Back to the drawing board...

 My SAR team had evals about a month ago now (wow, am I behind...) and I went through it with Kenzi. Good news - she has made progress since last time!  Bad news - we didn't pass...

 I've thought about washing her from training, but she does continue to progress and she's doing really well in training scenarios. So I'm reevaluating how I'm training and tweaking it a bit.

 A couple things she had issues with were obedience related.  Like heeling off leash through a crowd. Kenzi loves people and is highly distracted by them. We did an okay on leash heel pattern. But I need to work harder on this. My plan is to go back a few steps and up the rate of reinforcement.

 She kind of flunked direct too.  For directional work, picture a baseball diamond with raised bases at 1st, 2nd, 3rd and pitchers.  These bases are 25 yards apart. The handler stands a home plate with their dog and sends it to different bases in a pattern given by the evaluator. For instance you could be instructed to send your dog to 3rd base, pitchers, 2nd base, pitchers, 3rd base then recall. The dog needs to stay on each base for at least 5 seconds and complete the given pattern in 3 minutes. Kenzi does great with the initial send out as well as going back and forth between pitchers 1st and 3rd. But she got highly confused when I asked her to go back to 2nd base from pitchers like she didn't understand the concept of looking back. So right now I'm just using pitchers and 2nd base, only placing them 20-30 feet apart and we're practicing short, highly rewarding sessions with a "go back".  This is working well and she seems to be getting the "go back" concept. I'll gradually increase the distance between bases and when she's consistently going back with the bases 25-30 yards apart then I'll add the 1st and 3rd bases back in.

I'm tweaking her reward system for searches too. I was having the victim reward all the time - her usual reward was playing/interacting with the victim and I rewarded only occassionally. But the handler has to reward during evaluations and I think this threw her off a bit too when all the rewards started coming from me rather than the victim. She was fine with the first few but then she start acting like "this is different - maybe I'm not doing something quite right"  Crazy, over-analyzing Border Collie.... So now when she goes in and alerts, the victim throws her a frisbee, then I follow up with playing a short frisbee game with her. I'll try this for a few weeks and see how it works.

'tis the season

I haven't been neglecting this blog on purpose.  It's just that we entered the work season in southwest Michigan.  Many people call this season "summer" and take vacations. Not so here.  I'm doing both farm work and helping to manage a rental cottage this summer.

Then on top of that I decided to take a summer class because I'm trying to get done with my math requirements.  It's kinda crazy, but in 6 weeks the class will be over.

I've been doing some knitting and pattern work on the side.  I need the creative outlet! Plus sample knitting is a great excuse to take a break. Because even though I'm sitting there watching a movie, I'm still working!

A couple of my latest patterns are the With Love Baby Blanket

This blanket was knit with Knit Picks Swish Tonal (100% superwash Merino, 220 yards/100 gram skein) It took 4 skeins and the Summer Blooms color was perfect for this project!


And Daisy Chain Blanket and Pretty Posies Hat

The Pretty Posies hat uses yarn left over from the Daisy Chain Blanket (I knit both hats with the leftover yarn!) so it's a project that makes good use of the all the yarn and doesn't leave you with half a skein left over (except for the yellow used for the flower centers...) I knit in with Knit Picks Brava Worsted - 100% acrylic, 220 yards/100 gram skein.  I'm kind of a natural fiber snob, but thought that Brava was very nice for an acrylic.  Soft, easy on your hands and the colors are great.  Often acrylics have a definite plastic feel, but I didn't notice that with Brava. I could tell I was knitting with acrylic, but it wasn't at all objectionable to me.

The dog by my bed

 Missy always slept by the side of my bed underneath a table.  It was her spot.  After I lost her I missed seeing a dog by the side of my bed.  Oh I still had them in my room but they were either on the bed (Kenzi) or curled up on a dog bed on the other side (Kipp). It was one of the little things that I missed.

 Until recently.

A couple months ago Kipp started giving up his bed for a time and curling up on the floor along side of mine. He now goes to sleep there, moves to his bed in the middle of the night, then back along side of mine by the time I get up in the morning. 

It makes me smile. 

Random thoughts

Because I haven't posted very frequently lately...

My schedule has greatly relaxed since school ended last week.

It might actually seem relaxed if it wasn't filling up with everything I didn't get done while school was in session.

But it's really nice that I don't have to use my brain power for homework and class because now I can focus it on pattern designing :-)

Speaking of patterns I finished up 2 samples over the weekend! Now I just need to get the final versions of the patterns completed.

And I need to hurry because Knit Picks is sending me yarn for two more projects :D

There were two lambs born over the weekend.

I have two weeks to get Kenzi all set for SAR evals :o

Life is crazy...

...which you probably could have guess through the gaps in my blogging.

I'm wrapping up the semester. Which means lots of odds and ends to wrap up and a couple finals (no finals in two of my classes!) to prep for.

And work has started back up in full swing - my boss is chomping at the bit for school to be done so I can get more hours in.

I'm still working on pattern design. It's going slower, but knitting is relaxing and the designing gives me an outlet for my creative juices. Currently wrapping up the Puppy Trails Tote and working on two baby blankets.

And then of course the dogs!! We're playing quite a bit of frisbee and ball lately. And hiking. Good exercise for them without much thought input for me... I'm doing some training, but not as much as I should (especially considering that I'm putting Kenzi through a SAR evaluation in a month!). I need to step up that training next week after finals.

Puppy Trails Tote

Introducing my latest design - The Puppy Trails Tote! I'm super excited about this tote - that seems to be a recurring theme with my dog inspired designs :D

It's my first foray into felting, or at least pattern writing for felting! I loved designing and making this one - and love the idea of felted totes in general - simple, versatile, lots of uses and they'd make great gifts!


And I love taking pictures of Kipp - he gives me such great poses (yes, I had a handful of kibble, and yes I occasionally said words like "cat", "sheep" and "frisbee" to get those ears to really perk up :p)

I'm in the process of writing the pattern up now and should be sending everything off to Knit Picks in by the end of the week - woo-hoo!

Brains over Brawn

Or, Why Kipp is smarter than Kenzi.

Kipp is the bottom of the totem pole dog here. Always has been. With Missy he understood that she was The Boss. Period. When Kenzi came, she also understood that Missy was The Boss but also figured out that she could still boss Kipp around. .Kipp is fine with that and has no aspirations of climbing higher. If Kenzi is happy, life is good. I think he finds security in absolutely knowing where his spot in life is, even if that means that Kenzi may steal his bone every once and a while...

Kipp likes his food. Really likes his food. Get a handful of kibble and I have his undivided attention. But he has zero food aggression with people or dogs (often this is far from the case with dogs that are highly food motivated)

Tonight I put a plate down for the dogs to lick off. They went to work at it and I started to hear a rumble coming out of Kenzi's throat. But before I could step in and remove the plate, Kipp ever so carefully grabbed the edge of the plate and just dragged it away. Kenzi went back over and stuck her nose back in but again Kipp just grabbed the edge and moved away with it. Then he laid down almost on top of the plate.

Kenzi gave up.

I love watching his brain work.