Visit from Miki and Lilit

My "niece," Lilit, was born one day after Cai. He's been visiting her since she was an infant and he was a puppy. At first he didn't care about her at all - sniffed, then ignored. He wasn't bothered by the sounds of baby crying or laughing or shrieking. As she began to walk and reach out and touch, he became just a little nervous about her. (Many dogs dislike toddlers because of their unpredictable movements and noises, and grabby-ness.) Treats and careful supervision are steadily bringing him around. The last visit was particularly sweet - he sat on his Auntie Miki's lap, and gave Lilit sniffs, kisses, and tail wags.

Recent pictures

Drooling after too much excitement over female dogs. Gross.

Hunting for lizards(?) in the scrap wood pile at N's farm.

Investigating the rolled up pasture fencing.

Sniff sniff...

It's an agility tunnel!

Playing with a top hat toy. (There are tiny stuffed bunnies inside that he was trying to pull out.)

Right before he walked into a kitchen cabinet.

He knew the stairs were somewhere in front of him, and thankfully stopped walking just in time.

Chiropractic fix up

One more story of note from the past couple of months - Cai had suddenly started being hesitant on the teeter, and even jumped off in the middle at one point. A few weeks before that, he had been consistently popping out of the weave poles around the 10th pole. That's a common issue, but it appeared suddenly when he had never done it before.

I got him to the chiropractor, who reported that he indeed had a disc out of alignment again. Our next opportunity to do the teeter was two weeks later, and Cai was back to his usual form. In fact, Blancett told me to stop babying him at the drop and instead start running past and testing his contact behavior (4 on). He still popped out of the weave poles, unfortunately. Back to training!

Rally-FrEe Novice title

I am so behind in updating Chimera's blog! I've had a lot of other things going on - check out my other blog detailing the adventure with chickens, gardening, and crafting. That said, there's no good excuse for not posting about Cai earning his Rally-FrEe Novice title!

This was back on January 11th, when the Redwood Empire Doggy Dancers hosted California's first Rally-FrEe trial. Cai did "okay" in the ring. He certainly had distracted moments, but when he was paying attention, he performed very nicely (other than sometimes going wide on the Circle Around signs). He earned 7-9 points at most of the signs. (I think the scoring was a bit lenient - but maybe that's just because I'm used to Obedience scoring!). In the morning we scored 156, and in the afternoon it was 152.

Here's our morning run. The first sign was "Right Heel Forward," but because I was nervous, I reverted to my Rally O roots and started Cai on the left! I realized that the signs were on the wrong side for left heel after the second sign (free choice).



Here's the afternoon run. You can tell that he's more tired.



So now his full name is MicFriends Chimera Monstra R-FE/N!