It was a verrie doggie weekend….

It was a verrie doggie weekend….

Friday night Jess came over to spend the evening, spend the night and stay over Saturday. She has been going crazy with show choir and play practice at school so she needed a weekend to rest and recooperate.

Friday we just hung out and watched stuff we had Tivo’ed

Erik decided to bag on ‘dog school’ with Petey. Petey has reached a training plateau and working with him is pretty frustrating, although he is starting to come along again…just slowly.

So Saturday AM I rousted Buster and we headed off to the 10am dog class. Roger had set up all the agility equipment so we could try that out. They had all the stuff you see on the dog agility trials from television….tunnels, planks to walk up and across, the big ‘A’ frame to walk up and over, a hoop to jump through, a ‘shaky’ platform to walk across, etc.

Luckily the 10am class had not much attendance because Buster is a little shy about new things…but we jumped right in and found out that Buster loved to walk the plank and go up and over the A frame. After a bit of effort we got him through the short and long tunnels, and at the end he even did the ‘chute’ which is a collapsed tunnel that is made from a long sleeve of light nylon fabric that the dog has to find his way through. Bustie wasn’t thrilled with the chute at first, but after his third try (and after Roger asked him to pony up and ‘be a man’) he trotted on through.

Roger said that doing the exercises can really boost a dog’s confidence, and we really saw that with some of the dogs…including Buster.

We had so much fun that I brought Petey back for the 2pm class. 14 people showed up for the class and things were pretty crowded and nuts- good thing Petey is not fazed by anything..I think 14 people in class would have put Buster over the edge.

Petey did everything without fear, actually bouncing on the shaky platform to make it move around more (once he realized it could bounce.

On Sunday afternoon we were just hanging out, and I decided to see what sort of dog obstacles I could build at home (with minimal effort)

I came up with:

The Shaky platform (thin plywood laid on top of some lengths of PVC)

The Hoop Jump- made from a PVC frame that used to be on our old kayak trailer plus a hoop made out of a length of drain tile that’s been laying in our pile of ‘stuff’ for about 5 years.

The ‘ladder’- in class we used a ladder laying on the ground to get the dogs used to foot placement for the plank. I just used some pieces of PVC that Jorgie had put together for some unknown project…fitting them together made a small ladder. I used more PVC to make 2 small jumps. In case you are wondering, we have a lot of extra PVC laying around in various lengths and sizes…Jorgie uses it for various and sundry projects. Anyway, the dogs worked through the equipment and showed off for “Dad”. I think it will help with the obedience training we do at home to swap off with some agility work . The dogs are starting to get burned out with the same exercises over and over…I think Petey is so bored that he has decided to just quit listening at all.

I need to dig around a little more and see if I can come up with parts for a plank…this will take more work because I have to make sure it’s stable enough for the dogs to go up and over. The one at dog school is about 3 feet high. The A frame is about 5 feet at it’s highest point…I don’t think we will make one of those for home…I just want a few things for playing around at home. The neighbors, who already think I’m pretty wacky, are going to get a laugh out of this I’m sure!

On Sunday morning Ann Marie and I walked the dogs at Terri’s farm. The weather was chilly, but really nice and sunny. Buster thought the horses were cool and sniffed noses with a few of them. Petey though the horses were devil incarnate and every time he saw one the hair on his back stood on end and he had a huge fit of barking and growling.

Terri actually asked me to walk him near some of the paddocks to ‘dog proof’ the horses.

Hollister, one of Terri’s new horses was really mellow, so we got him out of the field, and as I held Petey, we got them introduced which helped a bit, although Petey was still grumbling a bit.

Saturday night Erik and Jess and I went to Arri’s for pizza. It’s one of my new favorite places to eat. I highly recommend it if you like the Greek style of pizza, plus they also have good salads.