Millie the Border Terrier 360 Review Part 2: The Cats Share Their Views

In the previous post, The Cardi Boys shared their views on Millie.  This is all part of Millie's personal (or is it pupsonal) development.  This time, the cats have weighed in with their opinions of Millie.


BLOSSOM'S Feedback for Millie:

Strength = Snuggling

There is no question that snuggling is Millie's strongest point.

Here we are snuggling on Mom's lap.

And here in a back to back snuggle on the bed.

We snuggle many different ways.  

Millie is a great snuggler.

Weakness = Destruction!

(photographic proof of my claim)

I love to play with toy mice.  I carry them around and bat them under things.  

Before Millie came along, the mice were a CATS ONLY toy.

Now Millie destroys them.  

Mom says it's because she was meant to kill vermin.

She must not be very smart, though, because these aren't REAL vermin.

SUMMER's Feedback for Millie:

Strength = She does not chase me

(this is the disdainful look the dogs deserve)

I had a very hard time thinking of a strength for Millie.  

Mom said I had to come up with one, so I guess I like that Millie doesn't chase me or bug me.  Sometimes the boy dogs get "in my whiskers" but Millie keeps her distance.  

She must be the smartest dog.

Weakness = She is a Dog

This is where I like to stay to keep away from the dogs.

If they get near me I must hiss at them.

Dogs are nothing but trouble.  

Except when they are sleeping.  Then they are ok.  I guess.

Millie the Border Terrier 360 Review Part 1: Ziggy and Rip Share Their Views

Millie has now been with us for more than half a year.  This is ample time for her to settle into the pack and reveal her true nature.  And it means that it's time for her first 360 feedback review.  This review will help Millie learn more about her strengths and weaknesses as recognized by those who spend the most time with her, allowing her to develop a personal improvement plan.

The first do to their reviews were the Cardi boys.  Here's what they have to say:

Ziggy's Feedback to Millie:  

Strength = Snuggling

Millie and I often snuggle together.  

She sometimes even cleans my ears.

Millie can fit into tight spaces, which enhances her snuggling ability.

I really like this about her.

Weakness = She doesn't play with me

Here I am at the bottom of my ramp waiting for Millie to play with me.

She only plays with Rip, because this is all he will allow.

This is a big weakness.  I wish she would play with me.

Rip's Feedback to Millie

Strength = She plays with me!

Here we are playing.  

We are having fun, and Millie likes to play A LOT.

I like this about Millie.

Weakness = She plays WILD (and sometimes it scares me)

Look at those teeth!

Much too big for the size of her body.

Sometimes her giant teeth scare me.

And she has very slappy paws.

They slap my head, and sometimes this scares me.

In this picture I am being brave and not turning away from the frenzied paws.

And look at this!!

NOW do you see why she scares me sometimes?!?

Next post:  360 review from the C*ts

2014 Summary: Changes

2014 brought a number of changes to the furry family.

In July we added a new canine to the pack.  Her name is Millie and she is a year-old Border Terrier.  She has forever changed our lives - though we're still not sure whether or not this is a good thing.

In December, after the loss of our dear cat Gloria, we got a new cat - Summer.  She is lovely and snuggly and fitting right in, though the dogs call her "The Spitty One."  She is gradually warming up to the dogs, but they aren't her favorite.

Here's the Pack - less Summer.  

She's not up for group snuggling quite yet.

From left to right:  Rip, Millie, Ziggy, Blossom

Ziggy, Rip, and Blossom continue to do well.  Rip is working in agility, Ziggy is still a Therapy Dog with TDInc., and Blossom snuggles with the dogs on a daily basis.

We all had a great summer at Wagmore, and got a lot of work done on the property.  We've planted well over 200 trees, and reclaimed many of the fences from the blackberries and other bushes.

In other 2014 news, my work responsibilities expanded quite a lot - contributing to my lack of posting in the latter half of the year.  

I'll share more updates in 2015, and plan to add a title or two to the dogs' names.  Happy New Year!

Happy Westminster Best In Show Day!

Since we missed the Christmas cookie baking season entirely, The Small Human and I decided to make Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show cookies instead.

When I colored all the frosting purple, The Small Human asked me why.  I told him it's because that's the Westminster Kennel Club color.  To which he replied, "Then don't we need yellow, too?  Their colors are purple and yellow."

Maybe I am raising him right :)

I'll work on my purple for next year (I think I need a dash more red to really hit the color), and add some yellow cookies too, of course.

So today my co-workers, our veterinary clinic's staff, and The Husband's co-workers will all enjoy some purple Cardigan sugar cookies in honor of Westminster Best In Show Day.

The Small Human and I are extra-excited now that a Cardi won the herding group.  Ok, maybe it's just me that's extra-excited.  I can't wait to watch Best In Show.  And that's not just the sugar talking.

Go Coco!

New Wheels for Me (or Dog Crates in a Honda Pilot)

Since my beloved Honda Odyssey didn't make it through the accident, we were forced, unexpectedly, into buying a new car.  

I didn't want another minivan, as Honda has redesigned the van since we bought ours, and the style is just too "mumsy" for me.  I may be deluding myself, but the old Odyssey was at least a little sporty.  The new one is not, and I'm feeling too much like middle-aged soccer mom to buy another minivan.  So what to buy?

My rental Explorer.  Loved it!

We had a Ford Explorer as our rental car, and I loved it.  Loved how it drove, loved the styling, especially loved the touch screen controls.  I thought maybe we'd just buy one of those.  Then I realized that, with the back seat up, I could barely fit 2 small crates in the back.  With my larger (24"x 36") crate - I could only fit one crate in the back.  No way.  A car that size should fit much more in the back, so the hunt was on.

We test drove and measured the behind-the-back-seat-area of:

• The Ford Flex (43" long x 40" wide)
• The Subaru Outback (42.5" long x 33" wide) - with slopey back window
• The Volvo Wagon (43" wide x 44.4" wide)

We were all set to buy a Volvo Wagon, when we found the Honda Pilot.  It combines good Consumer Reports ratings, decent gas mileage, adequate sportiness, and a dog-friendly rear storage.

Here's a picture of the one we test drove - 

on the left is a 30"x19" crate

on the right is a 24"x36" crate.

Perfect!

So here she is.  Awaiting dog hair.

Ziggy got to be the first canine passenger.

Lucky boy!

I think he likes being able to see the driver from his crate.

And here he is in the 30"x19" crate.

Plenty of room for his wheels, too.

I added pieces of 3 rubber mats under the front of the crate to keep it level.

So far we love the Pilot.  Now I need to find a dog show or clinic to attend so I can really put her cargo space to the test.

Ode to a Honda Minivan

About seven weeks ago, my minivan and motivation both took a hit.  I was driving home from work, and the traffic was stopped on the bridge.  I stopped, but the guy behind me didn't.  My van was hit from behind and thrown into the car stopped in front of me.


Unfortunately for me, my two-and-a-half-weeks-post surgery knee smashed into the dash/front console of the van on impact.  The accident set the healing of my knee back significantly - it changed (for worse) the trajectory of the healing, and put "Project Stay" on hold, as I was back to rest and ice.  So, no dog events to post.

Unfortunately for the van, it got smooshed from both ends, resulting in too much damage to make it a repair job.  So, the insurance company totaled out the van, forcing me to say goodbye to my lovely silver Honda minivan much sooner than I'd planned.

Here are some pictures of my (formerly) lovely silver van.

I miss you, silver minivan.  The whole family misses you.  

Here's a poem by The Husband titled "So Farewell Then, Silver Honda"

So, farewell silver Honda

You hauled a lot for us - dog shows

And trips to Lowes

School pick ups, the Target run

Genesis emergencies, family fun

We'll miss you silver Honda

Good luck

On your final Odyssey

Obedience "must train" - The Nose Touch

I've had a number of occasions lately to be thankful that I have taught my dogs to touch their nose to my palm -- something I call the nose touch.

What is the nose touch?

The nose touch is when I say "touch" and the dog firmly presses their nose into my outstretched palm.

Why do I find it useful?

It's a great way to maneuver a dog without having to pull on the leash, grab the collar, lure with food, pick them up, etc.

With Ziggy:

• Ziggy is a sweet dog.  He is also rather lazy, and has a bit of a stubborn streak.  If he doesn't want to go somewhere, a pull on his collar only leads to a dog who puts on the brakes even more.  No fits.  He just anchors himself into place and gives me a completely impassive look.  
• But the nose touch gets him to move!  It frees me from having to beg, pull, or push him into place.
• The logic seems to be touch = food = something I can do to get a reward!
• The folks at the ISU vet school rehab center also appreciate the nose touch, as it allows them to get Ziggy to do his rehab exercises more easily.

With Rip:

• I use the nose touch A LOT with Rip.
• I use it to get Rip where I want him to be.  
• I  ask him to "bounce" - or come off the ground in front a bit - to touch, which he finds very motivating.
• The nose touch comes in handy when teaching him things like finishes.  I have him bounce up to touch my hand, to get him to move left or right, then I use the touch to bounce him into place.
• I'll feed Rip his dinner as a reward for touching my hand (Touch = a small bit of food from my hand), so Rip is very motivated to touch.  
• I'll even use "touch" in place of "come" from time to time.  I seem to have built more rewards into touch, so Rip almost always barrels towards my hand.  But that's probably more a fault of my recall training than a benefit of "touch."  ;)
• I ask him to touch a lot when we're heeling.  
• I have him touch to get his attention.  Rather than correcting him when he looks away, I ask for a series of hand touches to get him back in focus.  
• I have him do a little "bounce" touch to get more drive when heeling -- like during the transition from slow to normal pace.

With Maggie:

• Oh, heck, let's face it - Maggie is an old lady who is deaf and gets to do what she wants most of the time - but she still remembers that touch is high reward, and she'll gently press her nose to my hand if I hold it out there for her.  And she always gets a treat for it!  :)

(Maggie was at rest during my "nose" photo shoot, 

so I just took a nose picture of her snuggled up in her bed)

How do I train "touch?"

Touch is a fairly straightforward thing to train.

Criteria

When I train the nose touch, my criteria are that a corgi nose is firmly pressed into my open palm.  I don't want teeth + nose.  I don't want near touches, or gentle tap nose touches.  I want a nice, firm nose touch, wherever my hand may be - close to the floor, behind my back, above the dog's head, etc.


Initial Training

The nose touch is easy to train if you're clicker training, or even if you're not.

I clicker trained Rip and Ziggy to touch, clicking for ever-closer progression toward my palm, and delivering the treat from the hand that I've asked them to touch.  Using the clicker to train touch is now my favorite way to train it.  It's a great thing to train when just learning to use the clicker, as dogs tend to catch on very quickly.

Maggie I trained without a clicker (this was before my clicker days).  She is hugely food driven, so I had small treat in my hand, and rewarded when her nose came in contact with my hand -- which it naturally did as part of trying to get the treat.  I think it took her about twice before she figured the game out.


Maintenance

Though my dogs know "touch" very well now, I continue to offer a high rate of reward for it.  I'll often just do touches for treats, or touches for bits of their meal so that it I have a lot "in the bank," allowing me to use touch without it becoming boring, or low reward.

I hope you and your dogs enjoy the nose touch as much as The Pack and I do.  I am regularly thinking of new ways to use it!

The old lady dog

In the past six months, Maggie has made the move from "senior" to "old lady."  I haven't posted about her in a while, so I thought I'd share an update.

The old lady likes to snuggle with Ziggy.

Maggie is now 13.5 years old, and in pretty darn good shape.  Some things to know about the old lady dog:

She is DEAF.  
Maggie can no longer hear.  Well, she can't hear anything except for Rip's piercing "I want something" barks.  I can't imagine that's any fun - woken up from a quiet nap by a piercing bark from a petulant pup.

Deafness means that she can't hear the "come on in" yell that brings the dogs in from the yard.  If she looks my way, I can flag her in using a hand signal (I am very thankful for her Utility training - hand signals are invaluable now).  If she doesn't look my way she'll stay out in the yard for a long time.  Now that it's cold out we sometimes have to go out, tap her, and flag her in.

What is she doing out in the  yard so long?  Sniffing!

Yes, we indulge the sniffing.

She SNIFFS a lot.
Maggie's nose seems to be supercharged.  Maybe she's trying to make up for the deafness, but Maggie's sniffing has ratcheted up tremendously.  She sniffs around the yard.  Walks are now really sniff-tastic adventure strolls.  A walk around the block can take as much time as we allow.  And the worst part about the sniffing?

She has become a TRIP HAZARD.
Maggie's infernal sniffing carries over into the house.  When she's not asleep, she can normally be found sniffing around the kitchen.  Crumbs might fall.  Humans in the kitchen must watch out or the old lady may trip them.

She still PLAYS a bit, though.
In the mornings Maggie will run down the hall and do some very mild frapping with Rip.  She also gets excited when Rip and I are doing obedience work, too.  So I often indulge her in a few dumbbell retrieves (no fronts required!) - she still loves to work!

2 dogs reporting for work.

We are really pleased, though, that Maggie is happy and healthy.  She is a dear old lady.

I'm sorry, Amy the House-Sitter. PLEASE come back!!

As many of you may know, we are lucky enough to have a house-sitter who comes to stay with the pack when we're out of town.  She is a lovely, responsible young lady and  we never have to worry when she's here.

I don't know what to do without her, and I don't know why she keeps coming back.  I've apologized to her on this blog before.  Once when our house cleaners skipped a week before we skipped town.  And another time when I realized all of the things she has to deal with when she stays here.

Apologizing to my house-sitter has become a frequent occurence.   Why am I apologizing this time?  For all of the pet hair.  

We left for our trip to the UK on a Thursday afternoon.  After working in the morning, I decided to vacuum the house before we left.  It is shedding season here, and all 3 corgis were losing their fur in a big way.  Add 2 cats to the mix - including an old cat who sheds in big clumps - and you can imagine how much hair there was.  Despite the fact that we had vacuumed only a couple of days before, some parts of the carpet were fully coated in pet hair.

But I planned ahead.  I had time to vacuum.  What could go wrong?  Let me explain using photos.

This is our main vacuum.  

A Dyson Animal.  

We've had this vacuum for around 5 years, and it does a great job.  Well, I should say that it DID a great job, because it suddenly decided to stop working just as I needed to vacuum less than an hour before leaving to the airport.  

Well, technically it was working a little, but it started to making a noise so loud it could drown out the tornado siren.  Easily.

No problem, we have a vacuum that lives in the basement.  So I went to get it.

This is the basement vacuum.  

It picks up cat litter and pet hair nearly every day.

Unfortunately, the basement vacuum wouldn't work either.  Apparently it only works on hard surfaces now.  It didn't even work on our very short nap carpet upstairs.  Sigh.

But wait, don't we have an old Dyson lurking in the basement, too?  Indeed we do.  I'll go get that one.

Here it is!  Our original Dyson Animal.

I brought it upstairs and tried to start it up.  Then I remembered why we put it in the basement.  It doesn't even work on hard floors anymore.  "Never loses suction!"  Perhaps not.  It now lives in the garage.  Some day we'll get rid of it.

But we have 2 more vacuums.  What about them?

Ronnie the Roomba to the rescue?

Nope.  It wasn't plugged in, so it was out of charge, and probably couldn't handle the layers of pet hair anyway.

How about the hand-held Dyson?

It IS still working, but by the time I got to this option it was too late for me to take the time to use it.  So the house was awash in pet hair when we left for vacation, and there was no way to remedy the situation.

So let me say it one more time.

I am REALLY SORRY for all the pet hair, Amy the House-Sitter.  It won't happen again (well, probably not), because look what we have now:

Another vacuum!

Rated very well by Consumer Reports!

Even though Amy the House-Sitter doesn't know I have a blog, I hope she reads this and forgives me.
I left her a message to see if she can stay later this month and she didn't return my call.  Now I'm worried.  Was this the last straw?

Cardi fun in the Autumn leaves

This weekend was leaf clean-up for us.  I love the colors of the leaves with the colors of The Trio, so I took my camera outside to get some pics before all the leaves were gone.


To give you and idea of what a nice day it was, here are the portraits/still shots:

Rip taking a break from frapping

Maggie surveying the yard

I love how her brindle color matches the leaves

Ziggy looks cute in the leaves, too

Here he's trying to decide if he wants to pay attention to me,

or his brother causing trouble in the background

But a crisp autumn day isn't about standing still, so here are the action shots

Let's all frap!

Maggie likes to be the chaser not the chased

Here she's reprimanding Rip for biting her sides

I love Ziggy's "I'm staying out of this one" expression

Rip didn't get Maggie's point the first time

(nor the second, nor the third...)

When there's conflict, Ziggy hangs back, but still runs along

It allowed me to get some good pics of just him...

Where is this speed in agility?!?

When the other 2 got too tired to play, 

Rip grabbed a stick and got me to play with him

Sniff-tastic Adventure Stroll!

Some Most people call it a walk.  When I take all 3 dogs out around the neighborhood I now call it a "Sniff-tastic Adventure Stroll."

Why have I made this change?  Because this is the most common activity when I walk the Trio:

Don't judge us - we just love to sniff.

Is that so wrong?

I took the dogs out this morning before work.  I told The Husband, "I'm going for a walk."  Our 1.5 mile jaunt took us nearly 40 minutes.  AND we were almost passed by an 80+ year old woman who was not moving particularly rapidly.  That, my friends, is not a walk.  Thus the re-labeling of our trip...

"Sniff-tastic"  --  because the Trio thinks sniffing is fantastic
"Adventure"  -- because for the Trio sniffing their way around the neighborhood is akin to an adventure quest
"Stroll"  --  because 1.5 miles in 40 minutes does not qualify as walking

So what in the world has gone wrong?
I used to walk the dogs so quickly and with such purpose that The Husband called it a "forced march."  Now it's a stroll.

I blame it on this:

Darn you, Alexandra Horowitz.  You've written "Inside of Dog."  A book that has caused me to think in more depth about how my dogs see the world.  A book that I enjoyed so much that I've altered the things I do with my dogs.

Now I want to let them sniff on a walk.  It provides them enjoyment and information about their world.  Now my walks don't really qualify as walks anymore.  Now my dogs stop and sniff everything that's of interest.  And almost everything is of interest.

Maybe I've gone too far.  I need to find a balance between Sniff-tastic Adventure Strolls and forced marches.  Or maybe not....

Ziggy Naughty; Ziggy Nice

Ziggy is a multi-faceted dog.  In my last post, I shared his adventures as a guard dog.

Not only is he a guard dog but also, he's:

NAUGHTY!!

This is what I found in the living room this weekend.  A sweet black-brindle dog sitting next to a pile of crayon papers.  Z loves his Crayons, and The Child left a whole small storage tote full of crayons sitting on the floor.  What luck for Ziggy!

Let's take a closer look at Ziggy's after-dinner snack:

Burnt Sienna, Goldenrod, Red Violet, and Verde

YUM!

But Ziggy's not all about snacking on non-toxic bits of The Child's art kit.  He's also:

NICE

Ziggy and his soccer friend

I take a dog to every soccer practice and game, as I think it's a great environment for training with distractions(!) and basic socialization.

Rip normally gets to come to soccer practice.  Not as many people are there, so it gives me more time to work on his manners and training.

Maggie gets to stay home.  She's not particularly fond of new people, and she doesn't need any socialization.

Ziggy gets to come to games.  He is lovely, calm, likes kids, and is not bothered by all of the activity.  

The sister of one of the kids on The Child's soccer team loves dogs.  Unfortunately she can't have dogs because her dad is allergic to them.  At every practice and game, she seeks the Cardis and I out.  Ziggy is her favorite.  At last weekend's game, she ran up to me and gave me a hug saying, "I'm SO glad you're here!"  Then she squealed, "Ziggy!!" and gave him a big hug, too.

She spends the entire game with Ziggy.  She grabs some treats and leads him around (often running).  When Z decides he's had enough activity (meaning he comes back to me and lays down), she brings her chair over and sits or lays next to him.

So sweet.  Good Ziggy.