Category: Blog

After living with a dog afraid of fireworks for 10 years, I am really over them.

I live between two city firework sites.

Now I get Addison, no one lives there and the bars and restaurants welcome the revenue from the patios watching the fireworks. Boy howdy, go for it.

But why are we doing it in Farmers Branch. Ours are ground level and we have long run off any restaurant near the site. Lack of revenue.

How much money did we make? Who did it benefit? I am about to start attending council meetings and put a stop to it.

Yeah our house was shaking from 9:00 – 10:00 from it.

Tax dollars at work?

Sent from my Windows Phone

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

She  looked okay until we got downstairs at Watt’s and tried to warm out, then her rear end started bothering her again.  Her tail was up and she looked happy.

Here’s what she looked like after the try:

I’ve done some research on the internet, and it a condition not well known to vets, but fairly well known to beagle people. I’ve seen it in my other beagles, rest and anti-inflammatories seem to help (Macy is on them).

In fact, I’m staying home right now.  One of the reasons, is that I literally can’t walk.  Might have something to do with the 12,686 steps I took yesterday.

Started out by getting there at 7:25, finding a somewhat decent place to park and finding out that I was 4th dog in the ring.  Also not seeing any crating space.

Found a friend, asked her about leaving Dulce in the car for a few minutes, she said she had space but was saving it for someone else.  Also said that she wouldn’t leave Dulce in the car.

Now, I’ve shown there for years and crating in the parking lot (though that parking lot is gone), knew that 4th in the ring meant we’d be done in about 10 minutes from then, so went on.   Oh, and it was 60 degrees and still overcast.

I decided I didn’t have time to do anything but get Macy, run, and then decide what to do which worked out fine.

Once we did that I had plenty of time. 

Ended up crating with total strangers who were great to be around.

Honestly though, I’m not sure what was up.  One person I’ve known for years was screaming at everyone we knew.  Apparently that’s normal behavior, as they were tolerating it – she recently told me that I should crate near her because my dogs might bark.

At one moment people would be pleasant and run, a few hours later would just be no fun at all.  If it weren’t for the fact that the people I was crated around were fun, I would have thought it were me.

Anyway, I came home not able to walk any more, and in the same state this morning.  I could still go back later in the day, but we’ll see.