Kirby Drills

This morning, Susan Garrett posted her famous 'Puppy One Hundred' (well, it actually stretched into 135, but who's counting).  The puppy one hundred (and thirty five) is a list of things to teach your puppy/dog before you begin working on agility or putting your dog on equiptment.  This is especially excellent if you have a puppy or younger dog who you plan on training in agility, but they might be too young to actually start some of the physical stuff (waiting for growth plates to close, etc). 

My lovely Kirby...

...he is mature enough to begin the more physical training.  Um, er, mature enough physically I should say.  He still does this:

So I can't say much about his mental maturity at this point. 

Moving on...  **eye roll**

Because I wasted so much time in the beginning trying to push Frisbee onto him, I didn't put a whole lot of thought into an agility career for Kirby, so he still needs to learn all of the basics required of an agility dog.  Susan's puppy one hundred (and thirty five) is a perfect place to begin. 

Kirby and I completed an obedience class this past fall and learned some of the basics and it put us on the right track for clicker training, shaping, positive reinforcement, etc.  SG's list takes it a step (or five) forward.  For the past couple of months as winter reared it's ugly head and the holidays sucked up much of my time, the pack and I have been hibernating mostly with our spare time, with short walks every other day and 2 minute nano training sessions as often as possible.  Kirby's been getting stuck with a lot of boring basics, such as sit, lay down, don't chew on my arm, take, out, paw, etc. Not his fault, its mine for being lazy and not wanting to use my brain long enough to think of better, more interesting things for him to do.

Now that we've grown accustomed to the cold time is on our side again, the Aussies especially have been getting more walks and Kirby has become my funny running partner.  I would like to take a handful things from SG's list each week and work on them.  It's a goal.  It might work, it might not.  I dont plan on working them all every night.  But mixing them up and pulling out 2 or 3 for each session.

For this week:
1) Smack da baby. We do it, but not frequently enough and it really does work on Kirby.
2) Hand targeting. It's good shaping work and lets face it.  It's fun!
3) Recall from distraction.  Kirby is easily distracted. His recall is pretty good... But we haven't done enough distraction work.
4) Walking on a loose lead. Very basic. We worked on it in ob class and he did well... most of the time.
5) Duration sit. Kirby's got a great sit. But he needs work on sitting until I release him.
6) Chase games. Kirby loves to chase his toys. He will think we're playing instead of working.
7) Back up. I'd like to teach it to all of my dogs.

I'm debating signing Kirby up for a beginner agility class in the spring. I took Frankie through a beginner class and so I know how to introduce a dog to obsticals and we have some of the basics at home.  Weave poles and jumps and that.  But I dont think I want to go there yet. 

Strength

Last night the disc dog club hosted it's annual bash and awards gathering.  I believe the purpose of it though is just for everyone to be together again.  As a club, we haven't all been together now since September, and we won't all be together again until March. 

It was a blast!  And so good to see everybody again.

But what do you expect from me, people?  How's a girl to concentrate when she's faced with this all night:

Look at that tiny pink mouth and the little pig nose!

And the tiny... er, huge Aussie paws!

Be still, my heart...

I was forced to repeat that to myself over and over last night.  Nobody has Aussie fever like Emily has Aussie fever.  And little Skyver/Booger/StevenTyler/Rush/Aero here didn't do anything to help quash my fever.  If anything, he sent it through the roof.

Luckily, Red Rocket Man had my back.  Every once and a while (okay, ever four seconds or so) he would toss his ball at my face and ask me to throw it, which usually was able to knock me back to reality for a sec.  I heart you, Rocket.

The torture of the night was knowing that there were still 3 of Skyver's siblings who were waiting for homes, and that until they found homes, they would be living in a cold barn in northern Minnesota.  Yeah.  Don't get me started.

But it's okay.  When I got home, I was greeted by my own puppies.  And the baby of my little pack and his spastic older sister are enough Aussie for me.  For now.

**The look on Red's face this morning when I showed him Skyver's picture on my camera was priceless.  With a look of horror on his face, he says "Is he here????"  I've never seen an Aussie baby have quite that effect on a grown man before... :o)

Hollywood Cookie Diet & a Wal-Mart Boycott

Yes, you heard me.  I said hollywood cookie diet. 

As I drive to work in the morning, I am usually listening to the local country station on the radio.  This morning was no different.  A radio ad came on for what I originally thought was the 'Hollywood Cooking Diet'. I was intruiged. I would love to learn some new recipes.  When they repeated themselves, I understood that it was indeed not a cooking diet, but a 'cookie diet'. 

"Replace up to two meals a day with up to four cookies, and have a sensible meal as your third meal of the day."  They have a website and everything. I thought it was a joke at first. They even had a code word for a discount.  It was 'New Rear'.  What a crock. But it was no joke.

How many people do you think heard that commercial and went off to stock up on cookies??  It's insane!  I'll bet I could write a book full on nonsense, title it as 'Lose 50lbs in 50 days' and become a millionaire overnight.  People will do just about anything to lose weight.  I've tried a few crazy diets myself in an effort to lose a few, but even I'm intelligent enough to know that replacing meals with cookies is a fast train failure and pose even worse health risks. There aren't any nutrients in cookies.  You can't survive on cookies.  WTF?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Red and I decided this morning that we are boycotting Wal-Mart.  I read a news article this morning about how Wal-Mart is dumping unused clothing, shoes and winter gear in dumpsters.  They hire a contractor to take giant garbage bags full brand new clothing and dispose of them.  But that's not the worst part.  First, Wal-Mart purposely destroys the articles of clothing (cutting out the fingers of gloves, the sleeves off jackets, etc) so that people can't dig in the trash and use the items.  Why not donate them to some charities who can use them? 

A gal commented on my FB page after I wrote about the article and our plans to boycott.  She said how while the story is true, the reason they do it is so that people don't take the items and try to return them for money.  Okay, well cut the tags off them, mark them as donated (a permanent marker 'x' on the back collar or something?) and train your always rude, pissed off customer service staff to recognize the donation mark. 

There is no excuse for this conglomerate of a company to act the way they do.  I am always hearing of questionable business ploys from them. I won't go into detail.  But I won't be shopping there anymore.

CrossFit

Last night, I became a CrossFitter.  And I managed not to die!
I started a 6 week CrossFit bootcamp.  I figure that, added to my 5K race on the first, will be a good start to the new year.
The class is made up of mostly newbies to this method of training.  Which made me feel a whole lot better, because I didn't know what I was doing either.
I managed to do my first pull up... ever... with the help of a giant rubber band and one of the trainers.  My goal for this class is to be able to do one pullup, unassisted.  I wonder if that kind of strength is possible in just 6 weeks?
CrossFit's version of a squat is merciless.  There's no possible way to cheat.  Added in were pushups, sit ups and more squats.  Tabata squats. 
I'm sore today.  I'll be more sore tomorrow, when I have to go back to class. 

We also began our company Biggest Loser competition again.  I plan on winning this season.  I plan on it.

Stressing About Stress

I stress about my stress levels. Rediculous, no?  I suffer from many anxieties and as of lately, I've been stressing about how stressed out I am, because I have been doing some research and stress kills.  It's not just a theory anymore.  It's proven.  Stress can and will kill a person if they don't get a handle on it.  Knowing that just stresses me out even more, because I recognize how much stress I'm under at any given time. I panic about the smallest things.  The unknown, mostly.  I try to live in the moment.  But I struggle to relax.  My mind is constantly wandering to the 'what ifs' in life.  It's not a healthy way to live, really.

I start a CrossFit bootcamp today.  I am hoping the hard exercise will help me to chill out.  I also am going to try to add yoga and meditation to my daily life in hopes of bringing my stress levels down.  I dont want to die over stress.  And I'm sick of stressing about dying from stress. 

I need to chill!

DELETE

I made the decision to delete my other 2 blogs today.  They no longer exist.  This decision was made because I don't feel right splitting up my life into categories.  This blog is my blog, and I started it to share my life with those who want to read about it.  I didn't need to start a dog blog just because I talk about my dogs so much.  Why can't I talk about them here?  My dogs are my life, and this blog is about my life.  Therefor, if you're going to read my blog, then you're going to read a lot about my dogs. And you're going to read about my new health and fitness journeys.  And you're going to read a lot about books.  And food.  And quality vacuum cleaners.  Because those things matter to me, and it's my life and it's my blog. 

I'm not sure why I thought that people were sick of hearing about dogs.  Or why I felt compelled to move them somewhere other than my main blog.  Maybe because I read so many other blogs and they are so organized and about one subject and they manage to stick to one subject.  Well screw that!  I'm not a one subject type of gal!  I'm all over the place!  I'm unorganized and I'm clumzy and I'm lazy! 

So?  DELETE!  They're deleted.  And you're going to read about dogs and fitness and whatever other crap I feel like talking about, right here!

Gosh rants just make a girl feel good sometimes.  Good stuff.

Hello 2010

G'Mornin' folks!  Top of the mornin to ya!


One of my new years resolutions is to be a morning person. Or at least to try. It could definately turn into a struggle.

My year has started off well.  I kicked it off with my first 5K run ever.  January 1st in Minnesota isn't the ideal time to run outside.  For obvious reasons.  It was difficult to breathe and much of my training was indoors on a treadmill.  Climate control.  It was a brutal race, but I finished and I wasn't last, which were my only goals for this run.  There is another 5K in 6 weeks and I hope to participate.  My goal then will be to beat my time in the first one.

Another resolution of mine is to continue working on my book.  Wyoming Sun was last worked on in January... of 2009.  When I originally set out to write it and share it with you, I had planned on adding to it every week or two.  It's something I need to work on.

I think I've found my new freestyle song with Frankie.  I loved our first freestyle song and I struggle to let it go.  But as we improve and change, our music needs to reflect that.  The new song is quite a bit more upbeat and a little faster.  Frankie and I are only playing disc about once a week these days.  In the next month or two, I'll start to increase it a bit as the new season begins to gear up.  In December it still felt like we were on the downhill slide of the season gearing down.  But with the arrival of January and a new year, it feels more like a new season is going to be gearing up.  That is huge in regards to my mood. 

I recieved my new Flip recently.  In my eagerness to use it... Well, just take a look for yourself.  I ripped into the box before I even got home and got down to shooting some video. The thing rocks.

How did you ring in the new year??