Author Archives: Averill

Stuff I found while cleaning up my computer

Dog’s note to God: We dogs can understand human verbal instructions, hand signals, whistles, horns, clickers, beepers, scent ID’s, electromagnetic energy fields, and Frisbee flight paths. What do humans understand? Yesterday I was a dog. Today I’m a dog. Tomorrow I’ll probably still be a dog. Sigh! There’s so little hope for advancement. Snoopy Do not make the mistake of treating your dogs like humans or they will treat you like dogs. Martha Scott If dogs could talk, it would

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December Trials

Words to the wise: Stay home (or just don’t enter) if you are invited to go to an agility trial in an unheated Virginia horse barn during the second week of December. It will take me a while to recover from this one. The good parts were the dogs’ runs which were exceptionally wonderful, until the afternoon of day #2 when the handler’s brain became mush and she couldn’t form a complete “go tunnel” cue and “table” came out instead

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Q&A – USDAA Agility

In an email discussion list I’m on, I’ve recently answered some questions about my favorite agility venue and would like to share this info. So here is my USDAA FAQ – which may be added to as more comes up. Q. With what I can read on the USDAA website, it looks like the dogs run “naked”. At least the people get to wear their clothes. Also looks like USDAA runs all “Starters” together without “A” and “B” classes.I couldn’t

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Joon surprises me

Received shipment of Clean Run toys. Nice rabbit tug with two handles, thought Joon might like it. Anyway, our big session today consisted of working her on leash using handfuls of Red Barn applied as appropriate for desired behaviors. Clicker too, just for the heck of it. She was AMAZING. Leaving her to wander and explore is obviously a loser at this time. Far more rewarding than she finds me – for now. But with the leash and frequent clicks

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Joon – Two weeks

The little darling has been here now a fortnight. Boy, what a mix of wild and crazy and submissive and worm-like she is (not to mention bitchy and sweet) – a study in contradictions! We’ve been blessed with some lovely weather for November (except for two days of solid rain last week, but we won’t count them): sunny days in the 60s with cool (well, cold) nights. For the most part I cannot use crappy weather as an excuse not

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