Hair tumbleweeds on the carpet?!?

The boys (husband, child) and I arrived home from vacation last night. We were visiting my parents in SW Washington State, and none of us wanted to leave. Except to come back to the pets, of course.

We have a wonderful house sitter who stays in our home and takes care of the pack while we're gone. I don't know what we'd do without her. Last night, I called her to tell her we were home safely, and to apologize for the state of the house. Please see explanation below.

We also have our house cleaned once a week. Once a week, that is, unless one of the amazing house-cleaning duo is injured. They haven't been in to clean for the last 2 weeks, and the dogs are also shedding like crazy. Not a good combination.

I vacuumed a bit before we left, but we still came home to hair tumbleweeds everywhere. I'm used to seeing hair built up in the corners of our laminate floor. I've never before seen hair tumbleweeds on the carpet. Yet, that's what I came home to yesterday - not a pretty site. I had to empty the Dyson 5 times, and I didn't even vacuum under the furniture.

I should have taken some pictures, but I was too ashamed. Now I'm off to furminate 3 corgis.

Just the 2 of us.

Ziggy & I had our bi-monthly private lesson w/ our local trainer last week. Ziggy was pretty good, but had some of the same (lack of) attention issues if we stopped moving for too long.

My instructor observed that, most of the time when Ziggy wasn't paying attention to me, he was paying attention to Maggie & Denzil who were waiting ringside in crates.

Her suggestion: Ziggy and I need to spend some time together - just the two of us. In theory, this will help Ziggy bond more with me. And I must admit that I spent a LOT more alone time with Maggie and Denzil than I have with Ziggy (reinforcing my theory that it all comes back to being the handler's fault).

Soooo, I've set a goal to go on "dates" with Ziggy twice a week. Once a week it's agility. Which leaves one other outing with just the two of us together. Last week I took him to our club meeting and stayed late to work on obedience & agility. Ziggy loved it - he got lots of pets from club members and he spontaneously showed off his new trick - bowing (I think he was hoping to get treats, too) AND he got to play some obedience and agility.

I'm just thinking it's a good think The Husband doesn't read my blog much. I'm not sure he'd appreciate that I'm planning dates with Ziggy instead of him....

Well, a corgi does need some bling!

I've been thinking about getting an obedience collar for Ziggy for a while now (Maggie told me she's tired of sharing), then I learned about this guy in NH who custom makes them.  I couldn't resist.  I also couldn't resist having a little "bling" added.  Ziggy doesn't have much white on him, and I thought it would look nice.

The collar arrived on Monday, and I LOVE it.  I'm a bit more impressed with it than Ziggy is.  He was hoping that the package contained more treats!

Here are some pictures...

Glass of wine + online dog supplies =

In my defense, I did need to order training treats (I was out - gasp!) and J and J gives a quantity discount so I thought, "why not?" 

 Then the box came.

On the up side, now I have plenty of training treats!  These are my favorite for clicker training, as they're small and not sticky/gooey/smelly, etc.

Whittling down my inventory of dog treats is yet another incentive to train.  Watch out corgis!

What to do at night in New York City.

One of the things I like about my job is that it gives me the opportunity to travel.  Not too much, just enough.  This week a colleague and I were in New York City.  We worked all day and went out to nice dinners in the evening.  Being from the Midwest, we saw no reason to wait until it was "fashionable" to be at dinner.  We ate dinner early and got done early.  So what is a woman to do with time on her hands in the evening in NYC?

Read Front and Finish magazine in her hotel room, of course!  Okay, so that's what I did.  Oh, and I got to bed early.  With a full time job and a pre-schooler, I miss sleep.  Sweet sleep.  But I digress.  

One of the articles I read (written by Kathy Lang) was about being clear and consistent about what you expect of your dog.  I am really trying to be the best handler and trainer I can.  I get that using the same command for different behaviors, or a different command for the same behavior, is confusing.  I thought I was being consistent.  Until I started to do the exercise listed in the article.  

This exercise involves of writing down every command (hand signals, verbal, etc.) that you use, or intend to use, with your dog AND writing down what you want this command to mean.  Since I had some time on my hands, and my laptop, I started a spreadsheet (I'm a bit addicted to Excel) with each of the commands I use with Ziggy.  I included "around the house" commands like "leave the kitty" and obedience, rally, and agility commands.  Then I started to add some definitions.  

I'm not done with the list yet (I'm up to 75-ish commands), but I can already see some areas of inconsistency/overlaps in commands that I'll need to fix.  If I can figure out how to attach a pdf to my blog, I'll post the list when I'm finished and have cleared up the overlaps.

This one's really got me thinking, though.  I need to clean up my act....

Denzil's feeling a bit better.

Saturday Denzil had an appointment with the chiropractor.  She said he had a lot of stiffness in the middle of his back.  Her best guess is that he'd been "t-boned" causing him some back trouble.  Hmmm.... I wonder who did that to him?  Let's use our detective skills to figure this out.  Do you think it was:  a 10-year-old female who gets irritated if you try to play with her?  Or, could it be the 2-year-old male who outweighs Denzil by nearly 10 lbs and  specializes in body slamming?  I wonder....

At any rate, Denzil is moving much more freely after visiting the chiro and seems a lot happier, too.  I've also been giving him some Deramaxx, which helps with the knee.  

We're planning to take Denzil back to the chiro in 2 weeks - in interim check just in case.

So, it's not all fixed, but at least the boy is in a much better state then he was earlier this week. whew.

Ziggy loves the hairy bag!

And, no, I'm not referring to myself and the fact that I don't shave my legs as often as I "should." :)  Although I do like to think that Ziggy loves me, I'm really referring to this:

You may recall from an earlier post that I bought a small herd of furry, animal like toys in an attempt to get Ziggy to play.  This one is the only one that's made the cut - and that's only because I've trained him to like this toy.  It took me a couple of weeks of shaping & feeding, but he now gets excited when he sees the toy - he'll chase it, tug (a bit) with it, and bring it back to me.  

He's figured out that playing with this toy means he gets to eat the treats inside - like a corgi feedbag - what could be better?!  I stock the bag w/ Zukes Mini-Naturals, or some other small, sliced up treat that makes noise.  The noise when I shake it adds to the fun! 

This has helped a lot in agility - he's started running over obstacles and moving fast - anticipating the fun with the toy.  I also carry it in my pocket during obedience and surprise him with it if he does something really good. It's nice to have at least one thing to get the boy more "up!"