The Dog Blog

It’s very difficult to get back to routine life when you have just spent 3 days at a K9 Games workshop with Ian Dunbar.

I had the idea to bring the event to Toulouse, in the south of France so I could have the pleasure of participating with my dog. But I never imagined that it would be so funny, so exciting and so relaxing!

Since the event we have emails from attendees everyday who say « Thank you to have given us the opportunity to be part of such an event. When does Ian come back? »

These are only games, but oh my, we are training and having fun at the same time and dogs can at last experience their owners having fun in training.
I really do think that the K9 Games should be much more popular all over the world.

Why?

Okay, let's be honest, when it comes to competition obedience, how much of an underdog could a Border Collie and Aussie really be, but believe it or not, in my neck of the woods, the two dogs pictured, Logan and Phoenix, kind of are. Dog sports within the mid-Atlantic area (PA, NJ, VA, MD) is highly competitive. Earning an OTCH (Obedience Trial Championship) has become more and more elusive through the years, and has become limited to trainers who view competition almost as seriously as a job, rather than a part-time hobby. For us part-timers, particularly those of us who use only positive methods and have more of a pet person mentality (those of you involved in dog sports will know exactly what that means), no matter what breed we have, we're definitely considered underdogs. No matter how you train or what methods you use, you never really know what a dog is going to do in the ring.

While The CDC (Center for Disease Control) has been working double overtime lately as evidenced by the constant stream of H1N1 Virus (nee Swine Flu) discussion, reporting, analyzing, speculating and more, lesser known perhaps is that in late March of this year they released analyzed fall data and disclosed the following fascinating stats:

• 88% of fall related injuries were associated with dogs or one of their pet items such as a toy or bowl.

• 31.3 % resulted from falling or tripping over the dog (versus the overwhelming 66.4 % of cats being tripped over) which included falls from chasing after a dog with obviously poor recall (another one of The Six Things All Dogs Should Know!)

• 21.2 % from being pushed or PULLED by the pet.

• Women were TWO TIMES AS LIKELY to be injured as males. (Hmmmmm)

Meet Bart, a little collie cross. He lives with two children and he was there first! He doesn't pull on the lead, jump up on people or the kids in the home, steal things or act in any way inappropriately.

Why? Because his owners called for help when he was a new puppy who had arrived in their home at 9 weeks old. They listened and took on board every piece of advice they were given and worked hard to give Bart what he needed.

Today at age 4 Bart has a healthy diet, an appropriate exercise regime, fun things to do that are instinctive to his breed type plus, and most importantly he is a member of their family. When the children arrived Bart was never excluded. He was involved from day 1 with the result that he loves his family and little people plus he knows exactly how to behave around them. His owners give him feedback on everything he gets right with the result that he rarely gets anything wrong!