- You know, I think I mentioned last night
that my neck was really sore,
and I was having a hard time turning it to the left.
And by the time I got home from teaching last night,
it was really really uncomfortable.
And it was sort of uncomfortable to sleep,
and then this morning when I tried to get outta bed,
I could barely lift my head off the pillow.
So thankfully Ken brought me some medicine
to sorta help release the pain a little bit,
so we'll see how today goes.
It feels okay right now, but I sort of,
you know, try not to be too much of a bobblehead.
Anyways, now I have to go feed the dogs.
We just recently switched one of your younger dogs,
Hippy Shake, our little poodle, to raw food.
Just because her stomach wasn't handling
the kibble quite as well, and so I have to get
that outta the fridge and section it off,
weigh it out and get it all ready.
I'm making it sound like a big process,
but literally it takes like two seconds.
And then I have to go downstairs
and feed the rest of the crew.
(dog barking)
Now there's a lotta discussion out there
about raw food vs. kibble,
and what's better.
And for me, my opinion is you should feed the dog
what they do the best on.
So, you know, I've had lots of different kibbles
and types of food over the years with our dogs.
And I just watch the dog and see how they take to it.
We have a lotta dogs, and certainly it would make our life
easier if we fed all of the dogs exactly the same stuff,
but they're all different and we can't do that,
so we've just tried different things with different dogs.
And Hippy, we chose to switch her to raw because
with the kibble she wasn't digesting it very well
and she was having like poos the size of like a great Dane.
That's totally an exaggeration, that's disgusting.
But anyways, I could tell that it just wasn't great for her.
So, so far, she's only been on it for about a couple months,
and it's been doing really well.
We have some of our dogs on like a lower-activity
senior food, like some of the older dogs,
and then we have a higher-fat-content type of food
for our dogs that are competing because it's hard
to keep weight on them because they're so active.
So you really just have to have to pick and choose
things that are the best fit for the dog.
And the only way to know that is really
just to try different things.
(upbeat music)
So the type of food, the raw that I use,
is basically really easy.
It just has everything included in it already.
Vegetables and the bone and all the stuff
is all included, I don't have to do
any of that stuff myself, which makes my life easier.
All I have to do is add a few supplements like some oil
or sometimes I give her a little bit of pumpkin
to help her stomach as well.
But I just sorta keep it in this nice container,
clearly labeled so that nobody eats it.
And we can just section it off every day.
So it actually really is just as easy as feeding kibble.
I haven't had to travel yet with the food,
so that's a little bit of new territory for me.
But so far, I'm not finding it too bad.
So I just got Bee's food ready, and one thing
that has been really funny is she has come up
with a really funny cue to tell her when I'm
about to feed her, so any time I take the bowl of kibble
and I take it to the sink and put water in it,
she madly runs to her crate.
She's standing halfway between me and the crate right now,
waiting to go.
(laughing)
Dogs crack me up.
Good girl.
(upbeat music)
So it's another day in the life
in the household of McCann and Steepe,
except the Steepe portion of the household is off
fighting fires and saving lives today.
So I'm here holding down the fort,
until tomorrow when he gets back.
So I have a fairly busy day today.
I don't have to go into work until this afternoon,
so this morning, I'm trying to do laundry,
looking after the dogs, and then I just sat down
to do a little bit of work on my camp.
I actually came up with some pretty fun ideas
in my sleep last night, which is pretty sad
that I'm thinking about my job in my sleep, but hey.
I kinda like it.
Anyways, I wanted to quickly write it down before I forgot.
This afternoon, I have to go into work
to attend our weekly meeting that we have.
So every single week all of the full-time staff
at McCann Dog Trainers gets together.
We talk about the different classes and the students,
and we problem solve any areas that might need help.
And it's great because there's a lotta people there
that have awesome expertise, and we sorta put our brains
together and come up with some really great ideas.
And although it sorta sounds a little bit serious,
there is usually about a half-hour of shenanigans
that happens because we usually get a little punchy
towards the end of the meeting, and it's really fun.
I usually laugh very hard every single meeting.
After that, I have class with Beeline.
I take obedience classes with her as well
as agility classes, so we worked our way up
to our Grade Three program.
So it's a really really fun class.
We're about halfway through the program,
and we've been enjoying it.
That is Bee playing with her bone in her crate,
if you're wondering what that crashing sound is.
And then last but not least, I finish up the night
teaching some agility with Jamie again.
And tonight we have a couple different levels.
We have a Level Two, and a Level Four, I believe,
which is a masters level, and Level Two is sort of
where we introduce the different obstacles and stuff.
So the classes have been doing really great
over the program, so hopefully things will go well.
So I started working on the camp and got a little
carried away, so I'm late for the meeting now.
Luckily, it's not a huge deal.
So I just loaded all the dogs and I am gonna head in
to work, and I will be there for the rest of the night.
(upbeat music)
Say hello to the blog, everyone.
- [Everyone] Hello, blog.
(laughing)
(upbeat music)
Here we are in Grade Three, and Bee has just noticed
that her favorite little brother is over there,
and her favorite person, Angela, is also over there.
Bee, do you see your friends?
She's very excited.
Beeline, here, here, good girl.
Here.
Lie down.
Yes, good girl.
- [Instructor] Uh-oh.
Nice.
Here again, just isolate and right back in.
- Good.
Yes.
- [Instructor] Nice.
So a little choosy.
- Get it, get it.
Bee.
- [Instructor] Be quick, Caitlin, be quick.
- [Kayl] So I have this awesome husband-and-wife team here,
with their standard poodles.
Nice.
And this is, they've gone through
the program a couple times now.
Oh my God, so good, and they are just nailing it.
- Stay, stay, break.
- Woo-hoo, I didn't wanna tell you I was taping
in case it was too much pressure.
That was awesome.
We just finished agility obstacles and handling.
We have some very tired and very happy dogs.
Good girl.
Very good.
What did you think coaches, good?
Let's do a closeup on my best friend in the whole world,
Miss Jamie Morrow.
So we're getting ready for the last class of the night.
They're just walking their courses.
I foresee a lot of blind crosses in their future.
This is Steve, and his dog Jett.
Good girl.
Say hi, Jett.
Jett is very tired because we just did a lot of agility.
What was your favorite of tonight's class?
- The scary blind crosses.
- [Kayl] And what was your least favorite part?
- The scary blind crosses.
(laughing)
So it's the end of the night, and we are just
doing a bit of training.
I brought my laptop, and this is one of the unique nights
where Jamie and Ang and I are all at the arena
at the same time, so we were going
over all our camp details.
Another cool thing about Wednesday nights
is our friend Kayley comes to join us.
She does, I wrote it down because it's a mouthful.
Pulse electromagnetic field therapy.
So essentially she has this really cool thing
that hooks up to the dogs that makes their muscles pulse,
and it's really good for relieving inflammation
and pain in their muscles,
and so we get all of our dogs done
every single Wednesday from her.
Right now Jamie's getting her dog done.
Hi, Jame.
- Hi.
- Ang already got her dogs done,
and now she's training her puppy.
So yeah, still busy, still working away,
but we're all getting pretty excited for the camp
in a few days.
I'm getting my neck done now, and Jamie's training Grin.
(dog yelping)
- [Jamie] Kayl?
- Yes.
- [Jamie] How does your neck feel?
- It actually feels a lot more loose.
Hopefully, I'm gonna be able to sleep better tonight.
- [Jamie] Both ways?
- Oh, that's actually significant better.
Oh, that's a good test, Jamie, good thinking.
It's still a little bit stiff this way,
but I could only turn it this much before,
and now I can go almost all the way over.
- [Jamie] Bee, you're in the way.
- Bee, you're in the way.
- [Jamie] Kayley, how many more sessions will Kayl need?
- Probably another two to get full results.
- Next Wednesday.
- [Jamie] Are you committed?
- I'm committed.
These three are having fun running around, ready?
Down.
Yes, good girl.
They're actually all related, so the one in the back
is Slam.
His brother, Hero, is the one in the front, Grin's dad.
Grin's brother, no sister, Purple,
is Beeline, the one on the right's mother.
Who is continually sitting up and lying down, ready?
Set, go.
Go go go.
We were just marveling at our beauty right now.
This is what we look like after running
and teaching and planning.
- And chatting.
- And chatting, this is true.
All right, that's all for us, good night.
- Good night.
♫ Good night.
(upbeat music)
- [Kayl] Good girl, yes.
(upbeat music)