Sunday Of Shame

Today started off sort of slow, but then it picked up and I was really optimistic half way through. Now I have a headache and a surprise visit from Tilly (neighbor's dog who stays with us from time to time) put us completely off course again.

• Walks:   1h 45min. I won't try to claim it would have been a lot more, but having Tilly come stay with us meant we can't go for more than very short walks. She has an issue with her shoulder and isn't to be exercised. 
• Exercise:   0. I meant to do the ball (etc) exercises this evening, but with Tilly here it's not possible. (She's a resource guarder with a very low stress threshold, I can't train anything high energy and I can't reward with food or play, so...)
• Training:   25min. This was what made me feel so happy today! We put about 15min into a partial obedience program (heel through a course, stay under march, stay, recall to heel, send, distance control). Not the most impressive stuff nor the most precise performance, but we had fun! Monster was so involved in the training, he sort of made me wake up... While competition obedience has never really been my thing, today it was so much fun. As wind down/reward (I managed to end the training in time this time, rather than drag it out until it became boring!) we did a nosework session outside as well, where Monster had to search for a piece of plastic in the garden (I hid it up a tree) and got a bully stick for finding and retrieving it. It took ten minutes. I meant to do some more obedience training indoors this evening, focusing more on precision, but, you know, Tilly.
• Planning/preparation:   0. I'd like to say I've spent this quiet evening with Tilly planning to make up time tomorrow. But I haven't. And I won't.
• Other:   0. I realized today that I can't remember the last time I just played with Monster. Just for no other reason than it's fun, just got down on the floor and wrestled him or something. Can't do it with Tilly here of course, but she's not here all the time and like I said I think it's been quite some time since I did it. Must be remedied. But hasn't been today. I also haven't read any of the stuff I meant to read about precision obedience before I messed it up any more...

Is blaming Tilly really the way to do this...?

No, it's not. I just... It feels like climbing up a steep, sandy slope. You fight like mad to get anywhere at all, and the smallest thing will knock you back again. But it isn't Tilly's fault, I'm just looking for a scapegoat. Again. That's ugly behavior.

Saturday Of Shame

Miserable day! I've been tired, cold and grumpy ever since I woke up - and I'm never cold when I sleep, I always wake up with practically a fever. Sure it's cold outside, but it's not cold-cold (five-six degrees below zero today, Celsius. I can remember going for firewood in a T-shirt and sandals in well below -30 back home). And it's not very warm indoors either, but 12-15 degrees is normal in this house and no reason to sit shivering under a mountain of blankets... I'd blame it on being sick if I could, but there's nothing wrong with me besides being tired and frozen. If I was more active I wouldn't be so cold!

Enough excuses. This has been our day:

• Walks:   2h. While I accept we generally walk less on weekends (a lot more people and dogs around, keeping unpredictable hours and routes, means a lot more triggers for us), this is not enough. Especially since everything else is slipping too.
• Exercise:   10-15 minutes... We did cavaletti for a while - which is less exercise and more training still, since Monster doesn't want to/understand how to walk it properly. He happily steps correctly with his front legs, but the hind legs (which is what I really want to focus the exercise on!) are all over the place, often entirely outside the cavaletti as he happily diagonals through it... His hind leg awareness has always been a serious weak spot, so I'm not sure if he just doesn't understand or if the exercise is uncomfortable for him and he doesn't want to strain his hind legs? Maybe I need to build some kind of chute for it? Yeah, like that's going to happen... I'd also meant to do some balance and strength exercises on the ball, elephant and mattress (all inflatables) but never got around to it.
• Training:   ~30min. Working on the "hands up - play dead" trick for about 20min. Not getting very far, and I think my bad mood made Monster feel uncertain and low in the training. We may have moved backwards... Also did about 10min of nosework, same setup as yesterday. (I meant to do it outside, but it was so cold I couldn't face it.)
• Planning/preparation:   0. Thought about it. Didn't actually do any. 
• Other:   0. Nada.

Raise your hand if you're bored and depressed!

So. Not a good day, you could say. I wish recognizing the problem would also lead to fixing it, but it doesn't. I'm not particularly optimistic that tomorrow will be any better. And I shouldn't even think about it in terms of "hope"! It's something I do or don't do, not something that just happens. But again, understanding that isn't the same as changing it...

Friday Of Shame

Alright, let's do this!

Do you really think this'll work?

Today I have achieved the following:

• Walks:   2h 45min... Yeah, better than yesterday maybe but nowhere near anything to be content with. Again I'm writing this before our last evening walk, but from how I feel right now I doubt it'll be anything to write about anyway...
• Exercise:   0... Yeah, that may look bad but this time it's actually OK... No, really, it is. Today was meant to be a resting day, and since I overdid it with the dragweight yesterday there's extra reason for it too. So zero exercise is OK - but just for today.
• Training:   40-50min? Two sets of nosework (searching for a piece of plastic, indoors, four rooms), unfortunately not entirely sure how long but I estimate ~10min each - with better planning and preparation I would have known more precisely, no doubt. Also did some trick shaping (trying to get the "hands up - play dead" trick, for whatever reason), again very uncertain how long we spent on it but I think around 20-30min. Too long, anyway, since Monster wound up having to tell me he was tired before I stopped. Again the lack of planning made it ineffectual and uncontrolled.

Also adding a couple of new categories...

• Planning/preparation:   0. Any and all activities we've gotten around to today happened haphazardly, nothing planned or prepared. Also have spent no time planning or preparing for tomorrow.
• Other:   ~20min. Have spent some time giving Monster a massage, plus experimented on some new treats. (In case you're wondering: don't make a mousse by running canned tuna and rice flour in a blender, put the resulting goop in a cake decorating bag and squeeze it out as training treats. Apart from the mess, apparently raw rice flour results in a dog a few hours later turning in a doughnut shape to stare in confusion at his behind, since it's making weird noises - and even weirder smells...)

Tell me when it's over!

 Too early to tell how/if this works I guess... Although I have been aware of this post looming all day, so maybe it's having an effect! Most of all I just want to sleep, though...

Slow Progress, But Progress All The Same

So, still not a lot happening on the blog, right? Well, what can I say... While I didn't write much while I had the cast on, I still spent a lot of time sitting in front of the computer. Feeling trapped, more or less. Now the cast is off, and I feel free - or at least freer. So sitting down by the computer just has no appeal right now, and even trying to write something short and quick (hah, like that's a skill I have!) feels like doing a tax audit... But I should be stronger than that, so here goes an attempt at an update:

Can you believe this nonsense?! Like writing about me isn't the best part of her day!?

First of all, my leg (not because it's the most interesting, but just to get it out of the way). It's not going too well... Some days I can walk OK, especially uphill for some reason, but it's not exactly an even gait and it's slow. Other days - like today - I can barely hobble out to the mailbox. Pain is one thing, if it were just about pain I'm pretty sure I could force myself through it. But the leg - or rather the joints - won't work right. I'm going back to the PT tomorrow, hopefully I'll get some more effective exercises and also a timeline of what I can expect...

I'm boooooored! We barely do anything!

With that out of the way, let's take a look at Monster instead. He's doing... Surprisingly well lately! Just yesterday we were out on a "things couldn't be going more wrong"-walk, where everywhere we turned we were faced with others out walking their dogs despite it being our usual (carefully chosen) time and route. A one point we were squeezed in between two JRTs, a German Shepherd, and some mix breeds, all three groups moving toward us leaving no way out. I wound up limping and falling down a slope through some trees trying to get away, twisting my ankle in a rather unpleasant way, and later I found myself wondering if I'd even had to do that. Monster had seen all the dogs approaching us, and hadn't reacted at all - not even when I forced him to turn his back on them, which is normally not a simple thing for him. And my attempts to find a more peaceful way home were thwarted at every turn, other dog owners apparently conspiring to cover all exits. The biggest scare came when we turned a corner (and I swear he must have been waiting for us, I scanned that street across a hedge and a fence before we got to the corner and there was no one there, clearly he was hiding to jump out at us!) and came face to face with a man walking a bike and three dogs (no idea of breed, they were slightly smaller than Monster and black, that's all the impression I had time for) coming straight at us less than ten metres away. And as soon as his dogs spotted Monster they lunged for him! And you know what Monster did? He turned right around and walked back the way we came, not a second's hesitation and no prompting from me! As the dogs passed growling behind us, Monster didn't acknowledge them at all... So we waited a little while, and turned back again (that was our way home, and with my foot by then on fire I didn't have a lot of options for alternative, longer, routes), and when we got to the corner we met a man with a Schnauzer who started bouncing on his toes when he saw us. So Monster turned away again! Third time's the charm, right? Nope. Third time we tried to get around the corner, the German Shepherd from earlier turned up. This time Monster didn't turn around (German Shepherds are one of his big problems), but we were still on the side street even though we had nearly reached the corner so I decided to stay and let him watch rather than try to force him away. The Shepherd wasn't very pleased with his audience and focused Monster with a hard stare and tense body all the way past us, and Monster did give a small "woof" and a bounce (causing the man to give a disapproving "oh" comment in my direction, which is kind of funny when you think about how Monster would normally have behaved), but that was all.

Well... He was nasty looking! Plus he was ogling me.

And that's surprisingly often how our walks have been going lately - far better than I expect...

In other news, I went to a sniffer dog lecture and workshop this weekend. That was a lot of fun, and gave me some interesting ideas for some more organized training in that direction - Monster knows to search for my keys, wallet, phone and some other stuff already, but now I have better tools for developing whatever I want. I've started on sniffing for marjoram right now - just to try out the techniques, not because I have a dire need for a marjoram finding dog - and Monster seems to be appreciating the better organization too. He wasn't with me in class of course (it's not exactly fair to him or to other participants to have him threatening bloody murder on everyone present after all...), but I had him in the car in the parking lot and during breaks I took him out. At first just to let him pee and give him a break from the boredom in the car, making sure the other participants were nowhere near and no dogs in sight. But I quickly noticed Monster was amazingly relaxed, looking at humans and dogs with some interest but no agitation, and performing beautiful BAT turns if something became too much. So the breaks became wonderful training sessions, walking around in the parking lot, along the road, around the club house and alongside the training field. Monster only ever reacted once, when we turned a corner and another dog - also reactive - went nuts at the sight of us. Monster did tense up and bark, but then happily turned away and left and when we walked back the same way just a couple of minutes later he had no residual tension. The progress I think I've seen in our home village seem infinitely greater out of our territory... I don't want to talk this up too much, who knows how much is temporary and how much is simply imaginary, but I will say I'm cautiously hopeful.

Hopeful of what? Infinite carrots?

And so you won't think I've become ridiculously and uncharacteristicly optimistic, let's close on a downer: first my car won't run for ages, when it finally gets fixed I'm still too sick to do much, as I start to get a lot better I break my ankle, and three days after getting the cast taken off, someone or something cracks the windshield of my car... This has been a long, slow, frustrating and expensive winter and spring. The windshield isn't fixable, the damage is far too extensive, so now the question is whether or not I should get a new windshield put in or just scrap the car altogether (changing the windshield is expensive, and poor Tin Can is probably not long for this world anyway...), and I don't actually have the money for either option. To be continued...

We don't need no boring car - we can RUN!