Quick, creative dog training solutions for a rain based time crunch!

In a little break in the rain, I actually got to practice with the dogs for a little bit on the way to work. A miracle! A neccessity, since we are going to Turlock this Sunday and we all feel out of shape and tiredy.

It was damp. It was muddy. It was freezing. We are so tough, me and Team Small Dog.

So how do you get the most bang for your buck when it's about to rain, it's freezing cold, and you have a whole buncha horses needing rides before that rain actually starts and you gotta practice fast?

I made a little gamble of a teeter, poles, jump and tire.

Otterpop STILL NEEDS an Advanced Gamblers Q, please agility gods, just grant us one and let us move on with our lives. Gamblers is hardly ever, ever on a Sunday, and every time it is, it's either got a teeter (paranoia attack unless I am oh-so-near at a dog show), or I make some hair-brained, capital E Error (like, remember the time I body slammed the kindly yet slow moving judge?) and in Turlock there is Advanced Gamblers on Sunday.

Needless to say, you've all heard this old story a million times, when she practices, Otterpop sends out from the moon. Yes, I still can't send her to weave poles from inside a parked car while drunk, but at least I have a goal.

So I set up what would look like a horrible, gnarly gamble, with a teeter and poles, and backchained that until she was flying through with flying colors. If only dog practice Otterpop was dog show Otterpop.

Ruby likes to send out to things. Sometimes too much-if she is feeling spry and sassy, you say out and you get like WAY out. So she was mostly practicing getting these huge rewards for doing her poles fast. When we practice, her poles are still really fast IF I am close by. They are slow if I am sending her out far to them. A new part of the clue! Agility Detective! So I just practiced fast poles with me in there and her fast giving her giant, freakout AWARDS OF JOYFULNESS and frisbee attacking string cheese eating. Oh sorry, goodbye my non agility readers. I just lost you. Really, agility is the new black, it is fun and cool, I really am not lying!

Gustavo, he doesn't even do sequences. He is learning how to run up the teeter super fast and slide into a down on the yellow end and ride down to the bottom eating some cheese, and having it bang around with him holding a down. Disneyland should take note. Kids would love this. Because agility is the new black, just wait and see how popular it is in 5 years from now and everyone is DYING to capitalize on it and you are saying, damn, Laura TOLD US this would happen, and the Teeter ride becomes a theme park hit. Then the kids run off as fast as they can after it's been banging around when they are holding their stays to their target. For some weird reason, I made a target jumping onto a black bucket and laying down like it's a table. I was not drunk. It just happened and it was funny so that's what we did. A black bucket might not be that exciting for kids, how about they can run to a mud pit full of nerf weapons?

Gustavo practiced his Success With One Jump. He ran down the dogwalk a bunch. He is getting it! He also woke us all up at 4am to alert us to the impending danger from a pair of pants hanging over a chair. Remember his pumpkin freakout? Not much freaks out Gustavo except for pumpkins, and apparently, pants. UPS guys and people breaking into my car, you are safe from Gustavo but pants and pumpkins, you look out.

Hey and lookedy, got done quick, everyone got a few turns, and still got to work and horses done before the rain!

Wet wet wet. Wet.

What I look like in the morning when I'm not walking dogs or going to work on time because of the wet.

What some of the dogs do when they're not going to work or for a walk on time.

This dog got turned into a lamp.

Timmy is a happy dog this week. His picture isn't here because he's outside. Because one of his favorite things to do, besides run at full speed up our driveway and not bash himself into anything, is stand outside in the pouring rain. I don't chalk that one up to dementia, because he has always liked standing outside and getting wet. Just hanging out, sort of meander around, and get really, really wet. The dementia part though, means that he scratches on the door to get let back in, which involves the actual work on my side of drying off his mounds of fur, and then a few minutes later he wants to go out and repeat the whole process because he may have just forgotten he was just out there. If the pouring rain is at 5am, he's there. In the door, out the door, repeat, repeat.

Rain means a lot of stress at work because people want to know can they ride, can they not ride, and it's just always a crapshoot of about 30 variables of which ring if any we can use. And that's with our awesome and well draining footing, it's never a no brainer of life without a covered arena. I lose money in the rain. I have a lot of customers that are sort of, um, fair weather riders. So they're out. The regulars come, and I still get the horses out for the ones that have horses in training, but those pay by the lesson beginner types that don't want to still come out and learn horsemanship skills, or lesson people from long drives away, they kill me this time of year. So more work for less money! I always am smart about the career paths I take.

Dirt Night also became Mud Bowl. Ruby had to stay in the car, something is wrong with her foot. Did it cause slow weave poles on Sunday? I have no idea. I give up. She has an infected foot though that I didn't notice until yesterday morning when she was lame on it. Otterpop and Hobbes were fast and fun and barking and muddy. Thanks Rob for driving all the way back down to Salinas to get Hobbes! He has to go to the dog show on Saturday so he needed to practice. Or I guess just get in shape. Like Hobbes needs to practice anything. We don't get to go. Rob gets to run his own dog all by himself and not have to share him with his stalker. Although had I been a weather genie and could predict what work days would be a total washout, I should have entered and bagged a work day. But then the poor horses would have had to sit all day and I would have felt really, really bad. It's a good show because it's USDAA but all the Masters is Sat. and Starters and Advanced on Sunday. So you only have to go 1 day and get all your runs. But it's the wrong day for my lifestyle.

I worked with my beginner class on some Susan Garrett focus and drive to the jump exersizes during Mud Bowl. I tried to be just like Susan Garrett on her DVD. I used a Canadian accent and everything. I couldn't bring a demonstration dog out though because my ringer dog was lame and Otterpop, she's not so good at this one because it requires a smashing startline stay and since I've started working on this little exersize with them all for the good of Gustavo, I learned she just blows it part of the time from frisbee insanity. Oops. Never really taught her the control freak stay. Gustavo, he's the one learning this but I want to look like a rockstar Susan Garrett if I demonstrate to beginners so they experience shock and awe at my smashing training skills and Gustavo is still at stage one since he has to repeat stuff 600 times til he gets it. Ruby is the only one that can make me look good. And it's all about me right? Uh, ego flaw? I'm already going to hell for not singing to help the dogs but holding a candle for dogs instead of Martin Luther King and Heath Ledger.

Hello and welcome to Success With One Jump!

Today's review is of Susan Garrett's DVD about dog jumping! Why did I sit around and watch a DVD one day? Due to our Storm Watch! Hurricane force winds! Giant rain from the side of the sky! Even INSIDE the barn it was wet. I made sure all the horses were dry and safe and fed them some lunch and drove home avoiding tree branches flinging about the roads and big floody puddles. A part day off due to weather! Thanks weather!

I tried to take the dogs down to Lighthouse Field early in the morning but being right on the ocean, there were actual hurricane like winds that wouldn't even let us walk. Like I am not kidding here-you cannot WALK! I had to turn backwards and take tiny little backwards steps thinking, maybe this isn't such a bright idea? There were trees in wrong places from falling down and blowing far across the field.The 3 little dogs were possibly going to just up and be flown away, and as I'm thinking, perhaps I need to tie them together to avoid their being blown away, we just ran back to the car. How long can dogs go without going to the bathroom?

But back to Susan Garrett. This DVD may not appeal to you non dog agility people. I would say perhaps rent the Wire instead. Unless you really want to see Susan Garrett talking a lot and practicing jumping with her perfectly trained dogs. Including DeCaff who Ruby used to try and beat in the Grand Prix and Steeplechase and never did. And then we moved down to Performance and so we will never know, could Ruby beat DeCaff? Probably not. Because. Well, just get the DVD and see why. It will look different than when we practice agility. Does Encore ever take her toy and lay down on it like a big fat goose guarding the golden eggs? Does DeCaff ever start flinging herself over the nearest 4 jumps you didn't even ask for and then look for a squirrel? And then run over to the picnic table, look for the treats, and back in a flash to her sit position as if all that never even happened?

Susan Garrett is like the Martha of dog agility. Except who sometimes you bump into in person. And she's Canadian. She's not going to be your friend. She might have bad hair, but she can work the tennis skort and have good ideas that are just going to come out better when she does them than if you tried them. I have been to a couple of seminars of hers and I learned a lot but she made me cranky. She gives a look that has a tone. You can't tell that from the DVD. She just looks like a sporty, dog training Suze Orman. She lives on a giant Canadian ranch of dog agility. She may be a little passive aggressive. I was afraid of her in real life. If you follow her steps of Success With One Jump, perhaps your dogs can beat hers when mine can't.

Can you imagine if a genie turned Martha and Susan and Suze into 3 border collies and those 3 were staring at you all the time?