Cooper

We were very excited to go down and see Cooper this past Saturday, it has been a long 3 months without him. The trainer had loaded up his trailer with 19 dogs that morning, although we didnt see Cooper go in, we were pretty sure he was in there as the trainer, Butch, knew we were his owners and there to watch him work and talk about his training to date.

We watched black lab after black lab after black lab (and so on) work for most of the morning. The dogs sit in their kennel on the trailer until it is time to work, come out and do their job, then go back in the kennel so Butch can work the next dog. Of 19 dogs, 17 were labs and 15 of those labs were black! The 2 non-lab dogs were Cooper and Molly..

Here is Molly, she is 1/2 sister to Cooper and owned by Elroy (who owns Earl, who is Coopers daddy). She is 2 and a very pretty little girl, very dainty like.
Finally after hours and hours of watching the other dogs work, Cooper was brought out. He hardly looked the same to me, his coat has changed A LOT! As you can see from this picture, it is a lot curlier than when we dropped him off (but I love it!).
It was 85 degrees that afternoon.. and we were excited to watch our dog work. After watching the other dogs retrieve their 2 or 3 birds and the dummy, we had high expectations for Cooper. Butch set him up for 3 retrieves I think it was, as he approached the first duck (in a really slow, lazy fashion) he hunkered over the duck, a little reluctant to pick it up. We realized he was pawing at the duck to roll it over so he could grab the softer belly side of the bird!
He looked very proud as he carried his first duck back to Butch!
I could look at pics of our Cooper all day long, he's just so beautiful holding that bird!!!
Cooper slowly trotted out to retrieve his second bird and managed to carry it back to Butch, no problem. He seemed to be a little lazy and uninspired to work that day.
Cooper's desire to work was going downhill, quickly! After he retrieved his first 2 ducks and was supposed to be on his way to retrieve the 3rd, Cooper decided he was done for the day and bolted back to the kennels which were a hundred or so yards away.. Butch snagged the 4 wheeler and chased after him, bringing him back to work. He set Cooper up to retrieve a dummy, inwhich Cooper reluctantly did so. After that retrieve, Butch was attemping to set him up for another dummy retrieve, Cooper here is getting a little lecture on behaving at this point. :)
After Coopers 2nd bolt back to the kennels, Butch took the 4 wheeler again to go get him and brought him back, placed him behind the blind where Cooper is supposed to "stay" and wait for instruction. Cooper thought it was funner to ignore Butch and sneak out behind his back! lol

Look at him hunched down, practically crawling out with both eyes up on Butch..
After attemping to once again get Cooper to go out and retrieve the dummy, Cooper bolted a 3rd time back to the kennels. Now imagine you are his owner.. imagine our horror as our dog is the ONLY dog to bolt like this, of 19 dogs! To realize you have no say in what is going on, to know your dog is pushing through his shock collar and just out-right not listening.

I was sad at this point, dissappointed that Cooper did not look happy. I started to question why we were putting him through this if he wasnt enjoying himself. After the 3rd escape attempt, Butch realized Cooper was HOT and when he was up at the kennels, he hosed him off, brought him back down and put him back in the trailer to sit for a while and cool down.
45 minutes later, he brought Cooper back out to work, as you have to end on a good note. Cooper retrieved 2 more dummies without any more problems or bolting episodes and he did look happy doing so!
We left that day unable to pet our dog or give him praise, just had to watch it all unfold. Cooper is very smart, we could see he knew where all his "marks" were at, which means he knew exactly where the ducks or dummies were at, he just didnt feel like working on Saturday. Blame it on the heat, not sure. Butch indicated that it was NOT a good representation of Cooper's abilities and that just a few days earlier he was doing triple retrieves with one being 100 yards away no problem.

We really want to get Cooper home at this point. We feel he has learned what he needs to learn from Butch and Butch has done a GREAT job with him. Our dog is healthy and as happy as a dog in training can be. But Cooper now needs the one on one time with Derek. He needs to remember his passion for retrieving simply because he loves Derek enough to do it. Cooper is probably a little bored and tired of retrieving for what Cooper would see as just this trainer guy who doesnt love him! When he retrieves for Derek, he will get TONS and TONS of praise and petting, something the trainer doesnt do. Cooper loves to retrieve for Derek and he just needs the time to remember that! Butch did tell us that this happens, the dogs will almost always work better for their owner because there is that special bond and love between man/dog that he just cant duplicate.

One other area we have work to do, is on the water! Cooper has not had a positive water experience is how the trainer phrases it. Cooper loved water at our house, but has yet to love water with Butch. But to be fair, Butch's expectations is for Cooper to run off a ledge and JUMP into the water. We need to take Cooper back to baby steps and get him to love just running and playing in shallow water, and work him up to swimming and then we can work on teaching him to jump in the water. We have a lot of work to do, but are looking forward to it.

I think I am most excited to just grab Cooper and hug him. I miss that little guy and I know he will be more than happy to get back to his old ways of doing whatever it takes to please us type attitude! 3 more days and he'll be home :)

How do YOU cool yourself off in the heat?

Well apparently THIS is how Edgar cools himself off when it gets to 85 Degrees...Dad caught these pictures of Edgar playing in the pond this past weekend. Silly horse!

Dexter has been so bored at home, he looks for anything he can to play with. Some days I play with him, we play a horse/human version of hide-n-seek and when he finds me I jump out at him, he bolts and prances away and comes back for more! When I'm not around, I watch him out in the barn having a fight with a tarp! There is a tarp over the feed room that used to hang above the feed room, but he tore it down so now it hangs on the wall. He bites that tarp and tugs on it, rears up at it, goes between the tarp and the wall, he will trot away from it and then turn around run to it and get pissy at it, biting it some more! His ball used to be in the barn, now its in the middle of the pasture.. he is quite the character these days.. and I love every minute of it. I feel a little bad he is so bored, but this really is still so great for our relationship that I'm not ready to let him have horse company quite yet.

We have decided to add a couple goats to the farm again! We've been contemplating for a little while and after seeing all the brush that has been starting to take back over what was cleared, decided it was time.. We went to a farm in Snohomish just around the corner from my parents, she raises Nigerian Dwarf goats.. she had a couple online that looked pretty cute, so we stopped by on Sunday.. They are a lot smaller than I anticipated and my initial reaction was that they are too small. They are less than half the size of the Kinder goats.. but Derek fell in love with them as I knew he would and we committed to not just 2 goats, nope not 3, but 4!! There is one that is really small, not growing as well and we didnt want to leave him behind... so the plan is that they will come home to us in a couple weeks when their naughty bits have fallen off and hopefully the little one will get a bit bigger and stronger. We have yet to name them, 3 of them are less than 2 months old and the other is a year old. I cant wait to get them home, they will be seperated from Dexter until they all are ready to share the pasture together.

The top left goat is the smallest one that needs to grow up a little more and is full brother to kitty corner goat from him. The one on top right is about same age as the other 2 and the biggest of those 3, and then the bottom left goat is the one that is a year old. Just for a little perspective, the little guys are only about 10 inches tall and the year old one is about 18 inches! :)

My Plan is Working...

I moved Edgar & Red to their summer vacation home (parents property!) for a couple reasons. 1) My sacrifice gravel areas REALLY needed the relief, w/o as much rain to wash the gravel out, the smell was gettin pretty bad 2) The boys I'm sure love having grass to eat and being out free to roam vs cooped up in a paddock with hay & 3) I thought it would be good for Dexter to be left home alone without them, so he could learn to count on me as his support.

In the beginning when I moved the horses away, Dexter would sometimes whinny when he heard me in the driveway or yard, and he always came trotting up to see if his buddies were back. As soon as he would realize it was just me, he would turn around and leave almost as quick as he came in! I was a little dissappointed that he still was not really connecting to me. After about 4 days, he just quit coming up and worrying about being alone. Then this past weekend we took out the temporary fencing inside the main pasture and moved Dexter out of the sacrifice area, so he only has pasture now and the center barn isle. Not sure what it was about all that, but he got all worked up, he was playing and running all over the pasture as we made these changes, he was feelin frisky! Ever since then, he comes up to me every time I go out, he's in my pocket and wants to know what's up.. :)

He actually will go out of his way to make sure he practically rubs up to me, expecting me to pet and scratch him (which I do!) Sometimes he'll walk past me just far enough that his butt is almost in my face and then will back up to me a little just to get a good scratchin.. He follows me around the barn, will follow me if I walk out in the pasture and yesterday as he was turned in the yard to eat grass, he and I were playing a game of chase!

I think he sometimes looks at me as his pasturemate and a couple times has tried to play bite me, but I am nipping that real quick and the second he thinks about biting, he gets smacked!!! But after he bolts away, he always comes right back and stands quietly and realizes his mistake.

He still needs more and more desensitizing but we've really come a very long ways. I need to get updated pics of him soon so I can get him registered and will post them on here as he lost all the silver color from his winter coat and has shed out to be a very dark roan.

Who the hell is in my pasture!

A couple weeks ago we had Jen/John over for a BBQ and as we relaxed in the living room, I was looking out into the pasture and noticed something "blue" was out there behind a pile of brush/sticks. I looked at it for a minute, trying to determine if I was just seeing things or what.. About this time the horses started snorting and running around, looking at this same thing.

As I am standing on the porch now, I see movement! The blue is now moving and I see what I think is a face of some sort.. I'm thinking "Who the F is in my pasture!!!" A few more seconds of starring at this moving object, I think I see an owl face.. I throw on the boots and walk out and the closer I get the quicker I realize it is a bundle of mylar balloons! LOLOL

I had wanted to get a picture, there were 3 or 4 mylars and then one regular balloon, the face was a big huge owl balloon, then a blue cake type one, a fire engine one... It was hilarious! The horses were all worked up as I carried the still floating but not enough air to lift themselves back into the sky, back up to the house. How random that some kids 1st birthday balloons from who knows where, end up in my pasture hiding behind some sticks making me believe for a brief second that someone is actually hiding in the pasture.. :)

Time to Catch Up!

Where to start, lots of little stuff to mention!

We have noticed Russell's eyes started to change again lately, going from cloudy to now they are a dark color with red marbled in them and about the time this all started to happen, he started bonking into things :( Poor kid.. he doesnt seem to be blind 100% of the time, he has phases of blindness right now I think, almost like it comes and goes. He definately has issues even on his good days but I wouldnt call him blind yet. Andrea said we would need to take him to a specific eye specialist vet to diagnose what is really going on. He doesnt seem to be in pain but she did think his eyes were very unusual. Probably not what you want a vet to say when they cant help you to fix it.. We are running blood work on him, just to see if that gives us any answers

Ellie & her friend Patch playing.. not sure what happened to Ellie's legs!! I took my friend Rachel riding about 10 days ago, I always like when she goes because I get to ride Edgar! She LOVES Red, so I'm happy to let her ride my horse so I can work with Edgar a little. My friend Tricia drove down from Bellingham with her new mare, we had a great ride, not counting the part where Edgar went lame on me halfway through the ride! :( It was a very slight limp, he wasn't going up any big hills, nothing major it just happened. I was pretty dissappointed, over the next couple days he limped real bad. The shoers came out a few days later and indicated it possibly could be in the hoof and gave me the # for a vet who does x-rays fairly cheap. Well cheap would consist of $250 apparently (after calling the vet to get prices). That price includes the farm call and full set of xrays on his hoof, but now he is back to sound, so will wait for him to go lame again and have the vet out possibly to rule out any navicular type issues that the shoers think could be the culprit for his on/off again lameness problems.

Tricia's new mare is pretty nice, big stout horse who has decided the horse trailer is no longer her friend. It took the 3 of us over 2 hours to get the horse in the trailer after our ride.. I felt bad for Tricia, she lost her best friend horse earlier this year to a broken leg, his femur! Found him in the pasture that way. She told me on our ride how/why he broke his leg, which I had not been previously told. Her horse was very similar to Edgar, draft cross, big bodied, solid good 'ole boy. Well the shoer had filed down his size 3 hoof into a size 1 shoe! The pressure over the months finally caused his leg to just break. I was stunned really at the ignorance of someone you put your trust and faith into that they know what they are doing! So she has struggled with finding a new horse and now has a good horse with a bad loading problem, one of the most frustrating issues one can have! If she lived closer I would be helping her out, but Bellingham is just too far away to be there for her.

I moved the horses to my parents pastures for a while, giving some relief to my paddocks and letting the boys be horses and just free to graze as they want! I left Dexter at home though, he sure misses his friends! He is eager to come see me, but when he realizes it's just me in the barn, he's almost just as eager to leave me... I'm hoping over a few weeks, maybe he'll learn to count on me and trust that I am his best friend since he will have no other distractions. I was SOOO happy, when the shoers were out, John was able to pick up and trim each hoof with NO fight, NO pinning him against the trailer, I didnt have to have him tied up, he just did really great.. that is some good progress!! He's still pretty jumpy, but we are workin on that as much as I can anyways.

We got a dissappointing progress report with Cooper a week ago. Apparently Cooper is NOT loving the water and was refusing to go in. :( and was missing some of his marks lately with retrieving. We are HOPING he is just hitting a wall in his training and will push through it. Derek is hopefully going to get an update this week as the trainer was going to spend a week straight just on water. He LOVED water at our house, well I'm not sure if you can count the bathtub water as pond water, apparently Cooper thinks there is a difference. It is frustrating to get a bad report card, we want Cooper to excel at his training, we want to get A++++++ reports because we have the BEST dog EVER! We are not too worried, we can expose him to more water when we get him home, take him swimming with my brothers dogs who LOVE to run in the water, maybe if he sees that he will change his mind and realize it is fun and not just work work work. He might be craving the personal attention of just being a dog right now too that we are not sure he gets being in training.

This past weekend our horse club was part of a big fundraiser ride at Harry O out of Sedro Woolley, the NW Regional Prize/Challenge Ride. This year the theme was the 60's. I actually was not real excited about the theme, heck I wasnt even alive in the 60's, but a few of us got together at our place and made some tie-dyed shirts.
I bought a couple tie-dye kits and we spent a Saturday afternoon creating some really awesome shirts! When we started doing the dying, I started to get into it a little more.. We had a lot of fun actually, I was glad to have the other ladies there as we all laughed and explored our dying options! Everyone left their shirts with me since there is this process of sitting for up to 24 hours after dying before being able to see the results. I had a GREAT time opening all those shirts and seeing just how cool they turned out, I was really amazed. But then I opened my shirt.. I hated it! See I thought I would be cool and try my own method and not follow the suggested methods and I got an ugly spotted mostly white shirt! Well there was still dye left over, so I just redid my shirt with a swirl pattern and added a LOT of color, then realized maybe I added too much.. maybe I was going to get a big blah shirt all of one deep ugly blurred together color. I was upset and went to bed worried about it, so at about 3 am I woke up and although it was only about 6 hours since I had colored the shirt, I opened it up anyways and WhaLa! I loved my 2nd try!! :) I then went back to bed and slept in peace..

Here are all the shirts we made that day
I got into the theme as much as I could, made some hippy pants, flowers in my hair.. we had a great time at our station on the trail, the weather was perfect and the turnout was good.. some money was made!

Derek & I at our station.. I think we look pretty cute!

Barbara Sue & I at our station, watiting for the first riders to show up

This is Rob (who helped at our station) riding his horse through one of the obstacles at our station.. Not many horses would go through this!!
Our 4th of July was fairly uneventful really, decided to stay home to ensure all our children were safe and happy, I think we made it to 10pm watching movies, not fireworks. Earlier in the day we did go over to Adam's place for some pistol shooting and a BBQ. Derek has been wanting me to shoot his 9mm handgun for a while, but I've been pretty apprehensive about it. The last time I shot a handgun was probably close to 15 years ago and I didnt like it at all.. had a lot of kick, I felt like it was unsafe and unpredictable. Derek assured me it was a crappy gun I shot before (it belonged to a friend) and his would be a better experience. Put a shot gun in my hands and I am pretty comfortable, the smaller it is the more I am afraid of it. So I was dreading it a little (okay maybe a lot), but he stood with me and instructed me on how to load, unload, prepare to fire, turn safety off and shoot! Derek kept telling me to breathe, I was a little uptight and tense.. but I didnt mind it so bad and more importantly, I was within inches of the bullseye!! After firing off a few rounds, I sat back down and watch the others for a while, then asked if I could shoot some more.. then they started shooting a tin can and well I just couldnt resist and asked to shoot more again! I actually enjoyed it.. It is a pretty big gun, but the kick was not bad, I felt fairly safe and secure with what I was doing. We will have to get back up to shoot again soon so I can test my knowledge on handling it properly without instruction this next time. I cant imagine shooting it w/o ear protection though, hopefully I'll never have to wonder what that feels/sounds like!