Update on Lucas training!

I wanted to come on and do an update on Luca's training as she's done so well lately! I've recently started her training on the E-collar so she can have the same off-leash freedom as Oakley does she gets very upset on the leash when Oakley goes off and plays and runs around and she's stuck on her leash. I of course started off with low stimulations with commands she already knows well and she's been doing amazing the only things I ask her to do off-leash with the E-collar yet are sit, come, and leave it but she's doing amazing with it and that's all she needs to know off leash for me to be comfortable with not having a leash on her or her being on a long line. There have not yet been the opportunities to test her around other safe dogs to work on her leave it so when I see other people or dogs I recall her and leash her while passing as I don't trust her to just stay in a heel but she's getting there and I think she will be doing exalt by this summer when she will be attending shows with Oakley and I. Luca also comes out to the barn now when I'm working my horse and she hangs out and likes to chase the deer and hang out with the horses. We have an invisible fence in our yard to have some sort of barrier between our dogs and people walking on the street and she recently started using that and is doing well with it and is pretty respectful of the barrier and is still testing it but doesn't pass it so I'm very excited to see how she takes to that especially in the summer when many more people are walking by and with dogs.

Day at the Barn(s)

A day at the barns is a little tough not going to lie. Currently, I start and am only consistent at my barn (about 15 min. east of me) where I board my horse so I go out there every day and I blanket him according to the weather and I feed him which I take home a bucket every 3-4 days and fill it with boiling water because I soak his food and then I bring it to the barn and fill it and then use that for the next 3-4 days. I also ride him nearly every day as he's recovering from an injury the movement is good for him and he needs to get back into shape. I have an interview at Rehbein's (about 25 min. northwest of me) another barn I frequent (my friend Ally boards there and I take care of her horses sometimes and ride with her) and I am applying for a part-time assistant horse trainer job and I am fairly confident that I will be hired or at least extremely highly considered. this job would likely include me feeding the horses as well as mucking stalls, bringing horses in and out, and riding horses whether that be to get them in shape or train them some more because they are more green-broke. I am also planning on applying to another trainer assistant job at a barn (about 15 min. north of me) and that will likely be the same thing, feeding, mucking stalls, bringing in and turning out, and riding horses that they are prepping to sell and that is more of a full-time thing so if everything works out I will be going to three different barns to work as many horses as I can ride in a day and only one of them is going to be mine haha. But honestly doing jobs like this is what I enjoy and I'm good at it and so it makes it not very difficult I just have to work on my time management a little.

A School Day

A typical school day has a lot more than just school for me. If I'm at home on my school day I typically wake up at 7 am and make my bed and do all my morning self-care as well as eat breakfast and do a light room cleaning and then I go on a jog/run with Oakley and Luca. Once I get back I look at school and where I currently am standing with it and what I should get done for the day and I write a to-do list. With my two current classes (English, and Intro to Agriscience) I have been focusing more on English as I am almost complete with Intro to Agriscience and I don't "need" to do anymore to finish but I need to get caught up on English so that is my priority. I am still a fair bit behind but I am confident that I can get caught up. at about 11:30-12:00, I get up and go make lunch and let the dogs outside to use the bathroom and then I get back to work I typically work until about 4:00 pm and my mom gets off work at 4:30 and I like to leave before she gets home so I end up going to the bard at about 4:30 and I get back around 5:30-6:00 and then I eat dinner with my family and usually take a bath and wash my hair and then do some more school if time allows.

Rs Saddlery Trip

Rs Saddlery is a tack shop in Cannon Falls, MN and they host a Monthly auction on the first thursday of every month and my mother and I are frequent shoppers. My mom and I choose to do a local pick up and go in store because we look at other items and they are also pet friendly so we bring the dogs! Our most recent trip down we took both Oakley and Luca as the workers have only ever met Oakley before and not yet Luca. We went inside and I made the mistake of giving Oakley to my mom and she let him go right up tp the workers and he ended up submissive/exited peeing on the floor. My mom cleaned it up while I took him outside to finish in an appropriate place and I come back and mom is letting Luca jump all over the employees And my mom wonders why I don't let her handle the dogs typically haha. I took both the dogs and put them into their respective heels one on each side and we went along with our shopping and overall they did really good except when a new costumer would come in Luca was convinced they were coming for her and she would whine and jump at the end of her lead until she could no longer see them but hey that's something that I can work on! Overall very happy with how both the dogs did besides minor mishaps.

Rs Saddlery is a tack shop in Cannon Falls, MN and they host a monthly auction on the first Thursday of every month my mother and I are frequent shoppers. My mom and I choose to do a local pick-up and go in-store because we look at other items and they are also pet friendly so we bring the dogs! On our most recent trip down we took both Oakley and Luca as the workers have only ever met Oakley before and not yet Luca. We went inside and I made the mistake of giving Oakley to my mom she let him go right up to the workers and he ended up submissive/excited peeing on the floor. My mom cleaned it up while I took him outside to finish in an appropriate place and I come back and mom is letting Luca jump all over the employees my mom wonders why I don't let her handle the dogs typically haha. I took both the dogs and put them into their respective heels one on each side and we went along with our shopping overall they did well except when a new customer would come in Luca was convinced they were coming for her and she would whine and jump at the end of her lead until she could no longer see them but hey that's something that I can work on! Overall very happy with how both the dogs did besides minor mishaps.

Barnes and Noble and the escalator

I recently went on a Barnes and Noble trip with my boyfriend and my dog Oakley. The trip overall started well I found out I had a gift card for Barnes and Noble and I was also recently very interested in a poetry book that was recently released. So we ended up going pretty late at night about 7 o'clock and we walked in and looked around upstairs and then I noticed that everything we wanted to look at was downstairs no biggie right? There were no stairs, there was an escalator, and to my knowledge at the time only an escalator. Oakley has never seen much less been on an escalator before now this made me pretty apprehensive about going downstairs as I know Oakley would be nervous getting on it and I know how much training service dogs go through and how even some of them do poorly with escalators much less the potential dangers from bringing a dog on one (such as fur getting stuck) but my boyfriend insisted that he would be okay and I knew truly that he would likely be fine. We went to get on the escalator and Oakley took a minute to figure out what was happening he was a bit nervous but he stayed in a good tight heel the whole time and he did well. Oakley showed a few stress signs as we were going down and I gave him his release word at the bottom he did a bug release and was very happy. We ended up finding what we needed and took the escalator back up and he was perfect overall very proud of Oakley and how my training with him is paying off!

Backstory on Tiger

Tiger is our only cat in the house, he is a typical tabby cat if I want to be specific he is a silver tabby cat. He is "my" cat as I begged for him as a child but he took to my mom right away and never really liked me. He came to us as a 10 ish month old kitten we got him from the Animal Humane Society. He originally came from a barn and was a barn cat with many other cats around and had a lot of his teeth broken off as a kitten. Ever since he came home he's been very friendly with the dogs origanny we had two dogs Griz, and Sadie and he was best friends with them and now that we have Oakley, and Luca he is best friends with them and loves to cuddle up with them and they give him nibbles. He's an indoor outdoor cat at our house very similar to our dogs and often goes out and comes in whenever the dogs do in the summer. He's now getting older closer to about 10 years old but he still loves going outside and watching the birds while sitting in a tree or laying in the yard in the sun with the dogs.

Backstory On Luca

Luca is the second of my two mutt dogs. She's half great Pyrenees, 1/4 border collie, and 1/4 spanial. Really she's my moms dog and she came into our lives in a very interesting way, she was born into a hoarding situation. She was born and raised on a farm with 30+ other dogs for the first 5 months of her life she had no water and no food. Luca and her siblings were all extremely skinny and very dehydrated, they had never been inside before. Andrea (the same person we got Oakley from) had come to the rescue and took the puppies and a few of the adult dogs off the property to vet and find homes for them. Andrea had posted them on facebook and we had a friend that was extremely interested and wanted Luca so I was the middle man in getting the dog to its third "home" within a week. I drove about 3.5 hours to get her to the new home and she was pretty happy and settling in well and then some things happened there and they decided a dog like her was no longer going to work for them so within 4 days she was back at our house and now my moms dog. she is currently doing very well and playing all the time and learning new things every day. She is about to start the process of being off leash trained and I am fully expecting her to do very very well.

Backstory On Oakley

Oakley is one of my two mutt dogs, he is a three and a half year old 1/2 Golden Retriever, 1/4 Newfoundland, 1/4 Great Pyrenees. He came from a friend of a friend originally and went to a different friends mother and then she unfortunately had some health struggles and gave him to her daughter (Andrea's family). Andrea had taken care of him for a while but she also had his brother and with both of them not being trained they got into insane sibling fights and so they tried for months to remove him to no success. Then in late June of 2021 I was at a rodeo with Andreas family and we went back to their place to get their mastiff because we wanted to bring him there and I met frank at the time now known as Oakley. I persuaded Andrea to bring him to the rodeo the next day and mom and I decides to bring him home. He has now been worked with and is extremely trained, he is 100% off leash trained and is very good at advanced obedience.

Backstory On Hollywood

Hollywood better known at Dyn to be a Vintage is my 2010 AQHA registered gelding. Hollywood came from Solum & Solum LLC known as the Solum brothers in Missouri he then got transported up to the university of Wisconsin river falls. There he went through the UWRF colt training program and we bought him from there as a late two year old. He is now 12 years old and recently sustained a partially career altering injury back in April. Hollywood was out in the arena the night before a show and sprained both of his hind suspensory ligaments. He has sense been cleared to be brought back to work with the understanding that he should be used very wisely and that he should only be ran 3-4 times total a month instead of the 40-50 times he was previously running. We have yet to bring him to a show sense his injury but we're hopeful for a strong comeback in 2023!