Arya, "Stark's Needle in a Haystack RN" (AKC #MA01094401) is a whosawhatsit, possibly border collie/lab mix. She was born sometime in the Winter/Spring 2004/5. I adopted her in December 2005 from the Tacoma Humane Society in Tacoma, Washington. James and I had just gotten an apartment that allowed pets and the dog I had previously adopted a year before, Kaimery, had bonded with my parents. I decided to go down to their kennels and take a look.
Kaimery and Arya sharing a stick at the dog park in 2006.
A shy girl in a cage up front caught my eye. There's a look, a feeling, something I can't describe to someone who hasn't experienced it. I knew in that second she was my dog. I quickly filled out the application and handed it to the volunteer. She tried to push me off saying I was too young and didn't have enough stability.
Luckily, 2 summers before I had spent the entire summer volunteering for them and knew the volunteer coordinator very well! I marched right up and told her the situation, she came back down and talked to the volunteer. Begrudgingly she did the apartment check to confirm we could have pets and we were off to meet her.
As the volunteer pulled her from the kennel and we walked to the meet and greet room, she let a gem slip. "I don't know why you're interested in this dog, plenty of people have been interested but she's too shy... no one wants her." I bit my tongue, it was a fight just to get to that point!
In the meet and greet room she was shy, quietly said hi but was fairly detached. Here's the thing - border collies are extremely sensitive dogs. Many dogs, not just bc's, are not themselves in a kennel situation. The noise, distraction and general situation shuts down them down. I just knew in my heart I wasn't taking no for an answer. My Dad came down to meet her and said, "well your Mother is going to need to come down".
Taken in 2008, shortly after we bought our first house.
We arranged to have my Mom come the next morning and I put a hold on her. We came back and my Mom, knowing how her kids when we get into these moods, said if I wanted her she didn't see a problem. We finished the paperwork and deliberated a name - we were recently obsessed with the Song of Ice and Fire series (now the TV show Game of Thrones on HBO) and decided on the small, shy female character who later becomes a total badass, Arya.
Right after she was adopted in December 2005.
She had been raised by a girl and when she went to college, handed over to her parent's. When they couldn't break her of chasing horses and killing chickens she was put in the shelter. Another person adopted her, but they kept her in a kennel at work and then returned her. I'm sure they had good intentions, but she just was not ready for that.
She was scared of people. Mostly men, she could recover more quickly with women but with men she would alert bark and do her best to seem mean. The truth of it was she was scared spitless. After about 2 years we got to the point where she could be comfortably out in public without needing to alert bark. Nowadays, you would not know Arya had a somewhat dubious past.
Stalking Kaimery
She is Ms. Social Butterfly, she loves to greet people, especially kids! They're the right height for kissing. And if you lean in just right she will give you one too. I often get asked why she doesn't do therapy - I have to admit part of it is her past.
Taken back in college, she's always known how to relax!
Arya is also my working dog. So far she's earned her RN but I realized after our first attempt at an RA that we had some retraining/training to do. Not bad considering we started taking performance seriously in Fall 2010 and finished her RN in January 2011! We've spent just about a year retraining and I think it will be about 6 months until I'm ready to go back in the ring. If we can finish her RA and RE, I'd like to take a shot at the various obedience titles. We've also been working on agility, I hope to finish her agility titles before she's not able to compete!
Helo is the newest addition. So new he's not even here yet! Back in 2008 when we picked Mochi, I had been dead set on getting an Australian Shepherd. Some things got in our way - namely, the breeder I was obsessed with was in Indiana and we were kids not far out of college (a year for James, less for me). Obviously, we ended up with a corgi (James' choice!). I held fast that I still wanted an aussie in my life in the future.
7 weeks old
I watched, planned and pondered. I fell in love with Helo's Grandma, Nita. This led me to Dawn. I saw in 2011 Nita was having her last litter but the timing was all wrong. James was at a 1 year temporary job across the country, we still had debts to pay off. Later in the Fall, Dawn announced Nita's daughter, Ellie would be having her first litter. I thought about it and realized we were on track to settle debts before the puppy would be here and I jumped on board!
The litter was born on January 3rd/4th (they were born late at night so some on the 3rd, some on the 4th). 5 boys and 2 girls, they were the "smurf" litter. At 7 weeks and change, Dawn did their final evaluation and decided on placements. She kept back one of the girls and one of the boys, we took the first pick boy. I chose the puppy that tows the middle line in personality and drive but was Dawn's first pick for conformation.
2 weeks old
I leave on April 4th and get in late, we'll meet on Thursday and decide if he's going to spend 1 more night with his breeder or at the hotel with me and then on Friday I fly home. The following weekend of April 14-15 I am going to a seminar with 2 days of working spots with Arya. I'm sure I'll be posting a lot more about Helo once he's home!
I have tried to start a general blog several times. Each time I'm never happy with some nitpicky detail of the blog. I think I finally have a name I like and lots of reasons to post, so here's to hoping this works out!
First and possibly most important an introduction. I always like a place to reference when I "meet" someone new on the internet. My name is Christina and I currently live in Tri Cities, Washington State. I like it here, though I was raised most of my life in the Tacoma area (there: green, wet, gorgeous; here: dry, brown, not so gorgeous). I've definitely adjusted to desert life. I am married to James, who works as an engineer for a big construction company. We will very likely be moving in the near future, so that the location is due to change!
This is a picture from 2008 of James, Mochi, Arya and my parent's dog Kaimery. Not that he's changed much in the years since but most of my pictures of him are just silly!
I volunteer as the training director for my local dog training club and spend 3-4 days/nights a week either teaching or taking dog training classes. I am aspiring to become a professional, I would like to attend Karen Pryor Academy and/or The Academy for Dog Trainers. There are a few other groups I'd love a chance to be a part of, but education is quite expensive when you're working as a volunteer!
I am a member of the the Association of Pet Dog Trainers (#78699) as well as the Australian Shepherd Club of America (#130968). I plan on joining my local ASCA club once I know where my husband's job is going to be and possibly the Pet Professional Guild. Community is very important to me, I can read books all day but having someone to guide you is important to the development of a career. I hope someday to be a mentor to up and comers, but that is a long way off as I need quite a bit of guiding myself now!
I have 3 dogs: Arya, Mochi and Helo. If you'd like to read about Mochi, he has his own blog here. This is his introduction post. He gets his own blog because he has a set of special behavioral issues and keeping a log on him is important. I will introduce the other two in a separate post!
This is Mochi in January 2012, shortly before he turned 4. I'm not even sure where to start to tell his story, surely it will come out as we go but I want to get the basics down at least once.
Mochi came to us from his breeder who was local to me but the President of the local kennel club. She talked a good talk and we decided to put a deposit on her upcoming litter. The puppies were born and.. BOTH litters were all females! We'd decided to get a boy because we already had an older female mixed breed rescue, Arya. Corgis can be pushy little jerks and tend to do best in mix gender pairs. We went down to say hi to the babies and consider our options.
The breeder took us back and we oo'd and aw'd over the cute little bundles and the breeder said, "well... I know you want a boy. I don't know if you'll consider this but I have a boy I kept back from a litter in February but for various reasons I'm thinking about not keeping him. He's a bit too close to the girls in my line anyways."
So we went and there were 3 bouncy puppies, his very pushy cousin, her boy littermate who was absolutely darling and the puppy who would become Mochi. The other boy already had a home but we brought them both inside. They raced around and the breeder brought out some puppy toys. Mochi engaged and then cuddled with my husband and I as if to say "let's go home now!" We all agreed he had picked us and we wrote a check...
After 2 weeks I had a moment of "what in the hell did I just do!?" He wasn't interacting much with Arya, didn't want to play and was just generally in his own (extremely cute) world. I remember panicking and considering returning him to the breeder, but finally he broke down and played with Arya.
That's them when they finally played, I grabbed the camera as quickly as I could and took pictures. It's weird looking back to pictures from then and knowing how everything has evolved to see signs of what was to come.
Things progressed somewhat normally for a few months. The dogs played and we took Mochi (and Arya eventually) to a puppy class at Petsmart. The trainer we went to was awesome and very encouraging. He was fine the first few weeks of basic then suddenly shopping carts were the! scariest! thing! ever! Yes, that punctuation was required. We forged through and brought him in for some serious counter conditioning between classes. It was a sign of things to come.
Mochi says, "Hi! I was a ridiculously adorable puppy!"
We had scheduling conflicts with the intermediate class and then the trainer we liked quit (aka had her hours reduced so much she had to get another job when the other trainer was not nearly as good as her, a pity!). We were at a loss for training classes for the time being and did what we could ourselves. That winter I started noticing he had a clicking in his hips. Part in denial and part hoping he would grow out of it, I ignored it until April. He kept alerting on things larger than him, the ceiling fan and was showing signs he didn't want to be social with other dogs.
Finally an xray in April of 2009 at 15 months old showed us Mochi had hip dysplasia and already had arthritis in his right hip. Immediately all our plans of agility and fun were put on hold and life became suddenly all about how to manage this condition.
Shortly before the xrays, he was limping on his front right and acting painful but not showing any signs of orthopedic issues. His shoulder was in pain, but the muscle. His microchip had embedded itself and was causing him pain. We did a local shot of steroids to try and loosen the chip and the day of his surgery to remove it we discovered it had finally done it's job and the chip had moved off to his left leg. Well, as you can see by the photo there was some miscommunication on that and he got shaved anyways!
It didn't help that at this exact time we took on a foster through craigslist listed as a "corgi mix". I had been intent on getting involved in corgi rescue. As you can see up there, Mr Trini was not part corgi. He was a very sweet terrier mix who was slow on the pick up but loyal to the core. Because this blog isn't about him I'll briefly say he was adopted out later that summer then came back but I asked them to find another foster home before Mochi's next surgery.
Mochi started supplements and played with the foster though we saw our first signs that he was dog selective when he would snark the foster for seemingly small transgressions. Foster learned and they buddied up, playing bitey face all having lots of fun. However, Mochi's attitude, already not that great because he'd stayed in his fear period I mentioned with shopping carts, kept tanking.
That may indicate when he started feeling his condition, I know for a fact nothing happened to him with a cart to start it. Who knows, really, except that behaviorally he was deteriorating and I could just tell he was in pain. We started needing pain meds daily, in a young dog not something you want! His behavior also became worse - he was guarding areas of the house and snarking Arya for things like bumping into him slightly.
He also started the signs of barrier frustration. We'd gone through some resource guarding as a puppy but it was resurfacing with a vengeance. He was (and remains) fine with people and resources but dogs are a different story. He also started avoiding my parent's dog, whom he had played with fine until that summer. The only thing that kept him relatively stable was liberal doses of pain meds. I resolved to go to the local veterinary college and see what could be done. We were prepared for a FHO (femoral head ostectomy) or THR (total hip replacement).
Instead, Dr. Martinez discussed a new procedure with us, a hip dennervation. Wikipedia tells me they now call this a capsular neurectomy. In short, the nerves in his right hip (his worst) are shaved off so he cannot feel the pain of his condition. The recovery was significantly shorter and if it didn't do enough to help, we had the option left of a FHO.
As you can see, two very small incisions and this photo is from the day after of his surgery! Yes, he had to rest but I wasn't needing to walk him to potty and such. The doctor also advised on supplements and suggested we start a new brand. If your dog has orthopedic issues, the amount in the pills is very important. You need a constant level of supplement to remain effective. The problem in brands like Kirkland which we had been using is that they are not regulated to have at least X amount in each pill. One of the ingredients (I can't remember which, sorry!) is water soluble and in lower quality products tends to go up and down in how much is in each pill.
The combination of these 2 - surgery and Cosequin DS - were effective. He was off the pain pills but still grumpy. The behavioral problems were still there. They did regress a bit during this time post surgery but not much. So this brings us into Winter/Spring of 2010. That summer, we went back to my parent's house. The resource guarding was an issue (though manageable thankfully), otherwise things were better. We decided he'd come along enough to take him to our local off leash park. He was until this point much better off leash with other dogs. Things were great, he greeted and was around different types of dogs.. and then there was the boxer. This boxer was obsessed and would not leave him alone. We moved away for a while while the owner chatted with my Dad.
The dog kept bugging Mochi and to his credit, he was doing a good job of saying "please leave me alone" without being rude. The dog finally pushed him despite my best to run interference and he snarked. The guy finally got the hint, which I had been saying the whole time for him to please call his dog off Mochi, and walked off. The frustrating part here is there were 3 other dogs in the area yet this boxer was focused on Mochi. I should have walked away with Mochi, I know that now.
That was kind of the beginning of the end. Mochi learned that growling works and works really well! It wasn't immediate. That summer we did a CGC class and passed with nearly flying colors. My mother in law was in the building and he was so worked up he struggled with his stay but did fine once she left the building. He had signs that he was becoming leash reactive and I was stupid to the entire thing. I'm sure I made all the novice mistakes - tightening my leash when another dog approached and the like.
That fall I joined the club and started assisting. Arya got to do agility, but poor Mr. Bo (his other nickname) had to stay home. I tried to get him out more and it seemed the more we went out the worse he got. He was also getting snarkier at home with Arya, guarding the back door. Around this time I read a blog asking if we were fans of our dogs. I wasn't Mochi's fan, not by any stretch of the imagination.
I resented that he had overtaken our lives with his issues, both physical and behavioral. That we had to worry about him constantly and carefully manage him. I loved my dog, but I didn't like my dog and I wasn't even trying to. He was my "husband's dog",when my husband invested little in his training. Reading that is hard. It's tough now knowing that I felt like that but it's important to be honest.
I resolved to become his fan. I let go of the negativity I'd harbored against him and did my best not to let it creep back in. There wasn't an immediate change, but it did happen. He slowly trusted me more. He was more willing to work and play. Our relationship improved and his reactivity started to just slightly decrease. His relationship with Arya started improving. There was still reactivity, there was still resource guarding but it was less.
It amazes me now how much impact my attitude had. Simply flipping a switch in my brain flipped something on in him. This was not a cure - he was still behaviorally a mess and despite counter conditioning (cc) attempts on my part his dog reactivity remained but at home he was better.
2011 was a rather unspectacular year in terms of Mochi. I continued my attempts at behavioral modification (bmod). Finally in the fall I realized he'd just had it. He wasn't responding at all so he became my stays at home dog. Things still weren't 100% but hey, he had a good life sniffing and barking outside in our large yard. He enjoyed playing tug and lazy (laser) pointer. More importantly, the guarding was better when I wasn't pushing him with bmod.
Our relationship continued to get better. I purchased and started making use of a thundershirt. It helped him relax. This video isn't the best, but it shows how he goes from being very uncomfortable, putting distance between himself and me to able to concentrate and work. Oh and please ignore the mess in the background. I rewatched this and I am so embarrassed. Why didn't I pick up that damn towel!?
In terms of what was going on with me, I started off 2011 teaching a rally class and then began assisting the basic obedience classes. Eventually I started teaching. I was also elected secretary of the club for 2011. In October, I stepped up again and was elected training director. I was teaching our remedial behavior class mostly. I participated in Susan Garrett's Recallers course which was my first "lightbulb" moment with both dogs. I started shaping with a clicker that summer. This had a huge impact in our continued growth. I got interested in bmod and started devouring all the materials I could get my hands on.
Elk antlers are difficult for short legged dogs!
A goofy moment in the grass.
His thundershirt the first day we had it on.
Which brings us more or less to present day. While 2011 was an unspectacular year for Mochi I consider that a good thing. Not good that this bmod failed, but we had no major bombs go off otherwise. As we came to 2012 I went to Clicker Expo in January. I attended a few reactive dog lectures, where I encountered Julie Shaw, Ken Ramirez (swoon) and Kathy Sdao. They talked a bit about medication to help with behavioral modification if it had been unsuccessful otherwise. It clicked in my head, it was that time. We also committed to a new puppy who would be coming home in April. In early February he began fluoxetine (prozac).
A few more recent photos from our big snow this year:
