Happy Halloween!

Sweet Travis humoring his Mom a few years ago.

Act Your Age

Katie is keeping fit and staying 11 years young. Such a funny girl!

Princess

Reagan has been letting her new stardom go to her head and has moved swiftly in making demands.For example, we employ a few mattresses around the house instead of having a zillion dog beds. A futon mattress that sleeps 3 works well for our hounds. Everyone is good about sharing and getting along.
Well, everyone except Princess Reagan. She plops herself down in the middle of a mattress and then growls or shows teeth at any innocently approaching hound.We are having to rein the Princess in and remind her that Queen Katie is reigning super star. Of course, she does not mind sharing if she can use Queen Katie as a head rest. No respect!

I Love Poop Guards

A few weeks ago, we had a scare. I was turning the hounds out before bed. I was standing around with a flashlight when Riley and a few others disturbed something in front of the gate next to our back door. It sounded like a bird fluttering its wings and I assumed the hounds were pummeling it. I told the pups to back off and they did so easier than I expected. Despite good training, high prey drive dogs are not always obedient when faced with prey. I shined my flashlight onto the victim and it turned out to be a very ticked off Copperhead snake.
The Snakey-Poo was not happy at all. It was striking out and fluttering its tail like a rattlesnake without a rattle. As you know, we do not kill snakes we find. Live and let live, but we do not want a Copperhead snake in our backyard.

I remembered a blog post that explained how a certain lady catches rattlesnakes on her property and releases them far away. Stephen and I were scrambling to figure out how to catch it, but it got away. Hopefully far away and we have not seen it since.I am not sure if it helped or not, but I was really glad the hounds were wearing their muzzles with poop guards. The snake could have easily popped Riley on the nose, but she was well protected with plastic.

Greyhound Puppies

I am very pleased to share Southeastern Greyhound Adoption's 2010 calendar with you. The calendar "Growing Up Greyhound" is comprised of countless pictures of greyhound puppies under the age of 6 months.We thought it would be fun for greyhound adopters especially, who rarely see greyhound puppies, to get a glimpse of what their hounds may have looked like when they were little munchkins.I cannot thank the breeders, owners, and photographers enough for sharing all of their pictures with me. Thank you, Terri, for putting it all together.The calendar price is $20. 100% of the proceeds benefit Southeastern Greyhound Adoption program. Get yours today!

Remember Me Now

How about a wordy Wednesday!

Okay, one last story about the agility trial over a week ago. I want to confess about being mean to someone. There is this lady who finds me occasionally at agility trials and talks to me about my greyhounds. We met a couple of years ago when I was competing Travis. I love talking to a fan of one of my greyhounds and I am always happy to answer questions. However, this lady aways tells me about her greyhound and does not appear to remember me or my greyhounds. Our encounters are always like meeting again for the first time.

At the trial last month, she started chatting with me when I was dealing with Riley during one of her frustrating moments. It was not a good time for yet another introduction. She tells me about her greyhound again (shy, fearful, could never do agility, yes, I know) and starts talking about Riley. She asked me if I had seen the fawn greyhound run earlier today. Uh, yeah, sort of since I am her owner, trainer, and handler. I just did not have the patience for another chat and escaped as quickly as I could.

So at the last agility trial, the lady shows up again just as we are about to enter the agility ring for our run. She reaches over the fence and begins petting Reagan (extremely bad manners when someone is 10 seconds from running).

Forgetful Lady to Reagan - "Are you going to zoom around the ring?"

Zooming is the term used to describe running laps around all of the agility obstacles and is out of control. Sighthounds can be famous for this. The crowd laughs and the handler wants to cry.Snotty Me - "Why would you say that? Why would she zoom around the ring when she has never zoomed before?"

Forgetful Lady - "Oh, I thought she was the greyhound that zoomed all over the ring at the NADAC trial a few weeks ago."

Unfortunately, my friend, Kathy, was given a good dose of the zoomies by her greyhound, Blaze, recently. Forgetful Lady and I had already had a prior conversation about Kathy and Blaze and I had already explained that was not Reagan and I.

Snotty Me - "No, that was Kathy and Blaze. You always come up to me, tell me about your greyhound, but you never remember me or my greyhounds. Please don't jinx us right now. I am about to go into the ring."

So I was not very nice. Later she apologized (maybe I should have :-). And then the next day something normal happened. She wished us "Good Luck." I think she is going to remember me now.

Improvement

I am thankful to report that Riley did better at the agility trial last weekend than the one prior. She had some issues on Saturday, but was perfect on Sunday. As you know, Riley is not competing yet, but I still have goals for her when we attend an event.On Saturday morning, Riley walked happily around the entire facility hunting squirrels unsuccessfully on a four foot leash. She was fine at the agility trial and worked on obedience exercises next to the rings. However, when I took Riley outside of the arena to potty walk, it is as if she suddenly sees the event from a distance and is afraid of it. Again, there is no connecting with Riley when she is like this.

My fear is that Riley would bolt and run away if she were to slip a collar or to be purposely off leash for competition when something scary happens. I have always had very good success teaching recalls to my greyhounds and have felt very confident with them off leash when competing. I have never felt out of control or that one might run away....... except Riley. I do not trust her.However, Riley was perfect on Sunday. She worked well ringside. She was able to walk outside of the event and then return to it with no problems. She played with me and visited with people. She was happy and curious. Improvement!Of course, the boy still hopes that Riley will bomb and one day she will be his trail dog.

Trial Reflection

I could not be more pleased with the start of Reagan's agility career. It really has been fun to see how she has changed. Twenty months ago, Reagan was an adult sized puppy that had never worn a collar or walked on a leash. Now she is a focused, confident, motivated, little lady (... well, maybe not a lady).I love seeing Reagan really enjoy herself at the agility trials. When we walked outside of the event, she was her normal self. Maybe a little bored. But when we would return to the arena that the agility event was held in, I would see that mischievous tail wag and she would light up. Reagan was bold and happy about everything at the event. Going forward, the plan is to continue trialing about once a month. Once a month, gives us plenty of time between trials to do our homework and work on trouble areas. I also plan to stick with 2-day trials for now. The reason for that strategy is to minimize practicing an error that pops up that I cannot correct in a trial setting. For example, if Reagan pops out of the weave poles early on day one and then repeats the same error on day 2, at least she only practiced the mistake for 2 days. But if I am at a 4-day agility trial and she pops out of the weave poles early 4 days in a row, I am not going to be happy about practicing that bad habit over and over again. So 2-day trials work best for now.This weekend's jackpot consisted of canned makeral, canned dog food, and Swiss cheese!

Wicked

Reagan had another wicked agility trial at Wills Park! She finished her Novice Standard title (NA) and her Novice Jumpers title (NAJ) with 3 first places. She also debuted in Open Standard on Sunday, but did not qualify. I am very happy that we were able to move out of Novice level in just two agility trials.

All 4 runs were videoed. We had a baby judge (newly certified) this weekend. For some reason, new judges tend to design really strange courses. We all felt Novice was more difficult than it should have been and the courses were very choppy regardless of how smooth you and your dog were.

Novice Jumpers - Awful opening with 3 jumps in a straight line to build up lots of speed and then a very tight right turn to the weave poles. She placed first.

Novice Standard - I made Reagan redo the weave poles 4 times. In Novice, weave pole errors do not count as long as you eventually get it right. She placed first again and finished her Novice Standard title (NA).

Open Standard - This is Reagan's first time in Open. She popped out of the weave poles early. This is first time doing 12 in competition. She also missed the A-frame contact zone and flew off the teeter. If you are going to make mistakes, you might as well do all of them in one run.

Novice Jumpers - This was our best run of the weekend. Reagan nailed everything perfectly in 17.78 seconds. She averaged 6 yards per second which Travis did only once in his entire career. Reagan has now done it twice in just two trials. That is very exciting!