Dogs enjoyed the first snow of the year

The dogs enjoyed the first snow of the year. It was in the teens today, but nothing a Carhart jacket couldn't handle.

Here is video of the dogs. The first part is pictures and then there is video footage.

Fusion Training Middle of November.mov

Fusion is from my Jen x Singe litter. She is my last Jen daughter since I lost Tephra (Jen x Spark). Fusion and I have a very special relationship. Even though she is only 2 years old and under 18" tall she is the next top dog here. Kate has been slowly giving up control (don't tell Fusion that) to her. Kate allows Fusion to do things that she allows no other dog to do. Fusion being a Jen daughter is a princess. All 3 of my Jen girls are princess' and they know it. The cool thing about Fusion is that she is a tomboy princess.

Here is a little of our agility training. She will start competing this spring.

Fear Periods

I have never been one to worry about fear periods in puppies.  I am amazed, over the years, how many people freak out when their puppy is afraid of something as they are growing up.  Over the past 10 years I have heard people ask "what should I do Fee Fee is sooooo afraid of 'X' and I don't know how to handle it".
I have seen so many people try to "work" their dogs through it.  Why?  If I am afraid of spiders and you force me in a room with spiders I will most likely deck you one.  Duh!!!!
If a dog is afraid of a fire hydrant, don't flood them with it and force them to go up to it.  Just do your walk every day and walk right past it like it isn't even there.  Don't try to be a Pezz dispenser and constantly feed cookies to your dog as you are walking by something that has spooked your dog in the past.
So, over the 18 or so years of raising dogs on my own, I have learned to just let them deal with it.  The more a human worries over it the more the dog becomes phobic over it.
So, my response to my dogs is to let them grow out of it.  I do not try to desensitize them of anything that they are "afraid" of at the time.  I just carry on with life.  If they show fear of something I do not recognize it and just carry on our marry way.
My dogs are pretty much fearless in life.  I really can not say that there is any one thing that freaks any of my dogs out.  I know that things that come out of the blue can make them startle, but heck it would me too.

Fusion Beginning Agility.mov

I have finally found the time to stay committed to Fusion's agility training. It was hard in the past because I had Connor at home with me. Now that he is in school I can work dogs more. Happy me and happy dogs. Fusion is everything I wanted from both of her parents. She is my little workaholic who loves to do anything I ask. She is biddable, but is not soft. She is very fast and has tons of drive. She makes working her tons of fun.

Besides being a very nice agility dog, she is also a very nice sheepdog. She has a natural cast to her outruns, with a nice amount of eye.

Here is a video to show some of Fusion's beginning work. More to come when the rain and snow goes away.

Kate at 12 1/2 Years Young

Kate is my heart dog and the love of my life. She is the main reason I found and moved up to Oregon. I waited over a year for her mom to be bred, then another 4 months until I could drive the 10 hours to pick Kate out. I fell in love with Central Oregon and moved up here, from California, 2 years later.

She has been through good and bad times with me and I owe her so much.

Joules 3 Months 2

This is Joules from our Lash x Spritz litter. She is a high drive puppy that has a sassy side to her. She loves to work and play with toys.

Watt (Lash x Sprtiz) Available

Watt is a male from our Lash x Spritz litter. He is available to a performance home. Watt is very outgoing, loves to work and play and is great with people and other dogs. He has the drive and work ethic to go to the top.

Available Male Puppies

We have a few male puppies available from our 2 summer litters. www.hillcrestbordercollies.com and www.youtube.com/user/HillcrestBCs

Lahar (Jen x Spark)

Tuff (Jen x Spark)

Caldera (Jen x Spark)

Watt (Lash x Spritz)

Ash (Jen x Spark)

Godspeed Tephra

Brew Is For Sale

Brew is for sale, on a neuter contract, to a herding or novice/intermediate agility home. Brew is a very sweet and loving boy who gets along with adult dogs and puppies and loves kids. He is very quiet inside the house and outside. Brew lives in the house as a part of our family. He plays with toys and bones and also chills on a dog bed.
Brew has been started on sheep and will be ready for full time training this summer. He was born in July, 2009 and has the ability to run in 2 years of Nursery.
Brew is for sale on a Neuter contract. Please visit Brew's personal page

www.hillcrestbordercollies.com/brew.cfm

Saint Is Available

Saint is an outgoing and energetic puppy. She is both toy and food motivated. She loves to tug on anything that she can get her mouth on. Saint is crate trained and sleeps through the night. She is starting on her basic puppy training. Saint would be suitable for a performance home as she has high toy drive and loves to work.

Running Contacts

I have put a lot of thought into contacts this past year. Risk and I would always go head to head at a trial for her 2o2o contacts. It was making trialing her not very fun. I also have several young dogs coming up and I needed to think on how I was going to train them. I did a lot of research, reading, watching videos and talking to people.

I have come to the conclusion that I will always teach a running A-Frame to any dog I train. I think this will help out with shoulder and back problems in the long run. I also like the striding a lot better than a 2o2o. Now, I know that I won't teach a running dogwalk to everydog as I don't feel it is meant for every dog. Some of my dogs are doing Silvia Trkman's method and some are going to do a 2o2o contact. I took this last year off to figure out what I wanted to do with Risk's dogwalk. I have been doing Silvia's method with her and I am really loving it, with her, so far. I started with Singe and I am very happy that he was taught to just run the plank as I think it will help him in the long run. I have decided to do a 2o2o with him because of his stride and style of running. The verdict is still out on Fusion. She like Singe is very bouncy, so it makes it frustrating.

Here is Risk's A-Frame. It is at 5'2" in this video. I am going to raise it up to 5'6" and take the stride regulator away today.

Singe's A-Frame is coming along nicely. I had to add a stride regulator on the descent because he was not extending coming over the apex.

This video shows the first time I took Risk off of the plank and put her on a baby height dogwalk. I was backchaining in this session.

Risk was then allowed to do the entire dogwalk at baby height. I have learned that 6 or 7 full dogwalks is all that Risk can take mentally and physically at this time. She starts to get tired after that. She is the type of dog that puts everything into her training and tugging add that to thinking about what she is learning. She starts to slow down and revert back to a partial 2o2o stride when she gets tired.

Havoc x Singe puppies 4 Weeks Old

The Havoc x Singe puppies are 4 weeks old now. OK, they are a few days over 4 weeks, but the video was taken at 4 weeks of age.

The puppies love to tug now. You can see this in the first video. They a have been taking a hold of their dog beds and "killing" them.

Colt is a very determined puppy. He had been working on escaping for quite some time and let us know all about it. He escaped this one time and then I put the board up a little. Well I found out that that wasn't going to work because the bugger got out in the middle of the night and started roaming the house in the dark. I put a taller board up there now.

Risk and Fusion's Running Dogwalk Training

I decided last fall that I would retrain Risk's contacts from 2o2o to a running. Unfortunately our winters are not conducive to training agility outside, so I had to wait for good weather. I have started training the dogs again. I also decided that I was going to train Fusion, Risk's grand daughter, on running contacts.

I have played around with a couple of our other dogs and found out it is not for every dog.

Fusion is just starting out on plank work. She tends to come off of the sides at times, so I decided I would put up x-pens on either side. I move them away from the plank more and more in each session. I am just working on her running, not pouncing, as she is doing the plank. What I am looking for is that her back feet are separated when they push off of the plank each time. I am very happy with it and will quickly fade out the x-pens so that I can raise the plank.

I am very happy with Risk's progress. I knew she would progress faster than Fusion because she has many years of dogwalk training. She also did "see wood run" as a young dog. I was able to raise her plank up to about 8 inches after warming up with it on the ground.

Time To Blog Again

Wow, I looked at my blog and the last time I wrote in it was the middle of November. So much has gone on over the winter. Murray's mom passed away right after Christmas, so that took a lot out of us. Connor (now 4 1/2 years old) has been taking up most of my time. He is a very active boy and very strong headed too. We have also been doing some remodeling of our house along with painting.

My goal is to write in the blog at least 3 times a week. I will update on our training etc along with puppy pictures of Havoc x Singe puppies.

The winter weather makes me so uninspired to train as there seems to be very little daytime hours to get out and train. I am feeling more inspired to train dogs in both agility and herding now that the days are longer and the bad weather "seems" to be behind us.

Went and worked Fusion, Skarlet and Brew at my good friend Karen's place. I hadn't worked Skarlet all winter and the break seems to have done her some good. She is releasing pressure better and squaring up on her flanks. This was Fusion's 2nd time on sheep and she is more than ready for me to start her training. And Mr. Brew had his first time on sheep at 7 months old. We liked what we saw. Brew is out of my Skarlet and Karen Child's Rock.

I was very pleased to see that Skarlet is not coming up tight behind her sheep now. She only had one major slice leaving for her outrun and was quickly stopped and brought back to retry.

Fusion is very natural and should be easy to train up. She should be running sometime in 2010.

Who knows, she may train up to be a nice Nursery dog.

It was so nice to see what Brew had to show us. He is only 7 months old, so he will go to sheep about once a month until he is around a year. If he is able to handle the pressure I will start him then. My hopes is that he will be my my Nursery dog.