She's A Star

I haven't posted in a while but things have been quite crazy here (mostly for me). Xsara is well enough to train, but unfortunately bad weather is now keeping us away from our training centre. We do some flat work, obedience and theraball tricks, but can't wait for some actual stuff. However we have some very big news to share:




Xsara was invited to be the poster-girl of a TV show here in Slovenia. We had a photo-shooting on Friday and her pictures turned out very nice, so she is now on jumbo billboards! I saw two of them yesterday but didn't have my camera on. Aša was able to make a snap with her phone on her walk with Sena and they sent me this picture, so thanks! Xsara had to pretend that she's a boy peeing on her neighbour's door for the poster (the title of the show is "It's nice to be a neighbour"). She got a little confused because the photographer couldn't decide if he wanted her to lift her right or her left foot and I had to stand behind her back so I couldn't help her much (and we only had one day to prepare for everything). In the end she would try to lift all her paws at the same time. She still lifts her back legs whenever I tell her to do something, it's really funny. Anyway, since it was a paying job and she did so well around all the cameras, lights, people jumping around and everything, I bought her a very fancy new fleece overall coat the next day (which was also my birthday, by the way). The hair on her tummy hasn't fully grown back yet, so she's very cold outside. She looks very cute in her outfit.

In my previous post I was talking about a potential big Christmas present for us. It looks like it's really going to happen! I'm so so happy. I don't want to share all the details until we're absolutely sure about everything, but it rhimes with Schnappi :) Shouldn't be too hard to guess, right?!

Finally Some Good News!

Seems like the medicines are starting to show their positive effect! Yesterday evening the feces were brown and more compact with no blood in them, and this morning half black half brown, which is very very good (the organism calms down at night and mornings are usually the worst part of the day for ulcer patients). I've never been so excited about poop before, but today I definitely am!

Also, we finished the box of anti-vomiting medications two days ago, and she hasn't thrown up since she's off pills. Hopefully she will continue to feel better and better, now that we definitely know that the meds are working properly.

Thanks to everyone sending us positive vibes, we are very grateful for all your messages of comfort. Currently I don't have much time for blogging, but will visit all of your blogs to thank you individually as soon as I can.

We also have a treat for all agility freaks: Xsara is on the official Slovenian agility calendar again, this year she is miss September. The calendar is made by the staff of Agility Portal Slovenije.

Update: We just got the test results for ehrlichiosis from the Faculty of Medicine. They test two blood samples using two different methods. Both results were negative, so Xsara does not have ehrichiosis!

Isn't She Lovely

I have some new pictures of Xsara in action, thanks to our Iztok and Andraz again. We are so lucky to have two photographers among agility enthusiasts in Slovenia, so we always have many beautiful pictures of our dogs on trials. Isn't that the coolest thing ever?!

Also I was asked to write a post about working dogs for Halo Pets. Since I really loved the topic that they proposed, I agreed. They also published some pictures and a video of Xsara :)

TV Star

A little update on our jogging: until yesterday I kept trying off leash. And what happened yesterday? There were no other people or animals that I could see and our jogging route is far from any traffic, so I tried running ahead to see if she would follow me. Maybe the fun was in me chasing her and she would follow if I didn't do that. Well, yes - she followed, but only after rolling in something so disgusting until she smelled so bad that I had to bathe her twice. I think this was probably her April Fool's joke for me :)

So I decided to give the "leash-around-my-belt" a try. We tried it for the first time today, and we'll see how it goes. Since she doesn't have the running ahead of me in agility fully learned, we now jog on leash in one direction, and return sprinting with the ball (like before). This exercise is going really well, so I'm starting to include turns and changes of direction. I would, for example, run full speed until she was at least a couple of steps ahead of me, then say "left" or "right" and throw the ball in that direction. I really try to move my shoulders as well as my arms when I throw the ball, because this way my body language is more apparent to her (I don't want her to overthink it, I want her to just run, run, run). I'm definitely seeing progress, and I hope we will be able to get advantage of this on course.

And an exciting news: a lady with a golden retriever we occasionally meet on our walks told me today that she saw Xsara on TV again. They filmed her during the charity run for Repkov Sklad we attended (the journalist saw us doing cop-cop and asked if they could film it). You can see the TV show here - Xsara is on 12:56 for about ten seconds.

I Am Smad!

It's official - people are crazy! I riecently found a German blog in which some of the readers were discussing Xsara's videos. My knowledge of German language is next to nothing, but I think one of the readers accused me of having Xsara under high doping mixture containing cocaine, cocoa and toothpaste! I've never heard anything more ridiculous in my life, anybody who knows me will tell you I'm even careful about giving her vitamins because I think her high quality dry food contains enough of them. And I certainly don't give her any sort of doping. I can't believe people can be so cruel, I don't even know this person! I love Xsara and I would never do anything to hurt her, if I thought agility or tricks were hurting her, I would stop doing them right away.
This accusation really made me sad and mad (smad?), because I am putting so much energy and work in Xsara's training. So I wrote an article about working with low motivated dogs. It can be found on Xsara's Forum. I will be adding more tips to the article and you can add things to if you have any ideas.

Dog Expo And Birthday Gifts

Good news and bad news. The bad news is we couldn't participate on the presentation of agility on dog Expo here in Ljubljana. The show lasted too long and I had to go to work before it was our time to run (unfortunately I work on Sundays). But the good news is, during the short time we were there (we attended the practise before the presentation) someone made pictures of Xsara. And they are published on the most popular website in Slovenia. There were about 5000 dogs at the expo, he took 15 pictures of the dogs and two of them are of Xsara. The man's got good taste, right? You can view the pictures here.
On thursday the human part of our team has her birthday. I ordered myself a gift from my favorite store CleanRun. The gift has already arrived and Xsara was happy with the content: a wide selection of dog toys and treats and some clothes and trial gear for me. We just can't wait to use all of it on the trial on Saturday - there are so few trials in the winter time, we really miss them.

New Collar

Guess what was in our mailbox today! A couple of months ago we sent a photo of Xsara's floor decoration (I'm sure you still remember it) to Patience who was writing an article to educate people on the bad idea of puppies as presents. She asked her readers to send her photos of doggy disasters, much like Xsara's job on the floor. Every dog who got their picture published won a custom made beauteemous Holiday collar:

Isn't it beautiful?!
By the way: you can read Patience's article here. I know Christmas is over but I think this topic is really very important. Thanks again for the collar, Patience!

The Big Decision

After three years of research, pro-con lists and discussions I finally decided to have Xsara spayed. Yesterday I talked to our vet and seems like January is the month (she's in heat now so we have to wait). It's one of the most difficult decisions I ever had to make but I came to the conclusion it's best for her. If any of you have experiences in this field, it would be great if you would share them with us. Preferably happy stories but all information is welcome!

Another thing I wanted to say: as most of you know, the new DWB calendar is out! All DWB calendars are awesome, but I think this year they really outdid themselves. It includes many different dogs, most of them are our dear friends (and they were very sweet to think of us as well). To view the pages and order it simply click the following image:

It's for a good cause since ALL of the profit goes to doggy rescue!

Good, Bad And In Between

Good news and bad news.
The good news is Xsara is one of the calendar girls for Slovenian Agility Calendar. You can view the entire calendar and order it on Agility Portal. I think that Andraz Cerar and Iztok Noc have done an amazing job, again! The calendar is just beautiful.
The bad news is we had to cancel the agility trial in Belgium (Kortrijk Euro Dog Show) because two of the girls we were supposed to go with got sick and have very high fever. We were really looking forward to it but health comes first. If the weather is nice we will use the weekend to go somewhere else instead.

Another thing I want to share - I just loved the tip of the month by Maureen deHaan in the latest issue of Clean Run: "When things go really bad and frustrating during a training session, stop and hug your dog. You can't hug your dog and be mad at the same time." Very nicely put and so very true - don't you agree?