Preparing for the Spring Semester

There are exactly 26 day's until my first class of the spring semester, 18 day's until I leave for my second national 4-H public speaking competition, and 23 days until I head back to New Mexico. I have already been home for nearly two weeks and the time has flown by. Next semester is going to be a very interesting one.

My schedule is filled with 17 credits:
Animal Science Career Development
Companion Animal Management
Horse Fitting and Selling
General Chemistry
Chemistry Lab
Ballet Technique (which I may drop considering I'm having knee surgery sometime next semester)
Science Ethics and Society (Honors)
Lifeguard Training

Most student's would worry the most about taking chemistry as it is a very difficult class and takes a lot of focus. However, I enjoy Chem and am prepared to study as much as needed to make an A in the class. The class that frightens me the most is ANSC 288 "Horse Fitting and Selling". The class objective is to "teach" student's how to prepare horses to sell. This sounded like a fun class until I discovered that we would be working with yearlings that have had minimal to no exposer to humans.

The NMSU horse farm breeds Thoroughbreds and Quarter Horses. If you know anything about these two breed you know that Quarter Horses can be slow and dumb but aggressive if not started young, and Thoroughbreds can be high strung but very intelligent and pick up on things quickly. I'm prepared for what ever yearling I end up with to be firery and challenging. I don't believe that the school should be breeding horses unless they are imprinting correctly and using more natural methods of training. That's just my personal opinion and a lot of students will not agree with me but these horses a dangerous to have students around.

Last semester I took a special topics class on halter breaking weanling's. I learned a lot about the wrong way to train horses and what I agreed and disagreed with. The goal of the class was to "break" the weanling's so that when it was time to train them in ANSC288 they would already be semi manageable and also to use students as free labor. Most of the weanling's in that class progressed nicely, turning into manageable young horses. A few of them where problem children but I think it was all because of the way the school believes in doing things. The first batch of weanling we worked with will be about 10 months come the start of next semester. Probably not old enough to use for the fitting and selling class but I can only hope that something happens and they have to use the little guys for 288.

Before going to college I hadn't had a ton of experience working with younger horses. I started riding when I was four years old but never learned as much as I should have about ground work. I took a break from riding when I started high school and have now been riding off in on since the beginning of last year. I enjoy being around horses and training them more than I do riding. I believe that it has helped to make me a better dog trainer. Horses are animals that spook easily and must be handled carefully. If you do something to mistrain a horse it takes you ten times longer to retrain them than it does with a dog. Since I have started working with younger horses, I have learned to control patience better when working with my dogs. (I'm probably going to make another post about this at some point)

The other challenging thing about next semester is knee surgery. Nearly a year ago I made a wrong move in a parking lot and manage to tear my  Medial Collateral Ligament (the one that keeps your knee from swinging out sideways) and break off some of the cartilage that covers my femur. I tried several rounds of physical therapy which helped but only covered up the problem. I'm really lucky to have a great physical therapist who has given me lots of advice and education on this whole thing. Last month, I went back to the surgeon again to see what else could be done with my knee to make the pain go away and get me back to doing triathlons. It's been over a year since I have competed in any triathlons, open water swims, or mountain bike races. They suggested surgery to clean up the knee and remove any cartilage floating around inside although they had previously been trying to avoid surgery. The MRI taken of my knee is inconclusive it shows a perfectly normal looking knee with only a small amount of wear. The surgeon who I trust a lot thinks that the pain, swelling, locking up and everything else I deal with are congruent with chunks of missing cartilage floating around my knee. yay! Both he and my physical therapist suggested that surgery was the best option to get me back running and doing everything I love again. However, it means that I get to limp around, go to therapy, and try to train a horse on one leg for part of the semester which could be challenging. I'm trying to prepare myself now by getting everything school related organized before surgery happens. I don't know when I'm having surgery but I have a pre-surgery appointment on the 24th to get everything set in stone. I'm not excited about it but I am excited to hopefully start running again next semester!

There are lots of things to do at home as I prepare for the spring semester. I'm very excited to start my second semester at NMSU as the plan is for it to be a 4.0 semester.

Signing off,
girl minus pup with potentially crazy horse to train

The Beginning

    I'm starting this blog to document my experiences of undergraduate school and my plan to raise guide dog puppy number three. I'll warn you now that my writing skills aren't anything to write home about but hopefully they will improve with time. Over the next semester I will be preparing to raise my third guide dog for Guide Dogs of the Desert (GDD) and starting up a new student organization called Aggie P.A.W. (Partners for Assistance thru Work). I will be serving as the club president as the club strives to create a community for service dog trainers, users, and individuals interested in either of the two.

   A little bit about the two dogs I have raised.

Nick was the first puppy that I raised. I picked him up from Guide Dogs of the Desert on August 13th 2010 as an 8 week old puppy who's dream was to be the worlds greatest guide dog. I started project Nick as a Junior in High school taking dual enrollment classes at a local community college in my home town. While I was home schooled the rest of the time. Nick started out as a rambunctious little pup but quickly grew into a dog that strived for adventure. He wanted to work every day and if he didn't get to he would destroy things. His favorite things to eat other than dog food where socks and toilet paper. One time he ate a five dollar bill and really seemed to enjoy that, although my mom wasn't too pleased. I taught Nick a lot and he turned into an amazing dog. He went everywhere I went, school, work at the clinic, city bus rides, class rooms, Doctors offices, grocery stores, busy downtown streets and everywhere in between. He learned to be well behaved and do exactly what he was supposed to do.

 

   February 18th 2012, at about 2 years of age, Nick returned to Guide Dogs of the Desert for formal training. Before formal training began he had to pass in depth medical exams and testing which he passed with flying colors. Nick worked with trainers for a little over 7 months before my mom got the phone call. It was a dreary October day when my mom called to tell me he had been dropped from the program. He had a natural instinct to air sniff which is a really amazing thing dogs can do to see what kind of danger or potential threats are in the area. However, for guide dogs it is very distracting as they are constantly trying to protect their partner from threats that might not be there. According to the trainers at GDD it became to stressful for Nick to guide as he was always concerned about protecting his partner. The trainers offered us to take him back home with us. I seriously wanted this dog back but I knew how much he loved to work and I asked them to career change him. It was a painful decision to make that involved lots of crying but I knew it was the best decision for him. Shortly after, Nick found his new job as a Mobility Support Service Dog and therapy dog for a legally blind man who didn't quite qualify for a guide dog but needed a dog for support. Nick's a big 85lb boy which is great for mobility support dogs so I hope that it was the right job for him. I haven't seen Nick sine I dropped him off for formal training almost a year ago, but I hear he is doing well and I hope to one day meet his new partner.

 Bodo was the second dog I raised. My brother and I finish raised her for Guide Dogs of the Desert last summer. As the story goes, her puppy raisers dropped her of at the training campus and said that they where going out of town for the summer and couldn't deal with her any more. She stayed at the school for a little over a month undergoing health exams in preparation for formal training. She was about 14 months of age. From observing her in the kennels and attempting to work with her the trainers decided that she needed a little extra puppy in training experiences before she was ready to go into formal training. I got a call from our area coordinator asking if we would be interested in fixing this dogs many problems and my brother and I jumped on the chance.

We only had Bodo for a little over 3 months but the transformation we watched her take over that time was pretty amazing. She was not the smartest puppy I have worked with by far but she was really sweet and loved to cuddle. Her worst habits where jumping up and grabbing the back of peoples pants while they tried to walk by her in the house, and running around in circles around the house so that no one could catch her. She was easily cured of both of these issues and turned into a great dog. I didn't get to do as much with her as I did with Nick but by the time she went back to school she was a well rounded pup ready to begin formal training. She returned to GDD a week after I started college at NMSU and begin working in harness about 6 weeks ago. I'm super proud of what she has accomplished so far and I hope to see her graduating sometime next year!

Why don't I have pup #3 already? Well, I started university this semester and I didn't want to overwhelm myself with to many experiences at once so I decided to take a break from puppy raising for a year. I really miss puppy raising. It also cost a fair amount of money to raise a pup and I wanted to give myself some time to save up for that. This next semester I will be preparing to raise puppy number 3 by making special arrangements with housing and starting up aggie P.A.W. So far, I love university and I want to spend as much time as possible going to school. My end goal is to be a veterinarian possibly specializing in equine or wildlife medicine and donating time to guide dog and service dog organization I love animal science and anything to do with medicine. I'm super excited to be starting this blog and I hope if you read this far because it's really stinking long, that you will leave a comment and tell me how you like it!

That's all for now,

Girl minus pup