Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Property Damage


You might not be aware of this but we recently moved out of our teeny one bedroom apartment into a new house.


It's huge compared with our last living accommodations and one of it's biggest selling points when we were looking was it's ginormous fully fenced wooded backyard.

Use Gauis to estimate size :)

One of it's few drawbacks was a single room with carpet. Now Gauis is pretty good about house training when supervised. When left to his own devises, not so much, especially not on carpet. He sort of demolished the carpet at my last place. But I had a plan. You see this house has an extra back bedroom that I was going to make all his.

Complete with a water bowl two doggy beds, kitty towers (for the cat) and chew toys. In essence this is more room than he had to run around in my old apartment! We are even going to put up his title certificates and ribbons and lovely pictures of him on the walls so it's homey! We were even going to make the kitty stay in there with him to keep him company as he loves his kitty. His own room, that's great right? And it sure beats having to stay in a crate.

I did not take this picture in this frame and do not "own it" so ssshhh no tattling on me.

So no proublem? Happy puppy, happy mommy, disgruntled yet resigned kitty right? Wrong.

Gauis would like everyone to know that he does not like being closed in one room. Not even for the measly 2-3 hours he is without human companionship during the day. Even if that room has MORE SPACE then he was used to inhabiting in total.

Extreme damage close up!

This was accomplished in about 3 days and I have no doubt that given a month he would be able to dig himself out. And having to sweep up large chunks of wood every night was not making me happy. He also managed to bang up his noes something awful.

I don't think this is separation anxiety as he never had that at the old place. I think this is just snotty, spoiled, bored behavior. For a while this meant crate time. As I will not give into this and see another carpet ruined. But now we are trying the baby gate.

He has managed to knock it down twice and escape (No accidents in my carpet room, thank the lord). And he hasn't jumped the baby gate yet (Something he has accomplished in the past. Serves me right for all the agility training.) So far so good.

SO I hope this dispels any perfect puppy myth Gauis might have had going for him. Anyone whose read this blog from the start I'm sure knows he's not perfect. But for the new folks. He can cause just as much trouble as any dog :)

P.S. I'm sure you noticed I found my camera's battery charger. Agility trial update tomorrow!

Thursday, October 21, 2010

Trick Title Sucess! (And other things)

Hello everyone :)

There are some new faces here because of this little post on:

The Long and Short of it All: A Dachshund Dog News Magazine: Gauis Rocks: Expert Trick Dachshund - Amazing Vid...: "We told you this was coming, and we know you can't wait any longer! Congratulations goes out to our pal 'Gauis,' the first-ever Dachshund..."

Which is a great dachshund news blog, so check it out if you haven't heard of it already. But Gauis big news is that he got his expert trick title! Check out the video: (Now if you joined my blog from the long and short, you've already seen this. If not you've seen most of these tricks already. Think of this as a greatest hits video)



But we aren't stopping there! There are plenty of tricks left to learn and things I want to teach. Such as roll on a barrel:



We are currently working on distance. But it's getting there! So stay tuned, I have lots of fun stuff planned.

In other news, we have an agility trail in Woodbridge this weekend. (Just one more leg for NJWW title!) so wish us luck. I'm sure you'll see an update on that)

Also, posts have been lacking recently because I lost the charger for my camera's battiers. And I like having nice pictures with my post not just videos. But today it was found! So expect a more active future.

Thursday, October 7, 2010

Lost Video

So in the interest of full disclosure. And to not be accused of only putting my good runs up here. I have this video. Turns out I found the missing standard run from my second day at Belroi.

You know, the one where he was so pumped up he screamed at the starting line then almost broke his stay, then took the wrong end of the tunnel. When he finally seemed to pull himself together, I forgot the course and everything pretty much falls apart from there.

So this is what it looks like when everything goes wrong. But he ran fast, he had fun, and all of his barking was excited not upset. So what more can you ask for.



In other news! I have a new theory on our weave pole mishaps. I think I'm babysitting him to much at trails. If I take a deep breath and just trust him, he'll do them like he does in class. Georgie said that her and Popeye (Remember Popeye, the brown dachshund from the earthdog post?) had the same issue for a while. Only instead of running off to scream at gate stewards Popeye just missed his entries (Because he is better behaved in every way than Gaius). So that's my goal for wood bridge. Trust my dog. Yikes what a tall order.

As an extra, here's a video of our friend (And head trainer at the dog school I go to) Cindy Briggs' dog Jody and some of her tricks. Video by yours truly.


Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Introducing Gauis Baltar NA!

These darn things are bigger than me.


Exciting news!

So we've been to two trials since you last heard from me. The first of which was Belroi and
the second of which was in Fredricksburg.

Geeze Belroi seems so long ago let's see what I can remember. Our first day at Belroi (Saturaday) we started with Jumpers with weaves... What can I say about this run. It was perfect (two tries at the weaves but what can you do?). He was fast and followed all of my positional cues. A perfect run. Next was standard, which he did very well in. Our only hairy moment was a strangely placed front cross on my end because I ran out too far with him to make sure he made the broad jump. Instead of waiting for me to exsicute said front cross he decied to simple blind cross me (a big Greg Derrett's handling system no no) and take the A-frame. Luckily the A-frame was the obstacle we were suppose to be headed for. Gaius suddenly behind me frazzled me enough to say "Hey! you blind crossed me" to him while he was at the top of the A-frame. The judge heard me and laughed. She then shouted "He knows where he's going as we headed to the table. The only other mishap in standard was Gaius deciding to run and visit his daddy instead of doing weave poles.

I've noticed Gaius always seems to do something funny at the weave poles. Like that's where he decides to bark, or go visit Sean or wonder off. I think it's because he finds them stressful. They are still tricky from him, which means he'll probably get them wrong and have to do them again. Which means they are less fun than other obstacles. So he gets there and goes "Aww man, not weave poles. Why don't I find something more reinforcing to do" and that's where I get my barking fits. There is another time I get barking fits, but that is another story I'll talk about in a minute.

Video of Day 1 at Belroi (A double Q!)

Belroi Agility Day 1 from Sean Van Damme on Vimeo.



Second Day at Belroi didn't go so well. In Standard he was a nut! Crazy fast but he didn't take any of the right obstacles. He was just crazy. Way to excited. I don't have video for this one for some reason. I'll go through the flip and try to find it again.... so expect an edit here with Gaius' manic crazy, there are bees in my brain run. The start of the jumpers run was much better. He was actually in control and taking the right things. Then we say the photographer and Gauis lost it. I don't think he's ever seen a camera that big. Well then we sort of had a barking meltdown. My main goal after that was just to get him back on track and finish the run happy and fast. Which he did, but by that point we'd missed an obstacle and made too many mistakes to Q.

Here's the first 25 seconds of his jumpers run monstrosity. The camera died mysteriously right when the run started to go south:




That leads us into Fredricksburg . Day one was Standard first out of the gate. It was a disaster Gaius' barking was so bad I had to pull him from the ring. Not because I was trying to teach him a lesson, just because we were going to get whistled off for taking to long. This totally bummed me out. And a spent my time until Jumpers wondering if Gauis and trialling was really something I wanted to keep doing if he was just going to bark. The Jumpers run still had barking but was much improved. It lifted my spirits enough to come back the next day and I'm sure lucky I did.

We have no footage of this day due to some wonky flip camera stuff. My poor dad. Though I'm kind of digging the mysterious lack of footage on all of our bad runs. All coincidence I assure you. No conspiracy here.

Saturday was awesome. There was still barking.... lord was there barking, but we managed to Q in both jumpers and standard. Which means Gauis got is Novice Agility Title! And he only has one more leg for his jumpers with weaves title!

Here is the Standard Run:



Again a weave pole meltdown. But I'm beginning to think that's more about weave poles and less about people. Other than that a lovely run. I did let him blow his dog walk contact. But there was a big GIANT guy with a hat on as a steward RIGHT next to the dog walk. And I figured if I kept him running he wouldn't notice. And it worked. So I was rewarded for bad behavior.

His Jumpers run saw another weave meltdown. See a pattern here? There was another meltdown after a jump. I have a theory there too. I think the other time he stresses then goes over threshold is when I make a handling error. I gave him a wonkey rear cross in the wrong place right before then and I think it threw him off. He also doesn't seem to be barking at anyone there.... he's just..... barking. But with only one refusal we still got our Q! See for yourself:



When I got off the course I wasn't sure if I had Qed. I asked the AKC representative and he said he had. Then he said "And he gets extra points for cursing at you."

I said "He's not cursing at me, he's cursing at the whole world"

The judge shock his head and replied firmly, "No, he's cursing at you."

And maybe he is. Maybe what he's saying is 'mom, we haven't practiced weaves enough and you make mistakes sometimes. When I get to weaves or you mess up, screw agility. I'm going to find another way to entertain myself. Like barking at that woman in the freaky sun hat.'

So new homework, weave poles and no more making mistakes (shesh!)
I don't really get the whole ribbon thing... but if you like them mom... whatever.