My name this week...

is...

Clever McCleverpants.  And I can hold the hotdog just like a dumb-bell without nomming it!

While this one got lost in her own back yard and howled her little heart out till mumma came and rescued her. 

 

And these two were just plain mischief!

  

combo plater pics

Rinlicious... proof that while all of us are special, some of us are moreso than others!

But my mumma loves me!

And the older goober heads have a run around Shipwreck Rock...

Two-fer-one

It's distraction proofing AND reality tv for cows!

No, we're not doing herding - we're proofing down and sit-stays with maintaining attention and focus while mum is at a distance (pics taken with 30x zoom) for several minutes and the cows just happen to decide to assist with distraction proofing.

 "I know it's there and I'm ignoring it, I'm not falling for that old distraction and loosing my click!"

(Okay mostly... covert glance!)  Meanwhile apparently watching us train is the cow equivalent of Big Brother and really, reeeeeally fascinating because they all come over and right up to snuffle.

"Mum - that reward better be bloody good!  I'm ignoring it and I'm staying put but I'm getting COW SNOT on my BUM FLUFF!  Cow. Snot. On. My. Bum. Fluff!"

Later on, while we were doing some of our herding dry work I didn't realize the curious cows had come over.  Being hard of hearing and it being somewhat windy I had no idea there was a small group right behind me.  Hope did and at one point when I went to send her around instead of going where I sent her, she went around behind me.  I whirled around wondering if she hadn't lost her marbles only to see the cows fetching at me. Hope was very chuffed with herself after weeks of working dry only to FINALLY some real work!  Little monster!

Behold - a sign of the end of days...

I. Went. Jogging.

Yep. I'll give you all a moment to pause and catch your breath from that hysterical laughter.

After not having jogged in *mumbletymumble* ages I started off on our walk and that oh-so-intelligent part of my brain piped up "hey, wouldn't it be nice to get back to jogging?" So I figured what they heck and started. First little while was an adrenaline rush. Whoo hoo... I fell into it like I'd never stopped! That little voice in my head was positively smug - ha! Not so out of shape after all! Yeah. Well... pride and the fall and all that...

I made it not quite a kilometer before the stitch in my side made a persuasive enough argument that we walked most of the rest of our normal nightly-walkies route. So yeah... maybe that whole jogging idea is one of those things I need to do slightly more often. And um, maybe some of that core focused stuff going by the general 'oh hey, remember me, I'm the muscle you forgot you had - surprise!' feeling in that area.

The dogs thought this new revelation was BRILLIANT. They'd figured all my speeds faster than plod had been broken! Who knew???

Now our usual route is along a quiet dirt road and we almost never see anyone along the way aside from the cows, sheep or occasional tethered goat. Today however I also had a few years scared off my life when my mob of dogs saw SOMETHING in the dark and stopped dead in their tracks. Sierra, being the oldest, vaguely recalled hearing "guardian instinct" somewhere in the Australian Shepherd job description quietly growled a low warning. Which is more intimidating if you've never met her and don't know this is the dog who jumps when she's startled by her own farts. Her lieutenants - Hope, Rin and Shadow took a moment to look mutually confused (nope, we haven't done anything to make her peevish at us - huh, must be something else!) before deciding it was their job as lieutenants to back her up even if they had no clue what they were backing her up on. Still they get points for sounding intimidating, even if all three heads were constantly swiveling in randomly opposite directions that seemed to be everywhere other than where the deadly serial killer was apparently laying in wait. The serial killer, who, by the way happened to be one of our neighbors who do know my mob are harmless and their completely stone deaf fat Methuselah of a beagle who paid them utterly NO notice. ~_~ How embarrassment!

random catch up photos

because I've been such a slacker and haven't really been sure what to write

One of the new roses in the Rainbow Bridge garden

Tim Tam, "Where are you going mum?"

Hopie and Luka at the dam

Lily at Ballarat comp

Luka on his birthday! :)

Lilypillie, my smiley girl

The interesting attempts to draw with small children around! LOL

Hopie with the ribbons our club gave her at the end of the year. She was more impressed with the biscuits but I thought they were nice. LOL

La demonstrating his weird abilities to sleep in the most bizzare places...

Hope at a recent comp

Hope, Sierra, Luka and Rin at the dam

Nilla playing sneaky stealth ninja bunny

and demanding a pat from La

Haha, - such shy timid little wallflowers hey!

random bits and pieces of my world

This pear tree on our property always blooms JUST on La's birthday, to the day, every year. It does fruit but the cockatoos and cows get more of it than we ever do.

How lucky am I? As much work as this place can be, I get to watch sunsets like this from my back porch!

Both girls, looking far more stationary than they are! And it wasn't posed or anything... they were busy goofing around with Lily pretending to brush Rin (that's actually what she's looking at, a comb that's fallen) and Rin manically staring at Hope who had the ball. LOL

A more typical scene... Sierra follows Lily around, ploinks down near her for a nap and is inevitably pounced on, cuddled, kissed, brushed, used as a pillow and otherwise loved on. Aussies and kids are the best combo ever!

The furkids

It's been a bit crazy lately... okay, who am I kidding? It's ALWAYS crazy here, it's been MORE crazy!

The fantabulous news in it is that Emi, my foster kitty, left for her new home today and they are thrilled to bits with her. Honestly it couldn't be a better match it seems and it's very reaffirming after having waited all this time to find the perfect home for her to see her go there and the beginnings of a lovely new relationship!

One of the odder developments is that Tim Tam the orphaned lamb has decided the dogs are acceptable substitutes. The dogs for their part figure he's pretty cool too. As usual, everything that lives here is just a bit odder than usual!

Other than that we've just been practicing as Miss Hopie has her very first flyball comp coming up this weekend! So exciting! We've got several more comps coming up in the next few weeks so stay tuned for further flyball reports! This weekend it was the VHA's Duck Clinic with Frances Smith, which was good fun. Hope was not so sure those quackers were something she should work, as she knows she's supposed to leave my ducks alone at home. (In fact they can crawl all over her, steal food from her bowl etc)


Little Miss Rin had no such qualms... the Pointy Black Dog saw ducks and went into instant stalky-staring-slinking Border Collie mode. For such a wild child, she did pretty well... especially given a few people who've seen what a manic little bit of monkeyshine she is probably figured it'd look like a game of skittles with a mad teenage BC bowling ball and ducks for pins! It looks like some of my "you only get what you want by being calm, listening and doing things mum's way" is starting to sink in... a bit, anyway!

Not from the clinic - just one of Pointy Black Dog after she's had a good bit of fun running around my muddy paddocks! The ones below are from her first introduction to duckies. The pictures were taken by Mandi who deserves big kudos for putting on the clinic, hosting us, ensuring all her duckies were ready for us, asking Francis down and generally working her bum off to ensure we had a nice day! :)

(And look, PointyBlackDog DOES have a speed other than ZOOM or SPLAT-LAYING-FLAT!)

Poor Sisi is feeling a bit left out... agility is her gig and thanks to the metric crapload of rain and storms we've had the agility grounds have been too soggy to run on for the past MONTH AND A HALF. Literally the week after we got promoted! DOH!!!

Facials anyone?

This weeks agility homework: rear end awareness. For those not aware, for dogs the but just sort of follows the decision-making front end because it's attached. They don't give it a whole lot of thought. There are areas in training having control over their rear is very useful though or important to working safely.

Now Sierra's a brilliant dog but erm... has not spectacularly successful... at rear end awareness before. It's just not particularly a strong area for her. We've taught with (flat) ladder and cavaletti in her puppy agility classes and those and backing in freestyle. She's inconsistent with the ladders and cavaletti to the frustration of myself and instructors. She does okay with backing, though she tends to crab a few degrees after several paces. We've tried rear paw targeting and spins on various equipment and via capturing, shaping and luring. She can climb ladders, both standard and more difficult ones at playgrounds which involves a fair bit of awareness of footing placement. When we're doing heel work in obed her left-about turn was taught with her tucking and swinging her bum off my left shoulder position. She can also do erm... I guess you'd call it lateral heeling - it's not great, there is two-tracking (I never bothered to refine it) but it's there. I've speculated part of it may be her physical build - her rear is not the best conformation wise so perhaps she feels the strain more - but she can move that rump! I think the only thing I know of we've not had a go at is the balance balls.

For this particular class they want pivoting on a point (pivot box) with the front anchored, ladder work and cavaletti work to be passed through to the next level. All pretty standard and they ought to be simpler than climbing the ladders but she bodges them up.

I decided to tackle the pivot box first because I actually have the equipment in the house for that and prefer not to be soaked by all this rain! The main sticking points for her have been her dancy front feet when excited... it's almost like that subconscious excitement whine some dogs do. Getting her to anchor her front in the face of excitement is difficult as she doesn't realize she's moving/shifting them

Almost as soon as I wrote it (okay, WHINGED it) onto my facebook page I realized my solution. I couldn't work with unconscious behaviour, it needed to be made conscious. There needed to be a way for her to have a sensation that would call her attention to the fact her feet were moving. I pondered for a few minutes. Novel surface textures wouldn't suit, it needed to be on her paws so she was aware of it on and off the box. Socks? Nah. It'd likely be very mildly aversive and her focus would be solely on that rather than placing and planting her feet. Coke? (An old showing trick to give dogs a bit of extra grip when gaiting...) Not noticeable enough. Needed to be stickier but not messy either.

Solution: I put peel-off facial stuff on her paw pads, you know the stuff you put on, let dry and then peel off? She lays down to be groomed, so with her melting into a puddle of bliss I put it on her feetsies and let it dry until it was just barely tacky but not messy. Not only did it work - in four sessions she has quieter feet - but she now has "softer, fresher, younger" paw pads that "feel refreshed and renewed"! ;P Booyah for David Jones facial stuff! Six sessions and we've got a reasonable if rough pivot going on. May the great god Murphy ordain we actually get the cavaletti and ladders next!

So nice to be able to do stuff with my girlies again! :)

After a long stretch of not being able to get anything done actively, it's been so nice the past few weeks to be able to immerse myself in all things doggy!

For starters, Wednesday we got a phone call from K9 Agility Club saying they had a slot open up for class starting this Thursday if I was interested? I ended up deciding to take Sierra this time as Hope will have three things with herding, flyball and obedience which is quite a bit for her - so figured to spread the love. *G*

Saturday we had the Old English Sheepdog Club of Victoria's herding test day. I'd entered Hope in PT and little madam got two qualifying passes for her title. She also won a fuzzy sheepy statue that Lily is loving patting for most promising dog in test levels. This is the video from her second run:

It was absolutely pouring rain most of the time - by the time I got home I was drenched from standing around in the rain, having Hope "share" her wetness by shaking all over me AND having had the sheep do so. LOL

Today I managed to haul myself out of bed for another soggy day at obedience and flyball. Hope is having a lot of fun with flyball and it's a good chance to work on calm focus while waiting but still being able to turn it on at the running line. A lot of people I talk to are turned off of flyball because every time they've seen it the dogs were revved up out of their minds, screaming, barking and lunging on their leads with excitement the whole time. There seems to be the mistaken impression that in order to have a dog who is high drive, turned on, focused, excited and enthusiastic you have to reinforce crazy behaviour! While we have the occasional bark, for the most part the dogs at our club train and run quietly and either watch quietly on the sideline. Hope is happy to lounge on her back, half asleep, legs lazily akimbo in every direction while we wait. Take her to the line and ask her if she's ready though and she turns on instantly. Such a good little girlie!

birth, kinder, dogs and stuff

I need to blog about the recent decisions the government has made in terms of trouncing our rights to choose independent midwifery, not have our choices as mothers and human beings over our uterus, our vaginas, our bodies and our babies removed if a doctor doesn't fancy agreeing with us and our midwives but it's all just too depressing. Krudd and Nicola Roxon suck. Lots. AMA sucks hairy monkey balls. ALP can kiss my shining white arse. It's not articulate, eloquent or stunningly spoken as some of the speeches at the 15 rallies around the nation were today (despite Krudd chickening out and avoiding everyone) but it is a very genuine sentiment none the less. If you haven't already, contact your local MP and tell them how outraged you are that these laws are being pushed through. Make a point that you will NOT vote for politicians who disregard our human rights to self determination. Senate votes NEXT TUESDAY on FEB 23!

On a happier note we had the first parent-teacher conference since La has started kinder and today was our meeting. It went pretty well and wasn't too surprising. The break-down:

• he's very, VERY smart - she reckons he'll move to Cycle 2 inside of 2 years
  
• he's exceedingly good at manipulating tools and stuff like scissors, staplers, hole punches, sticky tape etc (as if the stack of projects he brings home from kinder to join the stacks he's done here don't attest to that! LOL)
  
• he's loves learning how things work (don't I know it, the kid has pulled apart multiple remotes to wires and chips, disassembled the laundry dryer door to component parts and taken apart the DVD player to look at it's guts...)
  
• he adores the guinea pigs (or "any pigs" in La-ese) and she'd suspected he must have been taught about handling animals
  
• he yacks incessantly about all the animals here... no doubt whose kid he is hey?
  
• he loves being able to ring the class bell and is working very hard for the privilege
  
• he climbs like a monkey (they've found him perched at the top of a cupboard to get the aforementioned bell and has scaled the schools sport goal net to get up over the boundary fencing... it's been moved 3m away from the fence now) and is not at all affected by splatting himself. This is of course no shock given I've watched him climb and launch himself from the top of the chook pens, a couple meters up a tree, the top of the woodshed after shimmying up a gutter etc.
• he can be very polite and considerate.... and he can be defiant when he can't do something
  
• while he can be very focused, he's not always good about putting everything away and cleaning up when he's done before he gets something else and he can be disruptive to the other students as he'll go up and insert himself into their tasks willingly or otherwise
  

Hm. What else have we been up to? We did the Melbourne Pet Expo last Saturday with Sierra as one of the breeds demo dogs and had a nice time, albeit we got some typically amusing comments. I had one young lady look at Si's blue eyes and wail in distress, "Oh that poor dog, she's BLIND!" Um. No. She just has blue eyes. The amazing thing is the young lady had blue eyes as well! LOL

In other news, my adult foster cat who'd gone into the adoption program is back as she got ill poor dear. I think she's used up all 9 of her lives now! My foster kittens are getting big, won't be long before they're ready to spay/neuter, microchip and go to new homes. Cinnamon's spay is coming up as well, which is a bit anxiety inducing but a bit exciting as once she's healed we can adopt a friend for her!

I've put my name back down for agility training on the waiting list, so fingers crossed it won't take 2 years to get in this time! Obedience training was back as of the start of Feb but I didn't make the first class due to chest infection. (Joy!) Very much enjoying training again! Si has come up nice and trim, so she'll be in good shape... I on the other hand am a bit slower in the regaining my (non-round) shape!

I've also pretty much made up my mind that when the kids are a bit older and all in school I will look at going back to school to become a vet tech, maybe also looking into taking courses as a trainer as well. I like the trainer idea more but the vet tech is likely to be a bit more steady in terms of income. Laurent heard this and asked the all important question: but mum, will your school have sticky tape? "Um. No La, probably not." "Oh. You should come to my school then," he says with a slightly smug voice, "WE have sticky tape!" Priorities right?

Gratuitous pictures:

Mothers Day

This is my mothers day card, from "my two biggest fans", Lala and Lily. The colours don't quite show up correctly as Lily's handprint is actually orange rather than red, while La's is green.
Other than that we mostly had a normal day.... between feeding miss Lilykins I cleaned the house (though by the time I'm writing this you'd be forgiven for doubting me on that), cleaned out the chook shed, turned over the compost heap, started prepping one of the garden beds which will be dismantled as we're enlarging the area significantly, took care of critters, gathered kindling, went shopping to the pet stock store for dog food, a quick peek in the nursery while Nic took La and popped into the market. (Or "sucre market" in La-speak, my favorite missaying at the moment as it is also French for 'sweet', so it's the sweet market.) I'd have liked to have gone to Kuranga again, as we did last mothers day but unfortunately there's just never enough hours in the day and with everything being a bit behind taking care of home took precedence.

On a happier note when we were checking the lamb over today, La wanted a cuddle so we snapped a few pictures. Sierra was my self appointed "helper", ensuring the lamb didn't wander while I tried to juggle camera and baby till she was asked to lay down also. LOL
Not entirely looking forward to tomorrow as I will be up far earlier than the mother of a 1 month old should have to be to drive Nic to work since I need the car to pick up my gander from the vets. Thankfully at least it has been determined to be nothing contagious to the rest of the birds - a metabolic problem - but feeling rather 'meh' about breeding overall the moment. One wonders if it's worth the heartache we put ourselves through when we loose them to accidents or illness or they don't turn out.

Excitement...

We're lucky enough to have a photo session for Laurent and Lily today. Anyone who knows me knows I am ever so slightly (okay... completely and utterly...) obsessed with photos and one of the things I really wanted was to have some special photos from the time around Lily being a newborn. I have the ones I've taken of course but while I don't do the worst in the world I'm certainly no pro either and those newborn days go by so quickly, so despite it being not a 'strictly essential' expenditure I refused to spend years regretting not having done so and took some of the gift money for a photo session. La was a total ham of course, little cheeky-cheeks that he is... not that anyone who knows him would expect otherwise. A few sneak peeks should be online later tonight, though the proof gallery will take a bit longer. I am so excited!

I forgot to journal it but Tuesday was also Sierra's 7th birthday! Happy birthday to my bestest nubby-wigglebutt girl!

She was the most beautiful baby and my special treasure and still is.

Pics of the girls

Verity

Blueberry watching a bird

Sierra

Jo, after a hard day of playing around...

Along with one of her favorite toys, a squeeky football

Hopie

"Ohh... what's that? Jo has a squeeky football??? Must dash!"