Gone with the winddddddd

Apparently my want or motive to train THE princess has been blown away in all this wind we have been having!

It doesn't have to do with the lack of skill THE princess has because she is definitely a great little worker, but I think from what I have gathered after thinking about it is that I just like her as a companion SO much ;)

Everyday she makes me laugh with her crazy faces , the things she does, or the even the naughtiness she comes up with! She's definitely one of those dogs that I could just sit and watch all day long do whatever she does and be perfectly content!

However, she would probably not agree with me so much on no agility! She likes agility now and thinks it is a lot of fun! She loves tunnels, thinks it is super funny to scoot and break her startline, and to run around jumps because it is the fastest way :D

I have truly been in ZERO rush to get her started. I mean honestly at this point the girl can do a jump maybe two in a row without going around, tunnels, and a table successfully :) She has just started weave pole training, and still only does a teeter raised on one end, and I haven't worked her running contact training in months! Sure she is turning 18 months at the end of May and would AGE wise be able to compete, but everything concerning she isn't ready! I am sure she will make a debut this year at some point, it will probably be in jumpers because then I don't have to teach her as many things..lol..lazy I know! I really don't have any worries though of her being different at a trial- AMP has been to SOO many trials and cares so little about really anything but me that I don't see it being an issue! I am sure she will as most dogs do have issues with new equipment, but so what the only way that will be cured is with time and experience- starting her now or later isn't going to really change such things!

I also have changed my training ideas I have had with her a bit since the Daisy Peel seminar. I was getting so caught up in her wrapping and being tight like Jinx is now. I forget that Jinx started out wide and orbitie and THEN I started to tighten things up. SO instead of wrapping I let her wing out and take the jump wide I would rather at this point she be putting in as much drive and focus on just jumping before I am asking her to jump, turn, and wrap too! I want jumping the jump to become natural and subconscious for her first ;)

I guess I should maybe do some stuff with her then and move past just teaching the good ball a bunch of tricks :) I am thinking that a circus is going to be calling us soon wanting AMP as one of their acts :D

Notice her ear hair make an upside down heart in the middle :D

That's just how we roll....

AMP is I like to call figuring out her swagger :)

She is starting to get that thing we call jumping and heck she is just SO good that she can do it out of a tunnel....POW!

Plus she can do weave poles, yes you herd it peeps she can rock those weaves ;) Alright when they are spread apart, but it is the thought that counts :) Besides her general awesome-ness makes it all good :) No big deal or anything!

" That's how I roll" :)

Do I even have to say anything?

I really don't think any words are needed for this- the expression says it all. However if you are somehow missing it-- she is clearly a true princess with her new crate pad that my mother bought her. As if she wasn't already spoiled......

A first!!

AMP has changed lately. She came out of her first heat a little less then a month ago and as most people have said and warned me about she would go through a personality change and probably act different along with other stuff. They were very much correct! Imagine that ;)

She didn't do anything like CRAZY odd, but since I spend a lot of time with my dogs, training, walking, relaxing with them, I pick up on any changes quickly! When she WAS in heat she wasn't bad, but a little less intense and "ohhh other dogs"

Now that she out of heat she is a bit more soft. Not super soft that she can't handle correction or something, maybe a better word would be squishy? ( I love that word..lol) Lately her new thing was that when we tugged she would all of a sudden get this " I am sad"/"I am sorry"/ "poor me" attitude and quit tugging and didn't really have interesting it after that, she just became submissive. weird.

When something goes wrong I go through stages of....AHHHH...then I MUST fix....No I will ignore it and see if it cures it's self....to experimenting....all within a short period of time! Sometimes ignoring cures it, but usually experimenting helps if all else fails- as you would expect.

When this problem occurred...I tried just pretending it didn't happen and get her to join back in-fail, then totally ending the session and walk away and try again later-fail, and then I totally quit and brainstormed-SUCCESS ;)

Today was my first attempt at something new :) I decided to try and be really quiet and to not look at her while I was tugging. I just whispered and looked at the ground while I tapped her around like I always did and she had no issues ;D She actually did GREAT!!! Even got her to do 4 straight jumps in a row :)

For now I am going to run with this idea! I am actually perfectly fine with the idea since it saves my voice and breath :) We will see how it changes once she gets spayed in a couple of weeks!

"Best buds"

Here is AMP with her boyfriend Viper ;) They are best pals and can't wait to go on their tour starting Tuesday!!

The Rockstar

So as I have said before AMP has a doggie boyfriend :)

He is black and white and handsome AND he is a Rockstar :) yea your jealous now aren't you?! Don't believe me? Here is stud muffin himself :)

They are going to be going on tour together...for 6 days, 4 states, and 6 sold-out events!!!

It is going to be ROCKIN' :)

B-R-E-A-K T-H-R-O-U-G-H

Today was the day, the day to try the Susan Salo set-point grid again :)

When we had our first encounter with it, the results were not good and the reaction was fearful...or was it "going around is OBVIOUSLY faster than going over"......

Today I decided I would try again, since we have been doing jumping and she has been having no issues with going wraps, serps, threadles ect ect...

Wouldn't you know it, she did the grid just fine :) not once, not twice, but like 10 times alternating heights :)

Yesterday I re-updated her on driving to the end of the teeter and she did great on that too :) We will soon be going to letting it drop a tiny bit! Also just rewarded her for walking on the dogwalk back and forth, so when we start running a lowered dogwalk, hopefully it won't be scary or anything of the sort.

The sight of dog panting is always a sign of warmer weather :D

Stuck

I have realized that I get stuck or sorta tunnel vision when it comes to training my dogs, but mostly AMP.

It first started with the running contacts. I was only training them-nothing else and would train them at least once every day :/ Then I quit doing them and started to do some jump work- some turned into ALL and before I know it I am only doing jump work.

This isn't the worst thing on planet, but really I don't need to be doing it and truthfully it probably doesn't help me in the end.

I start the obsession like I have said previously when things aren't going right. So, her plank work was causing issues and rather then just doing a bit here and there I started focusing on it and only wanting to do it hoping that it would get fixed and start running smoothly. Jump stuff was the same way- we were hitting a few walls and rather then just letting it go and coming back to it here and there I started to only do it, again with the same thought process as before.

I don't want to do this and really it isn't fun for AMP either. AMP is a thinker, she likes to be given hard challenges and figure them out. She doesn't want to do something over and over again once she has got it because it no longer take work for her to do. I made her this way- I made her to ENJOY and THRIVE off of the challenges rather then shut down because of them :D I am ok with this, but I have to remember that this is how she operates and work with it.

I might start writing down a plan or schedule of what I want to work on each training session or set goals in various areas to not allow myself to get in a rut. Besides if I get in a rut then she will never get trained and we DEFINITELY don't want that :) The Doodle wants to get out there and play too, like her brother and friends doooo!

After taking a seminar with Jinx this past weekend I have come up with LOTS of ideas and things to train AMP which I love ;) I like being able to know these things now rather than like in Jinx's case learning them later on ;)

And since I haven't posted pics of her in awhile here are some new ones....