eclare

Just looking through Seamus's records, here's what I found 6 Weeks: 7 pounds 8 Weeks: 11 pounds 12 Weeks: 17 pounds 16 Weeks: a whopping 29 pounds (To be fair, this was directly after he got back from spending 10 days in boarding, where they seriously overfed him - he was incredibly round when I picked him up). 20 Weeks: a nicely proportioned 28 pounds. I haven't weighed him since then, but I would venture to guess that he's currently somewhere in the 40-45 pound range at 11 months, but still skinny as a rail. He's insanely tall.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! That is awesome. As for guesses, I'm gonna go with (slightly overweight) bcXaussie.

I'm kind of afraid that this is what is wrong with Seamus. We're going to the vet next week. http://www.bordercollie.org/boards/index.php?showtopic=28008

Both of mine are generally OK with strangers - eager to check them out at first. After an initial sniff Daisy will either go into raptures and demand attention or she will dismiss and ignore. Seamus is a bit of a puzzle. He's not afraid of strangers, but after an initial sniff will just stand back and park at them. If they crouch or sit down he'll usually go over to investigate more closely and get some affection, but I think being so much shorter than people makes him wary.

Heh...that probably makes more sense.

I think this is really prevalent, I guess because the image of feline grace jibes with our image of what constitutes femininity. What I find more often in adulthood is people for whom animal gender doesn't really exist. My mother, who is not a dog person, uses he, she, and it interchangeably when referring to my dogs, because she has this ingrained view that static assigned genders apply only to humans.

I've found that a lot of black and white dogs get labeled BC mixes basically because in urban rescue environments you try to label dogs anything BUT pit-mixes, which is what a lot of the dogs actually are. So, a block-headed dog with coloring that looks like a traditional border collie becomes a BC/lab mix, rather than a boxer/pit mix or some other more likely breed. In reality, most of the dogs we rescue have nothing close to actually recognizable breed characteristics, so we all just make it up as we go along.

Target actually has two means as far as I know, and both are really helpful in the early stages of agility. The first is to teach the dog to target to your hand, meaning that your dog will touch and follow your hand on command. It's pretty easy to teach - just start with your hand by her face and when she touches it with her nose, click and treat. Eventually you should be able to get her to touch your hand from several feet away and follow it around if you want to direct her somewhere. This is an incredibly useful thing to learn because it can be used for lots of other things - heel work, tricks, etc. The other form of targeting involves teaching your dog to run away from you and to a specific point. You start by taking some flat physical object, usually a tupperware top or paper plate or something along those lines, put a treat on it and place it a few feet in front of your dog. The idea is to send your dog to the "target" and then get her to come back to you. The idea here is that when you actually get on the agility equipment, you can place the target on the other side of an obstacle and the dog will know that it is supposed to go to that point. Eventually you start using a smaller and smaller target until the dog figures out what you want and will run through, for example, a jump shoot, without actually seeing a target.

Whoah! Uncanny resemblance to my Seamus! My advice is to work on attention games and building confidence. If you start with a dog that is not afraid of the equipment, the early stages of sports are a breeze. Of course, I have no idea how to actually raise a fearless dog, as my older dog came to me that way, but it has made training agility much easier. With Seamus I'm just working on basics (sit, down, target, watch me, leave it) and letting him follow my older dog around to learn the ropes.

My 14 week old, Seamus, keeps acting like he's really hot. He pants slightly while he's sleeping and he keeps stretching by the front door as if he's trying to feel the draft from outside. When I let him outside he'll lie down in the snow and spread his whole body out like he's trying to cool off. It's not excessively warm in my house - I keep the thermostat at 68 - but he seems uncomfortable. I did give him a dose of Drontal on Friday. Would that make any difference? Am I worried about nothing?

I actually asked my instructor about this just this weekend, and she said that while there are things we can do to improve the send, there are also many many advantages to having a sticky dog so I shouldn't try to work it out of her completely. She also pretty much said that we will never be able to do a rear cross, but we need to learn it anyway I guess it's a good thing I've been lots of speed work in my own workouts.

Good Vala! And plumbing mojo coming your way.

Does anyone have opinions on what type of course is easier for a certain style of dog? We're new to agility and not even close to actual competition, but Daisy is a total velcro dog who won't do anything unless she knows I'm running beside her. This means I can't send her out to obstacles, which sucks because her physical speed is incredible but we can't take advantage of it if I have to be running alongside her all the time. Knowing that, it sounds like a tighter AKC style course is likely to be easier for us than an open and flowing course, but I wonder if there are other things to consider that I am missing.

The Wallflowers class sounds intriguing, but I would want to know more about how they plan on running the class. Ask them first about their methods and how they work with a class full of shy dogs.

I don't have anything to say about the behavior, but that picture is hilarious!