was occasionally afraid of most agility equipment - I was encouraged to lure her over and through way too much. (oh the price our early dogs pay for our errors). Until I found her back door I pretty much resigned myself to doing jumpers only - she might be afraid of a chute or a tunnel or a dog walk at seemingly random times. Then I found her back door - do things she is successful at, rev her to the moon, do the things she is good interspersed with the things that might make her leery ...   we got our teeter back, dog walk no issue, tunnels are never anything but fun now ....  if she even looks sideways at something in training - quick quick where's an aframe? then scary thing ... zooooooooooooom ... she's forgotten to be afraid ... we no longer do teeters in public as she's had too many flyoffs for me to think they are safe for her but otherwise apart from the odd dark chute the world is her oyster

Yen is, umm, a little excitable. She is loud and proud and full of life. If ever I thought there was a small dog that would never be loose around horses it was her. Last night we walked out to a field at the barn I'm teaching at and she came with us - puttered in the field while I taught. She had a great time - so did miss pony pants and so did I. We got there not by forcing her to be quiet and still around the horses but by letting her run far enough away that the horses paid her no mind. Horses were never exciting to her. She also had plenty of opportunities to practice her truly rocket recall with horses quite far away so when they were closer it didn't occur to her to not come.  She was truly perfect yesterday.

This is Harri (aka DUDE). When Harri arrived at the barn he couldn't be cross-tied. He couldn't be held for the blacksmith and he was quite hysterical. Rather than fighting with 1200 + pounds of horse I simply brought him into the barn every day, stood him in the spot I wanted to cross-tie him in momentarily and put him in a stall (also a source of stress). I'd putter away with a horse who enjoyed being cross tied and love on them occasionally walking over to pat Harri. I groomed him loose in the stall and was amazed at how quickly he started to settle and not walk away. Within two weeks he was quite content to cross-tie while I fussed away with him. The blacksmith is stunned by how calm he is every time he sees him (he had seen him prior to being at our barn). The other day I untacked Harri and left him in the cross tie spot forgetting to put a halter on him while I went in and out of various tack rooms. He had no reason to stand except habit and wanting more TLC. He stood like a super trooper.

Back door solutions sometimes just happen, sometimes they require a plan but they are always worth considering in a problem solving approach. (On reflection I probably use this approach with people too)

being responsible sucks sometimes....

I was SO excited last week.

I was going to have REAL agility to blog about tonight.

We were going to a trial -the girls and me - cruising down the road to our favourite venue and having a ball. Sally had 5 classes to play in - standards and jumpers and steeplechase. It was going to be fun. SO. MUCH. FUN. We've been working on our agility skills. Jumping, aframes, weaving- not everything we needed but enough that we were feeling fine. Yen was going to make an FEO debut and buzz around the ring making everybody chuckle. I was going to take pictures.

Yesterday was a very long day. I had kids at a horse show, lessons then my own riding. I snuck home mid day and took the dogs for a lovely not too long run at the farm. They ran and swam and had a great time. No big jumps, sudden yips or refusals to load into car. Everybody seemed happy. Left them to nap their run away and got back in time for another quick run. Sally got up stiff and WALKED out the door. Sally really doesn't walk anywhere unless on leash. Hmmm perhaps she was stiff. She sort of, kind of, walked out of it but then her right hind leg started taking little dotty steps - she wasn't LAME but she was far from right.

Could I have run her?  I'm going to say yes. I am quite sure that the adrenal rush of being in one of her favourite places doing her favourite thing would have had her looking sound as a bell. She still isn't sound tonight (we won't discuss what she thinks of being on leash at the farm). She isn't any worse but she is still slightly quicker across that hind leg and not even in her stride.

Did I likely make the right call for the long term? Of course. Would Sally have made the same call? I doubt it. No, there is no doubt - she would have run her heart out and her legs off.  So sad to be the adult today.