Once more unto the breach, dear friends....

(Whispering)...I took Raff to Flyball practice last night.

I made special treats for him (recipe below), and fed him almost no supper before practice (he got maybe 10 kibbles, just so there was something in his bowl while the others ate.)

And at practice, he actually did pretty well. My ability to keep his focus on me is no longer an issue. I can even have him loose, off leash (as long as I'm paying attention to him every second.) So that's huge progress in and of itself!

We had the fencing between the lanes, and during the first round, there was just another green dog in the other lane, and we alternated running them. So he was pretty much running by himself, and he was fine. His turn totally went to hell when he got tired, but he did many (apparently too many) successful full down & backs.

In the second round, a teammate volunteered to have her seasoned dog run in the other lane, opposite Raff. Now THAT was another story. I foolishly started him too far from the box, so the first thing he did was run up to the fencing and start barking at her dog in the other lane. I said his name in the death tone, scooped him up, and took him down to the middle of the lane to try again. More confusion and anarchy, but he did a little better.

Third time, I wised up and took him to right in front of the box (which is what I had TOLD myself I was going to do in the first place, even before we left the house, but I didn't do it when we got there because...I'm a complete idiot?? Yeah, theat must be it.) He was still very distracted by the other little dog, and his turn was utter crap, but he did make it to the box, he did get the ball, and he did bring it back to me. We ran several more times, each time successful (but crappy turn, even w/a box jump), each time backing up a bit further from the box. We got all the way back to the third jump from the box, and my teammate was starting her dog from there, too. So by the time we were done, he was starting with another dog right by his side in the other lane, and he did his job. Woo-hoo!

I've accepted that his turn may just be spotty at best. It could be when he gets used to the distraction of the other dogs (IF he gets used to the distraction of the other dogs), his turn will recover. And I can certainly work on his conditioning more, so getting tired shouldn't be such a factor. And during the week, I'm going to try to have him do a few turns here and there, with the clicker, so I keep reinforcing what is a correct turn. We'll see.

For the moment, I'm going to keep him in Flyball. May doG have mercy on our souls!

RECIPE:

Raffy's Chicken Parmesan Re-Treats

*1 chicken breast, boiled, then pureed in a food processor w/enough broth to make it the
consistency of canned dog food
*2 eggs
*1 t garlic powder
*2 T parmesan cheese
*1 1/2 c whole wheat flour (more, if needed, to make the dough stiff)

Mix together well. Press into greased 9" x 13" pan. Bake at 250 degrees for 30 - 35 minutes. Cut into desired size pieces and refrigerate or freeze.

Sugar Free Lemon Meringue Pie

I like a lemon meringue pie for Christmas dessert. It's a bright, cheery dessert...a nice reminder that we are past the shortest day of the year, and that the sun is with us (however imperceptibly) a little bit longer each day. Afterall, isn't that what these mid-winter holidays are for? To get us through the winter doldrums, to help us cast our thoughts forward to spring?

And those thoughts, along with the meringue, remind me of my mother. She always looked forward to the shortest day of the year because it gave her hope during those hideous Wisconsin winters. Meringues (not pie, just meringues, usually with strawberries and whipped cream for toppings) were one of her signature desserts at Christmas time.

I found this recipe on-line, but I'm not linking to it b/c it's the single worst written recipe I've ever come across. The ingredients are listed in an indecipherable jumble...not in the order of preparation, and the directions are worse--no differentiation of when to use the duplicated ingredients. And then there are the two ingredients mentioned in the directions, but not shown on the ingredient list at all. Gotta love it.

At any rate, here's the recipe, translation by Patty:

Filling
1 1/2 c. Splenda
2 T flour
1/4 c. cornstarch
1/4 t. salt
1 1/2 c. water
4 egg yolks
1/3 c. fresh squeezed lemon juice (not fresh is okay, but as always, fresh will be MUCH better)
1 T. butter

Pre-baked 9" pie crust, cooled.

Meringue topping
4 egg whites
1/4 t. cream of tartar
1/4 t. cornstarch
1/2 c. Splenda
1 t. vanilla extract

Mix Splenda, flour, cornstarch, and salt in saucepan. Add water and mix well (whisk, if necessary, to eliminate lumps). Whisk egg yolks, stir into water/Splenda mixture. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until mixture is quite thick. Remove from heat, add lemon juice and butter. Mix well (I ended up with some lumps, so I used my whisk to get rid of them.) Pour filling into pie crust. Allow to cool while preparing the meringue.

In medium sized mixing bowl, beat egg whites until frothy. Add remaining ingredients and continue beating until slightly stiff peaks form. Swirl over pie filling, making sure to touch the edges of the crust all the way around.

Bake at 350 degrees for 10 - 15 minutes, or until golden brown. Cool before serving.

Merry Christmas, everyone. Now let's start planning our gardens!

Schutzhund...er, Pschutzhund Sleeves

Sheila, my lovely Sheila, was apparently separated from her littermates far too soon, and after that, she was never around other dogs...at least, for the formative months. That is to say, she never learned bite inhibition. Yes, bite inhibition can theoretically be taught to a dog who didn't previously learn it from its littermates, but I never did it. So shoot me.

And Sheila loves to play wrestle, but no sane dog will play with her because she's way too rough. So I play with her. And I've got the marks to prove it. My arms are always littered with a number of bruises, in various states of healing.

Now that I'm on break, I've decided to do something about this. Oh no--not TRAIN her. Goodness. How silly. No, I'm going to make a pair of Schutzhund Sleeves. Or, since she's not a working breed dog, and these are only going to be Pseudo-schutzhund Sleeves, I'm calling them Pschutzhund Sleeves. Tee hee.

It being the end of the month, I'm going cheap on the materials (I may regret this, of course. A real Schutzhund sleeve, the cheapest, costs about $70).

*Old pair of blue jeans (note the holes)

*Fleece

*2 oven mitts (from the Dollar Tree)

I cut a length of fleece, 26" x 10".

Fold that over, and sew a seam on the long side.

Turn that right-side out, in half upon itself. Oh, just look at the picture.

Fold back the outer layer, tuck the inner layer inside the oven mitt, by about an inch.

Smooth the outer layer back over the outside of the oven mitt. Hand stitch fleece sleeve to oven mitt, taking care that you're stitching through all of the layers. This is your inner padding for the ultimate finished product.

The outside covering of the sleeve will be the denim. Using the sleeve/mitt as a pattern, trace sewing and cutting lines on one leg of the blue jeans. Take care to account for the seam allowance around the thumb...I "moved" the whole thing over about 1/4 inch for this (as you can see by the multiple tracing lines I left in the attempt. I'm also using the existing outer seam of the jeans for one side. Cuz I'm lazy.

Sew the outer cover, then hem it.

Stuff the inside in the outside. Is it good? Darn tootin'! Doin' the Big Fig Newton! But I digress. You're done! Now make another one and try them out!

DISCLAIMERS! DISCLAIMERS! DISCLAIMERS!

If you're stupid enough to think that you won't get hurt using $2 Pschutzhund Sleeves when playing with a dog that has no bite inhibition, then you're an idiot. You WILL get hurt. Don't blame me if you do. See, here's the video to prove it.

So, how do I rate this project? A qualified success. The bite pressure was definitely lessened (i.e., I didn't feel like my bones were being crushed); however, she was still able to grab and pinch some skin, so it wasn't a pain-free experience. Also, the blue jean material is no match for her teeth...the sleeve suffered damage in our first and brief encounter. Nevertheless, we were still able to play longer and more roughly than we ever could with just my bare arms.

What's that you say? It's stupid to encourage a dog to bite hard? Well, duh. So don't do it.

More food

Having eaten enough chips and dip (Ruffles + Lipton Onion Soup Mix dip) to very nearly make myself puke yesterday afternoon, today I've redoubled my efforts to have good, low carb options at hand. (Although, I have to say that the occasional overindulgence could be a good diet trick for me, in that I really don't care if I never see another chip + dip, let alone eat it, again. Bleeeeechhhhh.)

So, today I've got happy little Peanut Butter...Bloops? They're certainly not "cups". See for yourself:

These are pretty simple, and quite tasty, I must say.

1 c. natural (no sugar) peanut butter

1/2 c. Splenda

1/4 t. vanilla

1 16 oz. bag GOOD semi-sweet chocolate chips (I'm partial to Ghiradelli, myself)

Mix first three ingredients. Melt chocolate. Shape peanut butter mixture into small balls (size is up to you). They will be kind of goopy...do your best. Dip into chocolate, set on wax paper to cool. Dust with cocoa powder b/c it's pretty.

You have to work pretty quickly with these...if you linger, the peanut butter ball will melt into the chocolate, and you'll quickly have a little pot of goo. Tasty goo, yes, but not quite what you're going for, really.

I also made a low carb pumpkin pie, using Laura Dolson's recipe. (She's my hero.) But I just used my almond meal crust (1 1/2 c. almond meal, 3 T butter) instead of the pecan one she suggests. It's looking good, but I haven't tasted it yet. Update on taste tomorrow.

I also recently made the cauliflower souffle thing (I follow the recipe except for adding 1/4 c. sauteed onion), that I describe in the For the Love of Side Dishes post. It's really a very happy food. You will want to roll in it. Or possibly rub it in your hair. Or both.

Winter Wonderland

Totally. All last week it was snowy (but the university didn't close b/c they didn't want to have to cancel the students' finals...grrrrrr.) Then over the weekend, we got freezing rain. There was 1/2 inch of ice over the two inches of snow, and when the dogs ran out onto it, and their 16 paws broke through, it sounded like thunder!

Last night we lost power for about 5 hours. But it was kind of fun, seeing how resourceful we could be. Lots of candles, the fireplace and lots of wood (courtesy of summer before last when DH downed the 8 apple trees that crowded our yard), our habit of buying batteries at Costco so we always have a lot of all sizes, all of our camping gear--including 2 propanes stoves, a propane heater, clothing, sleeping bags, etc., etc., etc. So we had a nice fire going, candles all around, and music playing before we went to bed last night. Almost (note, I said almost) disappointing when the power came back on at 2am.

Here's the dogs playing in the snow. They're all completely puppified by it.

Hmmmm.....

Gee, he reminds me of someone. Let me see...who is it?

Oh, yeah, I've got it!

DH gets credit for initally noticing the similarity in appearance.

(Not necessarily similarity in personality!)

Death to Stuffies!

Wyatt says, "Life is good, I have all the toys."

Sheila says, "My ass, you have all the toys. Must DESTROY!!!"

And Wyatt must be content with the deflated leftovers.

Sheila says, "My work is never done."

Holiday Strategy

While it's not actually working very well (I'm eating everything in sight), my food strategy for the holidays is to make sure I have plenty of happy low-carb snacks on hand, to counter the temptation of all the high carb snacks that seem to ooze out of the woodwork this time of year. To that end, I've been making:
*low carb eggnog,
*sugar-free hot chocolate (1 1/2 T cocoa powder, 1 1/2 T splenda, hot milk),
*low carb crackers (I use almond flour instead of flax meal b/c flax meal tastes like shit.)

My own creation is the Low Carb Almond Joy. This would also be good to make at Halloween, when all those nasty candies invade your home.

Start with a sugar-free macaroon recipe, make the macaroons into little oblong shapes:

Add a raw almond to the center of the macaroon; reshape if necessary.

Bake as directed for the macaroons, until wonderfully golden brown.

Now for the fabulous part. Melt a bag and a half of dark (semi-sweet) chocolate chips. Get the good ones, not the crap ones. Once the baked macaroons are completely cooled, dip them in the chocolate. Set on waxed paper to cool.

Wait until completely cooled to eat them. Heh. Riiiight.

Now, if you try this and aren't successful, it could be that you need a Constant Kitchen Companion, like I have. Sheila is my little Helpy-Helperton.

Wy-Fi and the Cheerleaders

Wyatt and I finally got to be a part of the Portland Trail Blazer half-time show demo. Our Flyball team is asked to participate a couple of times a year, but I've never been able to make it before this...and I've always desperately wanted to go.

Wy-man thought the cheerleaders were the BOMB.


It was the Weds. before Thanksgiving, and the show was sold out--which meant there were 20,000 cheering fan for us! Also, it was just before Oregon's big "Civil War" football game (OSU vs. UofO), so the organizers asked if the Flyball teams would dress up in Civil War gear. (Yes, not being from Oregon, when I first saw that request, I thought, "We're supposed to wear blue and grey?" No.....) OSU colors are orange and brown, UofO are green and yellow. We complied. The crowd went wild.

He was such a pro. Some of the dogs were a bit put off by the crowd noise (it really did sound like thunder...good thing Sheila wasn't there.) But Wy-Fi didn't even notice. He saw the ball at the end of the lane, I said the magic words ("reeeeady, ready, GO PUSH!"), and he was off.

I honestly don't know if I'll ever have another dog as ab-fab as Wyatt. He is sweet. He is quiet. He's a machine. He's a horse, while being graceful and cat-like. He's totally predictable (albeit, given that I'm human, sometimes only in retrospect.)

Flyball Kees

Call me psycho, but I'm taking another run at getting Raff to be a Flyball dog. This has been an on-again/off-again, work in progress since fall of 2005. We've worked through a lot of issues, and when I last had Raffy at practice, he was able to do a full down and back cleanly, as long as no other dogs were around. Not exactly tournament-ready. In the presence of other dogs, he gets distracted and crosses over to the other lane, or chases the dog he's supposed to be passing. I had started working on overcoming those distractions--and was making some good progress--only to see that his box turn was going to hell. At that point, I backed off and pulled him from training...for like, the 5th time in his life...to concentrate on Agility instead.

But I have a dream. There are only 37 Keeshonden to have ever been registered with NAFA. There are currently only 2 Kees active in Flyball. I want Raff to be the third. I think it would say a lot about how wonderful and driven he is, and it would say not-so-bad things about me as a trainer, too. I also would love to be able to bring Raff along with me and Wyatt to tournaments and practices--for a real purpose--because he really can play. (Not that Wyatt would like it so much, but he'd get over it.)


So I'm thinking of taking another run at it. Each time I've tried, and then backed off, I have made better progess than the time before. Maybe I need to give up the "all or nothing" (i.e., complete commitment OR completely quitting), and just look at this as a series of advances...knowing that with each try, I may have to back off and take a breather before making the next run at it. Eventually, with that philosophy, Raffy and I might push over the top!

This run will consist of working in the backyard, starting from one jump only, sending Raff while at the same time adding the distraction of throwing Wyatt and Sheila's balls/Wyatt and Sheila fetching their balls. We've been doing this all week, and this morning Raff actually maintained his focus and successfully completed these short runs 11 out of 12 times. I'm not upping the ante at all this week, except for to move the position of the box to different places in the yard. But no further distance challenge until he's equally successful in all places, and with Wyatt and Sheila running on either side of him...also with no degradation of his box turn.

After that, in each successive week, we'll try adding more distance. Perhaps only one foot at a time, depending on how it goes. When he's doing the full 51 foot distance with success in all criteria, THEN I'll start taking him back to practice...where we'll close the distance to one jump only again, and work our way back to the full course slowly, and only when he's able to be successful with dogs running on either side of him.

After that, we'll work on passing.

Or, somewhere in the process, I'll fizzle out again, and have to wait for the next burst of Flyball Kees Enthusiasm to revive my drive.

Meanwhile, for inspirational purposes, here's a video of one of the Kees currently running in Flyball. He is Casanova, who runs with 2 Lane Highway in MD.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KIMnhNormw (his team's run starts at 1:14).