Teamwork

 

I have been teaching a class called Teamwork since the fall of 2021. I designed the class to be a bridge between beginner obedience classes and more advanced classes focused on dog sports such as rally, scentwork, and agility.

The curriculum of beginner obedience as it is taught at the club is heavily focused on heeling, which is taught by having dogs and handlers practice heeling over and over and over. Not very exciting.

When handlers moved into one of the sports tracks after beginner obedience, they didn’t have any idea how to train their dogs. They didn’t know anything about learning theory, positive reinforcement, operant conditioning, shaping, how to use a clicker…really, they only thing they had been taught up to that point was to put a pinch collar on their dogs and pop the leash hard when the dog didn’t do what they wanted.

For the most part, the sports dog training world has moved on from such antiquated, punishment-based training. There are holdouts—many field dogs (retrievers, spaniels, and the like) and personal protection dogs are trained with pinch collars, shock collars, and hard leash corrections. A lot of formal obedience trainers still use punishment, unfortunately including most of the instructors of the club’s beginner obedience classes. The rest of the dog training world moved on decades ago.

Although there are rumblings for change amongst younger club members, we aren’t going to change those old school obedience trainers for a while yet. They are dying off though, so time is on our side.

I firmly believe that you can’t build a relationship with your dog through punishment. Rewarding the dog’s good choices and restricting their options to make bad choices by managing the training environment is a lot of work. But I don’t think you can be successful in any dog sport if the primary method of communication with your dog is through punishment and pain.

I designed the Teamwork class to fill that gap. In 8 short weeks, handlers learn how to communicate consistently and clearly with their dogs, and the dogs learn that their handlers are now reliable sources of information and rewards.

I teach Teamwork four times a year. The class always fills. Most of the students are not members of the club, although club members who do agility always take my class when they get a new puppy. These folks generally already know how to train dogs, so I’m flattered that they trust me to help them. The intense focus on training the handlers in Teamwork requires close observation and one-on-one work so I always have an assistant instructor.

The class moves at a fast pace. We push the handlers pretty hard. The dogs come along for the treats and praise so they don’t feel the same pressure. For most of the teams, the switch flips around week 4 (if they are doing their homework) and the growing partnership is obvious in class. The dogs are no longer looking around the room. Their focus is on their handler as they wait for the next fun game to be revealed. The handlers are praising and rewarding their dogs regularly, sometimes for just sitting quietly by their side. It’s really fun to see the relationship develop.

But some dogs come into Teamwork with significant deficits: anxiety, no relationship with the owners, no tolerance for commotion, fear of other people and dogs. Those dogs can’t even approach a cone, much less walk around it. They won’t take treats from me (and I always have better treats than their owners). They may be stuck to the ground, unable to even move.

These dogs deserve the same opportunities to learn how to work with their owners as their more resilient classmates. As long as they keep coming to class, I’m happy to meet them where they are. I put them in a quieter corner. I ask the owner to bring better food rewards. Dog is scared of the tippy board? The handler can still learn to shape if the dog works on a platform. Dog is scared of the platform? Don’t be afraid to lure the dog with a treat. Reward the dog for taking even a tiny step forward. Heck, reward the dog for simply looking at the platform.

Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Don’t force the dog. Find the place where the dog will work and start there.

And these handlers and dogs also find success by the end of the class. Seeing the faces of the handlers light up when their dog finally puts both front paws on the perch bowl or goes around the cone without a lure is worth the extra effort it took to get them there. Being kind is rarely the wrong choice. 

 

Ice Storm Hijinks

 It has been a warm, dry winter in central Arkansas this year but January is always full of surprises. Last weekend, we got hit with a thinning edge of the big storm that affected so much of the rest of the country. Arkansas is not prepared for ice and predictions were dire. I stockpiled water and food and staged blankets and crates in the upstairs guest room in case we lost power and I needed to set up a warm room. Since I don't eat much processed food, I cooked for a couple of days and filled all my food containers. 

We didn't lose power or water, thankfully, but we did get hit with three separate deposits of sleet and ice. The dogs are okay with going outside on their own but when it was o'dark thirty and blowing horizontal ice, Frankie had to be pushed. They did a lot of their business directly under the deck.  

The storm had mostly finished by Sunday morning so I opened the garage door to assess the situation. I found a 2 foot tall, 3 foot tall berm of ice snugged up against the length of the garage door. I obviously wasn't getting the car out until that was gone. It took me 3 hours of shoveling to move the berm. 

 

 While I was out there, I did some exploratory chipping and shoveling a little farther out on the driveway to see what I was dealing with. It didn't look good. Since it was mostly ice, the snow shovel wasn't rigid enough. I had to stab down with a regular shovel to break it apart then use the same shovel to move the chunks.

 

The weather on Monday was clear and sunny. I waited until around noon then spent 4 hours clearing the upper half of the driveway. My driveway is long with a slope to the street. This took another 4 hours of work with the regular shovel. The ice was too thick and the chunks were too heavy to move with the snow shovel. It was quite tedious. I finished the job on Tuesday and spread some grit I had left over from my wall projects on the remaining patches of ice. The street was still impassable but that was going to take more than my efforts to resolve.  

 

The fox terriers were running around in the backyard across the top of the ice like Legolas from LOTR, leaving no footprints. We went out every afternoon and played fetch with a tennis ball. It was very cold but sunny and clear. 

With time, the ice compacted down to a glass-smooth surface. So yesterday, when Frankie blasted down the deck stairs and headed out to make her usual perimeter run, she slipped and fell on her side. She had a lot of momentum and started sliding across the sort-of flat middle part of the yard, bounced off the top of a rock wall (I thought for sure she would fall over the edge), and finally slid to a stop against a tree. She easily covered 50-60 feet on her side. She stood up, gave herself a shake then very carefully began to make her way back up to the deck stairs. Since my seat in hell is already reserved with an embossed place card, I was on the deck doubled over with laughter for the entire performance. 

 

Train the Trainer

In early 2022, I began teaching a new class at the club. Handlers that were moving into the agility track (Intro to Agility, Beginner Agility, etc.) from Beginner Obedience weren't working with their dogs as a team. The handlers had no idea how to train a dog. Sure, they could drag a dog in a circle around a ring indoors on lead and maybe they stuffed a few treats in its mouth now and then but they weren't really communicating with their dogs. I thought, here's a knowledge gap that I think I can fill.

When I first proposed the class, to be held on Sunday mornings inside the club, the reaction of the old guard was so extreme that you would have thought I had proposed slaughtering puppies on their own front lawns. The inside of the club was sacrosanct, to be reserved for clean obedience training (of course, based on punishment), not dirty training with treats! The club had never offered classes on the weekends! Training with clickers would disturb other people who needed to train indoors! The wailing, the gnashing of teeth, and the rending of garments was extreme. 

So I spent several weeks going to the club on Sunday mornings and documenting exactly who was using it and what they were doing. It was empty, week after week.

I resubmitted my proposal and was grudgingly granted permission to teach this new class for one session, with said permission given provisionally, ready to be yanked back if there were "problems." The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse didn't make an appearance during those 8 weeks, so I kept going. 

I just finished the thirteenth 8-week session of my class. I guess weekend classes weren't such a bad idea after all because there are now Puppy Kindergarten, Beginner Obedience, and Scent Work classes offered on Saturday and Sunday in addition to mine. 

The class is called Teamwork. It's all about teaching handlers how to communicate with their dogs consistently and reliably. I use positive training methods and actively discourage negative markers and punishment. I teach handlers about rate and placement of rewards, how to use a clicker, and how to train behaviors with luring, targets, and shaping. Most of the exercises are flatwork, done with no equipment. As their skills progress, I add exercises with cones, platforms, and perch bowls. After 8 weeks, if they are paying attention and working at home between classes, the handlers and their dogs can execute all sorts of things that they will actually use in agility, obedience, and rally. 

What's so interesting about the class is that all of the training is for the handlers--but they don't know that at first. I mean, some dogs are a bit rambunctious and excited but what I am asking the dogs to do is pretty simple. Most dogs pick up the exercises right away. 

The origin of the idea for this class goes all the way back to the teaching I was doing in Saudi. I saw then that I could make a meaningful difference by helping pet owners communicate better with their dogs. It morphed to have more of an agility focus, of course, but the essential idea is the same. Owners that are reliable and predictable in how they communicate and reward their dogs will elicit reliable and predictable behaviors from their dogs.

The course content has evolved, of course. The addition that I am most proud of is what I now set up for the last class of each session: a series of exercises using hoops. Hoops are an agility obstacle used by the agility organization NADAC. Hoops don't require any jumping--the dog runs through them (see the picture below). I built four hoops to NADAC specs.

 

 

I start the last class by letting handlers introduce their dogs to the hoops by navigating a simple circle through them. Each sequence gets more complex and requires more handling. By the end of the hour, handlers and their dogs navigate a 10-obstacle sequence with hoops and cones and side changes. 

 

This is a course map. Squares are 10 x 10 feet. The shaded dots are cones. The oval things are the hoops. Obstacles are performed as numbered. 

 

Most of the students taking Teamwork have never competed in organized dog sports. They've maybe heard of agility or rally and maybe want to take more classes. They usually come to me with no more training than a session of Beginner Obedience. But after 8 weeks of Teamwork, they are successfully completing a short obstacle course. 

I developed Teamwork to be a bridge from Basic Obedience into one of the performance sports. Is it working? Well, last night, the Intro to Agility instructor announced at the Board meeting that she wanted to make Teamwork a prerequisite for her class. She said that handlers who had taken Teamwork understand how to train a dog, and that it was night and day obvious who had taken my class and who hadn't. Teamwork students are more successful and advance more quickly in her class.

I couldn't be more pleased. It's validating to have an instructor I like and trust to explicitly say, Teamwork has a measurable, positive impact. Let's have more of it!

I love teaching agility, and many of my agility students become great training partners. But Teamwork is my passion project. I am lucky that I have the opportunity to share that passion.

Return of CircusK9

 Hi. I'm back. It's been a while. I didn't post too often when I was in school, because I didn't have the mental bandwidth to think or write about anything else. And the past three years? I've been settling into my new career. Lots of things have happened in my little world and in the bigger world outside in that time. 

I decided it was time to dust the blog off and put some more effort into it. CircusK9, by title and design, is supposed to be about my dogs. But I'm sure some interesting veterinary stories will creep in now and then.

Let's start the restart with some thoughts about teaching. For the past several years, I've been teaching classes at the local dog club. I gravitated to intermediate agility quickly, and have stayed put there. I don't like teaching rank beginners (I honestly don't have the patience for it, although that is what I did in Saudi with Mimi), and there is already a solid instructor who teaches advanced agility. 

Intermediate level handlers and dogs can see very quick growth in skills if they apply themselves. I get a lot of satisfaction from teaching them--who doesn't like to be successful? Some of my students have been with me for over 2 years and I have gradually pushed them to handling and training at an advanced level. Frankie is in my class and there are plenty of weeks when the material is too advanced for her right now. But it's the level of challenge that several of the other students need. 

I read books. I listen to podcasts. I sign up for online seminars and webinars. I subscribe to two (expensive) training programs (Bad Dog Agility and Agility Nation) so I can keep up with new training protocols and get ideas for classes. I even keep a Facebook account solely to get access to course maps. I put a lot of my own time and money into making sure I am delivering useful and current agility training information. 

I also teach a class that I created back in 2020 that I call Teamwork. I saw a big gap between the formal, old-school obedience classes that formed the bulk of the club's class offerings and introductory rally and agility classes. Handlers were coming into those dog sport tracks without any understanding of how to train a dog. Teamwork is all about training the handler and teaching them how to communicate consistently with their canine partner. The dogs come along for the ride, and they just love it. In contrast to the old-school obedience training offered at the club, I only use positive training methods and high rates of reward/reinforcement. No pinch collars. No electric shocks. No leash yanking. No verbal corrections. Sounds reasonable to you? I can assure you, Teamwork is still viewed as subversive and radical, even after five years. I also upset the old guard by insisting that I teach it on Sunday mornings inside the building. Wailing, gnashing of teeth, and rending of garments ensued. What if someone decided they needed to train at 10am on a Sunday? How could they possibly do that if I was teaching a class? Turns out all those folks who said Teamwork would cut into their training time don't actually come to the club on weekends. I collected the data to prove it. That space was viewed as sacred, only to be used to punish, er, train dogs for formal obedience competition. Here I was, jumping around, treats flying, clickers clicking, dogs and handlers happy as clams. Subversive indeed. 

I teach Teamwork 5 or 6 times a year in 8-week sessions. It is one of the most popular classes offered at the club. The class fills every session with club members and non-members both. I get rave instructor reviews.

I love teaching agility. I find it exciting and challenging. But I really love teaching Teamwork. Usually around week 4, the shift in the relationship between dogs and handlers becomes obvious. I love seeing that. 

Four of the old guard are taking Teamwork from me this coming session with their young dogs. I think they know, in their dark, cold hearts, that I am right, that positive training is the correct and ethical way to train. I've alerted my assistant instructor that we are in for a wild ride. I absolutely will call them out if they revert to their punishment-based training methods in my class. But I have to give them a tiny bit of credit for being willing to brave me and sign up for it.

 Teaching revives me. It is an important social activity as well as one that gives me emotional and intellectual satisfaction. I teach because I like to learn. I succeed when my students succeed. I guess that's why they keep signing up.

 

Frankie

It's time to lay out some of Frankie's origin myth. 

Oh, who's Frankie, you ask? She is the smooth fox terrier puppy I picked up over the Fourth of July weekend in 2022. She was only 10 weeks old at the time, and the last of her litter. I had some reservations about both of those facts but decided to load up Archie and Azza and drive out to northwestern Arkansas to see her. Her breeder was registered with AKC, and told me this was her last litter of smooths. She and her husband were switching over to whippets. I met the sire and dam and both seemed in good health and good conformation. The sire was a finished champion. 

And there was the puppy, a scrap of a thing, by herself in an expen under the shade of a tree. She willingly tugged with a raccoon tail toy I brought with me and seemed quite feisty and healthy. She had a lazy left eye and the usual "carousel horse" planes to her head that you see in American-bred smooth fox terrier lines. 

I had really wanted another male puppy. Male smooth fox terriers tend to be more biddable and willing to please. The females tend to challenge everything, making them harder to train. Archie is a dream of a companion and agility partner, and I was sort of hoping that I could strike gold again with another male. 

But nope, that wasn't happening. This little pup was coming home with us: last of the litter, runt, lazy eye, female. So many things that weren't on my list. But she had a spark that drew me in right away.

I named her Frankie. 

She's still a tiny thing, 16 lb and about 15" at the shoulder. Her lazy eye mostly resolved on its own. It will show up now and then but casual observers would never notice it.

In the past year and a half, Frankie has proven herself over and over to be one of the most challenging fox terriers I've ever worked with. At every waking moment, she vibrates, levitates, with energy. She never stops moving. She wants to be touching me all the time. She is exceptionally bold and oblivious to personal safety. As a result, she and Archie have never been in the same space together, although they do interact across gates in doorways.  

Azza fell into the role of auntie after a couple of weeks of cautious observation. Azza didn't embrace Frankie as quickly as she did Archie, but she eventually came around. Amazingly, Frankie can regularly inspire a lot of play in my 12-year-old desert dog. 

 

 

Frankie is a foreign body surgery looking for a holiday weekend. She eats toys, bedding, sticks, acorns, small stones. She chewed the handle and snap off a 6-foot nylon leash and swallowed almost 3 feet of it. Following a panicked call to a vet school classmate, I dosed her twice with hydrogen peroxide. Once she began to gag, I reached in and pulled out the leash.

Once I realized that I could not monitor her every move outside nor could I train her to stop constantly hoovering up inappropriate things, I ordered a customized basket muzzle that she wears when she is running around the backyard. I had to add some additional strips of duct tape across the bottom because within days she learned she could slam the muzzle down on acorns and pop them into the muzzle so she could eat them. This morning, she still managed to pick up a tree branch (not a twig, a 2-foot long branch) that had fallen overnight by pushing a smaller branchlet sticking off of it into the muzzle.

When I had her spayed earlier this year, she destroyed two cones and the collars holding them, and started to dehisce her abdominal incision within hours of coming home from the clinic. I ended up getting two full-body vests, rotating them every 24 hours so I could wash one, and zoinking her to the moon with alternating trazadone and gabapentin every 4 hours (plus a short course of antibiotics). I had to take three days off work because I couldn't take my eyes off her for a second. 

Frankie is currently taking a novice rally obedience class at the dog training club. One of the other students in the class complimented Frankie on her nice conformation, then gently asked, so, do other smooth fox terriers have a ... similar temperament? I laughed and said, no, Frankie is definitely a unique chaos agent all her own. She is so spicy, so much MORE than I've seen in this breed before.

On the bright side, Frankie sleeps very soundly at night in a crate next to the bed. Goes in without a peep, sleeps a full 8 hours. I'm not surprised--she has to recharge her batteries for another day of mayhem. 

Her agility training has been quite a ride as well. She is comically fast. Think Roadrunner cartoon fast. It has been a challenge for me to learn how to handle her. She gets overstimulated/frustrated very quickly, spinning in circles and jumping up to bite my arm. I'm fortunate to have good training partners and instructors who help us work through these problems. 

Everyone keeps asking me when I will take her into the ring, and I say, she's not ready. Not even close. Archie started competing at 15 months. You could argue that he wasn't quite ready then, but he wasn't hell on wheels either. Frankie and I are still working on performing as a team. But progress is there--in the past 4-5 weeks, she went from only being able to complete 4-5 obstacles before melting down to completing 12-14 obstacles with some semblance of control and direction. I plan to debut her this coming summer when she is 2 years old. She needs a little more tempering.

 

My Money Is On The Shitty Greek Yogurt

On Thursday night, I spent several hours in one of the local vet ERs with Archie. He had been vomiting for about 18 hours, and wasn't keeping any food down. He would eat food but he would vomit it right back up. He was also lethargic and not his usual cuddly, interactive self. I had some bloodwork done just to be prudent (although I declined the pancreatic lipase blood test since hanky panky pancreatitis was pretty low on the differential list). All of his bloodwork was totally normal. He got a shot of maropitant (Cerenia) and was back to his usual bouncy hijinks the next morning. He did have some fairly violent, watery diarrhea the following evening but as far as I can tell, it was only that once.

But then Mimi started vomiting yesterday afternoon. She refused to eat any dinner. During the night, she got me up every hour with dry heaves, producing only a little bit of foamy bile every so often. And boy, was she fighting the nausea. Archie just opened his mouth and bleagh! Out came the food and that was that. Mimi made such a production out of it. We got no sleep at all. Mimi's eyes became sunken and she became slightly wobbly and disoriented. She was drooling and groaning in pain when I had to pick her up or move her. She was passing horrific gas all night and had a bit of bloody diarrhea this morning. So off again we went to the vet ER. We waited for over an hour but they had a couple of emergencies come in so they sent us off to another vet ER.

Poor Mimi was not doing well at all by the time we arrived at the second vet ER. I had full bloodwork run on her too, including the pancreatic lipase test. I was actually more worried about acute kidney disease than pancreatitis but all of her bloodwork came back normal. She got a shot of maropitant too, but we all agreed that she was clinically dehydrated so she got a big slug of subQ fluids. She wasn't quite sick enough to warrant an IV catheter and IV fluids although I was considering it.

I declined abdominal imaging (they suggested rads and I would have also requested ultrasound if possible). But if Mimi doesn't get better by the morning, I will probably have to get this imaging to rule out some pretty scary things such as an abdominal mass (GI lymphoma would be at the top of the list). And we'd probably have to do some aspirates of lymph nodes to go along with that. And we'd also have to get chest rads because lymphoma fucking loves to met to the lungs. What a mess.

Mimi definitely became more sick faster than Archie. Several possibilities could explain that--whatever was making her sick was different than what made Archie sick (unlikely, but possible), and she's old and slightly underconditioned so she doesn't have a lot extra to expend in being sick (most likely).

So let's hope she starts feeling better! She's been resting and seems to have stopped the dry heaving, which is a relief.

What could have caused this? If we assume that both terriers got sick from the same thing, then we have to look at environment and diet. With respect to diet, they eat different kibbles, and I brought their kibble with me from Oregon, so that hasn't changed. But I was not able to find a good quality yogurt to add to their morning meal and was giving them a store-brand greek-style yogurt. Personally, I detest greek yogurt. It is too thick and tastes like paste. I like real, full-fat yogurt with live bacteria, and that is what the terriers have been eating for years (Nancy's brand). I've tossed the shitty greek yogurt and am on the hunt for some decent yogurt that they can eat. They could have become sick from some toxin in the yard. If that were the case, I might expect Azza to show some signs of exposure as well, especially since she spends more time out there than the terriers but so far she seems fine. I did learn from the ER vet this morning that campylobacter infections are somewhat common here and can be passed back and forth in a multi-pet household. Nothing in the test results for either dog suggested an infectious agent but that certainly doesn't rule one out. And of course, the dogs were uprooted from their home and dragged out here and they have no idea what's going on. Stressful for all involved. Right now, our presumptive diagnosis for both is acute (hemorrhagic) gastroenteritis of unknown cause. My money is on the shitty greek yogurt.

I start work tomorrow so all of this has been taking place with fairly crappy timing. More stress for everyone!

Soaking Up the Sun

Here are the dogs in the trash-strewn, tick-infested, mosquito habitat of the backyard. Happy as clams.

Mimi laid down first. Archie stood next to her for a while surveying his domain then stretched out. Azza did a quick perimeter check then joined them. It's really sweet how they like to be together.

They all got a very good brush-down before I let them back in the house.

Getting Old

I've been keeping this blog for over 10 years now, and I could swear I've written a post with this same title. (I in fact did, in December 2011, about Harry.)

I was watching Mimi sleeping the other morning, and I started thinking about all of the places that she has lived: two different houses in Texas, Saudi Arabia, Oregon, and now a new house here in Arkansas. She dipped her toes in the Pacific Ocean and the Arabian Gulf. She has traveled a lot in her long life (2 months shy of 14 years old).

Old age is not a disease. But it certainly comes with relatively inevitable physical and mental changes. Mimi has lenticular sclerosis, a very common thing in older dogs (and people) in which proteins start depositing in the lenses of the eyes. Not cataracts, not associated with disease. Just age. She needs help navigating her world, which unfortunately at the moment changes daily, when light levels are low or there are poor lighting contrasts at doors and stairs. She is also nearly deaf. This is a bit of a blessing--Mimi is so high strung in general that not being able to hear things like neighbor dogs barking or thunder is better for her.

Sadly, Mimi is also starting to lose the thread of things now and then. She is a bit slower to wake up. She can get confused in chaotic settings, made worse because she can't hear verbal cues or reassurances. She is not experiencing dementia but I can see subtle signs of decline.

I also noticed just the other morning that the top of Azza's head and ears are starting to go white. She turned 7 years old in December 2018. She's not even close to being classified as "senior" but she's a larger dog and I'm not surprised to see signs of aging showing up now.

Our companion pets are with us for such a short time. It makes me sad to see them age. Older, maybe a little bit wiser, my dogs (and the Beast cat) have been through so much with me, and I'm grateful that they seem to be willing to keep on going, to see what the next adventure might be.

The Fence!

The lot for the house that I purchased is oddly shaped, like an elongated trapezoid. It is fenced along the property line with old chain link. To put up a 6 foot wooden privacy fence along the entire perimeter would have cost me almost $9,000! That's a lot of money that I don't have. I decided to fence half of it, getting 6-foot tall sides and a shorter, four-foot section across the middle. Eventually I will fence all of it but this keeps the dogs safe and allows me to pretend that the dense, dark jungle of the "lower forty" isn't a problem I need to deal with right now.

This photo doesn't even begin to capture the trashy, underbrushy mess that is most of the backyard. And despite the fact that the fence is the topic of this post, this is the only photo I decided to post showing the nice, new fence. 

And today, after 7 days of hard work by mainly two guys, the fence is completed! They placed it inside the existing chain link, so they only had to remove the parts of the chain link that were visible from the street. They had to do a lot of brush clearing and tree chopping, which contributed to the long job duration. Normally a fence of this size would have been up and done in two days, maybe three.

Anyway, I let the dogs out to investigate their new backyard. It's a real mess--tons of trash, broken glass, rocks, dead trees, brush, dead leaves. It hasn't been cared for in quite a while. No poison ivy that I've seen yet. Of course I'm worried about snakes but I bought a big bag of SnakeAway granules at Home Depot that I plan to put out on Sunday. Having the fence guys tramping around for a week helps too--snakes don't like that kind of commotion. They said they didn't see any but I remain vigilant. The AT&T internet guy told me that he's mostly seen black rat snakes, and those are the good kind of snakes. Even so, I think I want them far away along with the venomous ones. And the gnats and mosquitos and flies are horrible, but I can't spray for those until I get some of the brush and leaves cleared up. A big job, that's for sure.

Enjoying some time on the deck at last.

Road Trip Part 2: Starting to Settle In

I still haven't put my bed together although I hauled the futon upstairs to the bedroom. The space is slowly starting to come together. Unloading the trailer didn't take long, but it took me two days before I was able to get the kitchen clean enough, and before I was able to find all of the requisite equipment to make some coffee.

I've been getting the place cleaned and organized before the PODS arrive on Monday. I've got a week to unload them, plus another week after that to at least partially unpack before I start my new job.

This cheerful space will be my office. I finally got internet set up last night. 

I think you can tell that one of my priorities was dog beds!

The cat has finally starting showing up regularly for meal times, and is sleeping with the rest of us upstairs at night. The fence is not completed, so the dogs have to potty in the front yard on leash, and they are none too happy about that. They are all still a bit jumpy--the trip was hard on them too, and they are just starting to get used to the new environment. It will take time for all of us to settle in.

Road Trip Part 1: "It Was Fairly Horrible"

So exactly how does one get three dogs and a cat from Oregon to Arkansas? Driving was the best option but it came with some unique risks and problems. That's a long trip for just one driver. Plus I was going to pull a 5x8 foot trailer. And my plan wasn't too clear on lodging options. I figured that I would just pack it all up, hit the road, and figure things out on the way.

Taken in Utah.

It was a marathon event. I drove 2350 miles in three days. I did a bit less than 600 miles the first day, just under 900 miles the second day, and around 850 miles the third day. It was fairly horrible.

The cat was not doing well. He was in a large crate with room for a small bed, litter box, and bowl of food, but he was by no means happy or comfortable. He wasn't eating, drinking, or using the litter box, and that can be a big problem for cats. I was worried about him, and decided the sooner we reached Arkansas, the better. I was going to spend the same number of hours on the road, and whether we pushed through in three days or four wasn't going to change that.

And about those sketchy lodging plans? After wasting an hour or more trying to sort out a hotel on the first night (when I was already exhausted), I gave up and slept in the van in an interstate rest stop, buried in a pile of dog blankets and the two terriers. With four crates in the van, there was just enough room for me to sort of stretch out along one side. I could only let the terriers out--no way would I have been able to lie flat and let Azza out too. I did the same thing the second night too. In a way, it was easier. I could feed the dogs in their crates and didn't have to shuffle a hundred bits of crap in and out of a hotel room. Sure, I didn't shower for three days. And it was really cold both nights, around 45F. But I have plenty of dog blankets and the terriers are used to sleeping right next to me. So it worked out.

I stuck to major interstates for 99% of the trip. It was a good plan because I was able to stop often, let the dogs out and stretch my legs.

Here are some random observations from the trip:

• There is a lot of empty country out there. 
• Wyoming is fucking enormous. And empty. But amazingly beautiful. 
• Even after three days, I would look up at the rearview mirror and think, damn, that car behind me is too close, before realizing it was the trailer. I packed the shit out of that trailer. It was about the same size as the van and didn't move an inch even in high winds. 

Dogs along the driver side, cat in the dark red crate. 

• Kansas has the best rest stops I have ever seen. Large grassy areas surrounded by trees, places to pull the van and trailer into the shade, clean bathrooms. 

Enjoying some early morning Kansas sunshine.

• Oklahoma doesn't even bother with interstate rest stops. Disappointing. 
• It takes a pile of five thick fleece dog blankets to muffle the seat attachment brackets on the floor of the van but once they were in place, and I was wrapped in another king-size fleece blanket with two terriers snuggled in with me, I slept pretty comfortably. 

There was snow on the ground at the rest stop outside of Laramie, WY. Mimi is not amused by the cold winter wind. 

• I can't come up with a good reason for this, but with respect to traffic, the east-west corridors were the most empty and the north-south corridors the most crowded. 
• While I can confirm that the coffee culture of the Pacific Northwest has not fully penetrated The Big Empty of the western US, decent coffee can be found. 

So after three days, we arrived at the new house. My bed was in the trailer, but after that trip, I was too exhausted to even contemplate trying to unload anything. Plus we rolled in close to midnight and that's no time to be toting boxes and bales. So I slept on the floor of the house for yet a third night in the same pile of dog blankets, although this time Azza was able to join us.

CircusK9 Update, Long Overdue

During September, I will be traveling for two back-to-back, poultry-related preceptorships. I hope to be able to write more about them later, but for now, I wanted to put up a brief post about the dogs.  I've been so focused on vet school recently that I haven't written much about the general mental and physical state of the pack.

In the past couple of months, I've interviewed 8 or 9 people to see how they would work out for pet-sitting. And as I introduce the dogs to these new people, I am reminded of origin stories that I have sort of forgotten, that have become buried in my other quotidian concerns.

Azza will be 8 years old at the end of this year (she was born near the end of December, 2010). Azza still acts like a puppy for the most part: playful and joyful. In large part, I credit this to the fact that she lives with fox terriers. She is so much more resilient at facing the random events that life throws at her. Not quite a normal dog, but I worry about her much less than I used to.

Mimi is rounding the corner on 13 years, and has lost most of her upper teeth, yet will play fetch with a tennis ball until she drops. She is going deaf, and has started vocalizing nearly continuously, a sort of low moaning sound. Her Parkinsonian-like tremors have become quite extreme, present even when she is at rest, and often while she is sleeping (they only disappear when she is in REM sleep). Despite my advanced training, I can't explain what is wrong with her. She is not ataxic, she knows exactly where her body is in space, she has no muscle weakness, and she has no pain from this disease. She does have two lumps that I plan to have my vet poke (technically, collect a fine-needle aspirate from them). I am fairly sure they are lipomas, but it is better to be sure. They have nothing at all to do with her tremors.

From the day that I brought Archie home, Azza has been convinced that I did so for her. Whenever I go looking for them inside or outside the house, I invariably find them together, touching paws or laying side by side. They are true partners in crime, always looking for trouble.

Archie is a spoiled little monster, and I love every second of it. It was a bittersweet email that I got from AKC telling me he was ranked the #11 smooth fox terrier in AKC agility this year. He doesn't even have a single double-Q to his name! And this entire year will be a holiday from both training and trialing. A fourth-year vet student has some downtime, but not that much. It was clear from our last few trials that he needed a bit more maturing, so this "gap year" may not be the worst thing that could happen to his agility career. I am focusing instead on building my relationship with him. I must admit that I ignored some basic training in favor of driving him forward in agility. Time for re-collection.

A Lighter Note

Just look at this ridiculous dog.

I know that dropping to the ground and showing the belly is a submissive posture for dogs, and that's certainly part of why Azza does it, but she also loves belly rubs and has learned that this behavior can also serve as an invitation for that.

Archie in a second-floor windowsill. He knows there are many bunnies lurking in the garden below so he is taking advantage of his expanded view of the landscape.

CircusK9: File Under "Never A Dull Moment"

Hijinks and hilarity are the rule, not the exception, at CircusK9. I have two stories to illustrate and amuse. 

The first story is about Archie. He loves to play--he plays with the cat, with Azza, with his toys, with me. When I am studying, he brings me toys one by one, hoping that maybe this one will entice me to play since the one he brought me five minutes earlier did not. I've written before about looking up from my books and notes and computer to find myself surrounded by a sea of dog toys, so many that I have to move them out of the way to move my chair. 

Often when he is super stimulated during toy play, he carries his toys into Azza's or Mimi's crate, or to the two dog beds by my study area. He proceeds to ruck up the bedding, vigorously pulling it up and back with his front paws, with the general aim of burying his treasure within. He can completely turn over all of the bedding in the process, and in the case of the dog beds, move them several feet across the room. He will also bury his antlers like this. So every morning, while the dogs are eating breakfast, I go around to all the crates and dog beds to straighten out the bedding and remove all of Archie's stashed toys and antlers. 

The other morning while I was straightening up the dog things, I was completely taken aback to find this:

That is a picture of an antler and a plush toy carefully placed on the cat's scratching box. In case you are thinking, "pfft, carefully placed--that was just an accident", I will tell you that I removed them and a different antler and two different toys were on the scratching box the next morning. Archie deliberately stashed his treasure there.

There are several levels of silliness here. I have no idea why Archie gets so much pleasure out of burying his toys--he never retrieves them so I think it is the act of moving everything around that he likes. He never puts toys in his own crate. The terriers regularly take snoozes in any available crate or bed, but they absolutely know which crate is theirs. While the cat doesn't use a crate, Archie sees him use the scratch box every day. I can only assume that Archie logically translated this as "cat's special place, good for stashing treasure." Makes perfect sense.

The second story is about Archie and the cat. I don't free-feed Beast--every meal is measured out. Thus he is convinced that he will starve and blow away like a bit of fluff, and he is constantly, and loudly, on the lookout for things he can eat. The compost bucket is a regular stop on his rounds although I've learned to put the lid on it when I put things like eggshells in there. He will come to the kitchen and beg just like the dogs when I am preparing dinner, although I have a low tolerance for that behavior and chase them all out after a few minutes. 

Last night, I carved out an hour to make some real food. I sliced up half a sweet onion, peeled and cubed an eggplant, and cleaned, trimmed, and cut up three chicken thighs into thumb-sized chunks (when you are in vet school, you learn that when you manage to find time to cook, you cook big, enough for several meals, because you don't know when you'll have time again). I put all of that deliciousness into a saucepan with olive oil, salt, black pepper, and basil, gave it a bit of a stir, and turned on the burner. Suddenly, and now I can't even remember exactly why, I had to run back to the bedroom for something. It seemed necessary at the time. I was only gone for a few seconds. 

I returned to the kitchen just in time to see the cat leaping off the stove with a piece of raw chicken dangling from his mouth. A piece of raw chicken he pulled directly from the heating saucepan. Little fucker. Archie was waiting below, jaws open like a crocodile--he is a very alert terrier and knows when the cat is up to something. The cat leaped over his head, hit the floor, and the chase was on. The cat was so frantic to take his treasure into the bedroom and under the bed, and Archie was so equally frantic to take the raw chicken from the cat's mouth, that they were bouncing off each other, off walls, off corners, off furniture, like pinballs. Archie was growling, the cat was growling, I was laughing so hard I could barely stand up. 

I grabbed a flashlight, ran to the bedroom (yo, a nod to earthquake preparedness here, I have flashlights stashed all over the place), and dropped to the floor to watch it all play out. I sleep on a platform bed so Archie was not as maneuverable in that low space as the cat was but he sure gave it his all. In the end, the cat managed to choke down the piece of raw chicken before Archie could take it from him. Archie had to console himself with licking up drool and juice from the floor.

Never, ever a dull moment.