Author: kathleen

I am a dog sport enthusiast and a service dog user. My friends are breeders and dog sport enthusiasts. We are not pet parents.

We spend a lot of money on our dogs and our vets and suppliers don't need cutesy titles to make more money off of us. In fact, I get a discount from mine since I have been a client for so long.

One of my vets competes with me and I know for a fact, she got up out of a warm bed and delivered a litter of beagles during the ice storm we had a few weeks ago. She doesn't need to up sale that client either. That client goes to her for reproduction only
and also competes with her.

Now I know the type of client the other vets are after and they really should be ashamed of themselves. I have heard what "pet" vets charge and it is freaking ridiculous. About double what mine does without the discount.

Maybe if they would drop the charges, drop the upsale, they would get better clients?

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I took a break from agility and am slowly coming back. I entered both dogs in FAST, Standard and JWW

The weather sucked, and it was just too hot for Macy. She tried, but just couldn’t do it.

However, Dulce made a huge break through, she stayed in the ring all three runs. The FAST, which was first, was a bit iffy, but the second and third were two solid, dog was definitely in the ring. She did spend a lot of time eating things in the ring but did take quite a few obstacles.

Getting there.

We try again next weekend, but Standard and JWW only.

I think!

While she looked around the ring and didn’t do everything I said, she didn’t leave the ring and she took some obstacles.

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Dulce has been a rock star this week, but then she usually is.

Tuesday night we had a pre-Trend Sale appointment at Nordstorm – my Beauty Stylist loves her and really looks out for her so arranged for us to get an Oxygen Massage and a Warm Hand Massage, along with Trend Sale specials. We all agreed that Trend Sale would be too crazy for her. Plus we are double booked for Saturday.

Tonight we had a reception / check awards ceremony with the Junior League of Dallas. I was concentrating so hard on walking that I forgot we were supposed to stop and take a picture. Plus I was a bit startled by the audience reaction. They forgot about the service dog and I didn’t remind them and it worked out find. They had us arranged by school name so the check presentation would go faster. We did startle the woman next to us, but Dulce stayed under the chair in front of us. Big difference from last year when she hung out in a cage.

She did end up alerting when they were doing the last three schools. She did give me enough time for them to finish the picture taking – a group picture is shared on Facebook.

Fortunately I asked for sugar – the iced tea was sugar free and what looked like water was heavily sweetened lemonade. I would have guessed the opposite if I hadn’t asked. That and a couple of small brownies got us home.

Of course the first thing I did was set of Dulce’s “office”.

Since Dulce is a little dog, I have always set up a cage for her. I think Tara was a bit surprised at that, but I’m a huge believer in the power of the crate. I have gone through the training protocol “Crate Games” and have found it useful.

And yes, Dulce can and does alert while she is in a crate.

When I’m at school, she hangs out in her crate, most of time with the door open. She is comfortable there and knows that she won’t be bothered. The kids get a kick out of watching her pull the door open and closed with her paw.

Her crate is under my desk which keeps her close to me.

When we have staff development, I’ll take a smaller crate so both hands are free. If we have a short meeting, I’ll just take a mat so she still has a defined space.

Both of us tend to prefer the crate, as people can’t step on her when she is one – a waiter accidently stepped on her last week when she was loose.

As I hoped, both girls Qed in the only runs we ran. That gives Macy her 4^th Game 3 Q and Dulce her 1^st Game 3 Q. Each need 5 for their Game 3 title. It will be a while.

We ended up leaving the trial after the first class.

There were two major problems. The place that the trial was being held at isn’t doing maintenance, and one of the corners wasn’t well lit. I’ve posted pictures on Facebook already. I couldn’t see well enough to run.

PLUS, the club had food out where dogs who run out of the ring could get it.

I am working on an issue with Dulce that was caused by the people who run the place – so having food at ready access was NOT a good idea. Also having food poisonous to dogs readily available was also not a good idea. It took some major tantrum throwing but they did agree to let me leave and refund my money.

I got the check today, and went out to the web and finally found out that we Qed today!

While I have been in Austin, Macy was lying near the door, waiting for me, and wouldn’t spend a lot of time with my husband—unless he had food.

When I came home, she happily greeted me. But she has ignored me the rest of the time, even walking away from me when I called her.

Now, I know that the beagles with sore ears have avoided me so that their ears don’t get doctored – this is why we get our ears packed from now on, but this behavior is ridiculous.

Went to a fun match at a new training facility in Frisco to work on Dulce’s ring issues. They have been open for a while but haven’t had a match when I have been available plus their conditions are a bit sterile to be effective.

Had a nice relaxing run with Macy working on her speed and distance. She had fun.

Dulce had the zoomies her first run but she came back and got some sequences in. Second time she stayed with me, but I think I pushed too hard as she peed in the weaves. We got two nice runs in after that though.

I have decided to enter Saturday trials only until we get our issues resolved.

Today has been a looking back day….

The beagle girls (Macy and Dulce) and I made a trip to the beagle house. I’ve been working on Mildred’s website at http://www.tesorosbeagles.com and I went there to see if there were some missing pages on her computer (they weren’t there).

Dulce visited with her mom. Okay, they sniffed each other and nobody flashed teeth. Always a good thing.

On the way there, an internet friend mentioned she was at Shelburne Museum which reminded me of Marcie – Bettner’s Byte of Magic. Marcie was born at Shelburne Farms and owned by the groundskeeper’s family.

An internet friend noticed that one of Deenie’s beagle puppies looked exactly like my Peppermint Patty. We hooked up and made arrangements to ship Marcie to me. Thankfully, while Marcie was the smallest puppy in the litter, she ended up being a very LARGE 15″ beagle. If she was the slightest overweight, she would go over the wicket.

Patty was very special, and one of my 12″ – 13″ beagles. Both were blue tick beagles. Mostly black, with white and brown ticking, resembling blue tick beagles. Patty was the number one obedience beagle in the country, and got me into police dog training. I don’t think anyone could have taken two almost identical beagles that perfect.

Marcie’s litter was a “magical” litter as Deenie was the daughter of an east coast dog fancier and had purchased two very well bred beagles for her boys to hunt with. They had keep the two beagle apart, put them together a few times to breed, and no puppies so they gave up, and let them live together in a run. One day Deenie went out and Marcie’s mom was great with puppies. Thus the litter appeared magically, I think she was 6 or 7 at the time. Plus there were a large number of puppies.

Marcie was a very good beagle, having the uncanny ability to read the agility cones. Ask anyone around here. (Okay, the true secret is that she didn’t appear to watch me, but would catch the tinest movement, and I would often spot the correct cone at the last minute, saving many an almost off course. But it’s more fun to believe that she was truly magical and could read cones. We had one club that used flat plaques instead of cones and I would always tease them that Marcie couldn’t read their numbers and that we would have to required them to get cones.

See Patty was perfect at obedience, Marcie perfect at agility. Too bad they didn’t have a perfect handler.

Many years ago, I went to an agility trial and there was glass in the dirt – in fact, I’ll tell you exactly where it was – Monroe, Louisiana – in the summer.

I had a hotel reservation for the entire weekend, had planned for my family in Mississippi to come visit me there (I live in Texas, so it’s somewhat convenient for them).

I will admit, I have an issue with broken glass — and I tried really hard.

I had three dogs entered in the trial – Marcie, Maggie and Macy, in Excellent, Standard, and Novice, so I had a lot of money invested in the trial – and again, remember, my family was coming to see me.

Every time I went into the ring, I found another piece of glass. Or two or three.

Now I am NOT going to endanger my dogs for an agility trial. I couldn’t pick up the broken glass myself – I had to get someone to pick it up for me – and each time I went to someone on the trial committee. After the third course, I couldn’t take it anymore, and asked for my entries fees back. I think I even went to the rep (can’t remember if there was one there). I also know I immediately wrote to the AKC.

Guess what. I didn’t get my entries fees back but I left and I haven’t been back. It’s been at least 5 years. They don’t even have trials at that same convention center, but I STILL haven’t been back, even though it’s quite convenient to visit with my family when I’m there.