I loath...

Scorpions!  Waking up to someone telling me "move, move there is a scorpion in the bed" is not what I wanted to hear last night.  Then to my horror have my pillow used to squish the thing.  My pillow did no damage to the scorpion but a shoe on the bed did (after several attempts).  I was the flashlight gal during this bug squishing episode.  After the thing was dead I checked and rechecked my pillow before using it.  My nerves were on edge that is was very hard to go back to sleep.  Just a few weeks ago I was chased down by a scorpion in the bathroom.  After Todd squished that one we were talking in the kitchen were I spotted a light brown moving critter on my shoulder from the corner of my eye.  Let me just say Todd said my feet were moving so fast it reminded him of a cartoon.  Then of course I landed squarely on my rear which lead to a nice size black & blue mark.  Yeah, that one just turned out to be a June bug that landed on me but at the moment I so thought it was a scorpion.  I look forward to cooler weather for many reasons and the scorpions leaving is at the top of it.

experiments...

So I did some experiments this week.  One,  almond milk & pudding mix does not thicken very well.  Two, getting dogs to pay attention to me when coming out of the house.  My dogs have good recalls but when we first exit the door for walks things are a little crazy.  Wicket is so excited up races out the door (once released on cue) and makes a line between me & the tree line (bunnies & squirrels oh my).  During the back and forth runs of Wicket, Chloe is afraid she will miss the fun critters too.  Now Wicket never leaves my sight but Chloe does & comes back 85% of the time when called.  I have been working on ways to keep them from doing their ritual run out the door.  Treats work with Chloe but once I am done Wicket still goes crazy & makes his frantic run.  So, I tried toys.  Well, well I think we found a winner.  I pulled out several toys & let the dogs tug with me when they came out.  Since I only have two hands & have to push a stroller they had to take turns as we walked.  Once I told them all done they would walk a head of me & we would play recall games.  If the dog came, that I called, fast on the first call they got to tug with me.  This was way more fun then all the critters in the woods.  Now I have a way to reinforce my recalls, not running crazy when first leaving the house and that mama is lots of fun.  Granted this was not difficult for my dogs since they have a recall foundation.  Think outside the box for the behaviors you want to change.  -Heidi

The 4th of July

 Heidi, Ellie & Todd

Ellie 10 months old

The three of us went to have sweets with some of our family on the fourth of July.  Ellie had a great time getting into things.  No fireworks this year because Ellie was just way to tired to stay up.

A TV star...

Well, five minutes of fame anyway.  Chloe and I filmed for our local TV show Dog Talk.  Chloe is tv material but I better stick with dog training.  After driving for an hour and a half I finally made my way into the KSBI studio.  I felt so bad that everyone had to wait on me the one and only who couldn't seem to find the place.  The staff at KSBI were all very nice about my direction disability and we finally got the filming done so they could go home.  The episode Chloe and I will be one airs August 6th.  Check us out!

The busy dog trainer-June

How many of us keep track of our dog training? One thing I have learned over the years is the people that excel at what they do usually keep track of their training one way or another. I am a big fan of quick and easy record keeping. I am going to share with you one way to keeping track of your dog training. First, I make a spreadsheet on the computer. I list the skills for a week that I want to work on. Then, in the columns next to the skills I can place the date that I worked on it & the number of times a day. This helps motivate me to do daily training with my dogs & gives something specific to work on. Now that being said I use this for skills my dogs have already been taught & I am wanting to improve upon. When I teach a new skill I keep track differently because I need to do more writing on that new skill.

Tea Tree Oil

Most of us know that tea tree oil helps keep fleas & ticks away from our dogs but it can also help with another pesky bugger. I'm talking about chiggers! I just happened to run out of my dog shampoo (with tea tree oil) & was using another that had been sitting in the cabinet for a while. Todd & I keep getting chigger bits when we were in the house. I finally came to the conclusion that in years past we had never had this problem because I used shampoo with tea tree oil on our dogs. So, I set our to buy some shampoo & see if I was right. As soon as all the dogs were bathed the the furniture sprayed with tea tree oil & water we had no more chigger bits. The only down side to this is you have to bath the dogs once a week &/or spray them with tea tree oil every time the go out. That being said I live in the country were the dogs get into the tall grass. If you live in a neighbor hood then you are not going to have chigger problems like us country folks. Just thought I would share what I learned this month! -Heidi

The nine month old

Just before Ellie turned nine months she decided to try everything. Ellie started crawling, standing while holding on to things & her first tooth came in. It has been an exciting time! Ellie is keeping me on my toes now that she is on the go. Here are a few pictures of her.