I'm a very bad blogger! I didn't realize I haven't posted in so long. Wow! So much has happened since the last time I posted. Late October, let's see, in mid-November I sustained 3 pinched nerves and had to stop all training. Heck I had to stop everything! I spent most of the time the weekend before Thanksgiving and the weekend after Thanksgiving going to the doctor and the ER to get pain meds until they'd actually DO something! I had one pinched nerve in my neck and 2 in my upper back. I had…
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Added by Cheri on May 4, 2010 at 8:05pm —
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I'm not as frustrated this week as I was when I previously posted about tracking. Dudley over did it a bit when he was playing a couple of weeks ago and the vet restricted us from jumping for a while. For tracking that meant "short grass only". We needed to track in the short grass so Dudley wouldn't porpoise through the grass going in and out of the fields. I searched for places that had spaces with manicured grass. One of the places I found was a local church. I got permission to track on…
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Added by Cheri on October 28, 2009 at 6:46pm —
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I have started attempting to teach Dudley to track. OMG this is probably the most frustrating job I've attempted to teach Dudley! He actually knows how to do it and can do it really well, when he chooses to. That's the issue, "when he chooses to." AARGH!!!! If there weren't so many darn field mice, rabbits, moles and other critters out there in the fields this would be so much easier. Can I go directly to the VST test and skip the TD and TDX? I think he'd actually do better if we weren't out in…
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Added by Cheri on October 15, 2009 at 9:04am —
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September 25 through September 27 we attended the GSLAC (Greater St. Louis Agility Club) Agility trial in Glen Carbon, IL. This was Dudley's first full trial at his regular jump height. Before I'd always entered him in Preferred which has him jumping at 8". This time he was going to be jumping 12". There is a lot more competition in the 12" group so there wasn't going to be any "first by default" this weekend!
We've recently changed our game when it comes to agility. I felt like…
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Added by Cheri on September 29, 2009 at 9:09pm —
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Another new endeavor! Well, not totally new. We did start tracking a little last year but weren't able to devote enough time to it so we dropped from the group. But this year we're committed. Maybe in more ways than one! We'd been tracking for a couple of weeks and I thought Dudley was doing well. But then we tracked with a group and things were totally different! My remedial student came out and showed himself! When we track alone, Dudley does very well. He usually goes right down the track…
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Added by Cheri on September 1, 2009 at 7:04pm —
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My heavens what a difference a year makes! I can't wait to get the video off the camera so I can post it. I'm going to put Dudley's run in Novice jumpers last year next to this years Open Jumpers run for comparison. While he didn't qualify on either run, the difference is astounding. Last year he did 2 or 3 jumps and then zoomied around the ring with me trying to get him to the exit where he decided the tunnel looked especially enticing. He tried to see how many times he could get through it…
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Added by Cheri on April 22, 2009 at 2:13pm —
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Oh my gosh! What a fun weekend! We entered ten events. We qualified in seven of the 10 events. Dudley did fabulous. What a boy! I'm so proud of him. Even when we didn't Q it was all my fault. He was doing exactly what I asked him to do, well except for when I was blocking the entrance to the tunnel and he scooted around me and took it anyway. But other than that, he did everything I told him to do. Sometimes I just didn't tell him to do the right thing. Oh well, mommy has some improvement…
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Added by Cheri on March 17, 2009 at 1:30pm —
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Oh my! The switch has definitely flipped. Dudley is off to the races as far as agility is concerned.
I took him to an agility trial in Lawrence, KS last month--the February Fling. I only entered him on Thursday and Friday due to other commitments I had on Saturday and Sunday. At the time of the trial Dudley did not possess the skills to be able to Q in either Standard or JWW. We entered JWW anyway and also entered FAST. Dudley was only weaving at home and he was not performing the…
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Added by Cheri on March 2, 2009 at 4:08pm —
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Woo hoo! Dudley boy is off to the races! The way one of our agility instructors put it was "the switch has flipped and the light is now on!"
Dudley has been my remedial agility student. All the other dogs he started with in agility class have moved up to Intermediate after their first Beginner class. Dudley is taking his third round of the Beginner class. But as sometimes happens, things all finally came together for him. First I took him to an AKC agility trial in St. Louis over…
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Added by Cheri on January 21, 2009 at 11:13am —
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This year Dudley participated! We've been having some training issues lately plus my husband was in the hospital after the last trial so our training plan got scrapped. Because of all this I didn't get Dudley weaving by the time the trial rolled around, so I didn't plan on running him. The issue we've been working on is Dudley running out of the ring during a run. If Dudley sees what he considers an exit, he takes it. I discussed it with my instructor and we decided that it would be best not to…
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Added by Cheri on December 8, 2008 at 12:15pm —
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Vacation is over and I'm finally recovered from it! My heavens! What a fun time we had. We did the "extended camp". That meant that we could check in on Thursday morning rather than Friday evening. We loaded up the car Wednesday morning. Luckily I'd bought a car top carrier or we wouldn't have had room for the dogs in the car because I seriously overpacked. But it was our first time at camp and I didn't know what we might need so I took everything but the kitchen sink. Packing was fun because…
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Added by Cheri on October 26, 2008 at 9:30pm —
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Last weekend (July 18-20) Taffy and I went to Omaha to the Nebraska Kennel Club trial. It was a big trial with Conformation, Rally, Obedience and Agility all in one place. We entered all the Agility events and decided to give Rally a whirl. I figured she's an obedient dog, she should be able to do Rally, right? Well, she can do it but turns out I'm not so hot! The first day of Rally I was extremely nervous. I'm certain I did several commands totally wrong. There was a "down, walk around" and I…
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Added by Cheri on July 22, 2008 at 3:27pm —
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Agility class last night was hysterical. Dudley is in Beginning Sequencing and in the class progression we're in, this is the first class with full size contacts. Beginning Contacts has half size equipment. Dudley did very well in Beginning Contacts and loves the baby equipment, but every time we've presented him with the full size equipment he's baulked so we didn't press him. But now the time has come to try to get up and over the big boy equipment. First up, the A frame.
He…
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Added by Cheri on May 16, 2008 at 10:36am —
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I didn't realize it had been so long since I posted a blog update! My, my we've been busy. We jumped into agility training with 2 feet and 4 paws! Dudley is doing great. His instructor sometimes says that he's "already read the agility book". I think he's been watching Taffy so long that he already has the concept and really wants to participate so he just dives right in! We did have a bit of a setback last week though. He was trying out the big teeter for the first time. We put chairs under…
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Added by Cheri on April 16, 2008 at 3:00am —
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We had a big Thanksgiving weekend! We attend a 3 day agility trial in St. Louis every year and this if the first year Dudley has been with us so he got to go and watch Taffy run. Taffy had a pretty good weekend. This was our first time competing in Open plus she hadn't trained much so it was just a "fun run" weekend. We got to see our friends, have some good food and good times. I'll be posting a video that will probably be one of the funnier agility videos. I'm labeling it "Taffy the Ham".…
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Added by Cheri on November 26, 2007 at 10:15pm —
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What a busy day today! I got up at what we affectionately call "oh-dark-thirty" and went for my regularly scheduled Saturday morning long run (14 miles this week). I had to run at a fairly good pace because Dudley had his first post surgery herding lesson scheduled at 11:30 am. My run started at 6 and I live almost an hour away from where we were meeting to run so I needed to finish my mileage in under 3 hours. For you runners out there I know that's a pretty slow pace, but I'm normally a 10…
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Added by Cheri on November 10, 2007 at 10:19pm —
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I meant to enter this several days ago, but my busy boy has kept me hopping the last few days. Dudley has been given the A-OK from the vet. I took Dudley to the vets office on Monday to have him checked out. Dudley was so much better than I wanted to have him checked out to see if he could resume "normal" activities. Our vet says that Dudley has good muscle mass and his legs are symetrical in mass. She gave him a thorough examination and watched him walk and run. She said that if she didn't…
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Added by Cheri on November 9, 2007 at 9:05am —
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Dudley had his busiest weekend ever since his surgery. This past weekend he attended the Kansas City Marathon and helped me with course control, went shopping at the Three Dog Bakery and made friends with two Great Danes, played with Taffy, went on a walk with one of our neighbors, made his first trip to the Bark Park (where he made many more new friends), and did more romping and playing. He did all of this and ended the weekend with only a slight limp. Hurrah! That was an action packed…
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Added by Cheri on October 22, 2007 at 5:22pm —
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Today Dudley got his last stitch removed. We're just ending week 2 of rehab and I have to admit we've caved. Weeks 1-3 of rehab were supposed to be only walking on a short leash and crate rest. Yeah, try telling a puppy crate rest. Plus there was some mix up in our instructions. When we brought Dudley home from surgery they encouraged us to walk him. But when we took him back to get his first set of stitches out they assumed Dudley had been on total crate rest. When they instructed us to work…
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Added by Cheri on October 15, 2007 at 3:44pm —
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Dudley is doing GREAT! We made the journey to Columbia, MO today for Dudley's one month post op follow up visit at the MU Vet School. It was a long day. Our appointment was scheduled for 1:30 but they were way behind so we had a long wait for our appointment. Then we waited 2 hours for radiographs. We didn't get out of the clinic until after 5 pm and didn't get home until around 9 pm.
His elbow has aligned very nicely and the bone is healing wonderfully. You can still see the line…
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Added by Cheri on October 3, 2007 at 11:09pm —
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