Snow Pouncing

When Griffin would stop...bits of ice would continue forward down the hill...he would pounce! And more would fall. I wish I had gotten better quality video...

Ice! And a Snow Day...

What do I do with an unexpected half day free?

We go out walking and then later I spent another session working with Griffin on a Moving Down (going into a Down while Heeling...and 'sticking' there until released!). He understands it well but I'm wondering if I'm giving any additional cues besides my verbal "Down!" The solution? Video! If we get extra time tomorrow, we'll get to get a video of that and then I can see exactly what I am doing.

Snow!

My dogs like snow...they can roll in it, dig for hidden objects, and eat it. I like the part where we come home exhausted.

Of my three, Luna is probably the one who enjoys snow the most. With the expected 10" tonight, tomorrow will fun!

Here she is after a roll but before shaking off!

She's wearing her fabulous pulling harness. I bought it last year from Alpine Outfitters along with a tug line and skijor belt. The belt is about 5" wide and goes around my waist....allowing me to connect her to the belt via the tugline... and then we hike. That was one of my best purchases ever! While this isn't a good set up for walking in public, I highly recommend it for less busy trails.

At some point this year I want to get another type of harness to compare. This is the Urban Trail Harness...I see that they now have a fully adjustable Urban Trail Harness....I would definitely recommend paying for the extra adjustability!

As You Can See...

I did something that worked.... but it's embarrassing that I've been working on this since early December!

What have I been doing? Here's just a start to the many current projects...

Camp: The Ohio 4-H Teen Dog Experience is in the planning stages for the 2009 year. We're getting our registration and instructor information together.

Conference: This has also led to the opportunity for us to speak at the Ohio 4-H Teen Conference in February. Karin and I (and Abigail?) will be doing two sessions, one on good teaching and one on good training. There will be handouts on the OTDE page closer to/after the conference.

Puppy: Griffin is so much fun! He's about six months old in this picture, taken early January. Current training has been to teach a contact ("stopping on the plank obstacles") behavior, increasing the time on stays, and to discriminate Left/Right Finish ("Return to Heel) cues.

Reading: The Columbus Library System has recently got quite a few great dog training resources that I had not read yet. I'm thrilled they are now so accessible for the public and immediately sent them a thank you note!

Technology

There was a memorable instance at a horse show quite a few years ago... The room where we kept our belongings had this impressive feature of the lights turning off after a period of time with no movement. It was a very short period of time. The three of us left the room and all that remained was one book-reading mom. We went a few steps and the lights went out. A friend commented "Technology always leaves someone in the dark."

And that's me at this moment. I tried to be 'right' and keep the blog on my site, but it got ridiculous to maintain and re-format it every time I needed to add a new page. And pictures were another story!

For now at least, I'll be using this fancy host and maybe my postings will be more frequent. Or at least when I figure out how to link from my site to this page.