This post doesn’t have to do with people romance but rather the loss of our beloved animal companions. Since I own a lot of dogs I also have to deal with this loss more frequently than many pet owners do. Each time I have had a particularly hard loss it seems that a needy dog has appeared, perhaps sent by the other one from across the Rainbow Bridge.

Buster is one of those who I believe was sent for a reason. Buster is a pug that I meant to foster for the pug rescue and find him the right forever home. I was still grieving for my Lily (my first ever pug) even though it had been months since her death. Buster was rapidly dumped off at our home by his previous (and 3rd) owner and it was apparent the frequent switching of homes had left him with some baggage. Despite the baggage (upset/screaming if crated, separation anxiety, hanging on your legs when you tried to go through a door, etc.) he had redeeming qualities, too. He loved to play with my big dogs once he adjusted to them but wasn’t too interested in my other pugs. He was immediately retrieving balls and playing “tug” with toys. A dog like this needs a job, not to sit on someone’s lap and I think my husband expressed the thought first that we really should just keep him. The very first night we had Buster he was so distressed I decided to take him to bed with us and he snuggled up against me in the same spot Lily always did. I realized he had been sent by her to comfort me but I didn’t want to let myself love him. I took him to a couple of obedience classes and then I took him to an agility class. He took to it immediately although we had to work through the distractions of other dogs working and him wanting to just run off and do his own thing. We switched to a smaller class which helped a lot with his focus. At this point he is improving on being crated, we have gone to matches, done some agility demos and even been in a couple of trials now. He has his first agility title but we are still working on being a team.

Today we went to another agility match. He has trialed at this same place and often tries to run out of the ring so I was prepared to deal with that and give him positive reinforcement for coming back to me. Much to my surprise and delight not only did he run both courses fast and accurately but he never once tried to leave the ring. When we left the building after his second run I felt like I now had an agility teammate. I realized that loving Buster does not take away from the love I have for my Lily but it does help her loss not hurt so badly now.

As we got to the car I heard a sandhill crane in the distance. This is in town and I’ve not heard sandhills at that place before. Soon it was closer and it was then I felt my Lily’s presence. Ironically this week was the 4 year anniversary since she left me. I think she was telling me “I’m still watching over you, good job.”. I’m glad no one saw me crying out by the car.

If you are interested, these are two other blog posts about the messengers who my dogs have sent to me in the past.

Messengers From Beyond

Turbo Now Has Wings

Tonight I hosted a clinic for kids in our county’s 4H dog project to introduce them to agility. We had 15 dogs participate with their owners and I think a fun time was had by all. I especially wanted to show the kids how positive training techniques make it easy for the dogs to learn as I don’t think they get a lot of exposure to those techniques. I was fortunate to have my friends Jeff and Michelle helping out so all the kids got plenty of assistance. All the dogs ended up doing great and there isn’t one of them that couldn’t do agility in the future. If you are a dog training instructor please consider offering 4H clinics or classes at discounted rates so kids can get exposure to all the fun they can have with their dogs. Kids are the future of our sport and I love teaching them. I hope to arrange a 4H dog agility class session for later this summer.

Yesterday I had a great opportunity to educate the general public about the fun of dog agility. I was asked to do a demo at a 10th anniversary celebration for Country View Vet Clinic. They had booths, educational talks, vendors and many demos such as dressage, polo, natural horsemanship, sheep herding, canine freestyle and my agility demo. We were given a large round pen to use so it was fenced which pleased my students but a naughty little pug was able to easily slip under it. I ran Buster, my rescued pug, at the very end of the demo when I had finished announcing and said people were welcome to watch me practice with my dogs so they understood he was new to it.

He did the first jump, went off to sniff, did second jump, dog walk and a jump, sniffed, then did the tunnel, then ran under the ring fence to pee, then did a jump, then back to the edge to pee, etc. However this was an improvement since in the past he would have run off to go after other dogs, run after horses, etc. which he didn’t and each time he returned to work he got a bunch of treats. Very humbling but it was a good example to the spectators of how to be positive when your dog does ANYTHING right. My husband, who came to help haul equipment and has never been to a trial, got a lot of laughs out of his behavior……

Of course Jazz was crazy since it was cool out and she had to wait in the car for the very end! The crowd loved her though.

It was a fun thing to do, we had a great crowd and I appreciate all my wonderful students taking time out of their day to run in the demo. And a big thanks to Tracy Jane Photography for sending me these great photos from the demo.

I just had 4 days of agility trials in Milwaukee.  That means I was up just as early or earlier than if I was at work.  The trials, nicknamed “Hounds”, are held at an indoor soccer arena and are huge with 450 to 500 dogs entered each day.  It is not uncommon to go home ribbonless from an event like this so we were fortunate that yesterday Cori qualified in a very tough Excellent Jumpers class and came home with a 4th place.  There were 340 dogs in her class with 31 running at her jump height level and only 4 of the 31 qualifyng so we were quite pleased.   The people running the trials kept track of the number of “nq’s” (non qualifying runs) for each day and less than 1/3 of dogs running qualified.  Yesterday out of 940 runs there were 655 non-qualifying ones.

 The trials are well organized and for 4 days it is like living in a different world with many top canine athletes and their handlers/trainers there competing.  The shopping is good there, too.  I will say that I think the novice level courses now are getting very tough, especially for first time competitors and are more on the equivalent of what the open classes used to be like.  I saw very tight spaces and many “traps” on the courses, something that you usually wouldn’t see in novice until the past year or so. The beginning of the novice course yesterday was the exact same beginning as the excellent one the day before (same judge) except a broad jump was in place instead of a triple.   I am concerned that many of the first timers are not prepared to run that complexity of course and may become discouraged.   Since we need newcomers to the sport to keep the sport going perhaps AKC needs to revisit the complexity of the novice courses.  Okay, off my soap box…..tomorrow is a work day.  And as a t-shirt at the trial said: “A bad day at an agility trial is better than a good day at work”.