Black&White Sunday

Karma's Playdate

So Karma's playdate didn't go exactly as well as we'd hoped...

Last Sunday I met my friend and her two dogs at one of our local training facilities agility Run thrus. After she ran her girl Shiloh we took the pups to a near by park. Now Karma for the most part is good with other dogs. She generally just wants to play and that was pretty much the case here. Now Rory my friends other dog is leash reactive so we took it slow and pretty much walked the dogs together and once we made it to the field we did a little bit of work with both of them. And eventually once they calmed down we let them meet. Karma did pretty good in her initial meeting, but started trying to play and rory wasn't to thrilled.

They also both have two extremely different play styles. Karma likes to get physical and face fight/wrestle etc. I'm not to sure about rory's playstyle, but my friend said he's not really one to play all that rough. He does however apparently nip at other dogs faces to try and play, but naturally Karma wasn't thrilled about the face nipping and would snap back and then rory would react and yeah... I think the staring also bothered her. Gotta love those herding breeds and their intense staring...

Karma however did pretty well with my friends other dog shiloh. They tried to play and at one point Karma was getting to much and shiloh snapped at her, but the thing with Karma is that she doesn't exactly understand warnings from other dogs. So it just hyped her up and she got a little out of control and we had a small scuffle, but it was nothing bad. She was leashed so it wasn't difficult to separate them. And after that they were ok again... shiloh just avoided her and stayed just out of reach.

Anyway despite their first meeting not going as well as we'd hoped we did have a few nice moments where both Karma and Rory were able to just chill out and lay next to each other. So it was definitely a good day. And hopefully after a few more meetings they'll be ok with each other even if they don't end up being BFF's. It'll just be nice to have someone she can hang out with.I mean after all shiloh and Abby are the same way. They tolerate each other and even though shiloh tries really hard to play with her. Abby won't even give her the time of day *sigh*

Maybe a break is just what we needed...

So Thanks to Abby's Allergies we've been taking a little break from agility. Truthfully between my trip to Alaska a few months ago, personal stuff, and her allergies we haven't done any agility in about 2-3 months! The break sucks, but I will always put my dogs health before anything else. Speaking of which she seems to be doing a lot better. Thanks to her cone her fur is growing back and though she's still obviously not 100% comfortable she's not constantly trying to itch/scratch. However the second that cone comes off she turns her back into a bloody mess :( But I bought some hot spot stuff to put on it as well as she's been getting some cocoanut oil so hopefully between the two she'll start feeling some more relief...

Anyway like I said we've been taking a break from agility, but the other day during her bath I decided what the hey and brought out a couple jumps... She was so freaking excited to be doing agility! She was happy and acting all spunky and just having a blast. I really wish I'd gotten a video! It was really great to see her enjoying herself and actually having some fun...

So looks like no classes this session, but if she's doing better by the start of the next session we will be back doing some agility classes. Though I'm also considering stopping classes and just doing some trialing and maybe a class here and there. I'm not 100% sure yet, but since she tends to stress a lot at class(she goes completely unstressed at trials hmmm...) I think it might do her some good and help keep agility fun for her. Not to mention it will be better on my wallet....

But we'll see...

Wrodless Wednsday: Puppy Love