Lazy summer day

Well, not much to report from Michigan today. My person has been working on my box training this week, so that's pretty much what I've been doing. Get the ball from the box over and over and over. Cool thing is, I'm actually getting better. My person has gone off to pick blueberries, so I had to hurry and get on the computer so I could write this up. She'll be back soon, so I have to run back to look like I'm napping--then she'll feel bad and do something with me.

Lesson for today
Some days there just aren't many lessons

Woolies

My people surprised me yesterday by loading all the border collies up in the van and driving us to our herding instructor's house. Normally, we go herding on Thursdays, but last Thursday it was storming, so we couldn't go.

When we got there, I got to do an obstacle course. The first picture is me moving the sheep around the "handler's pole". In real herding trials, the dog has to bring the flock to the handler and then take the sheep around the pole. I'm doing a pretty good job of staying back off the sheep so they don't run the instructor over--she doesn't like that very much and often yells "time!!" if the sheep are coming in. The people don't like it if the sheep step on them.

Sheep herding takes quite a bit of concentration--it's not for every dog, that's for sure. The commands involved are "Come bye" (move the sheep clockwise); "away to me" (move the sheep counter clock-wise); "lie down" (stop and if you can remember, lie down); "walk up" (walk toward the sheep); "time" (sometimes also "easy", means slow down); "get out" (don't cut in on the sheep) and, of course, "that'll do" (work's done). If you've seen the movie "Babe", you've seen all these commands in action but with a pig of course. Lots of border collie web sites and paraphenalia also makes goofy use of some of the commands (like "Thanks for coming bye"). I don't really approve of that. This is serious work after all.

In this second picture, I've put the sheep in the pen and am lying down awaiting the next command (which it turns out is "that'll do").

Just like in flyball, there's lots to learn with sheep herding. One thing I have to learn (just like I did in flyball) is to have more confidence. I get a little nervous if the instructor asks me to run too far away to get the sheep and I often just come running back. I think once my person is out there with me, I might feel a little better. When I'm feeling especially worried, I start nosing around for some sheep poop. That usually makes me feel better.

Anyway, back on the homefront, my work with Rafe-oaf continues. I don't know what it's going to take to teach him to stop staring at me. The newest indignity that has befallen me because of him is that he actually thinks he can pounce at me to make me give up a bone I'm chewing. If I'm chewing it, of course, that means it's MINE. I made him crouch on the ground and say uncle twice, but he still thought he could take it away. Then, to test him, I left it on the floor in front of me, but I kept my eyes on it. He came over, but I didn't budge and I showed him all of my teeth. Luckily, he left. Tansy cheered loudly.

Lesson for today
You never know when you might get to see the woolies

Wow--9 comments

I got NINE comments on my blog yesterday--that's more than in the whole previous two years combined. Being a dog and all, what that says to me is that I should quit every day (e.g. some behavior got a particular desired response). My person said I couldn't, though. Human rules really are far too illogical, but since I don't have the opposable thumbs, I'm somewhat at their mercy for some of my creative endeavors (others I am quite good at all by myself, like skillfully removing cat food from the kitchen counter. My people don't appreciate my creative talents nearly enough, however.)

Here's a picture of me with my gal pal, Tansy, just for those of you who love speckle faces (I'm in back)


Anyway, I realize I've gotten a little far from my original flyball focus, so I wanted to explain my training exercise from yesterday. Like I posted previously, since I let the people know that I like to turn right, not left, I have to re-learn my turn. So, my person had me catching the ball off the wall. That means she threw it so it bounced once on the floor, hit the wall and the bounced off and I was supposed to catch it off the wall. That simulates it coming out of the box. She was laughing and having fun, so I did too. My catch off the real box improved some, so that was good.

My other activities yesterday included continuing work on Rafe's education about doggy manners. That boy has one thick skull. Here's a picture of him. My people really like him because he looks so a-typical.

Even the people in the Border Collie rescue group where Tansy came from weren't sure he was a border collie. My people have some papers, though, with a lot of funny names like "Snip" and "Wisp", places like "Isle of Man" and "Ireland", and some marks that mean "International Champion" on them and they say that means he is BC through and through. They have papers like that for all four of us BCs in the family. Like I said, humans are kind of hard to figure sometimes. Does it really matter that much?

BC or not, he is one rude youngster. Just this morning, he laid down right in front of me and just stared. Then, when I showed him my ferocious teeth, he laid over on his side, still staring and actually touched my paw with his nose. Well, you can understand how appalled I was, I'm sure. Tansy was saying "move away, move away, move away" as only she can, but it took a low growl from me to finally get the big oaf to move back to his side of the room. Trying, trying times at my house. Thank goodness for flyball and sheep.

Today's lesson?
Don't try to understand people rules unless they affect you directly. They affect you if the human is holding a toy or food or making a clicky sound or calling your name or giving another dog attention

Big woofs to my new friends

Since I posted in despair about not having anyone to read my blog, I've gotten e-mails from some new friends.

First I heard from Ninja, a very handsome German Shepherd. You can read about him at German Shepherds and Bunnies.

Then, I heard from a very cute dachshund, Copper. He writes about his thoughts on things at JustMeCopper.

Then, just this morning, I heard from a labrador retriever named Opy, who is the original gruff puppy.

You can read about all kinds of dogs who keep blogs at the Dogs With Blogs site.

After all the heat of the last couple days, today is a rainy day. I've been working hard to teach our new friend, Rafe, to stop looking at me. He's kind of dense about it, though.

One of my people has a birthday today--Happy Birthday, Duck-mom.

Lesson for the day
Youngsters take a long time to learn not to stare, so a good snarl is always an important part of any dog's toolbox

Hot day today

It's been blistering hot in our fair neck of the woods and that usually means less activities for us. My silly little brother Hamish overheats very easily and my person is something of a wimp too. Neither of them seem to understand the "under a shady tree" principle for dealing with heat, silly creatures.

I have been working on my flyball box this week. Here's the dilemma: I was trained to turn to the left (the "fast" side) and I have an AWESOME box--tight turn, good spring, all four feet up. But, I forgot to tell them when they were training me that I prefer to turn to the right. They figured it out once they added in the ball, but the dilemma is that my box when I turn to the right is less than stellar--it's more like a stroll and I only go up with my front feet, which, besides being slow and meaning I drop the ball a lot, also means more pounding on my shoulders.

The solution, you ask? More training. My people aren't very smart about doing it either, but I'm reminding myself to be patient and maybe they'll figure it out one of these days. In the meantime, I've decided to revive last year's "lesson of the day" (more like "lesson of the post", but you get the idea).

Lesson for today
Upward pressure on a buckle collar is not really the same thing as a choke chain (yeah right)

I've reconsidered

Well, in addition to the two comments I got from Ninja and JustMeCopper (thanks loads guys), some others have persuaded me that my words are not just disappearing into the cyber-nether.

I went to a training seminar this week-end. Boy did I have some things to learn. Me and my person learned it'd probably be good to go back and do some basics like "watch" and "sit". Kind of embarrassing for her, but it's all tricks to me.

Here's a picture of all the dogs that live at my house. Can you find me? There are four of us Border Collies (and we all look a little different) and my buddy, Renzo. There are also still those three cats, but we don't like to talk about them. Especially not the mean old one.

Not enough fans

Well, I've gotten pretty discouraged about my blog lately. I post my various missives and have been doing so off and on for almost two years; however, I get so little fan mail that I've decided that it might be time to close the blog down for a while. It's been a great run for me and I've enjoyed sharing my various triumphs with everyone (even though I don't know who you are).

I've gotten very busy with things other than flyball, too--herding, agility, running after my brother, keeping up with the foster dogs and now, to top it all off, my people added a new friend to the household and I've got a lot of work just making sure he understands what the rules are.

Since I started my blog, my people have added three more Border Collies to our house (I was the first one and they love me so much that they just keep adding more of us) and have fostered 11. I"m glad they are taking a break on that since it was hard on me, but it was also pretty cool to teach 11 new kidz the ropes.

Anyway, I might revive the blog at some point in the future if enough fans tell me they miss me, but until then

Today's lesson
You have to know when to hold them and know when to fold them.

Bye Bye!!

My favorite things, part II

Hi Everyone,

Now that the opposable thumbs person I have to rely on to type these missives has gotten over her astonishment at my flyball and agility prowess, she's agreed to continue with what I consider to be a much more important mission--namely, my list of favorite things. When I left off last, I'd mentioned some things I like to eat, including wooden spoons. I was lucky to get a taste of one of those last night. Here's what my people found when they got home:


I was bummed because really, I was just taking a little break and intended to get right back to it. Oh well. Here's me doing something I like to do--watch for interlopers while sitting on the couch

You can hardly see me for all the books and magazines, I know--I don't know why the people like that stuff so much and they don't even try to eat it.

So, on to the important list of my favorite things. I'll stick with edibles for now:

sheep poop
pens with plastic lids
pants' pockets, preferably those that once held doggie treats
raw hamburger
carrots
ice cubes
kitty poop

And today's important lesson??

Best to sleep under a tree when it's hot

I still rock

So, after my big day on Sunday with flyball, I had just as big a time at agility on Tuesday. I was really rocking through all the obstacles--paid attention to my person and all that stuff. It's like I'm a different dog. Or that's what my person says, but I've been trying to tell her for months that I was just not ready yet and to be patient--I mean, you don't push a 10 y.o. human child to do what an 18 y.o. can do. At least I hope not. If you do, you really shouldn't.

Lesson for the year

Be patient--this means people too!

I rock

It is true, I do. Really.

As many of my fans know, I've taken a bit of a break from flyball. Really almost a year. I mentioned we were going to start up again. So we did. My person brought her trainer friend over and they worked with me a little bit. They even made a plan. They decided that I was missing some piece of flyball, but they couldn't figure out what.

My person decided to bring me to practice one day and to video tape me while I just ran the course. Mind you, I've never just run the course before, but everyone thought it would be a good idea to see what I'd do and then see if we--or I mean they-- could figure out what was missing.

We did that on Sunday. Here are the video results. I fooled them, didn't I, hee hee.

I guess my secret is out. I've known how to do it for a while, but they never set it up so that I could show them that. Who knows what will happen next. But in the meantime, I rock. Really, I do.

My favorite things, part I

I have some musings on things I like to eat that aren't good for me. They include (in no particular order):

waffles and other fine baked goods
cat food
cat food cans
dog food cans
paper
wooden spoons and spatulas

My goofy little brother Hamish likes to eat shoes and socks. My buddy Renzo and my friend Tansy are perfect and only eat what is handed to them (suckers). The cats, well, who really cares about them?

I'm back

Here is a picture of me doing my newest activity. It's not flyball, but I thought I'd share it anyway.

It's called "sheepherding" and it's what I was made to do. In fact, flyball and agility and games like that were invented to give Border Collies like me something to do in case we didn't have sheep to play with.

I've been having a break from flyball and we're not sure where I'm headed with that. My person started working with me again today and I had a REALLY good time. I also heard her talking to a trainer friend of ours and I heard them say that our trainer friend was going to come to our house to see if she could help my person help me learn to like flyball. We'll see how that goes.

In the meantime, I know that I get to go see the sheep (some people call them the "woolies") almost every week and that's really fun for me right now. I'm pretty good at it, too, but mostly, I just love having fun and seeing my people so happy to see me work.

Oh yeah, there's two other things that happened since I was last posting regularly. First, my people started doing this thing called "fostering" which means that a Border Collie who needs a new home comes and hangs out at our house for a little while--kind of like an in-between place. My person said I should tell you that this is one of the reasons she couldn't keep my blog updated, but she's going to work harder at it now.


The other thing that happened is that my people brought a new friend to our house. He's actually my little brother (we have the same mom, but he has a different dad) and the people call him "Hamish" which is much more Scottish than Pippin. He's pretty fun and he's learning sheep herding and flyball, too.

My people haven't worked as much with him as they did with me, but he doesn't seem to be any worse for the wear.



He's what's called a "red tri", which means he's tri-colored and the dominant color is a reddish brown (in Australia and New Zealand, this color is called "chocolate"). Like me, he has some speckles on his face and legs, but unlike me, both his ears do the same thing. I'll tell you more about him as I continue to post.

Glad to be back. I hope I hear from some of my fans....

Hi Everybody,

I'm back--it's been almost a year, but my person has been very busy.  I'm still working on flyball, but in the meantime, I've started to learn about SHEEP

Only three weeks have past this time

Well, it's me again, writing from cloudy Ann Arbor. My person has been pretty busy these last couple of weeks (that's what she *always* says, but who knows) and I'm sure I"m losing fans because I'm not able to pen my thoughts as easily. Maybe things will look up in the near future--we'll see.

Big news on the flyball front is that my buddy Renzo had a real-live, regular running spot on a team at Spring-Loaded's tournament last week-end. He had a little trouble (but it wasn't really his fault), but I think things are really going to fly for him.

For me, well, I realized that the box is really pretty scary when there is a ball in it and I don't much like it when the ball pops out. I had a perfectly good solution, which was to just pull the ball out of the hole rather than hit the box--kills two birds as it were. I don't have to hear that loud sound and the ball doesn't pop out at me.

But for some reason, all the people seem kind of unhappy with this solution. So, my person and I are working on something she calls "desensitization". I"m not sure what it means, but I know that she carries me (yes, physically, since I won't go to the box on my own) to the box and then when it makes that awful loud sound, I get a cookie. I still don't want to stand too close, but who am I to turn down cookies (especially because they are "dehydrated lamb lung" from Solid Gold).

My person is feeling a little dejected because she thinks I've regressed. But the thing I keep trying to show her is that I've got all the pieces, but I'm still mulling over how to put them together. I'm not as fast to get it as some dogs, but I have no worries that it'll come together.

So, the lesson for today
It all comes together in the end, and that's what matters the most

I'm back

hazelpip
Originally uploaded by Pippin Noodle.

It's true, it's been a while. My person, who I'm dependent on to keep up with my blog since I don't type very well, has been "busy" with whatever it is she does. I try not to make a fuss, but really, it's pretty unfair that she chooses other things over keeping my fans up-dated on what's been going on in my flyball life.

That picture up there is a picture of me with my sister Hazel at the Davisburg flyball tournament in February. She's a cutie, isn't she. Pretty different looking than me--first off, she's a lot smaller and doesn't have quite the fringe that I do (you can sort of tell if you look closely at my tail). She also had a much shorter nose and bigger, rounder eyes. I don't like to talk about it too much, but she also has ears that both do the same thing--stand up.

submissivepip
Originally uploaded by Pippin Noodle.

In that picture, I'm saying hi in my usual way, which is to show that I'm not trying to be anybody's boss. Hazel was a little surprised--I don't think she's used to having someone lower on the totem pole than her. We were both a little wary and didn't really play much.

Hazel's already competing on her flyball team. I'm not yet, but I have learned some new tricks. I'm going down over all the jumps, hitting the box and coming back with no trouble (I've had about 3 weeks off, but I didn't forget anything). Yesterday at practice, we added the ball in. Not sure about that--I thought it was pretty good to just stop at the box and pull the ball out gently and gracefully. No need for all that racousness and banging and loud noises when you can just pull it out. I heard them whispering that that's not really allowed, but to let me go ahead and explore. I hope that I heard them wrong, but I'm a little worried because today at home, my people were having me stand at our box while they popped the ball out. Still not so sure about it all, but I liked grabbing the ball!

So, what have I learned in the last six weeks?
As usual, patience is a virtue

I made the whole run

Well hey ho, yesterday I did the whole flyball run (without the ball, but still, big step). For the first time since I've been learning (which is about 10 mos.), I went all the way down, over all four jumps, hit the box (with a pretty good, tight turn), and came back over all four jumps. Driving pretty hard, too. I rock--anyway that's what my people said.

My buddy Renzo also did just great. He was able to run the whole course with a dog running next to him AND a dog he had to pass. he crossed over the first time, but after that, he understood his job.

Yesterday was really a big day for both of us and it was so cool to see my people so proud of us.

So, what I'd learn in the process?
Going over four jumps is really not that different from going over one or two.

So, being Saturday and all, both of my people were home today and spent a lot of time with us pups. They are working hard to get me to associate playing fetch with tugging. In flyball, it's really good if we have something like a tug to run back to. My buddy Renzo will only run for food--that's fine too, but our team captains say that dogs run harder for tugs. I love to tug as a general thing, but I don't really see what it has to do with flyball, so I"m kind of disdainful of it when it shows up while I'm practicing.

When my person tries to get me tug before she will throw the ball, I usually just look at her patiently and eventually, I just walk away (she tries *really* hard not to give in and throw the ball anyway, but I put her in a kind of a bind--cause it's also not so good for me to decide when it's time to stop playing--something about getting a big head. Whatever, people are kind of weird.

The real thing I've been learning today, though is "be nice". See, I get a little persnickety when other dogs get too close. It's not all that predictable...for my person anyway and she doesn't really ask me what's the trigger, I'm not telling. In any case, the people don't like it, so today we've been working on "be nice"--which basically seems to mean, stop snarling and look at person. When I do that--bingo, a treat. Yay.

And that means today's lesson is:
Be nice, then you get a treat and keep everybody else from snarling

Harnasses are for the birds

Normally when I play flyball, my person holds on to my hips. For a while I wore a harness, but that was back when I didn't have a very good recall and the team capitans said that it would be better for me to learn with a leash attached to a collar (that's for a leash correction--boy, I'm glad I got past those!

Anyway, today my person decided to put my harnass on me again. This is what it looks like

halter
Originally uploaded by Pippin Noodle.

I don't really notice it that much, but when we went to run flyball (yeah, that's right, today is flyball day--yahoo!), my person held me by the harnass--I didn't like it one bit. I'd much rather be held by the hips--you know, a much more hands-on, feel-good touch just to set the right mood for a good, clean run. Much more civilized than being held like a common dog (or, dare I say it, a kitty... my kitties go outside with harnasses--never really though it could come to that for me)

What I learned today?
I don't like harnasses, BUT I really like flyball a whole lot

Big woofs to my pal Renzo, who had 10 pretty clean runs today--and even sort of passed into another dog. He does a good job, but boy is he a barker. Also, licks and kisses to Tansy who is doing a good job soaking in the whole new environment. It would have been great for her and us if she'd been with us from the start, but what matters most is that she's with us now!

What kind of dog are you

I'm out of lessons for today, but here's something fun to try:

What kind of dog are you?

My person is a Keeshound. They look like this

keeshond
Originally uploaded by Pippin Noodle.

She doesn't though....

By Jove I've got it

My person has been working with me over the last couple of months to learn to shut a cabinet door by pushing it with my nose (initial command for that is "touch"). The problem for me has been that I also know about shutting drawers by hitting them with my feet (initial command for that was "push"--that's a flyball command, too).

So, I'm a kind of pawsy gal and think it's a lot more efficient to shut things with my feet, so, while I would touch the cabinet door with my nose, I made it close with my feet.

My person was pretty patient--only rewarding me for closing the door with my nose. And if I just wasn't getting it, she'd back up and reward me for just touching the door with my nose adn once I remembered to close it with my nose, she'd go back to only rewarding that and eventually moving to a variable reinforcement (click here if you want to read more about this kind of dog training or read the book "don't shoot the dog").

Anyway, today I did it right right off the bat. My person could even send me from about 6 ft. out and I'd go close the door with my nose. I'm pretty cool, huh?

So, what'd I learn today?
With enough repetitions and the right kind of encouragement, just about anything is possible.