Rena Barnett’s blog

Since Phoebe has had almost two years of intense agility training, some of the show training she had as a puppy has begun to slide.  Like everything else, training follows the rule of "use it or lose it."  So I have decided to spend some time working on her show ring skills.  We've not decided whether she will return to the ring yet, but cross training is good for any dog.

 

Phoebe's natural response to being examined, is to drop her tail. Her reaction is one of "opps, did I do something wrong?"  Clicker training can be used both to capture her carrying her tail and reinforcing that, as well as to counter condition her negative response to being "stared" at.  In her first lesson, I clicked my clicker for any tail movement.  In the next session, I clicked for any upward movement.  This video is of her third lesson, here, I will wait her out and clicker for more upward movements. Finally I leave off with clicking for her tail straight up at a 90 degree angle from the base of her back or 180 from her backside. Every time you see me giving her her treat (American chesse) a click has immediately proceeded that click.  You'll see she is rewarded often.

 The next step will be to add a name to the behavior - what clicker trainers call "adding a cue." Once the cue is added, it will no longer be necessary to continually click the behavior.  I will got to "random reinforcment" instead. More information on clicker training for the show ring can be found in my article published in the August 2009 edition of Yorkie Club Magazine:

Yorkie Club Magazine

 

 

This past spring, Mighty Mite Dog Gear lost our business partner, mentor and friend, George Smith, to cancer.  We mourn his loss and thank our loyal patrons for standing by us during this terrifically difficult time. 

 

In George’s memory, Mighty Mite is conducting a fund raising campaign for the U.N Disaster Relief Fund “CERF.”  For the month of September, Mighty Mite is donating 20% of all Mighty Mite Screenroom tent orders to the U.N Fund in George’s name.  Please visit the screenroom page for more information:

 

http://www.mightymitedoggear.com/Screenroom.html

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

http://p.webshots.com/flash/smallslideshow.swf
http://pets.webshots.com/album/570099864lvdoZn">Progressive Toy Dog Show & NYC Specialties - vending

Beaded Leads are Available at Mighty Mite Dog Gear!

 

It's official! The dog show world has gone bling bling beaded lead crazy!

When I first started selling these leads in November, they were only 1% percent of my total sales - but the following month - it jumped to 20%!  I am now getting orders from as far away as Australia! The show leads I am offering are a nice alternative to the Kangaroo leads found everywhere else because: 

1. they are not as stiff as braided leather
2. they are less expensive
3. they are lighter weight - which is especially important for table and toy dogs.

 

People seem to truly love them.  The qualitty of the craftsmanship and the jewel like quality of the beads are especially nice.  I just love reading the emails from all the happy customers! Click Here: Beaded Dog Show Leads from Mighty Mite Dog Gear!

 

We'll be vending at the Hotel Pennsylvania During Westminster Week!

I'll have a complete display for Westminster (my Mighty Mite Dog Gear banner and table cover are displated to the left of this text!). Will be vending at the Hotel Pennsylvania for the Progressive Toy Dog Show and the New York Metropolitan Specialties. 

Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show At Madison Square Garden

Progressive Toy Dog Show at the Hotel Pennsylvania 

Westminster Week Events Calendar  

I know many customers are coming from all over the world and have been putting in their orders in advance of the show!   This is all very exciting! Please drop by and say hello!

 The Hotel Pennsylvania - where I will be vending during Westminster Week!

 

Bringing with me:

Summerwinds Grooming Supplies, Pure Paws Grooming Supplies (check out the new chalks! Mouse! Hairsprays!), Toys! Leads, Dog Bows! Kool Koats! Kool Vests, Kool Kennel Crate Fans! And tons more stuff!

 

 

It' been two months since we embarked in this new business project.  In the interim, I have kept all my own dogs exclusively on this product line and on the food supplement, Summerwinds Health-E-Coat.  I am very happy with the results! My problem seems not to be growing coat - but trimming it! Phoebe's ear fringe has grown 11/2 inches in the course of three weeks! Amazing. All the dogs are matt free and Penny's tear staining is reduced. 

 

Decided to go ahead and offer the introductory assemble package to my customers.  You can now buy the Summerwinds grooming supplies at discount on the Mighty Mite Dog Gear site.  It's a great bargain that introduces the customer to the best selling products in the Summerwinds line.  The sizes offered are large enough that you can actually use the products for awhile and get a chance to truly see the results. 

To find out more about the product line, or to purchase - click here:

 

Summerwinds Show Dog Grooming Shampoo & Summerwinds Grooming Products, Intro Assemble Package

Phoebe will be entering some UKC conformation shows (I hope!) this spring, economy and gas prices allowing.  Interestingly enough, although I taught her "stand" months before "sit" - as she has progressed in her agility training she has started to default into the sit behavior.  I suppose we reinforce "sit" so often in our dogs' daily life, that regardless of when the behavior is taught, dogs naturally default to it.  This was a shock when I slipped her show lead on, stood in front of her and said "STAND!" and what  I got was a very sweet little poodle face and a butt on the ground.  She clearly thought she was giving me the behavior I had asked for!

Now I am working with her every night with her highest value treats. I put her in her "real" show lead and hold her treat an arms distance from her nose - and count 1 mississippi, 2 mississippi, etc.  and then and her the treat, so that she does not raise or turn her head (rewarding in place) for the correct head position.  I am hoping that by doing this every night before dinner time and only rewarding her while she is still standing, i can get her to associate wearing her show lead with the stand as the default behavior.

Well, we're here in our second year of marketing the Mighty Mite Super Set Dog Tent.  The soft crates were released Thanksgiving of last year at the Sprinfield Kennel Club annual Dog Show Cluster.  It was five years of R & D in the making.  I've added a "Rate it All" Widget to the side of this blog. For those who have tried the dog tents, everyone who was a part of their manufacturing would love to hear from you!

 

 

Phoebe, UKC Champion Joey's Baby Girl, is my mother's new little show dog and my new "dog agility project." She's got amazing speed and toy drive but sometimes, the brain aint there. <wink> At 14 months, she still has a long way to go and is showing a lot of promise.  I am very excited about how she has taken to the sport and seems to be truly enjoying herself.

For most of the summer, we have been doing foundation work. Much time has been spent working on Susan Salo's jump grid work.Susan Salo Jump Dog - Jump Foundation Training  We are also working on training a true running contact (as opposed to the usual small dog - "run and pray that the dog's stride is so short that she has to hit the contact zone method!").  Poodles are famous for thier "BOING!" and I want to be sure that no "BOING" happens on the down contact.  Also, I attended a Dr. Chris Zink seminar many years ago where she showed video clips of dogs running down the A-Frame. 

Dr. Chris Zink Canine Sports Productions 

From those clips, it was obvious that the safest and ideal contact performance is for a dog to actually repel down the down side of the contact as opposed to run the length of the board, stubbing her toes all the way down! Running Contacts with Touch Board

 

Here are some clips of Phoebe doing grid work and contact training:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here's a photo of Phoebe doing the set-point exercise. She has done this exercise with a variety of different jumps, including the Tire and Broad Jump and at heights ranging from four inches to fourteen inches.

 

I am planning to work on more touch board exercises this week and a return to basic handling/flatwork to get her more responsive to my change of arm cues.   My hope is to teach her to 1) lengthen and extend her stride depending on whether she is cued with a "Go On" or a "Come Touch" and 2) teach her to look to my hand cues for signals as to whether to move forward, latterally away from me, or collect in preparation for a turn.

Until the summer of 2004, I knew virtually nothing about the disease myself and, as a result, it almost cost my dog his life. Bun was a wiry and hyperactive dog from the day I brought him home from the animal shelter. Super athletic and high energy: always on. I attributed his lean build to his temperament and my feeding regime, plus my conditioning and training him in agility. Unfortunately, his skinny build also happened to be warning sign. Mistake #1.

A year into his agility training, I took him as a novice dog to a seminar in Ohio with a “name” agility instructor who holds camps for novice agility dogs. It was in autumn but it was still brutally hot outside. Bun had never had almost eight hours a day of agility instruction before plus had to deal with being crated next to a dozen other dogs, most of whom were high drive Shelties and Border Collies. He did everything “slow” the whole seminar long and I got very upset with him and this instructor who kept referring to my dog as “slow.” I did not want instruction on how to deal with a slow dog when I knew the dog I had home was fast. Plus, I wanted to know what was the deal with my dog! Why was he suddenly turning off on me? Was I ruining agility for him? When we returned to New York, Bun acted like he had the life sucked out of him. I attributed it to the stress of the seminar, the heat, his physical exhaustion, and his reading off of my own stress. All of this was partially correct, but again, I missed another warning sign. Mistake #2.

The summer of 2004 we flew down to Florida for the Roving Yorkshire Terrier Specialty. Again, the weather was very hot but fortunately the show itself was in an air-conditioned ball room at the hotel. Bun was running speedily and doing a good job but then something odd happened, something that had never happened before (esp. not indoors!) He pooped in the ring! A tape of the interview is here:

http://www.wesh.com/community/3460674/detail.html

At first, I laughed it off as fluke that happens once to everyone. I shouldn’t have. Mistake #3. IF YOUR DOG DOES SOMETHING “STRANGE, “ SOMETHING HE ISN’T LIKELY TO EVER DO AGAIN, DO NOT PASS IT OFF OR EXPLAIN IT AWAY. Take it seriously. Bun is a very housebroken dog who will awaken me from a dead sleep in the middle of the night if he needs to be taken out, his going in the ring was a sign that something was terribly wrong and again I missed it.

He got very sick in the airport awaiting our delayed plane to New York. I now thought the heat of Florida had gotten to him. He was dead quite on the flight home, through turbulence that should have driven him insane. I attributed his silence to the upset belly and fatigue. We got home, I had a ton of work in the office I needed to catch up on because of the long vacation, and I started working late nights. Mom said her “grand dog” wasn’t “right” I laughed it off, saying she was being overprotective and that his malaise was a combination of exhaustion from the trip and depression because of my absence. Yet another lost opportunity to catch what was wrong before disaster struck. Mistake #5.

I took him to my local vet only to appease “grandmaw.” My vet knows me and my family well and knows how many dogs we have owned. I explained Bun’s symptoms, my vet and I laughed it off as my mother being overprotective of her “grand dog.” He gave Bun a general physical exam, BUT DID NOT TAKE A BLOOD SAMPLE, he gave Bun a passing score and we went home.

The Fourth of July weekend, I was home. I noticed something extremely “Wrong” with Bun. He wasn’t eating. He was refusing to eat anything – even his favorite, American cheese. I noticed that he was quivering, the AC was on, and so I turned it off. Soon the temperature of the house rose to 90 something degrees and yet, he was still shaking. Worse than that, his back legs were quivering and he seemed to be having trouble standing up. I put him on my bed, he plopped down and lay there, so uncharacteristically, quietly, as though the only thing in the world he wanted to do was sleep. I now was hysterical, finally realizing that something was horribly wrong with my dog. I raced to the nearest emergency room with him where they finally did perform a blood test. That’s when I finally heard the news, my dog was near death and the most likely culprit was an Addisonian Crisis.

Canine Addison’s Disease is the more common name for hypoadrencorticism also known as adrenal insufficiency. It is the “flip” side of Canine Cushings disease and is linked o an auto-immune deficiency. It is probably more common that people realize but is often over looked or misdiagnosed because the symptoms are so subtle and mimic other disorders:

http://www.vetmedpub.com/cp/pdf/roundtable...ovartis_add.pdf.
http://www.2ndchance.info/addison's.htm

My understanding of the disease is this: for some dogs the pituitary does not sufficiently stimulate the adrenal glands to produce adrenocorticotropic hormone (“ACTH”). For other dogs, such as Bun, the body actually attacks the adrenal gland in a misdirected auto-immune response, thus destroying the body’s ability to produce this hormone. Without ACTH, the body can not respond effectively to stressful situations because it cannot produce cortisol and aldosterone, the “stress” hormones. Without these hormones, the dog cannot regulate the potassium/calcium balance in his blood stream, the potassium levels rise and the body becomes weak and the heart rate slows. If the heart is slowed down enough, it will stop. In addition, Bun exhibited signs of renal failure, generalized muscle weakness, lethargy, inappetance, anorexia and pain in his hind legs. The blood test taken at the emergency room indicated that his electrolyte levels were “through the roof” This initial test, coupled with a subsequent “ACTH” stimulation test taken subsequenlty at a special hospital I took him to (the Center for Compassionate Care in Westbury Long Island) confirmed the initial diagnosis and ultimately saved his life. They began him on a saline drip IV and round-the-clock monitoring. They then injected him a steroid replacement which he will now be on for the rest of his life: DOCP (marketed as Percoten). With a monthly shot of DOCP and daily dose of Prednisone, it is believed he can live a normal and relatively healthy long life. He now goes for routine blood tests to monitor how these medications are working and to adjust his dosages as needed. Just recently, I had to change his dosage because he was exhibiting signs of Cushings. This disease requires that I be constantly vigilant!

Here are two links to websites that were my source of solace and information as we went though this ordeal together. There were some wonderful people on these Canine Addison’s lists who also consoled me and helped me though this.

http://www.k9addisons.com
http://www.addisondogs.com/

I should add for this forum in particular, that in response to my request, Chris Zink, writing under the pseudonym, “Sallie Sports Vet,” wrote an interesting and very helpful article in her column for Cleanrun Magazine in the Fall of 2004. http://www.cleanrun.com regarding canine athletes and A.D.

 

Mr. Cinnamon Bun is now 11 years old and retired from dog agility.  He had a very successful career in the sport and hopefully, proved to be an inspiration to other small dogs, rescue dogs and Addison dogs. He ended his career having earned a Master Agility Dog (MACH) title from AKC as well as titles from two other agility organizations. He was among the top 10 Yorkies in the country for mulitple years and among the top five before he retired. Here's a youtube clip of an agility run in April of 2008:

He is also the first, and unfortunately, only Yorkie to earn an Earthdog title, having successfully earned a Certificate of Gamness "CG" from the American Working Terrier Association (AWTA). Bun has retired due to hearing and vision loss not related to his A.D.  However, because he is not as active as he used to be, I have to be doubly careful about muscle wasting and have him on supplements and a regular exercise regime.

Some general info below:

How can you be sure it’s Addison’s?
One of the first things to look at when Addison’s disease is suspected are the electrolyte levels. The two that are of greatest concern are sodium (Na) and potassium (K). In addition to looking at these values, it is important to look at the ratio between the two. This number is derived by dividing K into Na and should be between 27 and 40. For example, a dog with a Na level of 145 and a K level of 4.5 would have a ratio of 32. A dog in an Addisonian crisis will typically have a low Na level, elevated K and low ratio. (see laboratory results for more info)
While electrolyte levels are important indicators, they are not the definitive test to determine Addison’s disease. In fact, with secondary and atypical hypoadrenocorticism, electrolyte levels may not be affected. For definitive diagnosis the dog is given the ACTH stimulation or response test. This tests the ability of the adrenal glands to produce the corticosteroid hormone cortisol.