What did we train on a Wednesday Nite after a dog show?

I let Ruby have the night off. She has been tired all week and slow and just not that wild, I let her run a tiny bit and no poles. No poles for her at all. Little does she know my devious plan to tear up the top of the driveway, lay sod (if and when we sell the house it will be an attractive side yard lawn!) and make room for weave poles and a contact trainer for Gustavo. I am going to retrain her on a slightly open channel to just run straight thru and give her Burger King or some other Super Excellent Treat and see if she can regain her drive through the poles and learn to love-em.

So that’s what Ruby didn’t do. Otterpop got to run, run, and run. I warm her up when she is fast and ready at long distances. When she is warming up, she easily works at Masters Gamblers distance. Someday this will transfer to the Stressball known as a trial, but for now we just take what we can get. Not freaking out a judge 2 feet from the teeter was huge. At practice, she can weave and do the teeter from 15-20 feet no problem. At a show, forgetaboutit. She got extra runs because I ran Hobbes and not Ruby, and about halfway through class, she became blase and i started rewarding intermittedly and redoing obstacles for speed then letting her at the frisbee. Worked well. She goes back to this method just to keep up speed on every course.

Also I believe I left all dog leashes there! Fantastic job! I did an ok job of running Hobbes but really I could do a lot better if I were the rockstar of dog handling that I know lies buried somewhere deep beneath the chowder legs.

There is a beagle in the class I teach that looks like Pencil in the Mike White movie “The Year of the Dog”. I told the beagle owner not to see it. Any beagle owners will not love seeing little fat beagles laying there playing dead-it is just a movie and these are pro dog actors is what I kept telling myself due to the sadness of it all-from eating the snail bait. It’s actually very funny in a Mike White way, even if in terms of dog realities it is pretty retarded and off but I still liked it. I think the message is PETA supporters are clearly off kilter. Also Laura Dern plays Molly Shannon’s sister in law and is super funny as the overprotective Prada shoe and tunic wearing mom having xmas by the pool in some Anaheim Hills tract community. Also I love it that she almost takes a 6 year old to a chicken slaughter house. But the best part is a movie with lots of dogs and you get to try and figure out where the dog handlers were for every scene and how they taught each behavior! Now that is Entertainment! That was clearly my missed true business calling.

But that movie gets a lot of stars due to the fact I did not fall asleep 20 minutes into and stayed awake the whole movie and it is not too long and features dogs in Almost Every Scene! Very good movie! Mike White is the Chuck and Buck guy. We love him. More dog movies Mike White! Who is the first one to make the dog agility movie-I guess I have to write the screenplay and send it to him? I am more reality show than screenplay though. We need Joel Warner on this!