Un-Co-Hosted Follow-Up Friday

December 21, 2012 By Jodi

Welcome to Un-Co-Hosted Follow-Up Friday, the blog hop that let’s you wrap up your week and leads you right into the weekend.

Do you hate blog hops? If your answer is no, then why won’t you sign up to co-host with me?

It’s not that hard, I promise. I think I’ve actually learned enough to help you through it too!

The New Normal – Author’s Note

Well here we are a week later, there’s been lots of talk about how to prevent something like Newtown from ever happening again.

I realize a lot of people are speaking out of fear and anger and rightly so.

My personal belief is that outlawing certain weapons will not be enough to prevent a tragedy like this from occurring again.

We need some frank and honest discussions about what’s wrong in our society and take measures to fix it, starting with mental health care…society’s glorification of violence…the media’s thirst for the dirtiest little details…the adulation of athletes that are criminals…

I won’t apologize for my opinion, but I will climb down from my soapbox. 🙂

‘Ello Fred – Update

Fred has adjusted wonderfully to his new home. His older brother Ollie is getting used to having a small, spry one in the family. He has begun chasing and playing with him and even grooms him on occasion.

And yes, my son-in-law has picked him up. 🙂

The Gift Every Dog Walker Needs For Christmas – Author’s Note

For those of you who said you were getting one of these lights, please come back and let me know what you think about them.

I did discover that they aren’t super fantastic in the fog, but then I haven’t really found ANY light that’s super fantastic in the fog. 🙂

Mental Stimulation is a Good Thing – Author’s Note

As you may have noticed Delilah loves using her brain. You can see her trying to figure out what Ariane wants in the video I posted yesterday. When we come home from tricks class, she is just as tired as if we’d taken a long walk.

I like to exercise my mind and body and I like to think my dogs do as well.

Can You Spare a Stamp? – Author’s Note

I just wanted to let you all know that I did indeed verify the truth of the story of Dalton Dingus before I put his address out there.

I learned my lesson from one of my WTF posts, when I didn’t have quite the whole story. 🙂

And just because I love this picture:

Yes, that’s Delilah with a toy pig in her mouth. It cracks me up.

That’s it for this edition of Follow-Up Friday

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This ‘N That Thursday

December 20, 2012 By Jodi

Today we’re joining our friends over at 2 Brown Dawgs Blog on This ‘N That Thursday. As 2 Brown Dawgs says, This ‘N That Thursday is for times when you want to post about unrelated topics or each topic isn’t quite long enough to make up a whole post. It can be anything you want, so feel free to grab the button and join us!

Courtesy of 2 Brown Dawgs Blog

The Dogs of Blogville Calendar

OH. MY. GOD.

The calendars are at my local Fed-Ex facility! They are expected to be at my house tomorrow and I expect to get them to the post on Saturday.

Some of you may receive them by MONDAY!! This makes me super excited.

Once I have shipped them all out, I will do a write-up and let you know how much we actually raised for Life With Desmond and Champion of my Heart.

This calendar contest has been a wonderful learning experience for me, and I will share it all in the write-up.

Tuesday Night Tricks Class

As I mentioned yesterday, Ariane wanted to use Delilah as a demo dog to teach back-up. I sneakily recorded a video. Shhh….don’t tell her.

Instagram

How many of you have Instagram accounts? Have you heard they are changing their terms of service as of the middle of January? Their new terms state, “it may, someday, allow advertisers to repurpose user-taken images.”

Folks that means they will use your pictures for their own personal gain and it doesn’t look like they will be compensating you either.

Listen, I’m still struggling to use Twitter, so you can’t be surprised to know that I don’t upload a lot to Instagram, but what I do upload is mine. If they decide to go forward with this new policy, I’m probably going to delete my account.

Google Reader

I’m finally caught up on my reading and hopefully I’ve commented nicely and not missed anything too important. If I have, if you’ve had some life changing event and I’ve missed it, please let me know.

Here’s hoping you have a super duper day and you get a few moments to spoil yourself.

Oooh a little lower please, that’s the spot.

Can You Spare a Stamp?

December 19, 2012 By Jodi

Before I get to showing and telling you what Delilah and I learned at Tricks Class last night, I’d like to ask a favor of you.

There is a young boy in Kentucky who is dying of Cystic Fibrosis, his dying wish is to make the Guinness Book of Records for receiving the most Christmas cards.

Can you spare a card and a stamp to help make a dying child’s wish come true?

Dalton Dingus

HC 62

Box 1249

Salyersville, KY 41465.

You can send it to the above address. My card is going out in today’s mail.

The last night of tricks class.

Boy am I glad I told our instructor that I’m a blogger, now as she walks around the classroom observing us, she happily picks up my camera and snaps some pictures.

The first trick we learned is back-up.

You train this by standing in front of your dog with a treat in each hand, place a hand on either side of their face, then slowly walk towards them. If they sit down or don’t back up, try again. If you get a tiny step backwards, praise and treat.

Most dogs can be trained to back up using this method.

Ariane tried it with Delilah as the model.

Aren’t I cute?

She ended up having to put her hands behind her back and work with one hand, two treats is just one more than Delilah can handle.

What worked best for her was when I put a treat in front of her nose and pushed it towards her. Sometimes she sits down and I just lure her up again and start over.

She has stepped back in this photo, I can tell because I’m smiling.

Another way you can train this trick is by creating a sort of tunnel for your dog by using one wall and some chairs, you want it big enough for your dog to fit, but not large enough for them to turn around.

I think I’ll try this in my hallway.

Dance, Stand or in Delilah’s case….Hop.

Take your treat and hold it up high, your goal is to get your dog up on their hind legs, where they can either just hold a stand, or take a couple of steps or hops.

If you’ve trained your Target or Touch command and your dog is comfortable with it, you can use this. I like the treat because I want her to learn the verbal cue I will be using which will probably be hop.

Give me the damn treat!

You want to make sure your dog is not touching your body with their paws…that’s cheating.

Weave

The last trick we learned was Weave, as in between your legs. You know it and probably some of you ~~showoffs~~ dedicated trainers have already taught this to your dog.

This is the trick where you walk and your dog weaves in and out of your walking legs.

Finally, the last night of class, the last trick turns out to be the one I wanted most to learn. This trick will come in handy when we take our Freestyle class next year.

To teach this trick you start with your dog in a heel. It doesn’t matter which side as long as you remember to lead with the opposite leg.

Delilah’s on my left, I step forward with my right foot and place my right hand behind my right leg, luring her through.

KEY COMPONENT: toss the treat away from you, this lets your dog know they are to go completely through your legs.

I step forward with my left leg and lure her back, again tossing the treat.

No-one said teaching it looks pretty, BUT note, I have no shirt that imitates stomach flesh this time!

We practiced this a lot and by the time we had finished I would have to say we probably took about six to eight steps before I made a mistake and had to start over.

Now THAT looks better.

We learned a lot of different tricks. I know that I won’t be working on training all of them, but there are a couple I’d really like to focus on.

What kind of tricks do you do with your dog? Have you ever taken a tricks class? Would you?