A visit to Craigmillar Castle

Craigmillar Castle

A dreich spring Sunday is always livened up by a trip to a local castle. Not Edinburgh Castle – hoi polloi dogs aren’t allowed (assistance dogs can visit, of course). The other castle in Edinburgh is Craigmillar, run by Historic Scotland, where dogs are allowed in, on lead & under control.

Jake poses by a spiral stone stair

Jake loves visiting castles. He’s fascinated by the smells in corners (birds! beasties!), he loves to race up and down spiral staircases, and he particularly likes being on high and looking out of narrow windows and over turrets. Craigmillar was particularly strong on all of the above.

Jake on the battlements

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Reflection

picture of Jake on Alnmouth beach with reflection

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Dun-contactin’

walking a course in Dundee

Dundee was the first show of the 2010 season for us. We went through for just the Saturday, on a glorious spring day in Camperdown Park. We didn’t even manage a clear run but I was just so relieved to be back at agility after all those weeks dealing with grim inevitable family stuff.

Jake was even more enthusiastic than I was – and so fast! – but a little unfocussed. Probably down to a lack of practice and me not being as quick as I need to be giving voice and body signals. On the plus side, Jake’s weaves, our bête noir at this point last year, were rock solid. On the down side, his contacts were terrible – he jumped on and off the A-frame, used the seesaw as a launch pad, and hopped off the side of the dog walk in his excitement. How could I be cross? He was so enthusiastic. (I might have had a little fun too).

And of course there was the traditional Scottish feast for athletes.

Jake stakes out the burger van

Since then we’ve really been working on his contacts on training nights. Back to basics! The dog walk & seesaw are now much improved, but the A-frame is a work in progress.

So our aims for the 2010 agility season (our third!) are

• to keep having fun
• to improve consistency on contacts
• to keep Jake sweet and below threshold round ringside
• to get the points we need for Jake’s bronze agility warrant
• to maybe even win out of grade one day …

Posted in Agility, Agility shows | 1 Comment

Breaking news: LAB-LURCH coalition

canine overlords

We agree on agility, eating bread left for ducks, chasing squirrels and barking unhelpfully at German Shepherds.

We are your canine overlords.

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We’re back

fed up dog chin on laptop keyboard

That’s quite enough faffing around with blog migration, thanks.

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New look for Jake’s Progress coming soon

We’re working on migrating Jake’s blog from Blogger to WordPress over the next week or so. So this is a holding message until we go live with the new site. Back soon, with tales of the new agility season …

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The moose loose aboot this hoose

We’ve been away for a week & when we got back, I opened a kitchen cupboard & found mouse droppings. Grrr. Itinerant mice are pretty common in Edinburgh tenements & multiple occupancy buildings but we haven’t seen hide or hair of rodents since we got Jake.

I started to empty the cupboard, which is the one full of olive oil & balsamic vinegar (obviously a mouse with Mediterranean tastes). Towards the back, when there was nothing to clear except a couple of glass jars of rice & a well-gnawed pack of burritos, I came face to face with the mouse.

Jake has only ever caught two things in his life: a water rat and a rabbit. When he caught the water rat, he became selectively deaf & trotted along just out of my reach, the busiest & most important dog in the world. Then he let it go. He also once caught a rabbit and let it go. He’d be rubbish as a working lurcher (and maybe that’s why he ended up in the dogs’ home).

So there was a stand-off in the kitchen – mouse vs inept lurcher & two soft-hearted humans. The three domestic mammals staring into the cupboard, and the mouse staring back at us. I must admit I considered Jake’s track record & decided that I’d catch the mouse in a large glass jar rather than risk Jake chase it somewhere else in the kitchen.

Then the mouse darted back into the packet of burritos. Easy! I scooped the packet up & into the waste bin, and took the mouse down to the wheelie bin for the ultimate last supper.

Jake now keeps going to stick his head right into the cleaned cupboard as if he can’t quite credit it.

(How did the mouse get in? It dropped through a gap between the back of the oven and the top of the cupboard, & obviously had no incentive to climb out of the land of plenty).

(And no, there are no other signs of mice anywhere else in the flat. But our local pest control officer is back on the beat).

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The therapy dog

I found myself dealing with more unhappy situations with my 80 year old aunt last week. As she’s in hospital at the moment, I took Jake to Tyneside with me as my therapy dog and he was brilliant – great fun on the beach, company in the house while I did various necessary and no-fun things. Dogs are GREAT. Jake is particularly great!

Here are some snaps from the beach at the bottom of my aunt’s street. Though it’s hard to take pics while you’re playing tug with sandy seaweed.

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2o2o

In our first proper training session this year, it was no great surprise that Jake’s contacts had gone to pot. He was so happy to be at agility again that he was tanking round – and launching himself off the A frame & dog walk before any paws touch the contact points. It’s my fault – we used to have steady, reliable contacts – until we sped up. And now, because we never cemented our contacts at the very start, Jake takes a flying leap OFF the dog walk or the A-frame.

2o2o is agility jargon for “two on, two off.” That’s the style we learn at our agility lessons & it also suits us – I’ve worked out a training plan I could carry out at home, on walks, day in day out. (The alternative is “running contacts.“)

The plan for Jake’s contacts is a bit off the wall but we’re working with what we’ve got.

I started on our stairs. I’ve been click-treating Jake for when he stops with his back paws on the bottom stair, practising in blocks of 10 repetitions. He gets the treat with the release command “go” – & I throw it forward so that the end of the behaviour is a surge forward away from the 2o2o to get the treat.

I’ve been increasing the length of time he spends 2o2o before I click and give the release command. The next stage has been to take it outside (think steps, ramps … and agility equipment). This week we started playing the 2o2o game outside, on flights of stone steps we pass on our walks. Jake is good at generalising to other places, so he very quickly understood what was required. And result! There was a marked improvement at this week’s agility class.

Posted in Agility, Training | 3 Comments

Silent through the snowpocalyse

All quiet here for a while. Before Christmas I was spending most weekends travelling to help my aunt, who lives about 100 miles away. I bailed out of a couple of agility shows because of that. And then just before Xmas we had heavy snowfall. It was the coldest snap in 30 years, and the most snow I’ve seen since I was a kid (when we had proper weather – listen to me, young’uns!). After four weeks we were thoroughly fed up – we’re not geared up to protracted snow; our street didn’t get gritted until 3 weeks in, for example. On the plus side, we had a very quiet snowed-in stay-at-home Christmas. Then I slipped on the ice, landed on my head and am only just getting back to rights.

At first Jake loved the snow. New snow is like sand you can eat, and short of it snowing actual ice cream I can’t imagine he’d have been any happier. There were crazy puppy antics, catching snowballs in mid-air, finding snowman’s noses (carrots) and blissfully sinking into soft snow to eat, eyes shut …

With the temperature dropping to -10 C for a while, the canal and even the Water of Leith (usually a fast flowing river) froze. For a while Jake was simply fascinated, staring at the place that’s usually water. Then he realised that well-meaning people were throwing bread on for the birds – and he wandered onto the ice for a snack. He wasn’t the first – there were plenty of footprints of all species. Even so, after that, he was on the lead near water.

By the end of the freeze, Jake was just very fed up with
• the compacted ice – it’s nippy on the paws
• semi-frozen melting snow in the park – uneven to run on
• paw washes after every walk to remove grit & salt
• more frequent pedicures – it’s pavement pounding that usually keeps his claws down.

Almost all the ice has melted now. I don’t know which of us is more relieved!

Posted in Park life, Scotland | 3 Comments