Surgery for Sophy!

Tomorrow, Sophy dog is having a surgery to get some lumps removed. It's a routine surgery, but she will be under anesthetics for a while. Her mommy is worried about her, but Sophy is upset because she can't have any more treats until after the surgery. She will probably need to rest for a few days, but she will get lots of nice chewy chicken-flavored treats afterward for being such a good dog at the vet's. Chicken is her favorite! Please wish Sophy best of luck for her surgery tomorrow, thanks :)

The Many Adventures of Sophy Dog.

Much has happened since Sophy's blog was last updated. Sophy now lives with her mommy in the state of New Jersey. Sophy misses her pal Dante, but now she has many loud children to play with. Sophy likes to go for walks in her new neighborhood and chase squirrels. She also bravely defends her family's home from the vicious gangs of deer that like to prey upon unsuspecting shrubberies. Of course, Sophy's favorite thing to do is spend time with her people. She gets especially excited when her mommy comes home from work. Sophy also has a new toy chicken that squeaks when it bounces really hard. Sophy loves her chicken and her rope, but her dinosaur is still her favorite toy.

New toy day

Sophy got a purple dinosaur today but that wasn't the coolest part. It has a squeaker which is the first time she has ever gotten a toy with a squeaker. Sophy is very gentle with smaller animals and when that thing squeaked, she dropped it an ducked, sniffing it carefully to check the damage. Again reassured it was not alive, she chomped again.

SQUEAK! She dropped it.


She's now in a battle with herself over her desire to chew the toy and her desire to avoid hurting it! hahaha. I am a mean mommy.

Sophy's getting her game on

Welp, Sophy has spent some great times in Rally and then in Open class, but all the while she betrayed her first love which is Agility. We signed her back up for it, jeez, if she loves it that much, she deserves to do it!

She's really good at obedience but you can tell it bores her a little. When she gets to do jumps she goes completely nuts. She's six years old and lean and fit, so we're going back in! She'll be so excited, I haven't told her yet.

To get her (and me) back in running shape, we've been taking the whole family out (Randy and Dante too) walking 3+ miles a day. After the first day she was sore, but she limbered up quickly after a day of rest and has no problem with it now. She's got to lose maybe 3 pounds for safer running and jumping, but that's about it.

Since she's been in Beginning, Intermediate, and Open, I have enrolled her in Open again. We don't compete and aren't experts by any means, so this is a good fit for us. But we'll miss class with Jill Perry, dog trainer extraordinaire! There just isn't enough time in the day.

Randy will apprentice with Jill in her Jr. Handlers class, which is exciting for him (and us! we are proud!). It's great to see him doing so much in his life.

Two ribbons in one weekend! Exciting!

Husband Randy decided to take matters into his own hands, and, having given up on me taking Sophy to an obedience trial, he did so himself. Two trials in, she had two "legs" of her first title. She's signed up to go again next weekend and if she gets another leg, she'll have a CD title. We're very proud.

Dante was also in the trial. He was....pretty. But he didn't qualify. (Is barking at the judge bad?)

Sophy passed Beginning Agility

Sophy and I are enjoying agility class very much at the Tulsa Dog Training Club. We passed Beginning Agility and are now in Intermediate Agility. Our teacher is Bob Fewell, the director of agility at the club and a very competent teacher. This class is quite hard - you wouldn't think so, but think about it - exactly how are you going to get your 50-pound dog to go in that dark tunnel that jiggles when they run through it? If there are 2 things in front of your pup, how can you show them which one you want them to do? The answer is body language! Shoulders, feet, and sometimes hands (although they are moving us away from that). At first I thought there's no way Sophy will notice if I quietly turn to the right while she's jumping over something. But she must have eyes in the back of her head, or else she can sense my magnetic field.

I am finding this class is more about trusting the body language signals than about anything else. We are both rather lousy at agility right now, but we have all kinds of time (no real interest in competing) and this was the whole end-goal. I would love to start buying or building obstacles, however. I want to practice more than once a week.

Agility class is a blast!

Sophy got to start Agility class last week at the Tulsa Dog Training Club. She's been taking "prerequisites" for about a year and finally qualified for Agility.

We got to play on the tunnels, ramps, teeters, weave poles and jumps. It was all great fun but we were tired afterwards. We'll have to get into better shape to keep this up!

Thanks for letting me be Doggy of the Day!

Sophy was thrilled to learn that she was not only a big deal in her own head, but also on the Dogster.com web site for a day. She hopes that all of the doggies on Dogster.com can have a chance like she had.

Sophy now has many new Pup Pals who discovered her on the home page and wrote notes to her. Woof! A Bark out to my home dogs out there! This is Grrreat fun!