training and vacationing

During the summer, I spent most of my dog training time at home. I was all over the place with my research - literally from Ottawa to Bracebridge to Niagara - as well as trying to pick up hours at work, so decided against any classes.

However, Piper and I are back in the saddle! We are currently enrolled in the Jumpworks class at Companion Dog Training, which teaches us common jump combinations and exposes us to different manuvers such as front and rear crosses. Piper just adores it, I think if she could jump all day long, she would!

We also enrolled in a 3 hour workshop at Companion called Games for Obedience that took place last Saturday. We learned a few tricks, and fun things to do while training to keep it fun. Most of it seemed to be to throw in variations when you're teaching things like heeling and jumping, so they don't know what to expect and to teach them to recover if they don't do it quite right the first time. Piper had cut her foot at the cottage a few days before, but seemed to be ok so I took her anyways. She is not quite healed enough to run around off-leash, but I am leash walking her still. Anyways, we very much enjoyed the workshop, and look forward to continue to practice our heeling. I also want to bring out the dumbbell again, and our scent recognition tubes, as we haven't worked with those in a long time.

The next class I would like to take is Attention One, however I am running out of money, so will probably have to wait until I get a full-time job. The jumpworks class was a birthday gift from my parents.

There are however a few meets coming up, including the Monster Match (also at Companion) about a month from now. The run obedience, rally, and agility fun matches - I will probably take both Ace and Piper. My friends have asked me to help them teach their yellow lab some Rally, so maybe I will enter Rogue as well!

As mentioned, we spent a few days at the cottage last week with my sister Rebecca, who flew out to Thailand on Friday afternoon to spend about 6 months teaching English. We had a relaxing few days, and were quite entertained by Ace, Piper, Archie, Morgan, and my parent's dog Toby.

Ace and Piper racing to get the ball in the water. Ace always wins.

Swimming back with the ball.

Piper standing on the beach, waiting for me to throw the ball.

Toby, looking cute!

Piper looking expectantly at the camera. "Can I run yet?"

Ace taking a break from swimming. It does happen! Usually so he can poop.

morgan

Greeting Blog Readers!

I would like to introduce Morgan, little annoying kitten extrordinaire!

Morgan, at 9 weeks old.

Morgan was born June 9th, and taken to the Kitchener Humane Society when he was about 5 weeks old. A kind citizen had found him and taken him there. I adopted him on August 10.

Morgan spent his first two weeks in and out of a 42" dog crate, learning to conduct himself among the dogs, and giving him some time for Archie to adjust to his presence. The separation was worth it, Morgan has now fit in almost seamlessly.

Morgan playing with a shoelace on the bed.

He curls up with the Aussies, snoozing and playing with their long fur. He plays with Archie (who I was most worried about), jumping on him and chasing his tail. Archie is a pretty good sport about it, occasionally complaining, but for the most part being very stoic about it. I think a few times Archie has even initiated the play, and I have caught them curled up together a few times.

Morgan curled up with Piper... he loves his Aussies!

Morgan has the loudest purr I've ever heard, he sounds like a regular little motor boat! I was thinking the other day we should have called him Evinrude. He spent most of last night curled up in bed with me.

What a sweetheart!