ziwipeak lasts this long

March 24th, 2012 § Leave a Comment

Slate just today finished that first bag of Ziwipeak, which I started around 17th February.

So, for anyone looking for some sort of reference point:  The 5kg bag lasts a spayed 23kg dog around 5 weeks.

weird man in the park, meanwhile Grey can see my casts…

March 23rd, 2012 § Leave a Comment

The most IMPORTANT thing to say today is that Grey got every cast right first time.  No no-gos.  No bugging.  No hesitation.  This was our first attempt at 3HC since her haircut.

Bloody hell.  Does this mean that she has previously been unable to see my casts because her hair was in her face?!  This is ridiculous.  This is so ridiculous, I almost don’t want to have found the solution and for this to be it.

Years spent going back to never-ending casting basics because her hair was in her eyes!?!!?!!!!!  

I am not going to think about it anymore.  It is too painful.

Instead, I am going to recount An Amusing Incident which took place in the park.  Obviously it was amusing retrospectively; at the time it was only infuriating.

I had almost finished our 3HC drill with both dogs.  There was just one dummy left out, at the right pole.

Then an altercation broke out near that pole, between a man with a little Jack Russell terrier and a woman who looked like a university student.  I couldn’t hear what it was about.  The woman walked off.  The man yelled at his dog (‘Buster, here.  BUSTER.’).  Buster was completely ignoring him and sniffing the ground about 10 feet away.

The man then proceeded to BEAT his dog with the lead for not coming when called.  Admittedly, it did not look like he was doing it very hard and I think it was mostly for show:  I figured that was what his argument with the woman had been about, and he was showing that she wasn’t going to stop him doing this.

Anyway, I couldn’t send a dog for the last dummy with them right by the pole, so I decided to call it a day and I walked around the pitch in the opposite direction, collecting the other 2 poles first.

As I did this, I saw the man walking across the pitch parallel to me with his dog hanging off his arm.  As in – terrier-style not-letting-go.  (At first I wasn’t sure the man wasn’t hanging his dog – but the dog was pulling back against it, so wasn’t being hung.  Phew.)

I called our dogs to me using the whistle.  I was making a point:  THIS is how you end up with dogs which come when called:  You have something they want.  (In this case, smoked mackerel.)  You don’t go and beat them.  I heard the man saying ‘peep peep peep’ after my whistle.  Which was stupid.  As if beating your dog isn’t stupid enough.  Then he made a few smoochy noises – it sounded like he was trying to encourage my dogs to come to him.  Well, let him try.  Fat chance.  If my dogs even turned a whisker towards him, I’d just call them back.

So, I ignored him and arrived at my third and final pole.  Only to find that the dummy was missing.  It then dawned on me what the man’s dog had been hanging off – my dummy!  I turned and saw him now on the far side of the pitch, throwing my f$%&^£^@ing dummy for his dog.

Right:  War.

Asshole.

I put the dogs back in the car.  I wasn’t sure what was going to happen when I confronted him.  I worried it would go something like:

‘Give me my dummy back.’

‘No.  Make me.’

‘You’re a very nasty man.  Uh… ‘

I debated taking Slate, and sending her to get it on one of the occasions he threw it for his dog.  But his dog was very fast and would be closer than Slate to it.  Plus I didn’t know if his dog was ok with other dogs.

So I walked off towards him.  At the last minute, I decided to be disarmingly polite and give him something completely unexpected.  So I said:

‘Hey.  That’s a really great little dog you’ve got there.  He’s really clever.  But I think you might have accidentally picked up something of mine.’  [You total-jerk-idiot-asshole-w%^ker.]  [I didn't say that bit, though.  That was internal monologue.]

He then handed me the dummy, without an ounce of surprise.  He knew full well that was my dummy.  He said:

‘Were you training those dogs you had?’

‘Yes.’

‘How much do you charge?’

‘Oh, I wasn’t training them for anyone else.  They’re my dogs.’

‘Why do you have big dogs?’

‘What?’

‘I’d have thought a woman would have small dogs.  More easily manageable.’

[Yeah, guess that's important if you're going to physically dominate them.  You numb nuts.]  [That was internal monologue again.]

‘Yeah, well I don’t.  Have a nice day.  And look after your dog.  He’s a clever one.’  [Unlike you, idiot.]

So, that was my little adventure this morning.  I did get the dummy back.  I probably did not help his poor dog in any way, since I just wanted to get out of there.  Sheesh.

 

 

blood results

March 20th, 2012 § Leave a Comment

Hoorah, it’s official:  Slate is ok.  Blood tests came back as normal.  So no liver problems.  Very good news.

haircut

March 19th, 2012 § 2 Comments

Before

After

repeat bloods

March 19th, 2012 § Leave a Comment

Took Slate back to the vet today to repeat the blood test she had a few months back.

The results a few months ago showed that her liver enzymes were raised.  Which could indicate nothing at all – human liver enzymes are raised if we have a few drinks, for example – or it could indicate a problem with her liver, or liver disease.  To rule out environmental stuff having caused the raised enzymes, it’s best to repeat them and see if they are still raised.

So that’s what we did today.  Should have the results by Wednesday.  She has no other symptoms of any kind and appears to be in good health.  So, even if they come back raised again, I’m going to be loathe to do anything further.

Out of the £1072 bill for her op and tests for the MCT, we have recouped around £800 from our Direct Line Essential insurance policy.  (Won’t go into why not the full amount, since you might fall asleep whilst reading the explanation.)

Meanwhile, Grey came into season about a week ago.  Which has scuppered any plans of her doing the Working Gundog Certificate I’d been intending to enter her for.  Bummer.

I have decided to cut the fur away from in front of her eyes, so she can see properly.  I am curious to see whether this will make any difference to her no-gos on casts.

blue Weimaraners

March 15th, 2012 § 10 Comments

There is quite a charged conversation taking place in the Weimaraner UK group on Facebook, at the moment.

In a nutshell, a woman posted that she had just imported a blue field-bred Weimaraner, from the US.  The level of vitriol directed at her, for this, has been staggering and – frankly – disgusting.  Stripping out the emotional aspect of the exchange to look at the facts, the accusations are:

  • Breeding from blue Weimaraners is unethical and bad for the breed.
  • Blue Weimaraners are a crossbreed.
  • Blue Weimaraners are not in the breed standard, nor endorsed by the country of origin, therefore to breed them or support them in any way is wrong because Weimaraners must be ‘grey ghosts’, not blue.
  • Importing US field-bred Weimaraners to the UK is a bad idea because US Weimaraners are bred to be run off horseback and are wider-ranging than we have use for, in the UK (this one is slightly separate to the blue Weim arguments and revolves instead around the importation of working US Weims).
  • We don’t need to import Weims from the US, because we have such fantastic working Weims here in the UK (ditto the above).
  • Blue Weimaraners actually don’t exist (!) since they can’t be shown even in the US, and therefore we can just write them out of Weimaraner-dom.
  • The blue gene is dominant over the grey gene, which means that if we endorse blue Weimaraners we will ‘lose’ the greys.
  • The woman concerned is asking for different stud fees from grey and blue bitch owners, and is also offering her dog at stud to non-Weimaraners.  She has a blue and appears to be an irresponsible breeder for these reasons.  Therefore everyone with a blue is unethical and having anything to do with blues is necessarily unethical and irresponsible.
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Blue Weimaraners are not a crossbreed.  Two blue Weimaraners, bred together, can produce silver-grey puppies which can be (and are) shown in AKC events.  How could two ‘crossbreeds’ together produce a silver ‘pedigree’ Weimaraner?
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Furthermore, the KC decides whether a dog can be registered as pedigree.  The KC is the authority which decides whether a dog is pedigree or not, as evidenced recently by the decision to accept a dalmatian with pointer blood as a pedigree dalmatian.  This dalmatian was shown at Crufts this year, as a dalmatian.  The be-all and end-all of what is a pedigree is the KC.  You don’t have to like it, you don’t have to agree, but that’s how it is.
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Whether or not the breed clubs approve, the KC has decided to accept blue Weimaraners as pedigree Weimaraners and to register them accordingly.  (Whilst noting on the pedigree that their colour is blue or not recognised.)  Blues are also accepted as AKC registered pedigrees in the US and were even shown alongside greys until 1972 – since the colour was accepted until 1972 in conformation shows.  AKC reg blues still compete in obedience, tracking, agility and field competitions.
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Secondly, blue Weimaraners do not pose a risk to greys:  There is an article by the Blue Weimaraner Club of America outlining the genetics of blue Weimaraners, but essentially blue is dominant to grey, which means that there must be one blue parent to produce blues:  You can never get a blue puppy from two grey parents.  This is because, if a dog is carrying the blue gene, you will always see the blue colour.  (Since it is dominant.)
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Grey pups from blue parents will never pass on the blue gene, because they are not carriers.  There is no risk of blue Weimaraners cropping up unexpectedly in matings between greys.  Blue Weimaraners have existed for decades in the US – since the introduction of the breed to the US in the late 1940s – and there have been many, many matings documented by the AKC during that time, so we know this to be an indisputable fact.  Any fear that blue Weimaraners are a threat to grey integrity is hysteria and a very primitive response to something which is ‘other’ and ‘different’ as being necessarily threatening.  (I’m tempted here to make comparisons to racism in humans…).
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It is interesting to compare the blue/grey conundrum to the long-hair and short-hair genes in Weimaraners.  The long-hair gene is recessive.  This means it can be carried without being obvious in the dog’s phenotype (appearance), and if two carriers are bred together you will get some long-haired puppies in a litter – even when both parents are short-haired.  Because it is recessive, you need a DNA coat test to see if a short-haired dog is a long-hair carrier.  You do not need such a test for a blue Weimaraner – it will be obvious that the dog is a carrier, since it will be blue.
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Which is all to say that it is harder to determine whether you will get long-hairs in a litter than it is to determine whether you will get blues.  Yet no one is raising hue and cry about long-haired Weimaraners wiping out short-haired Weims…
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As for the breed standard and the country of origin argument:  The first known blue dog was Casar von Gaiberg, call name ‘Tell’.

"Tell"

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He is considered the origin of the US blues.  The German Weimaraner Club issued Tell’s papers and so clearly considered him purebred.  The AKC accepted these papers and registered him.  After this, the German Weimaraner Club appear to have changed their minds about his pedigree status.  By then, however, it was too late and he was AKC registered.  There is no evidence that his German papers were revoked, nor that he was crossbred.  We can argue forever about his origins:  Some believe his colour was the result of a spontaneous genetic mutation, a throw-back to earlier developments of the breed.  Others believe that he was crossbred.  The point being, though, that his genes are out there now and are well and truly part of Weimaraners genetically.
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Furthermore, since all dog breeds were created by crossing various breeds together (the SRHP Club in Slovakia still being embarked on this very process), what would be so unusual about the addition of blood from another breed in the 1940s?  That’s a heck of a long time ago and many breeds have had blood from other breeds inputted since then, yet the pups are not considered crossbreeds.  My point being that the outrage on Facebook is nothing at all to do with blues being genetically a crossbreed (that is just being used to justify it), and everything to do with appearance.
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In fact, the evil, spawn of satan, to-be-wiped-out-at-all-costs blue genes – which are such a great threat to the UK grey Weim population - are already here.  Flimmoric Fanclub was one of the most prolific UK Weimaraner stud dogs of all time.  According to the international Weimaraner Pedigrees database, he sired no fewer than 410 puppies.
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Yet follow his pedigree back through one particular line and you get this:
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Flimmoric Fanclub>
Lusco’s Foreign Affair of Flimmoric>
Reichtenstadt’s Simon Peter>
Reichtenstadt’s Kona vom Arenas>
Reichtenstadt’s Majestic>
Kams Rauchigalan of Redhill>
Kris-Miss Shadow>
Monarch of Long Beach>
[unknown male, silver grey]>
Bing’s Blue Boy>
Casar’s Bing>
Casar von Gaiberg
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That is:  One of the most prolific sires in the UK, campaigned successfully in the show ring, has the first recorded blue Weimaraner behind him.  (The blue virus is amongst us!  OMG!!!  Lock your dogs up!!).
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Yet we have seen no further incidences of blues in the UK, from grey Weimaraners.  If that’s not proof enough that blues do not throw greys, and are not a threat to greys, I don’t know what is…
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Furthermore, if blue Weimaraners are crossbreeds, and there is a blue Weimaraner behind such a prolific stud dog, does that mean that all the UK Weims with Flimmoric Fanclub in their pedigree are crossbreeds too?
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This would include the vast majority of UK-bred Weimaraners – remember, he did sire 410 puppies.  Just when does this so-called ‘crossbreed’ effect wear off?  Are people saying that a dog is a crossbreed if it is blue, but not if it has the exact same parentage but is grey??  How can that be?  A crossbreed is a crossbreed, right?  It’s about genetics, not appearance.
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Finally, to deal with the argument that they don’t meet the breed standard so they are not Weimaraners…
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Many Weimaraners do not meet the breed standard.  They may be too tall or too short, they may have too many white patches… there are many faults, some disqualifying.  That does not mean they are not Weimaraners.  These dogs would win no awards in the show ring, but that doesn’t mean they are not pedigrees.  Just because a blue dog has a disqualifying fault (the wrong coat colour) does not mean it is not a Weimaraner!  Not unless you also want to throw out all dogs which are too short or too tall, or have too large a white patch on their chest, too.
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Breed standards have, of course, got us into some hot water:  They have led to dogs being increasingly bred for exaggerated qualities.  Already at the moment in the UK show ring we have huge Weimaraners appearing, the size of small great danes.  The standard is open to interpretation and is a record of fashion, and fashion changes – it is not immutable:  Some say that the original ‘mouse-grey’ colour of the German standard once included blue Weimaraners.
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Moreover, if folk are going to throw the breed standard around, it does say ‘hunting ability of paramount concern‘.  Should we throw out all Weimaraners as ‘non-pedigree’ if they can’t hunt, given that they are obviously not fulfilling this part of the breed standard?  Are we even assessing the ‘hunting ability’ which is of ‘paramount concern’ by trotting a dog around a small ring, miles away from the whiff of a rabbit or bird?
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Given that the breed has had only 2 FTChs ever, as compared to over 45-odd GSP FTChs, are we really upholding the right parts of the breed standard or are there perhaps some which should be given more attention?  If folk were as outraged about poor working ability as they are about the colour of the dog, we might have our priorities in a better place.  If I buy a vacuum for my house, is it even relevant if it is black or grey, or is it more important that it vacuums my house?
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The breed standard itself states:
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I cannot see how the blue coat affects either the health and welfare of the dog, nor its ability to perform its traditional work.
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If we are going to hark back to what the country of origin do, as setting the precedent for what we should do:  There are many things Germany does which breeders in the UK seem quite happy not to do.  We don’t assess our dogs’ working abilities through a comprehensive testing system before breeding from them.  We don’t assess their ability to track in any way.  Nor to retrieve vermin.  We don’t assess their man-sharpness before breeding.  Actually, most UK Weims are bred without having been worked in any way and are sold to non-hunters.  Nothing could be further from this in Germany.  Furthermore, in Germany LH Weims and SH Weims cannot be interbred, they are effectively separate breeds.  Yet we interbreed them in the UK.  I could go on.  The point being that we already do many things against what the country of origin does.
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Finally, it is true that many blue Weim breeders are not reputable and seek to breed for profit.  But what comes first, the chicken or the egg?  Arguably, by excommunicating blue Weims, we have created that situation:  It meant that few reputable breeders then wanted to breed them, since they had a disqualifying fault.  We left the territory wide open for them to be owned and bred by backyard breeders who sell them as ‘rare’.  They are not rare and they should not cost any more than a grey Weim.  So, yes, most blue Weim breeders around are unethical.  But to extrapolate from ‘most blue Weimaraner breeders are bad’ to ‘all blue Weimaraners are bad’ is a fallacy.
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I won’t even get into US working Weims and why we urgently need an injection of working blood in the UK, I will have to save that one for a rainy day…
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Just to be clear:  I am not pro-blue Weimaraners and they don’t appeal to me.  But I think there is no need for such outrage and such hostility and such misinformation when discussing them.  They cannot be shown and they are not a threat to grey Weims genetically.

3HC video

March 12th, 2012 § 1 Comment

What we did this morning:

3 leg pattern with casts

March 9th, 2012 § Leave a Comment

Following on our recent success with walking baseball, I’m continuing on from this point with Grey.

I have quite a few US retriever-training books, which I would really recommend to anyone wanting to train their dog to handle – whether a retriever or a HPR (or even a spaniel).  Although these books advocate all kinds of punishment and e-collar use, you can take exactly the same exercises and drills and patterns, and use them from a reward-based training perspective.  (In the UK all gundogs are expected to handle, to some extent – although retrievers are supposed to be the handling dogs par excellence.)

The only thing to be careful of, if you are using reward-based methods only, is to pay extra attention to preventing mistakes in the first place.  The US retriever trainers can always use a nick from an e-collar on the dog at a distance, to prevent the dog from carrying through and ignoring a sit whistle or picking the wrong dummy.

If you’re using only reward-based training methods, you can still use exactly the same drills to teach a dog to handle, but you don’t have any brakes on the dog at a distance.  So it really helps at first to 1) use a long-line for a good while at first and 2) keep everything small and manageable – no massive distances where the dog is working outside your control.

Folk who use reward-based methods tend to ignore everything to do with e-collar retriever training and dismiss it as not being relevant to what they want to do.  This is a shame, because if you just strip out the punishment and look at the progression of exercises and drills, you can easily adjust them to be used positively.  US retriever trainers achieve results, and contrary to what it might look like at first, those results are largely derived from rewards – dummies, for retrieving-fanatic dogs.

Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater and reinvent the wheel, if you’re a positive-only trainer.

Although I have SmartWork, and the Mike Lardy stuff too, the book I return to most for its simplicity and coherent progression (as well as excellent walking baseball diagrams) is a bit of an old one:  Training Retrievers to Handle by D.L. & Ann Walters.

This does have lots of punishment-based advice – which doesn’t even make good learning-theory sense.  Such as: ‘As soon as he goes off course, holler ‘NO’ at him, go get him, put a lead and choke collar on him, and drag him back to the correct line.’ (p52).  There is even the suggestion that you shoot your dog with an air-rifle at one point!!!!  But really, persevere through all this if you’re interested in reward-based methods and extract what you can from it all.

Today I worked on the ’3 Leg Pattern with Casts’, which is the step after walking baseball in the book.

Slate did it perfectly first-time, as usual.  (It’s a refresher for her, really.)

Grey hesitated on a Back cast, and sat herself half-way there.  I moved up really close and cast ‘Back’ again, and she went and got the dummy fine.  On the Left cast, she remained sitting and no-goed.  I again moved up close and re-cast and she went fine.

I didn’t stop her at all today.  I want to get her running these 100 yard casts first, before I introduce any stopping and re-casting.  That will be a major issue for her, since she experiences the stop whistle as punishing in itself and is then less likely to have the confidence to take the subsequent cast.

I’m determined to improve her handling for this coming working test season.

a tick!!

March 6th, 2012 § Leave a Comment

I took the dogs out this morning and then, sitting by the fire tonight, found a tick on Grey’s nose.  I used a tick-twister to take it off and fortunately got the mouth parts too.  It wasn’t moving, though.  It was probably so full it couldn’t move!

She has a big bump where it was, and I’ve put antibiotic cream on it.  Unfortunately, the tick must have been on her all day until 10pm tonight.  Which is not good, because the quicker they’re removed, the less chance of disease being spread.

Now, the powers-that-be are taking the piss, seeing this is ONE DAY after treating them both with Dyna-mite shampoo – and I also sprayed them with Dyna-mite spray today – just before we went out.

BUT… I’m not writing the natural preventatives off yet, since I didn’t treat her face/nose with either treatment.  Since the shampoo said not to get it in the dog’s eyes, and the spray is so strong-smelling I didn’t want to spray it near her face/nose either.  So it’s quite possible this tick didn’t want to latch on where the Dyna-mite treatments had been, and crawled away as far as possible to her nose.

Maybe tomorrow I will get some water in a bucket and wash her face gently with the shampoo.

I also think we might need to avoid the area where we walked, since there are deer there – hence the ticks.

I haven’t started either dog on the Billy No Mates yet, either – I’m waiting for a confirmed list of ingredients from CSJ before I give it to Slate – but I’ll start Grey on it tomorrow for sure.

It’s only the beginning of March!  This doesn’t bode well.

Other news:  I heard today that the SCAS course (Practical Training for Therapy Dogs Level 1), which I’d enrolled on with Grey, has been postponed until after the summer.  Bummer.

natural tick preventatives

March 5th, 2012 § 1 Comment

We are coming into the dreaded tick season now, although it isn’t usually bad where we live.  Some summers we haven’t had a single tick in our area, even without a preventative.  Some people might find that amazing!

Slate, with her very short coat, is much less prone to them than Grey.  Last year Grey picked up a couple in May-ish, so I then treated both dogs with K9 Advantix.  However, ideally I should treat before they get them – that being the point of preventing the ticks and stopping the transmission of tick-borne diseases.

One of the reasons I drag my feet about treating the dogs is that I hate using products with pesticides in them.  Pesticides are toxic for all insects, including honey bees and butterflies, and they are also toxic for aquatic organisms – including fish.  If your dogs swim and they are treated with a product containing pesticides, that is very harmful for life in the water.

If you are going to use a product containing pesticides, using a Scalibor collar is best, since these can be removed from the dog before swimming.  I also think that, being contained within the collar and not in some runny liquid, the pesticides are less likely to end up on people and furniture.

But pesticides do of course come off on furniture, sofas, bedding, and on people when they handle their pets.  And even if they have been approved for use on pets, this can’t be great news.

Especially with Slate having had a MCT recently, I’m particularly reluctant to treat the dogs with pesticides now – or with anything to challenge Slate’s immune system or liver.  (We have yet to return to repeat the blood test to see if she still has raised liver enzymes.)

So I’m trying some natural tick preventatives, to see if some of these in combination will work.  At least at the beginning and end of the season.

Here are the products I’ve got in to try – some of these I’ve used before:

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So today I bathed both dogs and shampooed them with the Dyna-mite shampoo.  They were not impressed.  Slate got a nice warm shower upstairs in the bathroom, but Grey would have panicked too much at being carried upstairs for this to be a good idea with her – so she got a cold hose down outdoors.  She tolerates this, but stands there shivering, poor doggy!

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