After we fed the dogs both, Bekah and me noticed that Judge wasn’t doing so well. He was pacing, seemed off, drinking lots of water, his belly twice as big, bloated, rock-hard, he attempted to throw up in the bed room, wouldn’t go to the bathroom. Everything pointed to a bloat and we rushed to the Animal Hospital.

They immediately took us in, on the way he threw up at least four cups of food, which made me feel better because with a bloat they attempt to throw up but nothing is coming out, still I was worried and expected the worst and already saw him dead.

I was completely freaking out. “Oh my god, how are we going to afford a bloat.” to “We can’t afford to lose him.” flying down the Highway (thank god, no police was around), always checking back… “What is he doing?”, “What is he doing?” and when he finally laid down i was like “Judge, JUDGE.” to check if he’s still alive.

At the Hospital we waited like 5 minutes and the Vet checked him through, took X-rays and when she came back she said “Well, there is a couple of things going on with his belly.” and my heart sank, I really expected the worst.

Turns out, he got into the food. We have no idea how it happened since we always supervise and close the storage room door but somehow he managed to get in there. Half of the 40 pound bag is gone.

Plus, he’s got broken cartilage on his belly, a big egg which I noticed when his belly was leaning to one side. It was three times as big and he was really hurting, whining whenever I touched it.

Thank god, no bloat, no flipping stomach, not twisting, just a puppy that ate more than he can take, which is why he was drinking twice as much, which caused the food to bloat and his belly to expand and leaning to the other side where he’s got really bad bruising which must have happened outside when he was roughhousing with Indra and Yukon.

Boy was I scared. Thank god… and the Animal Hospital was really generous, they only charged us for the X-Rays which was 95 bucks.

We went to our 2nd Greg Doud workshop. It’s a long drive to Albany but totally worth it. Indra is doing surprisingly well, especially since she has limited experience in bitework. The last workshop was in January and before that she’s only been worked around a month (as a puppy) during summertime.

I got to see Debbie Zappia working a Rottweiler, Doberman and a Shepherd. She’s a completely different league and it was amazing how Greg and Debbie worked the dogs. I learned a lot just from watching them, especially about praise, markers, and clear commands. 

Judge was a riot. Everybody had so much fun watching him. Especially since he didn’t really know what to do in the beginning. He hadn’t done any bite-work before the workshop. I used his ball-drive for SAR and didn’t tug with him at all. I wanted somebody, who really knows what he’s doing, work him for the first time. since he’s so young and just got out of teething You could tell from the beginning that he’s got it in him. He knew he had to do something and barked and barked and barked some more until it made “click” and he bit. First he played with the tug, than he learned to actually tug and hold onto it, so you couldn’t simply take it out from under him by pulling on the lead.
This is Judges 3rd Session with Greg and it’s amazing what he has learned just within those three sessions.

Indra and I never had any formal obedience training at all. What you can see in this video is what we have taught ourselves by recording everything we’ve been doing it and watching it over and over and over again. Anytime I am training the heel, I am recording and literally obsessing over it. I sit there all night long, watching it over and over again, breaking it down and over analyzing what we do.

The thing is, I can see what we do wrong. I can see every mistake I am doing, the problem is, I have nobody that kicks my butt and points it out right there and then. Like when I am opening myself up and she swings her butt around and follows my body… that is my fault but nobody is there to yell at me so I keep my body straight. 

Same with walking faster. She’d be much flashier if I’d walk faster but I have nobody to remind me to walk faster.

Anyhow, we could be much better than we actually are but we could do worse. We are doing okay. Just wished I could go to formal obedience training. However, this is the first time I sent a dog over the hurdle to retrieve and it was more playing anyways. I wanted to see if I ever learned something from watching my parents doing it for years. It went amazingly well but I know that I am way ahead of us. We shouldn’t do stuff like that already. However I am not doing that to compete. Pretty much anything I do is for ourselves.