…and after:
Category Archives: Katie
Rules about toys
One of the new doggie household rules is that Katie’s toys are not available to her unless we give her something to play with. She doesn’t get to chose out of a basket like she did before. This is supposed to help us be Masters of the House. As opposed to her. Katie doesn’t like the new rule at all.
Today I gave Katie the toy that Ludo sent her. Katie hadn’t seen it in a very long time; a couple of months anyway. So she was very excited, it was almost like it was brand new to her!
It’s very hard to photograph an exchited Sheltie and her toy. But here’s my attempt:
After so much play she was exhausted. And a bit disheveled.
And we put the toy away to wait for another day. Thanks Ludo!
What Katie loves
We’ve been challenged by the Key West Collies Essex and Deacon (http://keywestcollies.blogspot.com/) to come up with ten things Katie loves. I think we’ll try to come up with ten things Katie loves about going to school.
1. Treats. Lots and lots and lots of treats. Fresh chicken. Roast beef. Cheese. Yum!
2. The car ride to school. With the windows down so she can get a breeze in her face.
3. The place all the doggies go pee. Such lovely fresh smells!
4. Doggie butts. Need I say more?
5. Ignoring her mama and vacuuming the floor for any spare treats anyone else dropped. Just in case.
6. Looking at herself in the mirror. Because she’s such a princess you know.
7. Making goo goo eyes at that little brown aussie named Charlie.
8. Jumping. Over any kind of jumps those silly humans can devise.
9. Tunnels. Oh tunnels are soooo much fun!
10. Getting told how pretty she is. In case she didn’t already know.
I’m supposed to ask ten of our closest dog friends to think about 10 things they love…but I don’t think I have ten dog friends that haven’t already been asked by Essex and Deacon…so if any of you want to jump at the chance to share your favorite things…well, Katie and I would enjoy reading about them!
Katie update
It’s been three weeks or so since we had the animal behaviorist in to tell us what to do with Katie’s idiosyncrasies. We’ve been keeping her off the furniture including the bed but we haven’t been very consistent with pulling Kleenex out of the box to desensitize her. It really takes two of us to do this and we just can’t seem to coordinate the training time. Even though neither of us has a real job at the moment.
So anyway, no more of this for Katie:
Or this:
Poor puppy.
Katie is so smart. She knew right away what the new rules were and after the first night really didn’t try to jump up on the bed often. At least not when we were looking. I came home once and watched through the window of the front door as she casually jumped off the sofa to greet me. So I’m not so naive as to think she follows the rules when we’re not around.
She has a big pillow bed in the living room that she flings herself down on and pouts on when she wants something that we won’t give her. Or when we tell her to get “OFF!” a chair on the few occasions she gives furniture another try in hopes that we’ve forgotten the rule. In the bedroom she has two bed pillows with one of my T shirts on top that she sleeps on. It’s right next to the bed and she goes there on her own, curls up and sighs when I go to sleep at night. Later in the night she migrates to the hallway floor and then back onto her pillows depending on her mood. But she won’t jump on the bed unless she’s scared about something; say the noise of her dad shoveling the driveway, or some carpenter guys banging away in the living room. She also has her crate, which she runs to when she thinks we’re getting ready to go anywhere scary. Like the vet or something. As we pick up car keys she slinks down the hall and into her crate where she will wait us out, not leaving it until she hears us walk out the door. It’s her super safe place and I won’t pull her out of there, even if I did want her to go with me. I take the time to entice her out because I don’t want her to feel she doesn’t have anywhere special to be safe.
Speaking of vets, Katie developed diarrhea last Saturday evening and by Monday when it had only gotten worse I called the vet. We got in on Tuesday morning and it turns out she has a bacterial virus. So for now she’s getting yogurt in with her food. And a daily antibacterial pill with a treat. She loves both! Today there was improvement in her stool, not normal, but a lot better. But the vet said no school this week, so we are missing a night of agility and a morning of rally. Oh well. She’s feeling better so that’s all that matters.
What a princess.
Wanna play Frisbee?
It’s sunny today and already 13 degrees out! Can’t waste a perfectly beautiful Saturday. So I asked …”Hey Katie…wanna play Frisbee?
Well, like any good young Sheltie she was immediately up for it. She hopped around so much it was hard to put her leash on. And once outside and off the leash…well…it was time for CRAZY DOG! She could hardly stand it until I threw the frisbee the first time. Then she ran as fast as she could, heading across the snow covered yard. With the sun in her eyes she didn’t catch the frisbee, which caused her to growl at it. But she brought it right back to me without her “victory lap” that she usually takes around me before she’ll hand it off. This time she wanted me to throw it right away. So I did.
Do you see her waaaaay out there?
Here she comes!
Throw it again Mom! Throw it again!
Silly girl.
YES!
It’s 7 degrees out this morning. But the sun is shining and in the front of the house there is little wind. And Katie was going nuts inside. So I got the board out and we started working on getting her to go UP the slope. I started with it flat on the driveway, butted up against the front porch’s two steps. No problem. She’ll run back and forth all happy, eager for her treat.
I slipped one end up on the first step which is really low. No problem, she runs back and forth, leaping up onto the porch and grinning.
I slipped the end up to the top step. She ran down it just like always, turned around and ran back up it before she realized it was higher. YEA!!! I gave her LOTS of treats. She ran back down. Got a treat. Turned around and balked. Silly girl. You just did this!
Finally got her to go up half the board, jumping on from the middle…then a bit later she accidently ran up all of it, eager for the treat. YEA!!!! I gave her LOTS of treats. Then she balked again.
Sigh.
After much tempting she sort of just said “oh what the heck” and ran up the board, turned around and basically said: “OK, is THAT WHAT YOU WANT MOM?!” She got LOTS of treats.
Then we went inside before she had a chance to balk again. And to warm up my fingers. We’ll try again later this afternoon. They expect we’ll get to a high of 17. Heat wave.
Wordless Wednesday
Guess that hint of spring is over now
We’ve had pretty warm temps, in the high 30’s and low 40’s…once even into the high 40’s (!) for several days now. Maybe a couple of weeks, but I’ve been too busy to notice. It was just starting to sink in that it was nice outside and Katie and I should get ourselves over to the park. But apparently yesterday was the last warm day. Today was rather warm in the morning and it’s been downhill since. This afternoon it started to snow, bigger and bigger flakes came down.
Katie and I went to check things out. She was immediately attracted to the falling snow, trying to catch the snowflakes in her mouth. Silly girl. We go through this every time it starts to snow; I have to explain that she can’t catch all the falling snow, or eat all the drifts in her yard. But still she tries.
Agility update
Katie, her Daddy and I went to our second beginning agility class tonight. Katie has been wound up like a top all day and I didn’t have high expectations for class. I wasn’t wrong, at least at first. They started out with the dogwalk and she was having none of that. There were only three of in the class at first, and three instructors, so one of them took us aside and wanted to work with her on the wobble board.
This is when I had a memory flash of Dianna’s blog where she said she should have listened to herself rather than let an instructor tell her what to make Miley do on the table. I know that the wobble board was what got Katie totally freaked out last week. So when the instructor tonight suggested we use it to get Katie desensitized to the dogwalk I said NO. I told her it had caused Katie to shut down last week. So the very nice instructor went and got a blue board that sat flat on the floor and a lower table, and I worked with Katie to first touch and then get on those. It took awhile and a lot of chicken, but eventually she would sit on the blue board, then on the low table. By the end of the class she’d jump on the taller table.
She never did walk the dogwalk, but she’ll put her front feet on the yellow part. And she’ll do the same for the A-frame. She just won’t put her back feet on anything! The teeter? Well, she’ll quickly put ONE paw on it and then take it right back off then look to me for a treat. She’s so funny! I guess she’s right, she did touch it! LOL!
They also introduced a longer tunnel, the tire and the chute. She loves tunnel and jumps and only balked at the tire a few times. I think that was more me than her, she wasn’t always sure where she was supposed to jump with it. I was worried that she wouldn’t do the chute, but she was on a roll running through stuff, so even when they dropped the chute on her she ran through. I don’t think she’s ready to just charge through it without someone holding it open yet, but she sure didn’t show any fear.
In fact, I think she had a blast today. We made sure to make it all fun and not force her to do anything. We’re going to be working on our board in the driveway. This past week I got her to walk it a couple times, mostly though she’d rather avoid it. I did use Marie’s suggestion with the board that if she touched it I threw the treat away from the board to alleviate stress. She doesn’t seem as afraid of it as she used to be. If I can get her to run it regularly this week I’ll raise it up a tiny bit see how that goes.
Tomorrow is our rally class. I used obedience/rally stuff tonight to warm Katie up and she was spot on. Maybe tomorrow will be a great class too! After that husband and I are going to the North American Auto Show. We haven’t been in years. Should be fun.
Change Is Hard 