



My Life in a Min Pin World
December 24, 2020
December 23, 2020
Today I gathered toys that are in very good condition but ignored by my dogs and put them in a bag to be donated to the animal shelter.
Quest decided to help by taking the toys out of the bag to check for working squeakers. đ
I hope these toys bring Christmas joy to dogs waiting for their forever homes. đŸ
December 17, 2020
August 26, 2020
We havenât had too many mornings this summer with temperatures cool enough for a walk. It was absolutely gorgeous today though and the girls were excited to take a walk in our neighborhood.
This afternoon we played a couple of the girl’s favorite games.
Around the Bear
Cards
Kongs with frozen peanut butter were a fun surprise.
Several green bean jackpots and an evening car ride rounded out the day. It may be National Dog Day, but for my crew it was like any other day. đ
June 17, 2020
Look whoâs celebrating their HALF birthdays!!  Quest, Aspen, and Malibu turned 12 and a half today! đ„ł
May 16, 2020
dog agility, Miniature Pinscher, Uncategorized Leave a comment
Aspen began competing in agility trials shortly after Malibu. Aspen, my fearless Min Pin, who shows no hesitation on any obstacles and flies over jumps with ease, had potential to do very well in this sport. Aspen was not stressed at trials like Malibu, but she was very distracted. I soon learned that all she wanted to do was explore the course rather than run it as we were there to do.
As in class, Aspen seemed to prefer to go off and sniff. So now I had two dogs who would rather be off doing other things. I didnât want to force either of them to compete if they werenât happy while doing it. They both enjoyed âplayingâ agility and running courses in the backyard. Maybe that was enough for them, but I wasnât ready to throw in the towel after only a few months. I decided to give them time to acclimate and hopefully adapt to the trial environment. (Malibuâs initial agility experiences are detailed in Going for the Q). Â
It got to a point in which I realized that although Aspen was better at agility than Malibu, she had less interest. Finally, I just stopped entering Aspen in trials. All she wanted to do was go and explore these novel environments. This was not avoidance or displacement behavior. Aspen just seemed to prefer investigating the area rather than run the obstacles.
It was difficult to end Aspenâs agility âcareerâ before it even got started because she truly showed potential to go very far in this sport. Could I have tried a bit longer, found a new instructor, researched different strategies? Perhaps, but agility isnât the only game in town. At our last trial a friend observed Aspen opting to sniff around the course and commented that we should look into nosework. I had heard of this dog sport before, but did not really know much about it. Within a week we were attending our first nosework class and Aspen never competed in agility again.
April 12, 2020
December 23, 2019
A couple of weeks ago I took the kids to visit Santa Claus at our local PetValu store. Two of them thought that sitting on Santaâs lap was highly overrated.
Malibu
Quest
Aspen