The Art of Praise

This post will be redone at a later date. I wasn't pleased with the quality or content and as such, I would rather rewrite it. Sorry for any inconvenience!

Fresh ideas

The day draws near for the arrival of my pup and with it will come a change in the direction of this blog.  I will use this blog to record my training of said pup and other dogs I interact with, so that I may better understand just what my training philosophy is!  Of course I will also have some ramblings regarding bikes and my mountain biking adventures but I will center the focus of the blog around training and the development and progress of my puppy.  This will help me keep a record of what has and has not worked for me, and why.  I'm really excited about shaping my beliefs regarding dog training and behavior and I believe this blog will be great for facilitating just that!  I also feel this will help me move towards some personal goals I have for myself and I'm excited about getting this underway.  However, I have four finals between now and then so I will be absent for a period of time (a week or so).  Until then, goodbye!

Vida

Lots has been going on lately. I have had the hardest time getting back in the swing of things since Spring Break, which means I made a couple of poor grades on tests. I'm not very happy about that but all I can do is do well on this last round and hope the previous round didn't ruin the good things I had going.

School aside, things are going well! I've picked a puppy - a little red merle female who is coming to me from Idaho. I'm purchasing her from an old ranch breeder who has been around since the makings of the breed, since before the AKC recognized Australian Shepherds as a breed and before ASCA (the Australian Shepherd Club of America) even existed! I'm excited, to say the least! She should be a good little pup, ready to come work. I really hope that we excel in search and rescue but only time will tell! I will post pictures of her when I update next - hopefully I will have received more than the one that I have right now by then.

Lately, I have been considering my future career. I have always wanted to go to Vet School, since I was a little kid. But maybe that's because you are conditioned to believe that the only thing people who like animals do for a job is be a Vet...then later you learn that you can chase them around with cameras too. All lame jokes aside, I have always had a particular interest, fascination, and maybe even a gift, if you will, in our canid counterparts and particularly in their behavior. It was recently suggested to me by a friend that perhaps I should consider a career in canine behavior. I scoffed at first...then asked myself what was I scoffing for? Isn't canine behavior what makes me tick? Don't I find myself at peace when I'm out walking through the woods with friends and a pack of dogs, all coexisting peacefully? Don't I love to see an owner marvel as their dog does something they were previously convinced he just simply could not do? I realized that I scoffed because I am afraid that I would not succeed in the field of canine behavior. Why? I'm not really sure. But I know one thing, I need to get over that and real quick! So now I am really giving this some serious consideration. I set up an appointment to chat with a Behaviorist I know and respect back home this weekend...so we'll see where my mind is after Sunday. Until then, I'll just be pondering and praying...praying and pondering.

My first AKC Dog Show/ASCA Agility Trial

Last weekend was event filled and definitely a mile stone for me. On saturday, I went to an AKC dog show in Houston with my sister and some friends from the dog club. It was great! I've been a purebred fancier my entire life but have never gotten to meet some of the less popular breeds (in America, anyway) in person. The breeds that I got the most excited over were the Saluki, the Ibizan Hound, and the Novia Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever. I found it quite odd that there were more Tollers enrolled in the show than Weimaraners...but that's okay! There were about ten rings running at once but we only watched the Brittany, Weimaraner, Australian Shepherd, Great Dane, and Novia Scotia Duck Tolling Retrievers show. I also met an Aussie breeder who had some rather attractive dogs but I'm thinking they're not going to fit the 'style' of Aussie I'm looking for. I will post another update on the two different styles of Aussies so that statement makes more sense.
On sunday, we went to an ASCA agility trial which was also fun. We stayed for a few hours and I met three Slash V Aussies in person. As is often rumored, two of the three were shy but one was friendly as can be and extremely biddable. Slash V is a prominent kennel in the Australian Shepherd world on the stockdog end of things. I will explain more about them when I post about the two different types/styles of Australian Shepherds. We watched a jumpers class and then the beginners on the actual agility course. It made me pretty excited! I'm looking forward to the prospect of competing in agility with my next pup. I suppose we'll see where things take me.
Well...it's rather late at night and my mind is in a million places! I'll try and make it a point to update more frequently again - midterms sort of threw off my schedule these past few weeks.

Cardiomyopathy

Here is my post from my other blog on Cardiomyopathy. A bit of the information is about cats and cardiomyopathy but most is valid for both species or dog-specific.

I did some research on cardiomyopathy and I must say that it is quite an extensive topic.

To put it simply, dogs and cats (and other animals as well) can suffer from Cardiomyopathy. Cardiomyopathy is a disease of the heart which causes it to function improperly/poorly. Boxers seem to have their own set of symptoms when suffering from cardiomyopathy (search: boxer cardiomyopathy). Large/giant breeds of dogs have a higher rate of incidence with this disease (FYI - Doberman Pinchers, Scottish Deer Hounds, and Irish Wolfhounds were commonly named in the articles I read). There are two types of cardiomyopathy that occur in dogs: hypertrophic and dilated. Cats can suffer from three types of cardiomyopathy: hypertrophic, dilated, and restrictive. The details listed in this article are brief descriptions of what occurs in dilated and hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. For more information regarding either of these diseases in cats or dogs, please visit the links listed below the definitions.

Dilated cardiomyopathy is the most common form. It occurs when the chambers of the heart increase in size and the muscles that form the walls become thinner.

Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is a rare form of this disease, but occurs when the heart's chamber walls thicken, causing decreased pumping efficiency.

More information on cardiomyopathy in Cats -
http://www.2ndchance.info/cardiomyopathy-cat.htm
More information on cardiomyopathy in Dogs -
http://www.2ndchance.info/dogdilcardiomyopathy.htm
http://www.2ndchance.info/conghtfaildog.htm


SOURCES
Hines DVM PhD, Dr. Ron (2006, 06 24). Heart Failure In Dogs - Congestive Cardiomyopathy. Web site: http://www.2ndchance.info/dogdilcardiomyopathy.htm

Cardiac Diseases of Dogs and Cats. from Pets Health Web site: http://www.petshealth.com/dr_library/cardiac.html

10:30 PM Fixies, Unis, and Trials Riders

Tonight I went on a ride with G, A, and E. It was a lot of fun. I was able to keep up with them better (though I still lagged behind at times) as we zipped around campus and town. We rode about fourteen miles total (just piddling around, jumping off of stairs and such) and took a break in the middle to ride to Marble Slab and get some ice cream. On the way back, we stopped by Kyle Field where every Wednesday night at 10:30 PM, fixie riders, unicyclists, and sometimes BMXers gather to just converse and ride their bikes. They do lots of neat tricks and have pretty nifty looking bikes. They also have a very different culture from road bikers or mountain bikers and in my opinion, fixie riders (in general) have a very different culture than BMXers too. I think I will stick to mountain/road biking but it was neat to watch them for a while. The trials riders were awesome...they were a couple and the girl bunny hopped her bike like three or four feet in the air. Then they jumped/rode over the concrete benches in the area...needless to say, I developed a complex tonight haha. No, just kidding. All in all I had a lot of fun and got some exercise in the process (as well as a break from studying) so what more could I ask for?

Ouch!

This weekend I took my sister out to one of the local bike trails for her first mountain ride. It was a lot of fun and she really enjoyed herself, even though she fell off her bike after going over some tough roots just before a descent. She bumped her head (thank goodness for helmets!) and scraped up her knees and arms. I guess we'll be investing in some elbow/knee pads...no more scars! I rode about 6 miles, as I did two and a half laps - one by myself and one and a half (the half was when she fell) with her. We were going to complete her second lap but I didn't have enough tape in my first aid kit to keep the bandages on her knee so we had to duck out early. I'm off to class but will update soon with a post about canine cardiomyopathy - something I posted about a while back on my other blog.