recall video

Dog food Recall :(

With all of the recalls happening lately, I would really love to recommend that you look at Life’s Abundance. It’s what I feed and I am a rep. It is developed by a holistic vet. No hormones, corn, wheat or soy. It has prebiotics, probiotics, and bags are delivered to your door within 6 weeks of manufacturing. The manufacturing plant is APHIS certified for the European market, which means that they are held to a very high standard of cleanliness. Look at the website www.feedteamcheetah.com and click on the video contained there do your really know whats in your dogs food? They have been in business for 13 years and have never had a recall. They keep several bags back from each batch and if anyone ever had a problem with the food they would test those bags and contact each customer and rep that has been sold a bag from that batch. They have never needed to do this, but that is the protocol of what would happen. It is a great food and a great company to be a part of. Contact me once you’ve checked it out and I will be happy to get you started.

 

CDC - Salmonella Infantis Infections Linked to Dry Dog Food
http://www.cdc.gov/salmonella/dog-food-05-12/index.html

Highlights

• A total of 14 individuals infected with the outbreak strain of Salmonella Infantis have been reported from 9 states.
• The number of ill persons identified in each state is as follows: Alabama (1), Connecticut (1), Michigan (1), Missouri (3), North Carolina (3), New Jersey (1), Ohio (2), Pennsylvania (1), and Virginia (1).
• Among the 9 patients with available information, 5 (56%) were hospitalized. No deaths have been reported.
• Multiple brands of dry pet food produced by Diamond Pet Foods at a single manufacturing facility in South Carolina have been linked to some of the human Salmonella infections.
• Consumers should check their homes for recalled dog food products and discard them promptly. People who think they might have become ill after contact with dry pet food or with an animal that has eaten dry pet food should consult their health care providers.

Pet Foods Affected Include: 

- 4Health 

- Apex

 - Canidae 

- Chicken Soup For the Pet Lover's Soul 

- Country Value - Diamond - Diamond Naturals 

- Kaytee Fort-Diets

 - Kirkland 

- Natural Balance 

- Premium Edge 

- Professional

- Taste Of The Wild 

- Solid Gold

Sorry I've been so non bloggy!!

Cheetah and I have been much more consistent since her MACH 2...go figure! We are qualified for WT tryouts, and 1 QQ from being Qualified for Tulsa. I am still playing with the run vs. touch with the dogwalk, but mostly trying to perfect the touch which is a sortof moving contact. It seems in my area right now, real runnhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifing contacts that are not completely perfect are doomed to be tested every opportunity...so I admit I caved a bit. I still do them in practice from time to time, and want to increase the consistency of them, but I hated not getting so many QQ's because of them. I WILL train my next agility dog with running, because I love them, but I thing that at 8.5, we are not as likely to get reliable ones as I want. :(

I am trying to get some extra money together to actually go to tryouts one last time, while she is still doing so well and jumping 26. I will put her back down to 24" in AKC from here on out. So if anyone wants to help me get to tryouts ...go to my new website that links to my business site. www.feedteamcheetah.com. Its simple, buy some cool products that you like and the profits from it will go into my Tryout fund. Its a win win for all...you get amazingly great, healthy treats, supplements or food, and I get some extra money to buy our tickets to MN!

I am thankful for Cheetah!

As we approach Thanksgiving, I am thinking of how thankful I am to have Cheetah running happily and healthy. As some of you may know, we lost Tegan in October. She was 16 1/2 and she was very healthy until the end. I am also thankful that she only was sick for about a week. I promised her I wouldn't prolong things for us, if there wasn't anything we could do. Here is a picture of Tegan at the last trial she competed in and it was the first trial that Cheetah went to at 9 1/2 weeks old.

New Sponsorship....sort of

I have been wanting a sponsor for Cheetah for a while, and I think I finally found a good solution. I have been looking into a Premium Pet food Company called: Life's Abundance.


I am really impressed with the quality of the ingredients and the people that I have spoken to in the company. So I have become a independent field rep for them. I figured, all of the years I fed Canidae, told people about it, tried to get sponsorship from them, and they gave me nothing in return. I am now feeding Life's Abundance, can tell people about it, and when they order products from me, I then get some money to put back into Team Cheetah! So it's sorta like having a sponsor - right?

If you would like to check out the products for yourself - please click here and you can order directly from my website and get it shipped straight to you. You can even get it on Auto delivery!

MACH 2 CHEETAH !!!

Cheetah got her long awaited MACH 2!!!!! She got it on 7-22-11, in Westminster, MD. The funny thing is that she was having trouble getting that last QQ b/c of standard then we got a QQ the next day too. I have a new montra - "run the damn dog". I spent entirely too much time handling her contacts, and it doesn't do any good. I found that she is just as more likely to get her contacts if I just run her AS IF she would get them no matter what. Hmmmm....what a concept. The proof of this was when on Sunday, she took the wrong end of the tunnel off of the dw ( a contact she got btw) and then I decided "I would work her a-frame" since the little brat had already NQ'd. Well, THAT worked.....NOT! she came off high and to the wrong side as if to say -"why are you all up in my business - see ya!" But I can't really complain, our weekend was great. She was 7 for 9 and all Blue!! And lets not forget, she is now a MACH 2!

Still pluggin' away at run vs. touch!

I have not been posting very much lately, but we have been working on the 2o2o vs running contact criteria. I had been using a stride regulator for a while and was having success with this. I didn't really like the fact though that it wasn't really following Silvia's method. So the last few sessions, I have been using a cut down version of the add a plank that she suggested. This is simply a piece of plywood about 3 ft long and 1 ft wide ( the size of the dw contact zone.) I have glued a couple of pieces of the puzzle foam flooring on it. It sticks well to my dw because I have a rubberized dw.

Let me know what you think!





I will say that I am not happy with this performance of "touch"...her stop command.

Today, I tried it again without taping it for proof of course and she ROCKED IT!!!!

I will try to tape another session soon! Any thoughts about how long to keep the plank on, and how to fade it would be great!

running vs. touch....so far so good!

I am still working with Cheetah on differentiating between the cue for run and the cue for touch (stop). She is nearly 100% on making the correct decision when just training the contacts. She will sometimes still run through a "touch" in class, when put into a sequence. I will need to practice more sequencing at home with some short drills once the weather cooperates.

Here is a short video clip from today's session. The DW is not quite up to full height, so that is what I need to do once it stops raining. I will also need to start to fade the stride regulator. I know that this is not really part of Silvia Trkmans method, but I think it is making sense to Cheetah, so I am sticking with it for now. I think I will see if I can make it a little smaller in diameter first. Then I will paint it green. I think I could then move to just having the blue bendy thing, then take it away completely.

What do you think?

so when you can't train one contact behavior...why not train 2?

I have been trying (again)to train Cheetah to do a nice running contact. I am working through Silvia Trkman's method (for the most part) and it was having sketchy results so far. I have been working on it since November...so about 5 mo. now. About a month ago, I was at a Silvia Trkman seminar and she thought it that it would just take more time since she was a retrain, and I wasn't stopping competition. The next weekend I was at a Bridget McKnight seminar and she was concerned with the lack of q'ing that we have had in the last few months basically just over contacts.

This has been complicated by the fact that we are just 1 QQ away from our MACH2. So needless to say, I am getting a little frustrated at this point. So Bridget suggested that I think about reverting back to a 2o/2o...not something I really wanted to do. But I thought I would see if I could get her to do one while we were at the seminar. So I took Cheetah inside, asked for a couple of hop-ups, and of course she nailed them. I put a target out and asked her to "touch" it. she offered several very nice nose touches. I repeated using the target over the whole aframe, saying "touch" as she came over the top. She stopped nicely and we had a little party.

When it was our turn to work outside on the course, I asked Bridget if she wanted to see her 2o/2o? She said sure...we ran the course ( targets out in place) she nailed them. So this was confirming to Bridget that if she had a 7yo dog that was doing so well on all other aspects of the course, except the contacts, she would probably go back to a 2o/2o. Hmmmm....I see the logic in that but I don't really want to. I agreed to think about it and we would talk later at a trial coming up the next weekend.

I started thinking about it and I just didn't want to throw away all of the running practice that I had been doing. Then I remembered a website I saw a while ago. It talked about training both! BOTH....that's it! I could work on the running in practice, throw in some stops, and use the stops at competitions until I liked the running better at home. That way I could take all the time I wanted to to train the running. Now to find that website. A youtube search eventually got me to the original site and other site of someone doing the same thing.

www.polona.agility-slo.net

and

http://www.fannygott.com


I started playing around with it. I didn't want to give up her "broken 2o/2o" movement by just doing 2o/2o stuff...plus I hate training it. So I decided that if I can teach her left and right and she can respond on the fly, then she CAN learn to respond to touch or run on the the fly too. I started by being very systematic with it, only going one way to stop and the other to go ( based on the same way I was sending her from the tunnel to run already) I also put my target out ahead of time to ask for the stop and her frisbee bowl behind the jump set up for the run.

I ask for walk-it for both, but then quickly followed by the words "run" or "touch". If I am asking for the run - I also encourage her by going go go go in a high pitched voice. BTW she Doesn't need that on the AF or else she gets a little too hyped.

this is a session from a couple of weeks ago, that shows you that she was already starting to get the distinction. I am now going in the the same direction and randomly asking for both, more runnings than stops (because they are more fun!). I think that this will actually translate to her listening better to the cue on course in competition more so than if she always assumed it would be a stop. I also think that her running is getting better ( hit wise) and I don't feel that she is slowing down or acting uncertain about anything. So I see this as a win win situation. I will work harder on the stops than I would normally. I also will be able to mark her for making the wrong choice better. I can definitively say to her that was NOT a touch vs well but she DID hit yellow?!?!






This is the next day - I thought it went better than the first.





I'll have to record another session this week and show you how we are progressing.

The light is getting brighter...

Today I did two more sessions with Cheetah's running dogwalk using the stride regulator just above the first all yellow slat. I taped the second one, and she has been 100% using the SR. Up until now the DW has been at 29", After today's success, I raised it up a link - bringing it to 30.5". Compared to yesterday's video, this session is much better because ( well first of all you can see it!) but also because she stopped jumping from the top and landing in the yellow ( although landing in yellow IS good, JUMPING from the top of the crossplank to get there probably is NOT! She seems to be settling into the striding better and getting a little deeper in the yellow. I think that as the height goes up, and the actual horizontal distance decreases slightly, that she will go a little deeper still. Thank you Rosanne for the tiny SR idea...it is coming in handy!

Here is the video from today's second session.

getting her to see the light.....hopefully!

After another frustrating session with her earlier today, I just couldn't see how I was going to show her what I wanted her to do across the whole DW. I even tried to show her a foot target, which she avoided like the plague! That made me think, maybe I should try a stride regulator. I put a little piece of pvc pipe just above the yellow. she like to avoid things, so she avoided it very nicely. This video is really dark...that's what happens when you have a break through late in the day in Jan. I will again tomorrow in the day light!

frustrating sessions :(

On the 6th and the 7th, I had a couple of DW sessions with Cheetah and she is not seeming to completely understand what I want her do to once we move back to the end of the cross plank. I thought maybe if I just let her go over the whole thing some her striding would settle down, but she was very inconsistent doing it perfectly sometimes, but leaving high or out right jumping off much of the time. She even pulled out the old 2o/2o once????? She slowed down through the yellow a few times. How do you handle that one. On the one hand yes you did hid yellow...on the other hand, it was not really the speed we are looking for.

On the 7th, I decided NOT to have her run the whole thing, but instead really focus on continuing the back-chaining process. This was producing mixed results, until she decided that she should really just get on the table and run the board by her self...

baby steps...

I did two training sessions with Cheetah over the last two days. I continued to backchain her across the crossplank of the dogwalk. I put the table at the very beginning of the plank and had her load on from there. She started off a little rough at the beginning yesterday but she ended it well. Today, I repeated this set up and she started off really good, more confidence and some really good striding. Unfortunately, she had a high hit that I marked, and her next attempt to fix it was a big jump. Her next and last rep was better than the jump, but was about the same as the 8th rep. So all in all, we were about 7 out of 10.



I suppose I will stay here for a couple of more sessions, which I won't be able to do until I get back from the MADNESS trail this weekend. We shall see how she does on the contacts this weekend. She had two really good dogwalks in class on Wed. I was at least able to handle her like she really had a running dog walk.

Transistioning to the real Dog Walk....

Tuesday evening I took apart the picnic table ensemble and put together the whole DW. I was noticing (as did Rosanne) that she was basically bouncing the table because of it's shorter length. This is a concern since we know she is not going to have a 1 hit cross plank once it is a 12'. So I added some more motion to the table set up, in one session, which went pretty good. Then I set up the whole dog walk. It's set at about 28". I did one session that evening after the private lesson I gave to Julie and Splash. I didn't tape that session, but it was very odd.

I tried to run her over the whole thing, just to see where we were. She trotted down the down plank! ARRRGGH!!! I tried it one more time, and she actually started to stop for a 2o/2o.....WHAT?????? So, I just finished the session with several back chaining reps just to get her driving back to the target. I ended it there...sigh!


Yesterday we did two sessions, which we did tape. They went much better than the day before and the second session went much better than the first.




I took Cheetah to class tonight and we had a dogwalk in the the sequence. The course had a 270 from the left off of the dog walk. I handled it the first time as a push, which meant that I had to bust it up to the front of the DW to get the FC in so I could have her on my left to push over the jump. It was perfect! The next time I kept her on my right, but the time I saved by sending her I was able to get to the end and blind off of the DW. It was also pretty good. I may have collected her up a bit, but not too much.

Over all I am very pleased with our progression and will continue to backchain some more today, and tomorrow before we head off to MADNESS trial. The good thing about this trial, is that it is Team only, so even if she faults the DW, it will not be the end of the world. I purposely did NOT enter Friday's GP and Steeplechase classes so I would not be tempted to handle her contacts too much...THAT was hard for me not to do. I am such and addict! I will keep you posted!

All I want for christmas is running contacts!

The snow melted off of the "Dogwalk" and we had two sessions. As I stated earlier, I fixed the 2" height difference and that really seemed to help her striding. I taped the second session ( almost to dark to tape) but she was a very good girl, and while one was a little high, she was 13 for 13. She had also hit all of them in the first session today...I swear!

This is first time I had tried using the clicker with this, I usually use it alot, but I didn't want her to think too much about what she was doing and found it was easier for me to just mark verbally. Now, I think I can add some precision to it with the clicker w/o causing too much thinking....I hope!

Here is the latest training session.

I added the up plank to the table set up from the end of the last post. I tried her on it one time that I didn't tape about a week ago. For the most part she did ok with this, she had a couple of really good hits. I think her striding was thrown off because she was trying to avoid hitting the spot where the 24" table met the 26" picnic table and that was probably close to were she would naturally put her first stride. Her solution was to take one short stride and then clear the picnic table and land on the down plank. I think she thought that was too hard, so she did manage to figure out a second place to stride on the picnic table.

After this session was over, I added some more foam pieces underneath of the carpeting on the 24" table, this now makes both of the tables even. I will tape another session of that set up as soon as the snow from this morning melts off of it a bit more.

Running contact Journal thus far...yeah I know I am way behind!

After USDAA Nationals, I talked to Rosanne DeMascio and we had a couple of lessons were we just tried to get Cheetah to run, it worked some, but I figured I should go back to the beginning and really try to do some of the Trkman foundation steps. Last February when I got the new rubberized DW, I started it, but I didn't have very much room in my basement to work on it and it didn't seem to be working very well. So as I am want to do, I ended up reverting back to a 2o/2o and trying to muddle through with the contacts. I really worked on her teeter and that is making good progress, but I don't think we will ever be completely done working on that.


Anyway, I first tried to use the electronic touch board that I have, and that proved to have limited success. As both Silvia Trkman and Rosanne pointed out, too much thinking on her part is not what we want.







So I played around with a couple of other things, and then I got out my teeter plank and propped it up on a cinder block and ( at first with the hit it board, then later sessions without it. I like the ones without it much better. The other thing that I think really made her think was the target out in front. She thought she was being proofed. So I spent a couple of sessions ( not taped ) where I introduced her to a frisbee upside down like a bowl with some kibble in it. ( She loves working for kibble - freak that she is!) then I held her collar and revved her up and said "ready - ready - get it! I did that for her dinner a couple of times and that seemed to get her out of the proofing mindset!




Then I ran her over the see saw plank on a cinder block a few sessions, always giving her at least one cookie already in the frisbee and throwing several more in if I liked the rep- if I didn't she got 1 cookie and I said "nice try - try again"

Then I put it on a 16" table with her running from a tunnel. I did that 2 different times, one at the love on a leash training building and the other at Hunter Mountain Farm where I teach a couple of days a week too. I liked that one of the boards had slats and the other one didn't, because I didn't want that to be a factor.



I have been putting foam ( the puzzle piece type flooring foam) underneath it to help stabilize it, since she is NOT going to run over a plank confidently if it is wobbly.

The next session I put the table up to 24" and tried the same set up, but her confidence went down since she smacked her leg trying to time the jump up with the next stride forward. so I didn't do too much with this set up.



I have decided that she needs more room to run at this height, so I placed my 24" table at home up against the picnic table, added some old carpet for traction and added a jump to send her to an viola! a working set up for this height. I am still putting the target out about 15-20' out and putting some kind of treat pre-loaded and then following up with more if I like the rep. I am not moving too much my self yet, mostly because I have to send her to the loop before I can put the treat down, then by that time she is on her way back and I don't want to be running towards her while she is running full speed down the plank.



My next step is adding the up plank to the picnic table set up and start to do a little bit of turning off of it. I don't want to go too quickly with that, I want the running full tilt to be pretty set before I start asking her to do any collection on it. I will also add a jump between the down plank and the frisbee, so she gets used to looking for obstacles after and not just the target.

I promise to keep you posted more frequently.

Our First USDAA Nationals

Whew...what a week it was! Team "GET TO THE POINT!" left for KY on Tuesday and we got to the site about 7:30-8:00. They were getting ready to close up but we got our space staked out - Thanks Tracy!! And off to go find the hotel. It was right next to the complex and was very easy to get in an out of in the mornings.

The Nationals was pretty cool, this was the first time I'd been to USDAA Nationals. We have gone to AKC nationals 4 times, but just could never take the time off to go all the way to AZ. Of course my being "Unencumbered by work" made things easier this year too.



Cheetah did pretty well over the course of the Nationals, she ended up 8th in Team Snooker out of about 130 26" dogs. We had bye's in to both steeple chase AND GP, so it was neat to be able to know that you would be in the semi's and not have to worry about the quarter finals. Cheetah missed her second aframe contact in Steeplechase so, no finals there and in GP, we were clean, because I micromanaged her contacts, and we ended up 25th out of 60 in that round, but they only took 16 to the finals. I did get a cool shirt!!

Our team didn't do too bad considering we had to claw our way up from the bottom!
After Team Gamblers, we were 191 out of 206 teams. Sheli and I both missed our multipliers. I missed it by .02 seconds ARRRRGGGGHHHH!!!! She had two significant bobbles of which either one would have easily made up for it! I lost about 33 points on that to end up with only 22:(

Sheli got 20 and JoEllen and Point got 30 - they were more conservative after seeing us crash and burn.

Cheetah decided that yellow was not doing it for her in team std. and missed all three. To be fair it was more than likely due to the fact that she had torn her carpal pad lure coursing the day before. Yes, Cheetah discovered lure coursing and LOST HER MIND!!! by the second run, she was bipedal waiting for her turn, foaming at the mouth, with a wide tongue and every molecule in her being was quivering! I had to drag her away from it and didn't even let her do a 3 run for fear she would kill her self. She was very clever about on thing though. When Point went, he got so excited that he ran through the lattice that was supposed to stop him. I tried to stop Cheetah from doing the same thing, but she figured out exactly how to get the "bunny", she jumped the fence to get out around me and then jumped back in on the other side of the lattice and grabbed the lure.

It wasn't until I took her up to get a drink that I realized that she was bleeding. I then noticed that it was from her carpal pad. I think that bugged her during the rest of the runs. I did get permission to have vet wrap on it during her runs to keep debris and to prevent further scrapping of the pad.





After Team Standard, we climbed to 126th place - WOOHOO! Then after Snooker, we got all the way up to 65th place. But alas, Team Jumpers bumped us back down to 85th. Cheetah went passed a jump, but I fixed it, JoEllen and Point had a refusal in the weaves, but fixed it, and Sheli and Deva ended up with an E because Sheli ended up running the last line differently than she walked it and was pointed toward the wrong jump and Deva took it. They only took 36 teams to the relay, so we didn't get to do that. But all in all, it was a good experience and the competition was great. We had teams from Japan, China, Puerto Rico, Mexico and Canada. The Japanese teams had some amazing dogs!

Fall update - sorry so long!

I am sorry it has been such a long time since I have updated the blog. We have gone to several trials and I will quickly give you the highlights.

TAG - We got the last GP leg we needed for Nationals. We also got another Steeplechase Q and also qualified in the second round. I think we won 17 bucks.

NE Regionals - We didn't get the DAM team Q we needed by 1.23 points (AAARRGGHH!!!) But I did get byes into the semifinals for both Grand Prix and Steeplechase at Nationals!! Woohoo! No money this time:(

Teamworks - Well we did manage to get the DAM team Q we needed. "Need that Q" got 1st place, but it was inspite of Cheetah's relay run. She E'd, we ran back to give the baton to Leigh and when she took off with Rapture, Cheetah decided SHE wasn't done yet - and decided to join them. (I'll get the video of that up soon!)

Rectortown - We had great contacts ( yeah!!) and got our 39th QQ. Hoping to get #40 at our trial (Weyers Cave)!

I will try to keep you posted more frequently in the future...no promises though!

I got the crud!

Well I spent the weekend mostly in bed with the exception of of 2 private lessons on Sunday morning. I officially got the South African little kid crud! YUCK!!!!!

Cheetah, on the other hand, never missed a beat. I had a morning class to teach Wednesday after returning ( yes - I am crazy) I was going to let her sleep in...but as soon as I grabbed my training bag, she jumped up and was ready to go. She got to swim afterwards and even got a very personal encounter with a Great Blue Heron. I wish I had a camera for that one. It was hanging around the edge of the pond and then decided to fly over her head ( I thought she was going to get hit with those long legs as she swam back to shore!) Then it flew back on the shore about 10 min later and she stood there dumbfounded with the ball in her mouth, like - am I supposed to retrieve THAT? Then she pounced at it a couple of times ( literally, it was 20 feet from her) then it reluctantly flew away. It circled over head a few times, wishing we would go away no doubt!