GreyGhost Weimaraners

GreyGhost
Weimaraners
Newsletter
Fall 2011
Welcome!
It’s been a busy year at Greyghost! Zoe had a litter of puppies, dogs retired and other Greyghost
puppies started or continued earning titles in various venues not to mention a best friend.
Happy Retirement Christie!
An era ended with Christie retiring from active competition this year. At her
last agility trial in January, Christie earned her Silver Versatility Award (a
total of 100 Masters level qualifying scores in 4 classes), her Expert Silver
Steeplechase Award (50 qualifying runs) and her Expert Jumpers Silver
Award! All this at 12 yrs old and deaf. Christie still loves to play agility and
insists on being the first dog out to train each day. She’ll clear a 22” jump
and climb the aframe if left to her own devices! But I limit her to running
through tunnels and doing weave poles. I have to be very careful about footing – if it is at all slippery
she doesn’t get to do any agility since her back legs are not as stable as they used to be. She still
loves to go hunting.
Welcome to the families of the Smok’n Litter!
Zoe had her second litter of puppies with Cooper and welcomed 6
puppies – 3 boys, 3 girls – 3 longhairs, 3 shorthairs. Statistically perfect!
This time Eva and Lawrence kept a puppy and named her Koko Taylor.
Cooper Jr (SH male) went to Edmonton, Kasper (LH male) went to
Georgia, Samson (LH male) went to California, Abby (LH female) went
to North Carolina and Ember (SH female) went to Clearwater, BC.
Greyghost Weims in Competition
Keeper (Christie X Cruz) finished her Masters Agility title.
Nova (Christie X Cruz) finished her Masters Agility title.
Ginny (Sunshine X Enzo) competed at her first AKC agility trial and qualified in Jumpers.
Jake (Sunshine X Enzo) completed his Starters Standard and Starters Games titles in agility as well
as CKC Rally Obedience Novice and Advanced Titles. He also got a High in Trial running Novice
Obedience at a CKC trial! Still 1 more qualifying score to earn before he gets that title.
Cooper (Smokycity LH) finished his CARO Rally obedience Novice and Advanced titles.
Porsche (Smokycity LH) got Best Longhair at the Weim Assoc of Canada National Specialty
Meredith (Nova X Cooper) finished her CKC conformation Championship including getting a Group
placing. She also got BEST IN SHOW at a United Kennel Club competition in
the US.
Ozzy (Zoe X Cooper) completed his CKC Rally Obedience Novice Title with a
High in Class award. Ozzy gives Brenda a high Five!
Jazz (Zoe X Cooper) completed her CKC conformation Championship and CKC
Rally Obedience Novice Title in September.
Koko (Zoe X Cooper) earned her first conformation point.
Greyghost at the Weimaraner Assoc. of Canada National Specialty
This year the specialty was held at the Sporting Dog Spectacular shows in the Vancouver area. Jazz
and Porsche competed in the conformation show. Jake competed in obedience earning a Novice
qualifying score. Jake, Jazz and Ozzy all competed in Rally obedience all receiving qualifying scores!
Rest in Peace Tate
Kim & Lyndsey Good and her family said goodbye to Tate (Greyghost’s
Fuzzy Edition) in September 2011 at almost 10 yrs old. Tate became acutely
ill after a day on the farm with his dad. The cause was never discovered.
Tate had a great life and was most happy being a farm dog riding in the
tractor or combine with his dad and shepherding his boys on explorations.
He is missed.
Greyghost Gives Back
Doug and Denise with a bunch of friends have been involved with Clear Sailing Dog Sports since its
beginning. It started as a bunch of us forming a group to put on agility trial with the sole purpose of
raising money for purebred dog rescue. We run a big raffle at our annual July trial to boost our
fundraising and have been doing it now for 12 years. The past 2 years we’ve put on a couple of extra
events and accumulated a bit of funds so this year we decided to disperse those funds in a slightly
different way.
• CAAT Canadian Animal Assistance Team – this group of veterinarians and technicians
donates their time to not only provide disaster relief but also bring spaying/neutering and
vaccinations to remote communities where vet services are limited. Since this keeps dogs
from needing rescue we gave a significant amount to them ($5000).
• Smiling Blue Skies Cancer Research fund ($1500)
• Rabies Challenge fund ($1500)
• Individual purebred dog rescue as needed over the next year.
All of us at Clear Sailing donate stuff to the raffle and a significant amount of our own time to this
effort. If you’d like to help us out, our big raffle is held at our July trial in Quesnel BC. We’ll put just
about anything in our raffle and it doesn’t have to be just to dog stuff.
WEBSITE LINKS
http://www.caat-canada.org/
http://www.smilingblueskies.com/
http://www.rabieschallengefund.org/
Tale of a Shattered Toe
When Jake was 1.5yrs old he broke his toe – actually shattered his toe. First
he ran into Doug and started limping. When the limping didn’t go away over
the weekend (vet said it was badly bruised) we went back in and got an xray.
Totally shattered outside toe on his right foot. Poor Jake. So, they put a splint
on his leg and prescribed rest – come back in 3 weeks for a splint change.
That lasted 3 days. I let him off lead to pee late at night and he went over to the kiddy pool for a drink
and stuck his splint in the water. Argg!!! Good thing I watched them put the splint on. I unwrapped it
carefully, taking note of the different layers and rebuilt it with dry materials. I took him to a
chiropractic vet that was visiting town who suggested massaging the leg when I took the splint off and
giving him Comfrey tea to speed the bone healing. Jake wasn’t too thrilled to be on leash all the time
– he would have gladly run around with a splint on but he adapted well. Had to get him a GIANT wire
crate to accommodate him and his splint. Turns out those splints aren’t made for big dogs – it was
like a giant brittle plastic spoon. Jake would jump around and crack/break the tip of the splint despite
padding. We adapted it by putting on an overboot during the day made of a metal spoon rest – I love
Gorilla tape! Jake broke 5 splints…
I took the splint off every week or so to massage and wash the foot (it got
stinky with foot goo) and do nails (of course). Every 3 weeks it was back for
(usually) a new splint and an xray to check on the
progress of the healing. Poor Jake. To keep him
entertained I did a lot of small space, low impact training
like tricks and Rally obedience moves. I also started him
on formal retrieving and scent discrimination article
training. 12 weeks in a splint. He was so happy to get it off, but his leg was
wasted away. I slowly let him exercise more and with the advice of a dog physio
person started doing some work with him wearing a “lift boot” on his good leg to
make him use his bad leg more. It really helped and today you can’t tell that he
was ever hurt.
Broken toes are hard to heal properly and don’t heal well in older dogs. Jake was lucky.
PS. Bring a camera with you if you’re dog is going to get an xray – take a pic of the xray on the viewer
and you can then look closely at if afterwards… - just tell them your breeder wants to see it…
101 things to do with a box
A great winter training game to do in a small space is “101 things to do with a
box”. Get a sturdy cardboard box and put it in the middle of the floor. Stay quiet
and click for any interaction with the box – like sniffing, pawing etc. Throw your
treat away from the box after you click to get the dog away from the box after he
does something with it. Once they catch on to the game, they’ll head back to the
box and try something else. If they get stuck doing 1 thing, move the box and
yourself to another position. Some things that you can get your dog to do
include: 1 foot on the box, 2 feet on the box, 2 front feet on the box, 1 back foot
on the box, 2 back feet on the box, 4 feet on the box, circle the box – you get
the idea.
I used the box game to teach Stay – sit on the box and don’t come off until I tell you. You can also
teach this and use it to get the dog onto the bathroom scale to weigh him – it’s just a really small box.
For some ideas and observations about playing this game, read this article…
http://www.clickersolutions.com/articles/2001/box.htm
New Grooming tool.
New to me anyway! I was introduced to a new grooming tool this year – Wahl brand
DeShedder. I was looking for something to help pull shedding undercoat out on Christie –
she has a thick coat despite being a shorthair. She doesn’t like being brushed so the
Zoom Groom rubber brush doesn’t work well on her. This tool works well on her and
especially well on the longhairs!! You can’t do a lot at one time but when they’re shedding
doing a little bit every day works well. You’d be surprised how much hair it can pull out!
Gets rid of the “fluffy” bits on the longhairs.
Training Diary: It seemed like a good idea at the time…
Finish means Stop! Sometimes, what seems like a good idea at the time turns out to be a really,
really bad idea. Take for example how I corrupted Christie’s Finish (moving from Come, sitting infront
around behind you to heel position). I had trained Christie to do a really nice, fast finish for obedience
using the command “Around”. One day I was doing some agility training and was doing an exercise
where it would be an advantage to have the dog run around behind you to be in a better position to
do the next obstacle – you see many agility handlers use this move. I thought Cool! Why don’t I use
her Around command – and proceeded to do some repetitions. It worked great! BUT, the next time I
went to train obedience and asked her to Finish, she went zooming around and ran out ahead of me
– just like in agility. Darn! I couldn’t believe that I had done this! So, I had to go back and re-trained
the Finish with a new name – I now call it “Park”.
Walls, not Counters… I also may have caused a “little” problem with my last litter of puppies. I kept
getting reports back that the little darlings were persistent counter-surfers. Hmmm. Thinking back,
one of the things that I had taught the puppies when I was first clicker training them was to put their
front feet up onto (what I thought at the time) was walls. This is a good way to train the go-back part
of Directed Jumping in Utility and it’s a great stupid pet trick. But, what I used was not really a “wall”.
I used a 2 drawer file cabinet and the area under the window sill. The little darlings just might transfer
this over to kitchen cabinets, especially if they get something to eat the first time they try it!
First tricks first… Speaking of early clicker training… It is said that the first thing that you teach a dog
when clicker training is the thing that they will revert to the most. So, its very important to decide what
to train as your very first exercise. I didn’t really understand the significance of this when I started to
train Christie. One of the things that Christie always liked to do was to bark, talk etc. Since I had also
heard that the way to get rid of a behaviour was to put it on cue…when she started barking I clicked.
I was also clicking for a bunch of other behaviours at the time and didn’t think much of it. Well,
everybody will tell you that Christie barks. She barks when she’s happy, she barks when she thinks
that I’m giving her the wrong command in agility, she barks when she’s frustrated. In essence she
thinks – Bark First, Ask Questions Later. Sit was the first thing that the next litter of puppies all
learned first.
It’s not OK… A classic mistake that everybody seems to make, myself included, is using OK as a
release word. It seems like such a good word to use. Unfortunately, we use OK alot in everyday life.
I remember one time being on a Very Important phone call, and putting all the dogs in a down stay so
that they wouldn’t be running around. Of course to them this was a prelude to FUN. When I said OK
during the phone conversation they would all jump up and run around. I would get mad and put them
all on a down stay again. It took me until the third time that they jumped up to realize that I’d been
saying OK on the phone and that’s what they had been responding to. Hmmm, I still use OK as a
release word….