Panda, my part time Border Collie

Panda is my friend's dog. He likes to hang out with me. I used to do some agility with him.

Now, we pretty much just do herding. He's been a great help to me as I've been learning about sheep and dogs and how to work the two together. When Jane was a puppy and too young to work, Panda got me started.

He works stock with a lot of eye and a lot of style and sometimes a lot of naughtiness. We have recently discovered that goats are his calling. He is great on goats, and when the naughty Panda takes over and he buzzes them, it's no big deal. He looks forward to Sunday mornings, when I text his mom that I'm on my way to pick him up. See you tomorrow, Panda-man!

Ch-ch-cha-changes

Minor ones. Don't get excited. As you look to the right hand side of the blog, you'll see I added an individual picture of each of the dogs. No big deal. Everyone else with a dog blog did that last year! Or before.

I don't know why it took me so long. But today, I had some time and was scrolling through pictures of the dogs and picked my favorite one of each dog. As it turns out, my favorite picture of each dog is of that dog doing her favorite thing.

Gracie LOVED/LOVES agility. She was my star in that sport and she loved every minute of it. I love the look on her face in this picture.

Pogo loves to be loved and loves to be cute. This picture embodies that in a way that no other does. I have to thank my friend Kim Munoz for capturing it.

And, my Jane Border Collie loves to be a badass, fierce sheepdog. Carolynn Harwell of BCXFour can capture this like none other. Thank you Carolynn! There are a lot of favorite pictures of Jane working sheep, but this one is at the very top of my fave list.

So, gentle readers, my take home lesson from picking my favorite photos of my three best girls is this: capturing them doing the thing they love the most is beautiful. I love to see them doing what they love. And, allowing them to do what they love is a beautiful thing. Any one of them would have done what I wanted them to do, but by allowing them to do the thing they love most, I saw the most beautiful things.

Good day.

Just a good day's work today. No fuss, no fanfare. Dog straight out of the box with just a minute to run around. Got the Maltese Cross on the second try, penned pretty well. Second time out, lined out the Maltese Cross on the first try and penned in one nice straight walk from the cross to the pen. Everyone had their marching orders and followed them.

Did a little chore work, some sorting, some pen/take-pen work. At the end of the day, took the sheep (10-20 head? I wasn't counting) from the pens, through the big arena, up the road to the barn and into their stall. Today was the easiest this has been. No fighting, everything quiet and marching along, not much rushing. Dog took the pressure off at the right places and flanked at the right places. Stock flowed nicely, not too fast, not too slow. Nothing hit gates or walls. Just a nice day at the ranch.

LOVED IT! I think we are both getting better. And getting on the same page. Cool!

National Sheep Dog Finals: FREE Webcast!

Jealous???

Great birthday present for me! :) Thank you!!!!!

Why Did The Chicken Cross The Road? For my dog trainer friends.

WHY DID THE CHICKEN CROSS THE ROAD?
Dog Trainer Version ~ Author Unknown (correct me if you know who wrote it)

Pavlov: we fed the chicken on the opposite side of the road each day at 4 p.m. until the chicken's autonomic system actually began causing the chicken to cross the road at 4 p.m. without even questioning the "why."

B.F. Skinner: on prior occasions when the chicken voluntarily crossed the road, this behavior was followed immediately by a reinforcing consequence.

Cesar Milan: I bullied, chased, poked, and intimidated the chicken until it raced across the road, because I am a strong leader.

Barbara Woodhouse: You just say, "Walkies" with the right accent and place a crumpet on the other side of the road.

Karen Pryor: by associating R+ with road crossing and P+ with standing still, with a VR schedule, and offering a reward in keeping with the Premack principle, we increased the intensity and frequency of the road crossing behavior.

Bill Koehler: a few well-timed pops on the choke chain and the chicken was happy to cross the road.

Nicholas Dodman: I gave the chicken fluoxetine, sertraline, paroxetine, carbamazepine, and azapirone and then it was happy to cross the road.

Patti Ruzzo: I crossed the road, pausing every step to spit a treat out of my mouth like a human pez dispenser and the chicken followed along catching the treats.

Electric Collar Advocate: whenever the chicken does not cross the road I give it an electric shock. But do not worry, the shock is no more than you would feel if you walked on a carpet wearing socks and it does not bother the chicken at all. The feathers standing up and the smell of burning flesh mean nothing. In fact, they are happier having nice clear communication than
they would be otherwise.

Yuppie: chickens are just like little people in feather jackets, and if you love them and give them diamonds and feel sorry for them all the time, they will be happy to cross the road for you.

Paris Hilton: Because I put it in a Gucci bag and carried it.

Shelter director: Any chickens that do not cross the road will be euthanized for their own good, and the others we will "adopt" out tomorrow for only $200 each. Please send us money so we can keep doing more of this important work!

HSUS member: I do not know anything about animals, I have never been around animals and am not really fond of animals, but we passed a law mandating that chickens be kept without cages because animals belong only in the wild and cannot be happy coexisting with man, so now they are walking wherever they want.

PETA member: chickens have the right to live in world without roads. Any chicken that lives within a hundred miles of a road is suffering an inhumane existence and might eventually be hit by a car so we should kill it today to ensure that it does not die tomorrow.

Dog Food Post!

It's been a long time since I did a dog food post. You might want to get a cup of coffee or glass of wine. This might take a while.

I don't remember the last time I posted about dog food. For those of you who are new, thank you for reading, and I am a dog food nerd; I sell dog food for a living. I've been feeding my own dogs a raw diet for . . .how many years?. . . .15 years? I started when Webster was two. . .so, yeah +/- 15 years. I've switched healthy adult dogs, a senior dog and several puppies from kibble to a raw diet, cold turkey, successfully since then.

Tripper and Webster (Samoyeds) were young adults. Bud (Samoyed) was a senior. Gracie (Samoyed), Monty (Pomeranian), Pogo (Samoyed) and Jane (Border Collie) were baby puppies when they got switched. Every single one of them were switched cold turkey from kibble to raw, never a bit of diarrhea, everyone loved the change and thrived on it.

Back then, these fancy, prepared raw diets were not available and/or were prohibitively expensive, so I made my own. The three books that guided me were Wendy Volhard's, Ian Billinghurst's and Kymythy Schultze's. Now, I buy Meg's Meat's turkey grind (turkey, turkey bone, turkey organ meat) we sell at the store, Primal's buffalo grind (that we sell), meat from the butcher, prepared patties (Nature's Variety and Stella & Chewy's), dehydrated veggie mixes (SOJO's, Honest Kitchen) we sell at the store, among other things. I try to keep as much variety in the dogs' diets as I can.

Since Jane came on board and I knew that she would sometimes spend time away from home at sheep camp, I introduced kibble back into everyone's diet. I am SO LUCKY to have a raw friendly boarding kennel where the Samoyeds go when we are out of town (email me if you are interested and I will give you the contact). But what one eats, they all eat, so they are thrilled to have the occasional kibble meal (once a week or so). . .I stick to moderate protein level, grain free kibble and rotate between Instinct Salmon, Rabbit, Duck and Great Life Buffalo and Acana Lamb or Fish. All of these are in the low to mid 30 per cent protein. I stay away from high protein, high ash diets like Evo.

Back in the day, I ground my vegetables, added meat, organ meat, ground eggshell and other things to complete the diet. The veggie element can be tough because a variety of seasonal veggies is ideal. The solution I came up with was to buy a few of whatever was in season and mix up batches that would last two weeks at a time. Tonight, I found that we had some extra organic romaine and organic purple kale that we wouldn't eat before it went bad.


So I ran that through the food processor, then started looking for other things to add. I put in an organic banana and an organic Fuji apple. Isn't that a beautiful green color?

Beautiful, but too much veggies for the dogs to use in the next day. So I used my old muffin trick. I love this and I don't remember if I made it up or someone gave me the idea. Most likely the latter, but it tickles me to no end when I pass it along and people are THRILLED to try it. Works like a charm.

Get out a muffin tin. Scoop your veggie mix into the tin. I think it works out to about a 1/2 Cup per regular size muffin. My dogs are in the 40 - 50 lb range. So this is a good amount for them, per meal.

Fill up your muffins. If you have smaller dogs, just fill the muffin half way. If you have toy dogs, get a mini-muffin tin and use that. Big to giant dogs = big to giant, or multiple muffins.

Now, clean up the edges and freeze your veggie muffins. I like to give them a good day or so, then pop all the frozen veggies out into a container and keep that in the freezer. Now, take one out for each dog at the previous meal, thaw and add that to your meat and supplements. Depending on how much liquid is in your mix, you might be able to thaw a few at a time in a container and use as needed (the drier they are, the better they hold shape; more liquid in the muffin falls apart more easily as it thaws).

Tonight, we had organic sweet corn with our dinner. Here's my favorite way to make sweet corn: boil water in a pot (we have Le Crueset pots, which really hold heat for a long time), when it comes to a rapid boil, remove from heat, put shucked corn in the hot water, cover for 20 minutes. PERFECT every time! Anyway, I put some of that corn water in with the veggies to make a more fluid mix. It's just beautiful. I can't wait to feed it to the dogs!

Cool August Morning, 2010

Chris and I were judges, well, Chris was a judge but I was influencing him. . .at Hot August Nights this morning. I forget the name of the award we were giving, but different people about town were asked to judge. . .the Fire Chief, the Police Chief, Summit Racing, others, and the City Manager's Office. Chris was there as the representative for the CMO. Tomorrow the winners will be announced and will cruise in the parade that wraps up the week long event.

1950 Willys Jeepster. If anyone has one of these in beautiful working condition that you would like to give to me, please, leave a comment on the blog!

This 1933 Ford Woody attracted quite a bit of attention. The proud owner was seen using a lint roller to remove all, uh, lint from the fabric top of the car. I took a picture. Notice how lintfree it is! Good job, Woody Owner!

This was a new one on me and crowd favorite!! World's largest Radio Flyer!

Good dog, my Jane!

I was very proud of my little Jane dog today. We had some of the usual pushy, a little over flanky stuff. But, when the tough got going, Jane got smart, slowed down and used her ears and took direction!

So, the place where we work and take lessons was a cutting horse operation. The fencing is all appropriate for horses and cattle. When Lisa started leasing the place, she had to put fencing EVERYwhere to keep the sheep safe. I'm amazed at the feet of fencing that's been put up. I'm sure I don't want to know how much that has all cost.

To date, I think there are only two pastures and a handful of paddocks that are not yet sheep safe. In one of them is a Paint horse Lisa is going to use for cow dog trails. He does not like dogs and will go after a dog. Behind that pasture is another, horse fenced and unused. Next to them are matching pastures that are sheep fenced. The north end is sage brush and where the coyotes have been coming in. To the west and north is the road, supposed to be 35 mph, most vehicles are doing 50+.

Today a big group of sheep, maybe 40? +/-45 head got away from a dog and ended up in the pasture with Old Paint. Lisa ran to grab his halter and rope, as he started racing with his head and tail straight in the air. I offered and was told to GO cover the side of the pasture where the sheep could escape, while she caught the wild horse. As Jane and I got around to that side, around the barn, down the lane, some of the sheep started slipping under Paint's fence, into the unused pasture, closer to coyotes and the road. There were about 10 head left on Paint's side by the time I slipped through the fence and had Jane walking up on the others, to get them off the fence.

Lisa had Paint caught up by that time, so I sent Jane into that pasture to bring the stragglers. At the same time, I noticed a gate from this pasture into a sheep safe pasture, but it was down at the bottom, where if they went through (and they could) they would be in the sage brush with the road near and coyotes. Jane brought the stragglers through the fence, and then worked around to me, to keep them off the bottom fence. I worked to get the gate open, and sent her to bring them. Too much push (one of Jane's specialties!) would send them through the fence into the danger zone. As she got them coming to me, I started giving her small Away flanks to start the sheep turning through the gate. We had nice flow going, and I was eventually able to bring her 3:00 o'clock (me at 12 o'clock) and push them through to safety! We then drove them up through the two sheep safe pastures and put them where they needed to be.

It was a quick thing and maybe they weren't in as much peril as I imagined, but I loved how smooth it went, I loved how she listened to me, I loved how we worked this problem as a team. It tested my skills for quick thinking and problem solving and tested Jane's training. There was no coach there to tell us what to do, and the whole time I had the road and the coyotes in my mind, so I had to get it right the first time. And, we did.

Jane went on to do other good things that made me very proud in training today, but I think this little event will be at the forefront of my memory for a long time.