Neoprene Vest and Camera Harness

I've been trying to come up with a good way to mount my GoPro onto my dogs for ages. I've found an okay way to attach the GoPro to Koira's collar so it dangles under her neck, simply by using a hair tie to attach it. It dangles too low for Pallo to be comfortable wearing it like that. Not ideal, but it works well enough for Koira to take still photos. What it doesn't work for is video. The dangling-from-a-hair-tie method is way too unstable to make anything close to a watchable video.

Just looking cute

I recently decided to make Koira a neoprene vest. She gets chilled when swimming, even on hot days, simply because she refuses to come out of the water. Eventually, she gets so cold that her entire body is violently shaking. I figured a doggie wet suit would be just the thing.

Then I thought, hey, a neoprene vest would make a pretty stable mount for the GoPro too...

Nice, snug fitting vest that doesn't hinder movement but provides stabilization to the camera

There isn't a way to attach the GoPro to the front of this vest, but it works great when mounted on the back. I think it is about as stable as a dog mounted camera can be, really. The vest fits very snugly, without hindering movement. Since the vest is so snug, the GoPro has very little camera shake. Most of the shake comes directly from the dog's movement.

Koira is happy to sit, swim, or do pretty much anything while wearing it

I think I need to reinforce the current velcro closures with some small snaps, since the velcro can come loose if Koira moves suddenly, like jumping off the dock into the water. Overall, it worked really well on our trip to the river, though. The velcro even held well enough as long as I made sure to really rub it together well, and Koira never actually lost the vest even when some of the velcro came loose.

The front velcro closure. I think I will add a snap to it.

So, what do you think? Does your dog need their own wet suit? Or how about just the awesome camera holding ability of it? This first vest taught me a lot about how best to make these, but even so, I am totally thrilled with how this first one turned out. The only down side so far is that it is, of course, too hot for Koira to wear this during the summer other than when playing in the water. So I'll have to wait on getting some first hand flyball footage until the weather cools down.

In the mean time, how about a dog's-eye-view of some dock diving at the river?

Wordless Wednesday: The Can-Can!

I call this series of photos the "Underwater

Mischief Monday: Splashing

Koira's version of mischief is not normally too mischeivious. At the river, she had a ton of fun making big splashes with me. I would run up and down the bank of the river in knee deep water (yes, I was totally exhausted!) and she would run and bounce next to me, seeming to try to make the biggest splashes she possibly could.

I think her mischief was paid back a little by her getting water up her nose and sneezing though!

And of course, she had to get a little sassy about the whole thing. She knew she was so much better at running in the water than me, and couldn't help but mock me for it a little.

Underwater Dog!

First off, a quick race report. Pallo ran at our tournament earlier today. He did good, right up until he didn't. He is still doing that random stopping thing. I do have a theory about it that I will be testing out at our next practice. The sports vet on one of the local teams was nice enough to do a quick once over of Pallo and didn't find any obvious physical reason for him to be doing it, which was a relief even when I didn't quite think it was a physical thing. Koira didn't run today, so she just hung out in her crate the whole time. I ran another team mate's Belgian Teruvren, Zip. She is a total blast to run, and she ran like a total rockstar, even when she suddenly realized during the last race that her dad was judging and her mom was sitting at the scoring table.

I figured I would be busy enough with running two dogs and helping out my team (we were hosting the tournament), so I didn't even bring my camera along. Instead of flyball pictures, how about some pictures from our trip to the river yesterday?


I let the dogs wield the GoPro for a while on the new neoprene vest I made for it. But then I decided I wanted to try for some underwater type photos of the dogs. I held the camera myself and set the automatic timer to take a photo every second.

Here is Pallo. He doesn't actually believe in putting his face in the water.

Koira, however, DOES believe in putting her face in the water. Here she is from above. The blue vest she is wearing is the neoprene vest made for holding the GoPro. Koira spends so much time in the water that she gets chilled even on hot days, so it is dual purpose as both a camera vest and as a canine wet suit to help keep her warm.

For a ball, Koira thought sticking her nose in was plenty. No real reason to stick her whole head in just for some silly ball.

Though she might stick her nose in a little deeper, too.

The real thing Koira will dive her entire head under the water for? Rocks. Because apparently, rocks totally rock*! (Yes, my dog is a little special in the head sometimes.)

And then, of course, the best for last. At least, I think this is the best underwater photo I got yesterday. I'm totally in love with it.

Obsessive underwater dog!

I hope everyone has a great rest of the weekend!



*I do not at all encourage you to support your dog's rock habit. Koira has lost most of one of her canines between a combination of chewing on her crate and obsessing over rocks while at the river and beach. I only let her pick up rocks from the river during this shoot, and took them away from her before she had a chance to chew on them. Most of the time I will keep her attention with a toy the entire time we are at the beach or river so that she doesn't have a chance to obsess over rocks.

Farmer's Market

First off, we got the lab report back. And, I am probably just more confused than anything else. I was told the lab report said the lumps were hemangiomas, which are benign tumors. That is good news, of course. But, the vet also said that hemangiomas need to be removed so that they don't develop into hemangiosarcoma, which is pretty much a death sentence for dogs (with a 6-8 week expected survival after diagnosis.) When I came home and started doing research, though, I didn't find any warnings about hemangiomas turning malignant, except for one reference, which states "[Hemangiosarcomas] generally arise spontaneously, but in dogs with short, often white coats, chronic solar injury has induced a change in the superficial vascular plexus, which initially appears as a hemangioma and then progresses to a malignant vascular tumor. The breeds prone to actinically induced angiosarcomas are Whippets, Italian Greyhounds, White Boxers, and Pit Bulls."

So, I am making a list of questions to ask the vet on Friday when Koira goes in to have her last stitches removed. We actually did go in today to see the vet, pick up antibiotics for Koira's foot, and have the dangling knee stitches taken out, since they aren't doing much.

I bet this booth selling sausages is where Koira would like to start shopping

Koira is very ready to get back to being more active. She especially would like to swim, I think, since it has been pretty warm and even downright hot around here for the past week or so. But she is restricted to on leash walks or non-enticed exercise (no fetch, flyball, lure coursing, etc) until the last of the stitches come out. She is just so driven that she would not stop if the stitches pulled out or the wounds caused pain, so she doesn't get to play.

We did stop by the Farmer's Market on Saturday morning though. I had decided to stay home (rather than go take pictures at a lure coursing event) to give my ear infections a chance to heal up. I thought a walk at the Farmer's Market would be just the thing for both me and Koira, though I decided to leave Pallo at home because I wasn't feeling up to wrangling two dogs.

The wide view of the market

It was another hot sunny day, but we headed out early enough in the morning that it was cool enough walking around. It started to get a bit hot right as we left.

Market goers 

I mostly went with the sole purpose of walking around, seeing the sights, exercising the dog's mind and body, and just plain being somewhere other than home. I did also want to pick up some kind of a treat for the dogs from the local farmers though. One woman who sells chicken, rabbit, eggs, and occasional other things as well has discounted meats every week, just whatever is older than she wants to sell for people, and sells them as pet food. I picked up a whole rabbit for the dogs and cats to split between them.

The place we bought the rabbit

I was excited to see that our favorite local lamb farmers were at the market too. They previously have only been at our Wednesday markets, which are sometimes harder for me to get to. I didn't pick anything up from them this time, but did stop to talk for a little bit, and made a plan to go visit their lamb processor with them sometime. I would love to have a tour of the place, since I both feed my dogs her lamb and eat it myself. I think it would be interesting to see how the entire process works.

Our favorite lamb people also produce fiber as well

We also stopped to listen to some of the performers.

A small band getting ready to play

I just liked this next picture because it kind of shows a perfect picture of what your dog is seeing when in a crowd of people. It can be hard, I think, to really understand why some dogs are timid in crowds, or scared of people. This picture really shows, to me anyway, what they are seeing. And really, no wonder some dogs are weirded out by it. And for that matter, no wonder young children sometimes grab onto the wrong person, thinking it is their parent. People pretty much all look the same from that low down, at least, if they are wearing the same kind of clothes!

A dog's-eye-view in the crowd

And, a final photo as we were leaving for the day. The sun was getting high enough to make it hot, Koira was getting tired of carrying a backpack with our purchases (I picked up some zucchini for myself and to even out the weight of the rabbit in Koira's backpack), and we were ready to head home. This picture is one of the reasons I seriously love the GoPro. I might delete 3/4 or more of the photos it takes, but every once in a while, there is a photo I totally love.

Roller Derby: Week 2

Yesterday, I had my third Roller Derby Boot Camp practice, which also started our second week of training. We practice twice a week on Sunday and Thursday evenings.

Thursday was kind of a rough day for me. Partly I think it was that I was missing flyball practice to be there, which messed with my mental game a bit. Since the Thursday practices for both of these sports overlap, I will be juggling between the two for a while. Also hard was that I decided to try borrowing some of the loaner skates they have available at the training building. I've been skating in my mom's old rink skates that she is letting me borrow, which aren't ideal for derby. But trying on all those other skates did nothing but hurt my feet in all variety of ways, until I finally switched back to the rink skates.

My rink skates

On my way to practice yesterday I was feeling a little hesitant. I also fell a lot on Thursday, partly because of the different skates we were trying. I know I will fall a lot in derby. It is part of the game. There will never be a point where I will never fall. But it was a little discouraging. Last night's practice totally made up for it though!

The first thing we really learned was crossovers. This is basically where you pick up your outside foot when turning, bring it over in front of your other foot, set it down, and push out with the foot that stayed in place. It helps you corner faster and picks up a LOT more speed than just leaning into the turn or pushing a bit with the outside foot. It is also hard to get coordinated enough to do. It felt like the kneepads were in the way, my feet were huge and awkward, and like I was about to fall over the entire time. But, after a few rounds of the track, I was starting to get it, and when I did it right for the first time, it felt amazing.

Practicing stepping to the side doing crossovers before hitting the track with them

I think learning the crossovers was the biggest thing in practice for me yesterday. We also practiced T-stops, which I got way better at, and plow stops, which I haven't had much problem with because of my experience skiing and skijoring, where you use a lot of plow stops for slowing down and controlling your speed on hills or behind dogs. Then, as we were about to practice two knee slides/stops, my skate broke. The pivot cup (a piece that holds the skate wheels steady in place) snapped, making my skates unstable and unsafe to skate on. I quickly walked on my knees to the chairs, got those skates off, grabbed a random pair from the wall that looked like roughly the right size, and got back into practice as soon as I could.

Getting instructions before one of the drills

I don't know if it was my confidence or if the skates were just a better pair than I tried last time, but I felt pretty okay in them the rest of practice. We didn't have a whole lot left at that point. We made a pace line again (spaced 1 arm length apart behind another skater, all in a line, the goal being to keep the same speed, distance, and spacing) and then practiced weaving up the line between the skaters, while maintaining spacing. It was really hard to do the weaving because when going to the inside of the line, it was easy to skate too fast and get ahead of them. And then going to the outside of the line, it was super easy to skate too slow and get left behind. But everyone did really awesome with it.

Practicing stepping side to side and front to back without rolling

I think the best single thing in practice was doing the 25 in 5 again. We did it last Sunday as well. Basically, the point is to skate laps for 5 minutes, with a goal of being able to skate a minimum of 25 laps in that time. Last week, I skated 14. This week, I made it up to 19! If nothing else, that shows me how much faster doing crossovers is. And I can't wait until I am in better shape and get better at crossovers, because I know my speed is going to pick up a lot more the better I get.

Water break!

Mischief Monday: New Sports

I am sore this morning. Kind of an all over muscle soreness with a few concentrated areas that hurt worse- my hip, my elbow, and the portion of my foot with the blister. All of this, because I joined a new sport. We had practice for the first time last night. And the mischief part of that? It doesn't involve the dogs. The new sport is Roller Derby.

Geared up but afraid to stand up

I don't normally post my non-dog stuff on the blog, I know. But, this new sport will be practices two or more times per week for at least the next seven weeks, so will be taking up a lot of my time, and I think I might want to have something to look back on and see how far we've come. So far, it is a lot of fun, but I kind of feel like the trainers are trying to kill us and have us melt into the ground. First, we skated in circles (once we got the courage to stand up on skates for the first time in years!). Then, we did falling and stopping drills where we were introduced to some of the basic ways to stop yourself when moving- three of which involve deliberately falling- knee stops, using left, right, or both knees. What falling on your knees repeatedly means is that you have to get up off your knees over and over and over again, and my thighs are telling me about it this morning!

First attempt at 25 laps in 5 minutes. No, I got no where close!

After we got the hang of the basic ways to stop, including T-stops and plow stops as well as the knee stops, the real torture began. (By this point, by the way, I had fallen once on accident, landing on my not-padded hip and my elbow, both of which are also telling me about it this morning.) We did a time trial of how many laps we could finish in 5 minutes. Man, I started off pretty strong, but by that point, my legs were killing me and I'd developed a blister on my foot, and it was all I could do to keep going after a few laps. To pass Boot Camp, you need to skate 25 laps minimum in the five minutes given. I made it to 14 and felt dead at the end. I'm confident that by the end of Boot Camp I'll have a hard time believing I could only make 14 laps and that I thought it was hard!

Being pushed by a partner around the track.

We also did a bunch of different drills. One of them involved being pushed and pushing a partner around the track. It sounds like it would be easy to be pushed, but staying in a deep enough crouch to not fall over but not actually moving your own legs for momentum really makes the thighs burn deep. And pushing a partner was surprisingly easy in comparison. We switched back and forth who was pushed and who was the pushee to help spread the pain more evenly.

Equal spacing and speed practice, with extra crazy mixed in

We also did a line drill to practice even spacing and speed. The spacing and speed part wasn't too hard until some of the trainers and more experienced girls started weaving back and forth up the moving spaced line! Thinking about where the weaving skater was, looking back for her, and not freaking out when she passed within inches of me, all that made the equal spacing a lot more difficult.

To throw in a little more torture, we were introduced to burpees on skates (which I now need to seriously practice without skates, along with my lunges, because ouch) as well as a "Simon says" type game on skates.  Basically, torture.

But in the end, it was so much fun. I can't wait for the next class.

Home Alone

Yesterday's Wordless Wednesday post was a series of pictures that I got using my GoPro camera set up to take photos once a minute when I left for work. I knew Koira was restless and occasionally destructive in her crate when I was at work, but I wanted to see exactly what she was doing when I was gone.

That series of photos was a bit of a wake up for me. In the entire series, Koira was laying down less than 1/3 of the time. The rest of the time was spent pacing, stress panting, digging, and chewing on the bars of the kennel.

Now, I want to mention that Koira used to be just fine in her kennel. While I have never taped her before, the evidence in the kennel showed me that she used to pretty much just chill out when in there. No messed up bedding, no damage to the crate, nothing around the crate disturbed. That changed last year when Koira's shoulder injury put her on rest to the point that she was going bonkers. It appears that her stress with the kennel appeared at that point and has not left. We'll be playing a LOT of crate games to attempt to fix that problem.


So, the next day, I decided to do the same setup- have the GoPro take pictures once a minute while I was gone. Only this time, leave Koira loose in the house. Evidence has shown me that Koira will shred some items and will get into the trash or any available food when I am not home. I generally lift the trash can onto the counter before leaving the house to keep her out of it, and make sure there is nothing else for her to get into. But, in the view of trying to keep my dog as stress free as possible, moving the trash wouldn't solve the problem. I wanted to see how stressed Koira was while I was gone if she was loose in the house.

Answer? Not at all. She spent the entire time sleeping, just occasionally changing positions.

Wordless Wednesday: Home Alone

Weight Pull Practice

We've been practicing weight pull once or twice a week with a friend. Since we are using a cart, the friend is a necessary safety measure, as we need someone on the brake so the cart doesn't run over the dog.

I have been using a touch stick method to get Koira to pull. An important part of training is that she learn proper body position, which basically means she needs to learn to pull with her head down. While not so important with light weights, it will get very important when she is asked to pull more weight down the line. To keep her head low and forward, I've been using a touch stick (also commonly called a target stick) out in front of her and close to the ground. I then treat her down low as well, or toss treats on the ground in front of her.

This past week, I strapped the GoPro onto the end of the touch stick. The battery was borderline dead, so I didn't get very long videos, but I think it is enough for you to see the basics of what we are doing. Basically, I hook Koira's harness up to the cart, walk her out so the bar of the harness is not on her hocks, and then have her wait. Then, I go out next to her, put the target end of the touch stick out in front of her a ways, down low near the ground, and tell her to touch. She sticks her nose down toward the stick, throws her shoulders into the pulling, and walks toward the stick, head low, pulling the weighted cart (for reference, she has just over 100 lbs on the cart in these videos). I reward her when her head position is good, when she has pulled  a decent distance, when she gets a good start on the cart, etc.





Sorry at the videos being a bit tilted. I basically just taped the GoPro onto the touch stick with scotch tape, and it ended up being a bit crooked.

Anybody have weight pull questions? Anybody do weight pull and have tips for me?

A Walk At The Park

Our local sporting field are finally open to off leash dogs. In the summer, dogs are only allowed off leash on the trails, and must be on leash on the paved paths and in the sporting fields, since they are used for baseball, softball, soccer, and other organized sports. Every winter, the park opens up to allow off leash dogs.




This park shouldn't be mistaken for a "dog park" though. Instead, it is simply a park for people to go and enjoy themselves, which happens to allow you to have your dog off leash.




We do have a "dog park" in town. It is a tiny little fenced area with one big tree, a few benches, and lots of mud. I don't go there. My dogs have been attacked in that park multiple times. And, my dogs don't really want to go explore such a small place when I am standing around. If I wanted to stand outside with my dogs and play fetch, I'd do it in the back yard.



The great thing about the sporting fields allowing dogs off leash is the size of the park. Unlike in the small fenced park, the dogs love going off and exploring here. Since I am walking along a path or trail, the dogs get a chance to wander around, go sniff, play, and stay constantly engaged without me having to carry a ball or disc around to play with them (though of course many people do bring toys).




If any other off leash dogs are around (and we generally see at least a few, and sometimes a lot), my dogs get the chance to say hi. Since dogs are off leash at this park, few tend to be dog reactive. If we ever run into a dog who doesn't like my guys, or who my dogs don't care for, we can simply keep walking. It is amazing how easily deflated situations can be by simply speeding up a bit, continuing down the path, and calling the dogs.




Since the sporting fields aren't fenced, I think people who do bring their dogs off leash there have better control over their dogs than those going to the "dog park". Dogs who listen not at all to their owners generally don't get multiple trips to the unfenced expanses found at the sporting fields.




Plus, owners actually have to be there with their dogs- unlike at the "dog park" where, despite signs saying dogs must be accompanied, many people appear to drop their dog off in the fence, then return to their car where it is warm and dry. Or else they end up on their cell phone totally ignoring their dogs. That kind of thing doesn't seem to happen in an unfenced area, or at least, is much more rare.




When I ask my dogs if they want to go to the park, they know that this is where I mean. Pallo starts getting anxious and excited and emits a rather high pitched shrill noise from about 10 blocks away when he realizes where we are headed. Koira starts shaking, but in her excited way, rather than her scared way.



All of this, partly just to say a simple thing. Dog parks are not the solution to dog owners wanting to enjoy time spent outdoors in public with their dogs. Many people enjoy taking their dogs to dog parks. But keeping open off leash dog friendly areas like the sporting fields open to people to enjoy with their dogs is important. It helps create a much more relaxed environment for dogs to interact, while giving the humans something to enjoy and do as well (which is mostly completely lacking at the "dog park").