Adventures in Training the Beagles

Dulce doing a few tricks

I’ve got a Swivl Marker on her collar, you can see it glowing.  That way the camera is following her, and I don’t need a cameraman.  Available at http://www.swivl.com and found it at the Dallas Pet Expo.

Pet TAGG Review

The following article is provided to any not for profit dog or cat organization to use for newsletters and the like, just give me and my website, proper credit.

I have a dog that escapes.  She is a small, 16 pound, under 13” beagle.  She is afraid of thunderstorms and is 12 years old.  She is on Xanax twice a day and yes, we’ve tried the thundershirt, etc.  By the way, most of those items only work if you can get it to the dog before the thunderstorm and we live in North Texas.  The weather people miss a lot of them.

Recently during the first few minutes of an storm that was not forecasted and at 3:00 am in the morning, she broke a shipping type crate, escaped, dug out of a 6 foot run, and broke through a 6 foot privacy fence.  We knew this because we have a broken crate, surveillance film footage of her digging, the whole and the broken fence.  We received a phone about 10:00 am, over 24 hours later, asking would we please come get our dog.

Yes, we looked for her.  Fortunately her ID tag was still on her, but we worried for 24 hours.

I had been watching Pet Tagg and other GPS collars but they were just too expensive.  Fortunately, shortly after this event, Pet Tag went down in price and I was able to afford a set of three, one for each of my dogs.

We’ve had a variety of dogs through 25 years of marriage, and we have had our share of incidents.  Marcie liked to go walk about, and she even spent the night in the local pound.  Yard people have left gates open, etc.  Fortunately we’ve always managed to get the dogs back and I’ve done my share of catching dogs and getting them home.

However, you cannot imagine the sense of well being you get when you know you have GSP collars on your dogs.  Now, you can’t locate your dog precisely with a Pet Tagg©.  What you can do is narrow the search down to a few houses, and between that and some really good treats, you should be able to find your missing pet, be it a dog or cat.

With Pet Tagg© , you get a text message and email telling you when the following occurs:

• Dog has left the home zone.
• Tagg is off the collar.
• Tagg needs charging.
• Tagg goes off.
• Tagg comes on.

If the dog leaves the home zone, you can send a text message and either locate and/or track your pet. 

When you track, the system locates the dogs every three minutes.

It’s great peace of mine.  However, it doesn’t substitute for a proper fenced in yard and supervision.  I got my Pet Tagg from http://www.pettracker.com/ but I understand that they are now available at Best Buys and some pet stores.

Dog in the City

Good show.

Good dog training philosophy.

Weird, as usually the only thing two dog trainers agree on, is that the third is doing it wrong.

I like him better than Victoria Stillwell, because he doesn’t have a gimmick.  He comes across as sincere, even if they are all actors.

Agility and Driving While Tired

First, I’ll start out by saying I am and have been treated for sleep disturbances for several years.  I’ll also state that I have been sleepy behind the wheel AND as soon as I know it, I pull over and take a nap.  I have actually called in sick on the way to work because I was falling asleep at lights.  Before treatment, I was so bad that on several occasions fell asleep while waiting for students to give answers at the board.  So I know where I speak, and I do take care of the issue.

There is nothing more important than arriving at your destination alive.  On Monday morning, an agility exhibitor killed two of her dogs and injured three others.  At least she only killed her dogs, and didn’t kill the driver of the 18-wheeler she hit.  She’s not the only exhibitor who has ended up in the hospital because he or she kept driving when they shouldn’t. 

You CAN sleep in your car, I have. 

You CAN pull over and get a hotel room, and sleep for a few hours.   I have.

If getting to an appointment is too important, skip that last class or two.  I have.

Oh, gee, I did that on Friday.  I’d been at a trial since 7:30 am, and they were building my last class at 4:30 pm, but I knew if I stayed through the whole class to run, I wouldn’t have been able to get home. 

I’ve spent the last 12 hours or so very upset, and get even more upset when I learned the cause.

Grow up, get some sleep, and stay out of the car when you are tired.  You can seriously kill someone else.  Oh, back in the day when I was doing the K9 dog thing, a couple of my police friends were almost killed by a sleepy driver.

Some other things you can do to help the rest of us:

Get and use Taggs http://www.pettracker.com/ so we can find your dog.  Keep them charged (I have a spare charger that I take with me to trials and recharge them when I’m running the dogs).

Keep your dogs in crates when you are traveling.  I don’t know about this weeks incident, but we had one several years ago in Texas where we were frantically looking for a dog for 2 weeks who wasn’t crated at the time of the accident.

Sunday–Teacup

Was exhausted all day.  So much so that we skipped agility class Sunday night.  But we got in all our runs and Dulce managed to get a Q in Las Vegas.

Fun game, based on getting enough points in a fixed period of time.  Macy took the wrong in of a tunnel so didn’t get it.

The biggest problem we had were tables – Dulce especially just can’t stop wagging her tail long enough to do a down, sit, or even stand.  Silly girl.

Had a good time and glad we went, just wish we were a bit further out from school!

By the way, met someone who reminded me of myself as a dog trainer 15 years ago.  I’m glad I’m not that person anymore.

Off by One

My programmer friends will get this – we seemed to be “off by one” a lot today.  Both dogs in fact, would have qualified if it weren’t for one mistake, usually made by me.  Both dogs got the first game, but couldn’t sit on the table.  Macy had the first Standard run until the second to last obstacle when she flew over the down contact on the A-Frame.  It gets painful thinking about it.

Had a good time though, and certainly not near as hard on the body as if we had done the AKC trial.  Still exhausted though.

Friday Agility–Dalmatian Club

Man, I am worn out.  Long day, got there before 8:00 so I could get a place to put the dogs, first run around 9:00, left about 5:00 pm and still had one course I could have run.

Macy was very happy to be doing agility, which is a major change from the last two trials.  So happy, she made up her own course in Excellent Standard.  She did a few things I told her, but mostly ran around really fast taking her favorite obstacles.  Did get her on teeter and did it successfully.

We ALMOST got JWW, again, really good attitude, really fast, and really happy.  She ended up with one extra jump, because Momma’s feet were pointing towards it and I just couldn’t get moved out of the way quick enough.

Dulce got her first AKC Q in Novice Standard, but man she is a lot of dog to run.  You have to get the words out really fast or she is off doing her own thing. 

Macy got the send in Novice fast, but couldn’t get enough points to Q.  Dulce immediately left the ring – and I discovered it wasn’t a panic attack but she is looking for all the treats that get left behind.  Wicked little dog.

I was too exhausted to even think about sticking around for Novice JWW.