Our Second Trial

About ten months ago, Clementine and I had our first agility trial. I wouldn't say it was a complete disaster...we had some nice moments, but no Qs. It definitely made me realize some of the things we would need to work on to be competitive. Our biggest issues were time and distance. Since I have a disability, and Clementine has always been a "velcro dog" - I knew this was going to be a challenge. I was truly afraid we would never be fast enough to be able to compete in NADAC. Now, every single one of my agility teachers has said that NADAC would be one of the hardest venues for us to compete in, because the courses are so spread out. Yet, I really like NADAC, because everyone is just so dang friendly and supportive. To be fair, NADAC is the only venue we have competed in at this point - but I have heard many agility folks voicing the same opinion.

So a few weeks ago, Clem and I had our second trial. We took 10 months to work on distance and building up her confidence..and also to finally get the hang of weaving. It paid off. We ended up getting 2 Qs for the weekend. Our first Q was in Novice Jumpers:


Even though in class Clementine often gets too excited to maintain her start line stays, she nailed every single one of them at the trial. It took a few rounds for her to find her confidence..but while having a bit of "ring nerves" kept her slower, she was also more focused on me. Our second Q was in Regular, which I was not expecting at all considering she has only been weaving for all of a week before the trial. I wish I had a video of that run!

So I walk away from this trial, knowing we CAN do this! I have an incredible dog who wants to please and most importantly - loves doing this. I know that we need to work on discriminations (between contacts and tunnels specifically) and me being able to call her off of obstacles ahead of her. I never in a million years thought that her having too much distance would ever be a problem. It is now!

Dog Sports Junkie

Alright, now that introductions are mostly out of the way - I figure I'll get started with what this blog will mostly be about.

DOG SPORTS.


I'll be the first to admit it, I'm a dog sports junkie. Is anyone else out there?

I've never won any sort of championships, I dont have the fastest dogs out there - I just like to have fun setting goals and achieving them. I will argue that Clementine is crazy smart beyond belief - but that's for another day.

This past weekend started out with flyball practice. We have a tournament next weekend and it will the the first tournament for many of our club's new dogs. It will only be TeeVee's second tournament. We worked a lot on passing this week, which is what TeeVee needs. He has crazy chase drive and it has taken nearly 2 years of training for him to even run in a lane against other dogs. The patience has paid off and now he does great, but will often want to chase the dogs in his team as they run past him. He is now passing some other big dogs WITHOUT lunging, but is developing a hard eye and creep until the dog has passed him, then he runs normally. This is not acceptable either, but it is better than it was. Whats a few more months of work?

Sunday we took a trip up to Valdemar Farms to have TeeVee's herding instinct test and for Clem to have a lesson. Clementine and I took herding lessons for a little over a year, but that was two years ago. Life got in the way for a bit. Here's the thing... out of everything I do with my dogs, working Clem on livestock is by far my favorite. I never see my dog happier than when she is working stock. Our instructor (Cathy Balliu) says that she is like a Turbo Charged PT Cruiser... she has only two speeds. Stop and GO! Because Clem is more Cattle Dog than Border Collie, she doesn't have much of an eye. Instead - she paces quickly to get the stock where they need to go. We took a break from herding in order to start agility, which Cathy thought would help her off lead obedience. As you can see in the (long) video, she has some nice downs and distance most of the time.. but every once in a while (notably around 5:40 and 6:30) she has a real temper tantrum. I ended up getting in a shouting match with her and we really butt heads. Cathy told me to just ignore her and let her work through her arousal level. BEST ADVICE OF THE YEAR. If you watch the whole video, you can see a noticeable difference.



Clem shows drive with the stock that she doesn't show with anything else. Yes, she loves flyball, disc and agility...but it's not the same. She eventually gets bored or tired and thats it. She'll even work stock in thunderstorms, despite normally being severely thunderphobic.

When we left off with lessons two years ago, she was up to herding a flock of about 10 sheep at a time, doing outruns at about 50 yards and starting to drive the sheep through gates. We're going to back up a bit in an attempt to get a bit more control since she is such a hot head.

Lesson of the weekend: Sometimes you just need to shut up and let your dog work some things out on their own.

Finding the Training Addiction

So remember in that first post how I mentioned that the shelter said that Clementine was low energy and sweet? That all got thrown out the window after the first day I had her. She is smart, feisty, full of energy and not a fan of cuddles. When I first got her she was also terrified of everything. Every noise, she would flatten on the floor and pee herself. I lived on a very busy street here in Denver and it was a bear to potty train her because she was afraid of the traffic too.

I attempted to crate train her and I'd come home and find her in the crate, 15 feet over from where I left her. The whole apartment would smell of fear and she'd be shaking and shivering. I stopped trying to crate her once I got her house trained. The solution that worked for us was me keeping her tied to me with a leash at ALL TIMES unless she went potty outside. Once I figured that trick out - it took all of two days to have a house-trained dog.

Her separation anxiety then turned towards chewing and getting in the trash. I thought I would cleverly outsmart her by getting one of those step lid trash cans. I had that thing home for all of two minutes before I found her with one paw on the step and her head buried in coffee grounds and paper towels.

It was right then I realized I didn't have an average dog on my hands. I vigilantly researched everything I could about the breed and joined online chat groups. I read website after website on what to do with a fearful cattle dog. EXPOSURE, EXERCISE AND TRAINING - LOTS OF TRAINING.

I thought back to what my horse trainer always told me - to be calm, to not react. I began by taking Clementine everywhere I could. Don't like car rides? Too bad, get in. Don't like that other dog? Too bad, keep walking. Don't like loud noises? Yeah, you get the picture.

My dogs may be spoiled rotten, but I will say they are not babied and they are not sheltered. I understand they are dogs and they are not perfect. All I can do is try to make them the best dogs they can be.

It has taken years of this exposure level with Clem to get where we are today, but it has paid off. I now have a dog who used to be afraid of everything, to only being mildly upset over car rides, thunderstorms and fireworks. She trusts me and even though we often butt heads - we have a partnership that is beyond rewarding.

Background and how Clementine stole my heart and changed my life forever...

Okay, so most people who know me at this point think I'm a little crazy when it comes to my dogs. I blame my parents. Growing up, both my sister and I begged my parents for a dog and were always turned down. There was a brief period of time when I was about two, where there was a Cocker Spaniel in the house, who unfortunately met an early death at the hands of a Mennonite driving down our street.


Our parents did allow us to have cats at various points in time, and for my 13th birthday I got a pony. Yes, a real live pony! Her name was Fancy and she was an Arabian/Quarter Horse cross. Short, feisty and full of life. I took serious riding lessons for years - first in Jumping, then Dressage. You wouldn't know it to look at me now, but at one point I could do flying lead changes, side passes, leg yields and passage with ease. ahhhh those were the days.





I ended up moving away from home for college, and regrettably we ended up selling my dear Fancy. I got caught up in other things for a while, music, art, good friends and copious amounts of alcohol. As my undergrad years drew to a close, I once again began to feel that ache for a dog of my very own. For over a year I spent hours looking at dogs on Petfinder that needed home. My roommates dreaded hearing the latest sad story of abuse or neglect. It was a particularly confusing time in my life. Here I was, 24 years old, with a degree in Art History and a yearning to break away from the Midwest and get a four-legged companion of my very own. I followed a friend out to Denver and went looking for a dog as soon as my bags were unloaded.

Having been around my sister's dogs for a number of years now, I really wanted a pit bull. One problem - I now lived in a city with one of the strictest breed bans around (more on this later I'm sure). We ended up going to the Denver Dumb Friend's League where they made all adopters take a little quiz before browsing to see what kind of dog fit your lifestyle the best. I was told I would do best with a "Constant Companion." Nearly every dog that was a match was an Australian Cattle Dog (Heeler). Being from Ohio, I had absolutely no experience with the breed what so ever, but their size, markings and attitude intrigued me. After stops at a few shelters, I met Clementine (formerly Lainey) at the Buddy Center.

One head tilt was all it took for me to take her home.

See, Miss Clementine had been at the shelter for almost three months. Someone had stuffed her in the overnight drop box with no identification or information. They had her in lost and found for a month but no takers. After doing a shelter evaluation, they determined she was shy, sweet, low-energy and not good with kids. They explained several people had been interested, but were put off by her shyness, lack of a tail and fear of children. Since I have never planned on having kids and have a fear of human children myself - I figured we would be a great match.