Raven’s new collar arrived.  She looks lovely in it.  Here she is posing with her sister’s tail.

My pivot teaching is going along.  Raven and Dudley are the subjects for this, my first time at teaching this.   I took a couple of days off recently on teaching this, and returned to it last night.  The days off seemed to have helped.  Dudley, especially, knows what to do.  We are at a point now where he will go back and forth in both directions with absolutely no luring by me.  So my next step is to get him to swing around all the way in both directions and name them.  Or name the direction then get him to swing all the way around.

Raven is understanding, too, but she is very impatient and not as thoughtful.  Her whole thought is to get the treat, and often knocks her stool over and huffs and puffs because she’s not getting treats fast enough.  When she does take the treats, she snaps at them.  Last night I thought about working on her treat taking more.   She seems to know what I want, but I need to get her out of 5th gear and into a more controllable speed.  But we are getting there.  It just shows you what patience and perseverance can do.

Here’s Leissl in her new spring/Easter collar.  Lovely girlie girl!

Our Recaller’s 02 training is moving along splendidly.  Well, OK, mostly.  Last night we did an exercise where I had to run away from the dogs.  I’m doing this mostly for Dudley, but add Raven into the mix, too, but maybe she doesn’t really need it.  Running away from Dudley was fine.  He is a normal dog.  But Raven?  Before I get any speed, she’s passing me.  And so I tried to go faster last night, and therein lies the mistake.  I got a kink in my knee only known to me after I got up from a chair later in the night.  I stretched it out and it’s better today, but why do I never learn?  I cannot out power Raven.  Not in tugging, not in running, not in barking.  She’s just an over-the-top dog, and I’m not.

Well, did I say Dudley was normal?  I mis-spoke.  Ha!  He’s a character, and he is also stubborn and is giving me a hard time about tugging.  I have decided to put him on a kibble only diet and work harder on stuffing the Tug-It with something scrumptious so he’ll sink his teeth into it like he’s into this pine cone.  He did tug with me once upon a time with the Tug It, but now he follows me as if he is barely interested, and will lick the thing instead of biting into it and tugging.  These dogs are nothing if they don’t keep us on our toes trying to keep one step ahead of them.

On another note, my favorite collar making person, Lisa Ruiz who made the collars pictured here, is cutting her line in half.  She is taking the leather option off the table as of April 16.  She makes gorgeous collars of all types, but the leather is hard on her wrists and she can’t do it anymore.  But through the 15th of this month, she is taking leather orders at 20% off using coupon code Leather20 at checkout.   Lisa’s website is collarmania.com.

Mimi is doing very well.  She’s been spayed and had 14 days wearing a lamp shade collar, which was not fun.  It was necessary, though, because as soon as she woke up from the anesthesia, she was ready to bite on her stitches.  I took the stitches out myself, and she was very compliant as long as I was handing over those treats.  The vet used metal stitches.  Ouch.  I’m just glad that is done.  Since then, and I shall knock on wood, she hasn’t been pulling my clothes off to chew on them.  Maybe those two weeks trapped in a lamp shade broke her of that habit.  I want to do Crate Games with her this weekend.

One of my extravagances is playing lotteries.  Florida has several:  Fantasy Five, Mega Money, Lotto, and Power Ball are four of them.  I just want to make a note of a very odd occurrence in Mega Money.

3/25/11  – 6 – 23 – 32 – 36  MB  18
there was just one drawing in between, and here are the numbers on
4/1/11  –  7 – 23 – 32 – 36  MB 17

I am sure that statistically something like that happening is astronomical.  It’s also very annoying.  🙂  I pick my numbers and would never pick something like that after those numbers were drawn so recently.  I guess it was truly an April Fool’s kind of drawing and the balls were playing the joke on us.