Cheeky

After making eyes at this cute little snowgirl, Tristan apparently thought she needed a little color in her cheeks.Naughty boy!

Tristan can read!

Clearly Tristan can read the sign for drinking water. He was disappointed though that the spigot was turned off for the winter. It's a bad trick to play on a smart dog.

Merry Christmas

Saved by the snow! I'd just finished taking Tristan's Christmas picture when I saw it was snowing outside. Lucky dog. Now he has a regular photo and not the goofy one below. Hey, how many ways are there to tie a bow on a dog? We were going for a different look this year.

The snow was an unexpected magical surprise. Tristan and I headed to the corner park to play fetch in the snow. He soon forgave me for the head bow misjudgment.

Christmas card

Deck the halls with bowser holly!I rarely send Christmas cards but I had to send a few this year when I found this great card. This guy looks ever bit as vexed as Tristan does when I make him pose with silly stuff.

Dumbbell

A real dumbbell - not Tristan or me. We need to learn some new commands for the Schutzhund 1 and working with dumbbells is one of them. In obedience he must retrieve a dumbbell from the flat, over a hurdle and over the scaling wall plus learn the send out with down. In tracking Tristan needs to learn to indicate on articles. I think he has all the protection work down although we'll still practice it a lot.

Today we started working with the dumbbell. It may be a challenge for us for several reasons. The biggest problem is that I have to throw the dumbbell. I think we've established that I throw like a girl; however, the dumbbell throw is an underhanded toss so with practice I should be able to manage it. The issue is really that I'm left handed. I haven't figured out the best way to proceed. If I toss left handed, the dumbbell is between Tristan and me and I'd have to step away from him to have room to throw. It's still a bit disconcerting to throw it on the same side as the dog. I can try to do it right handed although accuracy in tossing it might be an issue. I'm going to try to find out how other lefties do it.

We just did little lobs today so it wasn't a problem. I started with placing a ball a short distance away on the field and having Tristan wait until I gave him the bring command. This was for him to get the idea that he was to wait and then bring an item back to me on command. Not too hard since he's a ball monster. I need to be careful, however, in training Tristan on the dumbbell so that he knows this is different than fetch. When we play fetch, there aren't any hard rules since it's his play time. He can make long sweeping returns to me which is what he likes to do. When he's retrieving the dumbbell though he needs to come directly back to me, hold it calmly and present it to me sitting in front. After two ball retrieves, I put the dumbbell on the field a short distance away. Tristan knew exactly what I wanted and brought the dumbbell right to me. You could tell he was proud and thought it was fun. Good start.

A ray of hope

After all the dreary weather recently there was a sun break this afternoon. Tristan and I went running out to catch a few rays of hope - and a few balls. Thank goodness the winter soltice is almost here. Every year I regret that it falls within a few days of Christmas. If it didn't, I would have a grand celebration party. As it is, I always go outside on the soltice and do a happy dance (discreetly but with a bit of wild abandon). It is so wonderful to know the days will start getting longer.

New duds

Tristan is modeling his new panniers. He helps bring in the groceries and I made a new set for him. The backpacks or saddlebags commercially available are too hard to use for short trips into the house mainly because they have zippered tops and buckles to fasten. Tristan's panniers are larger and the tops are open so it's easy to put items in. The straps are fastened with velcro and they're quick and easy to secure. The panniers are very useful and there's no reason they can't be pretty too. Next up a hot pink set!

The Grinch and faithful Max

"You're A Mean One, Mr. Grinch." That's how I felt today running errands. Here's hoping the holiday season engulfs me with positive sentiments. It wasn't happening today. Too rainy, too dark, too much traffic. Even having my faithful companion with me didn't dispell the gloom.

Very happy pup

Tristan was one very happy pup today. Since we've passed the BH, he is no longer confined to just doing the BH elements. So today we went back to working on the jumps and he could do protection work too.

Tristan was absolutely adorable when we were doing the jump and A-frame. Ok, I always think he is adorable but he really was especially cute today. He hasn't worked on the jumps for several months but he was better than when we broke off training on them. It was like "See, see, I know how to do this and wait, let me show you again!". I threw a ball over several times to retrieve and he immediately hupped over and back. Then I turned away and Tristan proceeded to jump over and back on his own several times. Ditto with the A-frame. He really was showing off and having a grand time. What a character.

Tristan loved doing protection too. He did some pole work with a newly certified helper and then was so happy to run off the field with the trophy sleeve.

Club training will be on hiatus until January. I still plan on working with Tristan a lot.

We passed

Finally! Tristan passed his BH today. What a relief and what a long time coming. It only took the threat of a snow storm for Tristan to realize he was going to have to keep doing it until we got it right. Here's the big boy with some snow on his nose. He's looking pretty serious but it's only because he wants to get back to romping in all that white stuff.
The BH went pretty well. We didn't do as well as our practice run yesterday but Tristan stayed with me the whole way. I thought the heeling could have been tighter. The judge noted that Tristan actually heels better off lead. He does and I'm lucky for that. All the heeling in SchH1 and beyond are off lead. The only major glitch was Tristan broke his sit out of motion and started toward me when he should have waited for me to come back to him. His recall from the down out of motion was great as always. He loves tearing down the field to me and then screeching to a sit in front. The judge mentioned I gave hand signals for the sit and down out of motions although Tristan was doing the commands anyway. I'm totally oblivious that I do it so that's on my practice fix list.

I'm looking forward to working on Tristan's SchH1. I've always felt that the BH would actually be the hardest for us. It's because the BH is all about obedience and once I could get Tristan to heel correctly then we had a chance. Tristan is great at tracking and protection and obedience is our biggest challenge.