sidoney

FHR, I'd be interested if you expanded on that a little, please!!

He must be a new one ... at least he's unlikely to stay long. What days do you go for a long time? Do you want to bring her here? Goodo that J. likes you ... he can be helpful if that's the case and knows about these kinds of people.

It rarely happens. Try to figure out why it happened. There is usually a clear reason (eg. me speaking to the dog). If it happened more I'd be looking at doing more and maybe different gridwork, taking some video to analyse what's happening, etc.

These especially are dogs that benefit from jump training basics, eg. gridwork. BTW not all BCs rush, Vickie's girl is fast but has a very nice, clean and accurate jumping style. Vickie, what did you do with her in the way of jump foundation work?

The back seat thing is called a "Back Seat Buddy". Not cheap but very effective. The hair is fairly firm and so short that it's stiff. As you see when you run your hand along against the lie of the hair. And it penetrates things. LOTS of things!

Re the last jump. I wonder if there is also an effect of not having a further focus for the dog - as it does the course there is generally something, a further obstacle, for it to focus on ahead (even if it's the wrong thing - but the handler should be driving the dog towards the right thing if doing the job properly). At the end of the course there is no obstacle. This can happen in the course too - not having the next obstacle in view - but I think the handler is usually already driving the dog towards the next obstacle. This ties in with what Vickie said about handling an imaginary next obstacle. Also, at the end of a course, the dog is often jumping into a visual jumble, of ropes and specators and steward tables and handlers and dogs waiting and so on. Alone, or if the handler concurrently reduces the amount of direction they are giving the dog, it may have an effect. It may be beneficial to do exercises with the dog jumping towards visual jumbles.

Hi, didn't get a chance to get online last night. Xia is fine and recovering from op well. I am having to keep her and Belle separated - this morning Xia says she is up to playing but I think not. Spay was straightforward. The lump ... was unlike anything the vet had seen before. And she's seen lots of lumps. It was right on the larynx, and like a tough fibrous capsule with a fluid centre. She could not find a foreign body but it was similar to a foreign body reaction. She could not remove the lump totally because of its position, surrounded by important blood vessels. But she's taken some of it out and that's going off to be tested. Will have results by next Monday, or with luck Friday.

Wish us luck. I slept like c**p last night. The unknown can be hard. Hopefully it will all be minor.

Thanks everyone. I'm a bit nervous about it but we'll be OK. I'll let you know what I find out.

One thing that I do that helps is run the groomer over them regularly to get out the loose hair. It's the type with sticky outy rubber bits. I do that outside, brush off the loosened hairs, and it reduces the amount of hair that comes off where I don't want it.

Thanks guys. I hope it's simple too. Her temp was fine and she's eating fine and she's active and all that. Fingers crossed it's an easy fix. Apparently it's grass seed season but it's been a couple of weeks since I had her at the horse paddock or anywhere with lots of seeds. I'm assured that she'll be recovered from her op and able to work sheep by the time of the Bungendore clinic. Feeling a *little* strange about having her spayed. I was always intending to do it, but it's been many years since I've had a bitch spayed without keeping a daughter from her. The main thing though is hoping that the lump is just something minor.

Well we've been to the vet and it's too high up the neck for thyroid. She has to be spayed anyway and so she's booked in for Monday and the lump will be checked out too. Possibly foreign body but can't be certain.

I've been doing a web crawl after reading your suggestions. I have the feeling that whatever it is, I'm not going to like it. Something thyroid-y seems to be likely.

I have Vizslas too. Once I had a car that had a patch of hair on the back seat that was like felt. Had to pull it all out by hand. Now I have a wagon. Best thing is to prevent it in the first place. Vizsla hair will go through a sheet no problems. Better to get one of those plastic backed seat protectors or similar. In the wagon I still have hair everywhere but I have carpet over the car's own carpet. As far as hairs on clothes etc. goes ... well I either keep clothes I don't want hair on away from the dogs, or I just shrug and accept it (which is more normal).

My Kelpie seems to have a large "adams apple". I don't remember it being like this before, but maybe I haven't noticed it? Although I think I would have. It kind of pokes out in the forwards direction. It doesn't seem sore and she's active and happy and acts normally. Is it normal? Or not normal? I worry about putting a collar on her as it seems like the collar would press on it. Has anyone had any experience with this? How prominent are the adams apples on your dogs? My Vizslas don't have prominent ones like this. Edit: I've decided it's NOT normal and so we'll be visiting the vet. In the meantime, has anyone had anything like this?

It's possible the dog knows the difference between you having treats (or other forms of reward) and therefore the possibility of a reward, and not having them and no possibility. Get them off your body and stash them around the place so that you can reward her unexpectedly. Do you have a bridge, eg. clicker or praise word or similar? You can give her the bridge/conditioned reinforcer and then dash off with her to a convenient location where the reward has been placed. Don't let her be able to predict whether you have the means to reward her or not. I'd also be mixing up the reward type. Not just food. I reward with food, toy, pat, backscratch, game, allowing her to get into the car, allowing her to go out the door, etc. This leads to another point - training the dog is an all day every day thing, it's not a thing that you just do at "training time".

I have bags of ribbons. Nowadays I take the most meaningful ribbons, and vouchers instead where possible. A wall of ribbons looks good but takes up a lot of space! I know someone who has a wall of ribbons etc. and among the ribbons are enlargements of her dogs. It looks really good.

I think it was a first in Novice Agility. And second to Maverick, ie. Holly with Maverick. Although they were both fast and I didn't see the scores. They were both gorgeous rounds, dogs fast, well handled. I think V & T got a place with a fault in something earlier, which would most likely have been the jumping. I hadn't arrived yet. And I left before the RQH.

FANTASTIC!!!

Works for me.

Well I did not attend (as I mentioned above) so that rules me out ... unless I can pay some $$ perhaps? I was and am interested, just the date was not possible for me.

No probs with 120MB. I would have come, except that day was my son's 5th birthday, and I could not really abandon him that evening - instead we had cake, candles, etc. Also interested in footage of the evening if that is at all available to non attendees. If not available no probs. BTW also have DVD burner.

"rabbit fur" found it. Nah, I'll leave the fox tail ... too smelly. Thanks anyway.

Hammersnipe. Automatic sniper. As recommended in an off topic thread by a DOL member. There are also others but that's the one I went with. There were 2 snipers for that coat and I was just above the other one.

I'll wait till I get it, and then I'll decide what to do with it. I have a dried uncured rabbit skin hanging inside out stretched on a reshaped coathanger. I was thinking that would be a good start for making it scented. My thought ATM is to make strips of rabbit skin/fur and plait them in say a round or 4 plait, including the uncured, dried skin (which is likely to get slobbery but I can make a few and rinse/dry them in between slobbers). I always like to collect fresh bunny road kill, I find it useful. The dogs like the meat and I dry the skin. Unfortunately in the burbs wild roadkill bunnies are not so easily found. BTW all kinds of cheap furs on Ebay.