# Two Poodles Road Trip, Redux!



## lily cd re (Jul 23, 2012)

We are on the road again this weekend. I waited until after rush hour was over to drive to New Jersey (in the Clinton area) where we will be doing a tracking workshop tomorrow and Sunday. After we finish tracking work on Sunday we will be headed down to Salisbury, MD for PCA.

The poodles are tired, but happy. Lily was camera shy.


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## zooeysmom (Jan 3, 2014)

I hope you have a great time on your adventure, and please check in and post pics when you can  Hope you and the pups sleep well.


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## MollyMuiMa (Oct 13, 2012)

Have fun, drive careful, and GOOD LUCK!!!!


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## StormeeK (Aug 3, 2015)

GOOD LUCK Lily, Jav and Catherine! Sounds like a very eventful four days. I'm waiting to hear how the pairs competition goes. I bet there will be many entertaining duos. ?


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## vegas (Jul 5, 2014)

Have fun!


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## Streetcar (Apr 13, 2014)

Have FUN and send us lots of pics !!!!


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## lily cd re (Jul 23, 2012)

It was a bit rainy and dark this morning so Lily had little interest in going out as early as we needed to.









Javelin was all set to be on his merry way though.









It remained cool and damp through most of the morning, but we were inside for some lectures and videos for a while. After a coffee break we headed outside to watch a club member do a demonstration track with her golden retriever who is a champion tracker (CT). We then had some outdoor workshops on a variety of topics including how to measure your steps to be able to calculate how long a track you are laying, how to handle the long line used for tracking and how to make maps of your tracks and notes on training.









We broke for lunch and then we had the chance to measure our dogs for harnesses (for those who didn't already have them) or to have a club member help us adjust the harnesses we brought with us. I needed to have Javelin's properly adjusted. Lily already has a correctly fit harness.

We then started working the dogs on little short straight tracks. It was very windy across the tracks we had set. Javelin went first. He had a hard time getting started but seemed to figure it out by the time we finished. Lily did a great job even though we haven't done any tracking training in ages. She was ready to go as soon as she saw what was set out. We will do more of this type of work tomorrow and hopefully I will get more pictures from the workshop.

But I do have more pictures to share. We are staying in a hotel in Clinton, NJ which has a nice downtown near the Raritan River that is very pleasant for a stroll. I took the poodles for a nice stroll. As I was getting them organized to get going a family walked by us. The little girl said to her parents that she wants a poodle so she can put her dog's hair up like Lily's.

We headed over by the river and Lily and Javelin posed pretty nicely for these pictures.


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## MiniPoo (Mar 6, 2014)

Lily and Javelin look great as always. I am glad you and the dogs are having a good time.

Thanks for sharing.


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## Viking Queen (Nov 12, 2014)

How fun for all of you. Always tracking would be very interesting to learn.

Your kids look great, as always. I enjoy hearing of your latest adventures together.

VQ


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## zooeysmom (Jan 3, 2014)

Great update and beautiful pics of Lily and Javvy. Tracking looks fun!


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## lily cd re (Jul 23, 2012)

Thanks everyone for your nice words about my poodle dynamic duo. They are really exhausted!

I think Lily can really pull this activity together if I stick with a good plan in the next few months. I am going to write it into my summer break schedule to keep at it. Hopefully I can get her ready for a certification track that the club will be giving in September. Then it will be time to find a place to enter an actual test. For tracking you only have to pass once to get the title, so once we get there we will have titles in four different sports (obedience, rally O, agility and tracking). Poodles truly are versatile companion dogs.

I don't remember if I mentioned that when we were in Syracuse a woman followed me out of the hotel when I was getting ready to put the dogs in the car. She turned out to be from the next town over from where we live and she has a spoo. Well today I met a whole gaggle of teenage girls and chaperones from the same town next door to mine in the lobby of our hotel! Lily and Javelin had great fun being fussed over by the girls.


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## Quossum (Mar 18, 2011)

Wow, this sounds like a lot of fun! I hope you'll give us plenty of reports from PCA.

I've always wanted to try tracking. I've purchased and read many books on it, but for some reason or another I never seem to get it in gear to actually get out there and do it. Maybe someday!

Enjoying your journey!

--Q


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## bigpoodleperson (Jul 14, 2009)

Jealous! I want to go to a tracking workshop! Have a great time!!!


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## Mfmst (Jun 18, 2014)

Safe travels and please give us a synopsis of the tracking seminar.


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## Streetcar (Apr 13, 2014)

Your puppers look gorgeous as always, and I smiled at the queen wanting to sleep in . Love your writeup of the day, and what happy smiles on the Spoos out on their stroll.


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## Caddy (Nov 23, 2014)

Love hearing about you weekend jaunts with your two spoo crew. What a thrill it would be to tag along and learn! Have fun, and keep the posts coming.


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## Axeldog (Aug 29, 2014)

[QUOTE As I was getting them organized to get going a family walked by us. The little girl said to her parents that she wants a poodle so she can put her dog's hair up like Lily's.

[/QUOTE]

That's so sweet! 

And little does she know, Lily has it all. Not only is she a beautiful girl, but she is uber talented and brilliant too!


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## lily cd re (Jul 23, 2012)

We had beautiful weather and an excellent morning at the tracking workshop today. 

Javelin showed some signs of catching onto working his nose on the ground today. Even though he is not really ready to start working turns we did a very short track to introduce the concept and he did a really good job finding the turn and sticking with the track. For the little tiny second leg we were headed into the wind and there were other people and dogs upwind from us. I think that accounts for why he picked his head up and acted confused in the middle of the leg. He must have caught some wind borne scent off one of the other dogs or a person and then started air scenting. But he did go back to work and found the glove.

Lily showed that she hasn't forgotten any of the training we did a couple of years ago. She was ready to track our track layer even before we got to the start article for our turn practice track. He was the same person who laid track for Javvy and he walked over his first leg to start hers where Javs made his turn. She had her nose down all the way across Jav's first leg, but then didn't think at all about taking his track's turn. For a dog that usually is like a feather to interact with I have to say she really pulled and leaned into her work. We worked on short lines so I was right behind them. It was interesting to listen to how hard their noses worked.

I will post more after I run out to get some dinner. We've already seen a gaggle of poodles at our Salisbury, MD hotel!


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## lily cd re (Jul 23, 2012)

I will write more about tracking tomorrow since it is getting late, but I do have some pictures from today.

Here is a view of the lake near where we worked this weekend. The site is Camp Tecumsah in Pittstown, NJ (a Salvation Army camp/retreat). It is a very pretty place.









Lily and Javelin were tired at the end of our working day, but once in the car Javelin was obviously ready to hit the road.









We stopped at a rest area in Delaware where we had a nice walk in a wooded area off to the edge of the property. When we were headed back to the parking area we ran across this very cool water fountain for dogs. There are holes in the bottom of the bowl so the water you run into it for your dogs is always totally fresh.


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## Streetcar (Apr 13, 2014)

Another wonderful day and more great tracking practice for Lily. She seems dead on with her focus and abilities. Javelin has quickly caught on that he has a nose and it works for a good purpose. What happy, fulfilled Spoos you have .


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## Quossum (Mar 18, 2011)

The adventure continues!

Those dog / human fountains are great, aren't they? The park where I often run has them, and they make it so easy to give your dog a drink on the trail.

--Q


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## bigpoodleperson (Jul 14, 2009)

Sounds like a really great job!! Im excited to hear how your tracking training continues!!

I took Draco out for the 3rd time today for some tracking. The first day we went out he really didn't get it. The second time he was out (maybe 3-4 weeks ago) he again wasn't sure what it all was about. I realized that I was pushing him too long too fast and in too much brush. I finished that last day with two very short straight tracks in short grass, and it really seemed to click for him with those!
Today we did 5 tracks in short grass about 50-200 yards long (starting short and then increasing depending on how he was doing). I am Horrible at judging distance, so honestly not sure about it. Anyway, he is Fantastic!!! I laid 3 right away, and they were all straight. Some had articles in the middle and some did not. He was nose to the ground pulling into the harness from the start. I kept about a 6' distance the whole time for now. I was so happy on how he did that I decided to lay 2 more tracks. The first one was straight and long with 1 article in the middle. The second was long, and I decided to throw a 90 degree turn in it near the beginning. He got the turn right away without any problem!! I couldn't be happier!! I can't wait to lay more tracks for him!


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## lily cd re (Jul 23, 2012)

Do you have a TD with Draco? If not yet it sounds like you could get him ready for it pretty easily if he is pulling hard into the harness in short grass. 

One of the club members who has a bunch of tracking titled dogs in her experience and I were talking about TD vs. TDX. She said she thought Lily could go on to TDX from what she saw of her work over the weekend. I told her I wasn't sure I was likely to live through her pulling me through woods and having to climb over logs and walls. If I get the TD then maybe I would see if someone else could take her through a TDX. I am sure I could do a VST track.

We did an interesting workshop session that I didn't talk about yesterday. We had club members who served as dogs with long lines attached around their waists. The handlers wore blind folds. The idea for the first part was to have tension on the lead and have the "dogs" doing gentle pace changes and direction changes, stopping and starting to help the handlers learn how to keep consistent tension on the lead. It was hard (thankfully I was able to see down to my feet, just not in front of me).

In the second part of that session blindfolded handlers stood in place with the long line to the "dog" slack on the ground. The dogs quietly moved in all sorts of directions at distance from the handlers but keeping the lines slack. After the "dogs" stopped moving the handlers were asked if they knew where their dog was. Most people had no clue! 

Here are a couple of pictures from that session. In the first one the people who are lined up are the "dogs." In the second picture you can see some of the handlers with their bling folds on.


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## TeamPoodle (Aug 10, 2015)

What a fun weekend! Your kids look great (as always!)


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## lily cd re (Jul 23, 2012)

We went over to the Civic Center this morning after a little bit of a sleep in morning. I walked into the building and started looking around the hallways for space to put up crates and don't you just think it is the biggest sign of poodle nirvana that the first people I saw who I knew were Delana and Mark, Javelin's breeders?

They hadn't seen Javvy since around Thanksgiving time, so he has grown a lot since then. He absolutely remembers Delana and was all kinds of happy to see her. We talked about his progress in his training and his shaggy coat. He really is very overgrown just now, but I thought that leaving some coat on would help keep ticks from getting down to skin and push them towards areas they would be easy to find (thankfully didn't find any on them or me). I think it will be time to take it all off and see who is under all that hair very soon.

Here are a couple of pictures from PCA on agility day today. I think Lily wanted to run, but since I haven't done much agility training lately I didn't enter. 

























After hanging around a bit to watch agility and doing a bit of shopping I took a ride over to St. Michael's, MD. It is a very pretty town over on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake Bay. It is quite dog friendly. We took a little walk down by the maritime museum before heading back to the civic center to find a space to set up crates. Here are a few shots of the poodle duo over in St. Michael's.


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## lily cd re (Jul 23, 2012)

*Rise and Shine!*

We are up very early for us today. But it is an important day.

Hopefully Lily and I will finish RAE8 and maybe Javelin and I will get the 3rd rally novice leg. We have rally novice pairs too. They are poodle wrestling right now and I am going to let them continue as long as they want so that they get it out of their systems before we go in the ring for rally novice pairs.

After the performance title holders parade we will be back on the road heading for home, so you all will have to be patient to find out what happened.

Wish us luck and safe travels.


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## TeamPoodle (Aug 10, 2015)

Good luck and have fun! I had never heard of rally novice pairs until you mentioned it, two dogs at once sounds insane to me, but if anyone can pull it off, it will be you!


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## lily cd re (Jul 23, 2012)

We are home! It was a very long day since we didn't leave Salisbury until 6:00 PM and I've only been here about 15 minutes.

I will tell all in the morning, but we had a good day today.


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## lily cd re (Jul 23, 2012)

*Good Morning Everyone*

Wow it was a long day yesterday. It had ups and downs but the balance is heavily in favor of a great day since I spent it with my spoos and good friends of the poodle world. Before I start my story of our bad start to the show day I want you to know that we are all okay.

We got up early and packed out of the hotel and headed over to the civic center to get organized for our rally day. I met a friend in the parking lot and we talked a bit about tracking (she belongs to the same tracking club I do). I headed across the parking lot towards the building with Lily and Javvy with me. We got to the edge of the lot where there is a little planted island separating parking from the big fire lane in front of the building. All of a sudden I noticed major movement near a jeep parked in the fire lane and realized it was a large white spoo jumping out of the open window of the jeep and charging at us. I started yelling loose dog, but he was right there in a flash. So here I am with two on leash dogs and an unknown loose dog. Javelin freaked and peed like a scared baby and backed out of his collar. I couldn't see Lily's reaction since she had backed up behind me and I was most immediately concerned with getting Javelin back on leash. Thankfully my friend didn't have her dog and was able to get the loose dog pretty quickly. Thankfully also he wasn't immediately aggressive. The owner took his sweet time showing up and never asked if we were okay or even made any effort to apologize. Seriously? Who leaves unrestrained dogs in a car with the windows wide open? I guess it goes to show that even among poodle people there are some a#$holes around.

I was pretty ticked since I didn't have an infinite amount of time to settle Lily and Javelin. I felt really badly putting them into their crates without time to talk to them and put hands on them to soothe them.

Rally ran in the order of excellent, advanced, novice and then novice pairs. I took Lily out before excellent and she peed, but I couldn't get her to poop. She seemed nervous and was scanning around. I think she was worried about having someone run up to her again. Sadly this ended up with her really having to go when we were in the ring for excellent. Soiling the ring is an automatic NQ, so no title for Lily. It is too bad too since she got a 99 and took third place in advanced. Oh well...

Rally novice B started after lunch and Javvy and I were in the middle of the run order. We got to use the practice ring to great advantage and I trained on two things I knew would be hard because Jav doesn't always hold his stay when I return to heel. One sign was call front handler return to heel and the other was halt handler walk around dog. We practiced and he clearly got it. He did both stays just fine in the ring and we got an 88. He was very happy to be with me and checked in while we moved and listened nice and fast to most of my orders.

Rally novice pairs was quite funny on our part. We started with Javelin close and Lily on the outside. By the time I got to the fourth station they had switched places. I guess Javelin had a fired brain by then since for every place he was supposed to sit he downed. When I came out of the ring, Delana and a few other people commented that they really made me work in that ring, and boy did they! We placed fourth of four teams, but it was all for fun!

Here is the new title holder with his rosette!

















I have a couple of other pictures that I will put up later.


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## bigpoodleperson (Jul 14, 2009)

Wow!! What a great time with your poodles!!! Congratulations on the new title for Javvy! That totally sucked about the loose poodle which made you NQ with Lily since you have been working so hard and looking forward to this!  But like you said, you had a good time anyway. 

No, I don't unfortunately have any titles on Draco. My goal is to follow through with the tracking, and I totally think it is a very obtainable goal soon! I would love to continue in Rally also, but there isn't a current class at our place.


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## JudyD (Feb 3, 2013)

Wow, what a day! Congrats to Javelin and you for winning that third leg! (And curses on the white poodle's owner. May he step in poop every day for a week.)


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## lily cd re (Jul 23, 2012)

Although a class is nice for rally you don't absolutely need one. Peeves and Javelin have not had classes. Lily went to one six week class way back when we started.

bigpoodleperson I am going to keep envisioning that TD for Draco. I hope we see it happen soon.

BTW nobody passed the TD at PCA this year.


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## lily cd re (Jul 23, 2012)

So aside from my poodle goodies that I shopped for the best stuff we came home with were 2 happy confident dogs and these:









The two greens are the qualifying rosettes for Javelin's rally novice and Lily's rally advanced routines. The yellow and white rosette is Lily's performance parade award. The blue and yellow is Javvy's title rosette for rally novice and the gray rosette is for our fourth place (and exceedingly hilarious) rally novice pairs routine.


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## Streetcar (Apr 13, 2014)

All in all, a successful and varied road trip that ended safely for the three of you. I know you were hoping for the RAE8 title for Lily at PCA, and am sorry the other Poodle owner who was so careless about the welfare of his own Spoo as well as yours spoiled things .


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## lily cd re (Jul 23, 2012)

Streetcar, I am mostly just happy that everybody is fine physically and mentally after that stupid encounter. Lily did a great job in advanced, so I know she isn't carrying any mental issues and Javelin is still his happy go lucky self. I would be very upset if either of them showed signs of psychological responses that were confidence damaging. It is all good, even though I wish I had come home with two of those pretty title rosettes!


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## Muggles (Mar 14, 2015)

Well done to you all! Very sorry about that careless owner and Lily's upset but sounds like a great trip overall. How does rally pairs work? Do you have one dog either side or two on your left?


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## lily cd re (Jul 23, 2012)

Muggles said:


> Well done to you all! Very sorry about that careless owner and Lily's upset but sounds like a great trip overall. How does rally pairs work? Do you have one dog either side or two on your left?


Well now, there is how it should be done and how we did it! They are both supposed to be at heel on your left and then to do everything in tandem. I started with Javelin on the inside close to me and Lily on the outside. I finished with Lily on the inside, through some reorganizing they decided on for themselves. Also Javelin did a down for all of the sits. We were very entertaining.


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