Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Agility practice last Saturday!

Hey Gracie! Do you like agility? Do ya, huh?

Gracie and I got to go to agility practice again last Saturday!

We were at this same building about a month ago and loved it there. Gracie and I both got to run three runs in about 1.5 hours on Saturday. Always takes a bit of a toll on Mum to run so much in such a short time, but it's good for her, lol!

Mum wanted to try to work on gambles with me since I needed gamble practice. The weave pole bases we've been seeing at trials lately are throwing me since they are so wide. But the bases here at this practice facility where the usual width 3.5 inches. So I did then just fine.

Mum ran me once on the regular course, and then ran me again a little differently to work in a couple of gambles. The first gamble was a jump, weave, jump (near the beginning); the second gamble was after the frame a jump, tunnel, triple jump and I nailed them both, both runs. Super fun....here's one of my gamble runs.





Gracie likes it at this building too. She's really starting to get used to me barking all the time while she is running. It doesn't seem to bother her like it used to.

She made all her contacts, and nailed all three of her weave entries. Such a good girl!

She had some issues with the table and was refusing the teeter on the first try the first two times, but they worked through that.

We're super proud of Gracie and all the good agility she's been doing lately. She's pretty apprehensive out there right now and it's showing in her slower speed, but Mum thinks that once she builds that confidence, she's gonna be a speedy one. BOL - maybe she needs some fluid tech in her. Right now, though, we're just super happy she wants to really start concentrating more on agility. Mum says she's a lot of fun to run.




Hope you had a pawsome weekend! Mum, Gracie and I took some time off from work and played in the yard, went to practice and just watched some fun movies. Great Holiday Weekend!!!

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! 

We sure are thankful that you stop by now and then. 

Have a great holiday and safe travels! 


-- Gracie and Johann

Monday, November 21, 2011

USDAA Q's for both me and Gracie this weekend!

Gracie, Mum and I attended a USDAA trial near here this weekend and we had a ton of fun!

The trial was only about 1.5 hours away, so we got to drive back and forth. It was an easy trip. The best part was the way back on Sunday when we got to drive when it was still daylight, BOL! Nice scenery around here, I must say.

Saturday I was entered in Gamblers and Steeplechase.

My first run was Gamblers. The nice part about the run was that Mum was very good on her opening timing. Really had me just in the right spot when the buzzer went off. Much better than the last time we ran Gamblers last year.

The Gamble was a tough one for me, coming out of a tunnel and out to a jump. I always come toward Mum when I come out of a tunnel, so she tried to get back from the line and push me out  toward the jump, but it wasn't enough, since I really shot out of that tunnel fast. But I got the frame and jump after anyway, and 22 points in the opening.

Next up was my Steeplechase run, nice little run and we got a Q. I love the Steeplechase courses that have two Frames instead of two weaves. Frames are one of my favs! Here's my Steeplechase Q run.




Gracie ran a Standard run in P1 for her first run. But she got the zoomies early on and was whistled off. It was sad to come this far and then see her start the run off stuff all over again. But she was gonna show us some good things coming later in the weekend.

Her second run was Jumpers. Not one of Gracie's favs since she gets bored doing jump after jump, but it was the best choice of the available runs for her that day. She took two jumps and then started to run off. Mum did a jump in the air, big doggone it leap; and what do you know? Gracie wanted to see what was wrong with Mum and came back to her, BOL! They finished the rest of the course perfectly and Mum was really proud of the Grace-ster! Mum had lots of folks ringside laughing, it was fun to see Mum jump in a jumpers run .




The next day, Sunday, I ran Gamblers again. Mum planned out the opening very well, and we ended up near the gamble just as the buzzer went off. The gamble was a jump, weaves, jump, jump all to the left. Mum thought I had a good chance at this one since I like to go out weaves. But these weaves had a really wide base and again, like other places we've been with these types of weaves, my toes were hitting the base and made me very apprehensive. To beat that, I took an extra unplanned Frame right before and lost all momentum going into the first jump of the gamble to the weaves, so I didn't get it. But gave it a really good go.

Next up was Snooker again for me. I really have to have a long, long talk with Mum. She isn't planning my Snooker courses very well. She way over thought the opening and of course we ran out of time. Gotta have  a heart to heart with her abut that. So no Snooker Q or SQ this weekend.

After that Gracie ran Standard again. Even though she held on better than her standard run on Saturday she still lost it. She had some really great moments though; super weaves after a second attempt, great DW, even a pretty good teeter. Good thing Gracie got herself together for her next run, Snooker.


Gracie held on the entire Snooker course and Mum was super proud. She even did her weaves on the first try! This was her first ever USDAA Q and there were cheers all over the arena! Big, big, huge break through for the Grace-ster; time to break out the Padron cigars, BOL!

Gracie P1 Snooker run and a 1st place Q!





Things learned over the weekend. I need to find a way to practice on some weaves with those really wide, thick, steel bases down the middle. Mum needs to work on her Gamble timing with me coming out of the tunnel. And she really has to stop over thinking my Snooker openings to get that last SQ. Really Mum, really!!!

Gracie is getting more and more focused all the time, but she does loose her mind on her first run of the day which we can understand. So Mum is going to enter her in more runs per day to help her get more used to the environment.


It was a very fun weekend. And we got to meet some great new friends. And one of the best parts is we got to hang with our bud, Cosmo!!! That's Cossie on the left :). I met Cosmo on Twitter about three years ago when we still lived up in Indiana. We're lucky now that we live so close to see each other on occasion!

We're super grateful to those folks that we didn't even know until yesterday for video taping our runs, they RAWK!!

Hope you had a good weekend!

Thursday, November 17, 2011

DogPawR is helping to power me up!

If you read my blog you know that I've had a lot of injuries in my life. And the older I get the more those injuries are taking a toll on my body even though they have pretty much healed.

Mum has tried many supplements (glucosamine and chondroitin) to see if they could help me feel more my usual wacky self. But all of those we've tried over the years haven't had any effect on me.

A few months back Mum was contacted by a company that has a new supplement on the market. They are the makers of DogPawR. At first Mum declined their nice offer to provide us with their product to try out, since I've tried so many. But after they told us the ingredients we thought it would be worth giving it a go.

Made in the USA with the same highest quality standards as for human supplements, DogPawR Joint and Hip Complex contains all the nutrients to keep joints healthy, repair past damage and sooth discomfort, including: Glucosamine HCl, MSM and a proprietary blend of Green Lipped Mussel (providing easy to digest chondroitin, omega 3 fatty acids and hundreds of micronutrients). The supplement also contains two very key ingredients: Turmeric, a very effective natural anti-inflammatory to reduce swelling and inflammation; and California Poppy, which is highly effective in reducing pain and relieving muscle tension.

It's not arthritis and old age that makes me ouch sometimes. It's all the muscle aches that I get associated with all the injuries, pulled muscles, broken bones and more, I've had over the years. So Mum was very intrigued with the Turmeric and California Poppy, thinking that it just may give ease my ouches some.

I started on the supplement about two months ago. After a few weeks Mum started noticing something very key. Every time she got up from her work chair I would bounce up and want to go with her, no matter where she was going. I used to do this when I was very young; but over time I had stopped. Another key indicator that something was different was when I'm out playing with Gracie in the back yard, I want to play a lot more than I used to. After being on it for over four weeks, Mum thought I was acting like I was two again!

You may remember my practice run at the indoor facility a few weeks ago (video below). Mum saw that I was really running like I used to, speedy and confident. Even though it seems I may have picked up an aversion to horse arenas dirt unevenness lately which is effecting my self-assurdness on the courses on dirt. But she knows I feel better since I've been taking the supplement, and I do; it really shows in my everyday life, energy and happiness. And it sure did when I ran indoors on rubber stall matting!



Since we're so sold on DogPawR, we wanted to share this info with you. It's really made a huge difference in how I feel, that's for sure. And here's the best part!

The nice folks at DogPawR who were kind enough to supply me with their supplement for free to try, have agreed to let me give away a couple (two) of bottles of DogPawR to my readers!

So if you'd like to enter our drawing that we'll be holding on the day after Thanksgiving, November 25th, just leave a comment (before midnight ET on the 25th) along with your email address in the comments section of this blog post and we'll draw a random winner on the weekend after Thanksgiving and notify the winner via email. This time you need to live in the US, but we hope to be able to provide something at a later date for our International readers.

So get commenting and win your pup a great new supplement from DogPawR!

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

We have raccoon!

Look what Gracie and I found!



It's a raccoon, the first one we've seen here on the mountain.

We chased that little guy (or maybe it's a gal, not sure) right up the tree. Poor thing was traumatized and stayed up there the entire time Gracie and I played in the back yard. He/She never did come down, even when we checked right before nightfall.

You can bet we looked for the critter again first thing in the morning. But he/she was long, long gone. How much you wanna bet he/she never comes back here again! Woofs!

Monday, November 14, 2011

Agility practice last week!

Last Tuesday Gracie, Mum and I headed south to get in some agility run thrus.

It was at a horse arena south of here and was a night time agility fun time. The run thrus started at 6:30 PM. There ended up being so many dogs that we got in our second and final run at 10:30 PM. I don't think I've ever run agility that late in my life, BOL!

We ended up getting home really late, about 1:30 AM after driving back and stopping for a quick errand or two. But it was fun, nonetheless!

The best part is that Gracie did really, really well!

Her first run is in the video. She got a little unfocused at the first set of jumps, but Mum got her back really quickly. She started getting that really glassy, wide-eyes look at the table, so Mum gave her the 'scratch the upper leg' calming that Gracie likes and she started focusing really well again. She didn't want to stop and do her weaves the first time, but Mum worked with her and she did them twice after, good girl! The rest of the run was pretty good too.

Her second run was the same course, and she actually did the weaves on the first try! Mum was soooo proud of her. She doesn't look really confident out there, but she's coming along really, really well and much more focused Mum thinks. Just imagine what she can do once the confidence kicks in!

I did the same course and was just OK on the speed. I've started a little aversion to horse arenas uneven dirt lately. Probably because the last time I gave it my all in a horse arena I got hurt again. But Mum is hoping it's just temporary and is working on helping me build my confidence on dirt again.

Gracie and I are both entered in a USDAA trial coming up in a week or so. Gracie hasn't been entered into a trial for over three years. I have two runs a day and Gracie has two runs a day as well. We can't wait to see what Gracie does! And I'm going for those last four Q's needed for my ADCH, can't wait!

Here's the vid (oh, btw, the guy that video taped my run hummed through the entire thing. Mum thought that was very rude!).


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