The Spaniel Annals

Best early Christmas present ever! 12-year-old Rozzie’s vet checkup went fine, and her labs came back looking great. She does have a wear a diaper at night now, but that is her only flaw.  I’m hoping for a lot more time with this precious girl. We’re going to play more in barnhunt next year, and this weekend we’ll start imprinting on odor for some scentwork.  I love my Roz to the moon and back. 

It’s getting a bit late to post this, but I’ve tried to annually post fall photos of the dogs around the property with some pumpkins or other fall paraphernalia.   So here they are, with the warty pumpkins I grew this year.  Happy fall!

Sometimes love wins.  I know this; I see it in my home everyday.  And so I don’t despair.

But other times even the greatest love can’t heal the ills of this world.

We both tried so hard, my good boy.

“Reardon”  Melchris Royal Bard, UD, TD, RN, FD (freestyle dog)
October 5, 2007 – November 11, 2019

Thanks to Lisa Kaufman for the tracking memories

This is my favorite shot of Reardon in motion.

Happy 9th birthday to Gael, my exuberant and beautiful Gordon Setter.  I can’t believe she is 9, and she certainly doesn’t act like it.  Gordons are known for aging well, and Gael exemplifies that youthfulness.   With the recent changes I’ve made in her training, I do have hopes we can get her Open and Utility titles before she retires to running in her pasture.  But we’re at a sticking point that I’m searching for answers.  What’s the problem?  Well, it’s not her retrieve:

And it’s not her drop on recall:

It’s the standstay.  The plain old seemingly easy standstay.  With the new AKC rules, it comes up in the new Command Discrimination exercises, as well as at the very end of the Open exercises, where she waits in a standstay as I go outside the ring and get her leash.  Prior to this last standstay, Gael will have just completed an arousing exercise, the broad jump, and knows she is about to get her cookies.  Coming up with ways to calm her into a consistent standstay has been a bugaboo.  We do need this consistency for the utility signals, so it’s great that we’re addressing this issue now.  She is pretty consistent using a front foot platform and with a small PVC barrier, but take those away, and I still can get several steps.  One key I’ve learned from Deb Jones of the Fenzi Academy is to better mark her correct behavior and reward frequently at first before adding duration and distance.  It is a work in progress that will be getting tested in some fun matches coming up.

But for now, happy birthday to my Gael.  I hope for many more with her.

Journey retired at the end of 2018, still 27 points from her OTCH.  While  her heart was always there, her body just couldn’t jump or sit precisely any more.  She ended with a wonderful 2 days of passing Utility at the Whidbey Island Kennel Club shows, earning her Obedience Master 2 and placing both days.   I am forever grateful to this girl for the spectacular journey we shared together.

And so the obedience journey begins again, with Gael and Robbie currently training for Open.  We have some fun matches coming up and trials this summer.  Gael has progressed tremendously in her impulse control, thanks for wonderful online classes offered through Fenzi Dog Sports Academy.  Taking classes through this Academy has pushed my training in very new, fascinating directions, but more on that later.  Robbie has struggled through some health issues that I think we’re finally on top of, and he is full of happiness and great attitude.  I’m looking forward to obedience trialing with them both, along with more freestyle for Robbie (and dabbling with Gael) and barnhunt for both of them.

Since the writing of the previous post of Journey earning her UDX in February of 2018, I resolved that we only show in Utility, as Journey turned 11 in June.  Utility is where many of the OTCH points are, and she only has to jump twice.  But our showing went into a rapid decline in the months that followed.  There were only a few OTCH points gained here and there, and after March, we kept failing, mostly the signals.  I’ve come very close to deciding to retire her.  I am so grateful for everything she’s given me, but we’ve just run out of time.  I have wanted this next year to be just be a “play” year for her as a 12-year-old.  She might show in rally, try barnhunt, and develop a little senior freestyle routine for the National, which will be in Bellingham in 2019.  What fun!  I began to let go of OTCH dreams, and felt full of gratitude for the great run we’ve had.

However, it was only a few weeks ago in preparation for her last trial at the WSOTC Labor Day weekend of trials, that I realized she was struggling to see my signals.  It was just little hints here and there, especially as I returned to doing signals at great distances.  She was looking right at me, but responding in often puzzled ways, going halfway down, or a sudden movement as if she thought I “said something” but wasn’t sure.  I remembered that the vet had mentioned her eyes getting cloudier at our last checkup.

What if she just couldn’t see my signals as well?  So in the last 2 weeks before the trial, I changed my signals to more outside my body, and thought about the best shirts to wear for the trial.  All of a sudden, her signals became more confident and quick.

At the 2 trials on Saturday, she passed both utility classes, winning the first one and taking a very close second in the second trial.  Eight OTCH points after months of nothing!  Her signals were crisp and confident, and she did none of the small stepping forward that has affected her scoring in the past.  I’m wondering if that movement forward was simply an effort to see me.

Sunday I wore a green shirt, which I thought would work fine against the white background.  (Saturday I had worn a dark blue shirt.)  She returned to struggling to see me, which puzzled me.  Shouldn’t the green provide enough of a contrast?

So I did more investigating and found this article:

https://pethelpful.com/dogs/How-Does-a-Dogs-Color-Vision-Affect-Canine-Sport-How-do-Dogs-See

So green could look like a washed out or dirty yellow to her!  Plus there were many slashes of light on the floor from the skylights above at the show that day.  So despite that Sunday result, I’m convinced we’re on the right track.

And so the OTCH journey begins again.  A final 27 points.  In some ways, it has felt like pushing and prodding a sleeping elephant up off the floor; I had already started to let that dream go and moved on.  It almost feels like I had to go through that letting go process to have it return so positively, putting a new spin on the Joseph Campbell quote, “We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.”

So these last points, or at least the journey through them, deserves its own journaling.  I feel like we about to learn more about ourselves, Journey and I, two old ladies who refuse to let go.

Originally printed in the  IWSCA newsletter in Spring 2018.  What better way to update this blog than with Journey’s UDX earned back in February?

Journey (Ch. Whistlestop Journey to Freedom [now] UDX, RN JH)  began her quest for her UDX at the Collie Club’s all-breed obedience trial in Feb. 2017, and ended it at the very same trial a year later, on Feb. 25^th 2018.  To earn the UDX, the dog must pass Open and Utility on the same day and do this ten times.  Six of Journey’s legs also earned High Combined awards, meaning her combined score was the highest at the trial.  Her pass rate improved over the year, with her last three trials providing the last three legs, and all of them also won High Combined.

It’s been a journey for me too, but a longer one.  I’ve been trying to earn the coveted advanced obedience awards with my springers and setters for 20 years now, and while their spirits were very willing, their bodies often weren’t up the task.  I could see Journey’s gifts in the very first weeks of training her oh so long ago, and while our life together has been a winding road, her intelligence, athleticism and willingness have always been evident.

Her titling weekend became a true test of our ability to focus.  At 10 ½, Journey has the mental drive, but sometimes she gets tired by the end of a weekend showing 2 classes in both days.  Fortunately, I’ve recently found a great combination of bodywork and supplements to help with this, and in the previous weekend’s trials, I had been very pleased to see her energy level remain high.  So I had high hopes she could maintain focus this weekend too.

This titling weekend was also a test of my mental toughness.  With literally decades of hoping, planning, training for untold hours, and trialing, this UDX meant more than I can even put into words.  But if I let my emotions and future-tripping thoughts engulf our performance, I could undermine everything we were trying to do.  While I have a number of tools in my toolbox for mental toughness, by Sunday, with one more qualifying class to go for the title, I knew there was only one way to shut down all the thoughts swirling in my head so I could be completely present for Journey, and that was to put the entire performance to music.   While I’m not a fan of electropop, the song “Unstoppable” by Sia seemed to fit best.  And so I played the song through my earbuds before I took Journey out of her crate for warmup, sang it to us as we waited to go in the ring, and played it in my head while we were performing.  Between each exercise, I brushed Journey’s curls away from her eyes as she looked up at me, and said, “We are UNSTOPPABLE.”  And we were.

Journey’s journey continues with the quest for the OTCH, and we are well over halfway towards that goal.  Since most of the points possible are in Utility, and she already has her major wins required from both classes, she is now a “Utility specialist,” so she doesn’t get too worn down from too much jumping and showing too many classes all weekend.  With this plan, I have high hopes that we can keep showing for a good while, and that we can reach that most holy grail of obedience trialing, the Obedience Trial Championship.   However that journey ends, I am forever grateful for the tremendous gift this dog has already given me.