Extreme Mutt Makeover: Results

Ok. Well my long 6 weeks with Harry and the whole Mutt Makeover experience is now over. I'm quite sad and although he got a good home I miss the fuzzy guy a lot. I taught him over 20 commands and tricks and he's a goofy, fun-loving dog.

We came in 6th overall, we were only 5 points off from making the finals, which were the top 3 dogs. The judges were much harder than I had anticipated and so I was frazzled with all of that. However, the weekend was fun. Harry just wants to say hi to people and dogs. He's just a love muffin. If I didn't have four dogs and a baby I know I would have made him a new family member!

We had 2 preliminaries of which the 2nd was broken down into 2 parts--obstacle course they designed along with a distraction and freestyle routine. The distraction scared me to death as I thought he'd panic as many of the dogs either were afraid or overly interested, and I didn't' blame them--it was a rooster! Yes. A live rooster in a cage. The 2nd part of this prelim was a 90-second freestyle routine where we could do whatever we wanted. Harry did some real goofy stuff here and didn't do it as planned but he was a definite crowd pleaser to say the least! It wasn't very practical to have these dogs doing this stuff with 100 people standing around and no fence to keep the folks out! Anyway here are the two parts of the preliminaries here. (The 1st preliminary was just obedience--leash work, sit, down, stay, come--and I didn't get that on video.)

I really want to tell you that after teaching so many tricks to Harry I want to pedal the tricks class to anyone who will do it! Tricks are a great way to not only entertain but keep your dog busy and mentally stimulated! Ask me about a tricks class and if we get enough interest we will put one together for a 3 or 4-week class!

Extreme Mutt Makeover: Final Week

Here we are . . . 6 days to go! We are working very hard this week on our routines and stuff but Harry is a goofy fellow. I haven't been able to get him out and working much in a distraction-filled environment. I am only hoping and praying for the best once he's out there in front of a crowd and in high distractions!

He's a great fuzzy guy. He does need someone with patience, time and willingness to meet his exercise and training needs. He is a very smart guy and has probably learned about 15 tricks along with basic commands: sit, down, stay, come, walk on leash, wait and leave it.

We hope to see everyone at the event and remember that Friday evening (September 18th) at 7pm are the 1st round of preliminaries and Saturday the 19th at 1pm are the 2nd round of preliminaries. All of those are free to the public. The finals round is at 7pm on Saturday, September 19th and will include the horses' performances and the dogs'. That will be the fun and exciting one but tickets need to be purchased for that. Tickets are $10/pp with the coupon in the picture (click the picture to get tickets). We hope to see you all there!

Have a great week!

Harry's Latest Skills.

Harry has several commands and tricks down now. He's a little rusty in some spots, and we are also working on weaning him off of treats because we can't have them at all in competition without getting the boot! So we still have a ways to go . . .

As you can see in the video he's very mouthy. He does this and it's so annoying to me and he does it worse to people when he meets them. This is what happens when you teach your puppy how to play with hands and do not teach them puppy biting is inappropriate at an early age.

He also seems to be confused with the "down" command (as in lie down). I've been working on it but not sure why he takes a couple of tries with that. I'm obviously giving him some mixed signals. I need to change something.

Now please ignore the beauty that I resonate in this lovely video. It has been one of those days! I'm not applying for Miss America anytime soon . . .