Silverton Sporting Ranch, part two

Posted on February 28, 2012 by annieriecken

The main attraction of the weekend at Silverton Sporting Ranch was our guided snowshoe walk. Denise said that our ultimate destination was a small hunting camp on her land. She had gone there on snow mobile earlier that morning to leave a cooler with some lunch for us. Venison stew sounded yummy, so we were looking forward to our promised hour and a half long appetite-creating walk.

We absolutely took the scenic route to that camp. (This is NOT a complaint.) We spent closer to two and a half hours winding through the woods and fields. This wasn’t off-road, bushwhacking stuff. The trails we used had been traveled by snow mobile, the machines compact the snow and that makes the snowshoeing super easy, so it was really just a nice walk in the woods. As we went along, we stopped frequently to look at animal tracks, to chat about the rigorous examination Denise passed to be certified by the State of Maine as a Maine Guide, or to ask questions about things we saw.

And where was Chico? Exploring, and sniffing, and running ahead and falling behind . . .

He was sniffing things.in the end going about three times as far as we did. He found many things worthy of investigation.

There was much digging in snow for unseen (to human eyes) things.

Hmmm, that looks pretty compelling. I wonder what he's stuck into. Something tells me it might be poop.

Yup. That's poop alright. Most likely coyote.

And what does any sensible dog do with coyote poop?

Stick out your tongue and roll in it! And no, his hind foot isn't that large, that's some interesting foreshortening caused by my camera angle.

After we had built up a serious appetite, Denise wound us around one or two more bends and suddenly we were at the hunting camp.

It's cute.

And it has a real outhouse. If you've never used a clean, well maintained outhouse be assured they are absolutely nothing like plastic, heavily scented with something gaggingly sweet meant to cover the smell, porta-potties.

While we lounged and ate and rested, as good clients ought to,

Denise built us a little camp fire.

By the time we finished lunch, it was mid-to-late afternoon and Denise had other guests arriving, so we headed back to the lodge by a much more direct route.  We three were all quite ready to go to our little cabin so we could shower and put our feet up.

A couple of us even took a nap. Chico was curled up like this until we went to the lodge for supper two or three hours later. K. . .well, truth is, she was more tired than hungry. She planned to leave quite early in the morning, so she stayed in the cabin when Chico and I went to dinner.

While it was a short weekend (both K and I had Sunday commitments) it was a total success. I’d say that the Silverton Sporting Ranch is a great place to go with your dog. In the interests of full disclosure, please note that neither K or I received any financial compensation or special treatment, this is just my enthusiastic post about a fun adventure with my dog.

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Silverton Sporting Ranch

Posted on February 22, 2012 by annieriecken

We had quite the field trip in mid-February. My longtime friend K got a deal on a lodging, food, and guided snowshoe expedition package at the Silverton Sporting Ranch in Canaan, Maine. K’s husband couldn’t make it, the place is dog-friendly, and I was lucky enough to get invited.

The ranch is close to 400 acres in size, with widely varied terrain, well suited to any number of outdoor pursuits. We walked in the woods, saw eagles and ate good food, but the owner, Denise Murchison, is a registered Maine Guide and many of her clients are hunters. Denise is a renaissance woman. She guides hunters, manages her land to promote wildlife health and diversity, cooks for guests, participates in business organizations, does the PR for the ranch, makes and promotes a line of game marinades, raises Labrador Retrievers AND she has time to put on make-up every morning.*

The promotion that K responded to was designed to expand the client base of the ranch. Hunting has peak seasons and this land is beautiful year round. There are ponds and trails and woods, there’s as much land as a nearby state park, comfy family-friendly cabins, great home cooking – it’s a wonderful place that non-hunters can also enjoy and it’s smart of Denise Murchison to capitalize on that.

The ranch has a lodge where Denise and her helper Kyle live and a number of cabins located far enough from the lodge (and each other) to give a feeling of privacy.

Here's Chico outside our little cabin. Something is happening over to his right, something much more interesting than having his picture taken.

With the outdoor, messy, nature of hunting, these cabins are decorated to be cozy and still easy to clean.

Chico on his sheepskin, hanging out in our cabin's living room.


We arrived Friday night and got to know Denise over a dinner of baby back ribs, salads and baked beans. She’s warm and open and immediately finds something in common with everyone. Chico was a jerk to her house dog, Sport, and Denise kindly put Sport in her crate.**

On Saturday morning, after eggs and ham for breakfast, we grabbed our stuff from the cabin and went to see eagles.

The four dark spots on the branches of that dead pine tree are bald eagles. We sat in the car and watched the trees through binoculars for about 20 minutes. In that time, we saw ten or fifteen eagles, both immature and mature, white-headed, ones.

The next activity was our guided snowshoe walk. Stay tuned for Silverton Sporting Ranch, part 2, coming soon.

*If you know me, you’ll understand my sense of awe at that. If you don’t, let me me try to explain by saying that I wear earrings I can sleep in because if I have to take them out at night, it can be days before I remember to take the time to put them back in. Mascara is practically an occasion. I have a “drip dry” hairstyle.

**On Sunday morning we tried bringing the dogs together again and while Chico wasn’t friendly (sigh), he could agree to stay by me while Sport agreed to stay in the next room. Not exactly what I want, but at least he could be civil and neutral at a distance.

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Got Ya day

Posted on February 15, 2012 by annieriecken

I heard a great expression the other day. Someone asked how long Chico had been with me and I said “Just over two years now.” “Oh, do you celebrate his Got Ya day? The date he came to you.”

Regular readers will know that I picked Chico’s Got Ya day as his birthday when I registered him in the AKC Canine Partners program (see Happy Birthday Chico). I am delighted by the concept of a Got Ya day, and if I knew Chico’s real birthday, I assure you, we would celebrate both.

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Leash walking second update

Posted on February 12, 2012 by annieriecken

I’d say that Chico’s leash walking is progressing quite nicely. I can get loose leash walking most of the time when we are on the familiar territory close to home. We start and end all walks on the leash and he’ll reliably trot near me without pulling about 85% of the time now. I’ll up the duration, then we’ll have to add some distractions. I predict that we’ll be back to square one at that point. The point of this exercise, for me, is that there are times when he needs to walk along without stopping to investigate every interesting diversion. It’s a bit like being able to say “No window shopping! We have to get to the dentist’s office on time.”

I have named the behavior “leash walking,” and sometimes in the middle of an off-leash walk, just for the heck of it, I ask for leash walking without actually putting Chico on the leash. I mean, it shouldn’t really matter if he’s connected to me with a lead, right?

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Cross Sound Ferry

Posted on February 9, 2012 by annieriecken

More of our adventures on the Christmas/New Years giant two-week field trip. On the way back from East Hampton, I decided to take the ferry from Orient Point, NY to New London, CT, about an hour and twenty minute ride. We arrived in plenty of time on a beautiful New Year’s day. It was about 50 degrees, not a cloud in the sky and not a bit of a breeze. There’s a park/open space across the road from the ferry for a last minute walk, the ferry welcomes dogs, it’s all very accommodating.

After driving on and leaving the car, we headed for the top deck and walked around so Chico could sniff and get the lay of the land (as it were) before we settled down on a bench in the sun.

Chico is not relaxed yet, he's panting, his eyes and ears are riveted on me, if I even start to take a step he'll be be right at my side in a flash.

I applied my best trick for new situations, I settled down in one place and started rewarding Chico for lying near me.

Pretty soon Chico was lying down, looking to starboard, and seeing this. Interestingly, nothing about sailing, not the ship's horn or the motion of pulling away from the dock, or having the shoreline change, seemed to upset him. Or maybe he was so overwhelmed by all of it that he couldn't even react. Notice the coin-operated binoculars, they play a part later in the story.

About 45 minutes into the trip families started to come up onto the top deck. Two or three  family groups with very well mannered children came up to us and one of the kids in each family asked if they could please pet my dog. I always start by thanking them for asking before petting the dog, then I explain that Chico is shy and it’s best if they put out their and and see if he’ll come to them. If they seem confident I can give them one of his treats and show them how to hold it flat in their hand for him (he’s utterly reliable about taking treats gently in this situation); that gets him to pay a little attention to the friendly kid and gives everyone a positive interaction.

It got busier and busier, we moved one row of benches in from the walking area, and Chico lay serenely at my feet, gazing out to port and enjoying the occasional cookie. No matter what passed by, he did no more than look to me for reassurance.

This is a Chico's eye view of two of the three girls who were playing with the two sets of coin-operated binoculars for a while. They ran, they screamed, they laughed, they had a great time about 7 feet from a Sphinx-like Chico. What a brave Chico.

The most amazing interaction was with a little boy, maybe 19 or 20 months old, who came running up behind Chico, pursued (but not quite fast enough) by his tending adult. I saw this all coming out of the corner of my eye and started a steady stream of cookies to Chico. The little tyke came up behind Chico and flopped down on all fours, knees on the deck and little palms smack! on Chico’s hips. Chico barely flinched.* “Oh, honey,” I said calmly and carefully. “You have to be very careful with dogs you don’t know. They aren’t all as friendly as my doggie. You need to ask before you touch a dog you don’t know.” “That’s right,” said the man who came and scooped him up, “you could have come away with a bloody stump.” He seemed to be joking, so I laughed with him, perhaps a little weakly. But, oh my, that was scary. And Chico was a hero.

Once my pulse returned to normal things were fine. Pretty soon it was time to start moving towards the car. We moved to the edge of the crowd near the stairs to the cars and I doled out cookies frequently enough to keep Chico’s eyes fixed on my hand. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a woman and a dog on the deck above us, looking over the flock of folks. She came down to our level and carefully made her way to a spot a good twenty feet from us, also at the edge of the crowd. When I could let my eyes wander from Chico I saw that this person was also engaging her dog and rewarding it for good, attentive behavior. It’s so cool to encounter someone who is working with their dog the same way I am.

*Remember, this is the dog that, two years ago, snapped and barked at the vet for trying to lean over him and listen to his heart. In his chart she calls him a “don’t mess with me” dog.

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Off-leash walking poses new dangers

Posted on February 5, 2012 by annieriecken

I just read this article about a northern California man walking two small dogs off-leash who was hit with an electric-shock gun (apparently this is the most current public relations speak for a stun-gun) by a National Park Service ranger.

The place where it happened, an area south of San Francisco, has long been an off-leash walking spot for local dog owners. In December, the area became part of the national park system, which requires that all dogs be on a leash and it seems that when the ranger tried to inform the dog walker of the new rules, well, things just got out of control.

Sometimes its so hard for me to follow the rules when they seem silly, this was a great reality check for me – being a good dog owner means going along with social and legal constraints.

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Do you want to feel better about your dog’s “problems”?

Posted on February 2, 2012 by annieriecken

Here’s a nice post from Casey Lomonaco on “the myth of normal dogs.” As the always-training owner of a troubled dog, this resonated with me.

Lomomaco asks us to “Carefully review the list of normal dog behaviors* [that she gives].  If these are not the behaviors you want, you need to train your dog to offer abnormal behaviors.” And she’s dead on: abnormal behaviors are exactly what we want from our dogs. These desirable (to humans) but not-so-natural behaviors include things like walking calmly on leash – even when passing something distracting, not going into the trash can, greeting guests at the door with a bone instead of a bark, letting strangers pet them: just about all the things that make friends, neighbors, and strangers on the street say, “My what a good dog you have!”

* These include biting, chewing, barking and growling, digging holes, vocalizing when left alone, liking to run around as fast as they can – even if they knock over small children or grandma in the process, sniffing everything, and rolling in poop and dead things.

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Paul’s Liquors

Posted on January 27, 2012 by annieriecken

Last fall I was in Washington, DC, visiting my family, and I went to the liquor store for my dad. Paul’s Liquors is a family run operation on Wisconsin Avenue, almost at the Maryland line and across the street from Rodman’s Drugs, another family run business I like to patronize.

I love that old fashioned neon sign.When I walked into the store one of the owners was out from behind the counter, on his knees, asking a customer’s dog to shake for a cookie. “Oh this is a dog-friendly business!” It turns out they are more than just a little fond of dogs. The business has been supporting local shelters for years and were preparing to host a wine tasting to benefit a shelter. One of the owners has taken in shelter dogs, apparently as many as ten at one point.

So, of course, when Chico and I were in Washington for Christmas, we made trip to Paul’s.

Chico will do a sit-stay well enough that I felt OK backing off to take a picture of him here in front of the entrance to Paul's.

Chico is shy around strangers and in new places, so he wasn’t sure about all the attention he got, even though it was positive. The owners are real dog people and they were great with him. When Chico wasn’t so sure about accepting a piece of biscuit, they put the dog cookie to their own mouths and mimed eating it. Of course, that upped the cookie’s value immensely and Chico was willing to try it.

Doing his tricks is always a good ice breaker, it gives Chico a chance to make people smile and those smiles help relax Chico.

Chico is not entirely convinced that this is a super-great idea. He's wary; not ready to run away, certainly not scared enough to think he needs to look scary, but also not having the world's greatest time.

After just a few moments, Chico is much more relaxed. He's paying attention to his host, his body is more relaxed, his ears are cocked forward and he's more relaxed around his eyes. This is going pretty well.

It seemed to me that Chico benefited from this interaction. He came away happier and calmer than he started, and in our little world, that’s good progress.

Dog friendly, with a great selection of beers, wines and spirits at what seem to me to be good prices, this is my current favorite liquor store in the part of Washington, DC that I visit.

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Leash walking update

Posted on January 23, 2012 by annieriecken

We’ve been practicing having Chico walk calmly by my side when on the leash. Chico can do just fine when there are no distractions, or if I am “loaded” (having a cookie in hand rather than in the treat bag), but there’s still a long way to go.

From agility Chico knows how to follow my finger, in theory, he can also learn to stay beside me on or off the leash by learning the self control to pay attention to my finger rather than the distractions provided by the world.

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Leash walking

Posted on January 15, 2012 by annieriecken

When Chico and I were in Washington most of our walks were on a leash, in places where there was a TON of new information to be gathered by a canine nose and I realized that my dog is not good on-leash. I was dragged over to posts, and pulled towards other dogs, it was impossible to just walk, it was rush or dawdle, rush or dawdle and I didn’t like it.

If I have a treat in my hand, Chico will trot right by my side, sniffling and licking at my hand to get the cookie, but that’s not really walking calmly by my side. I’m luring him to engage in the behavior, he’s not really doing it because he believes that right by my side is the best place to be. I was going to ask Julie for some advice on how to do this, then I happened to watch this video:

This trainer seems to be thinking the same way Julie does – make the desired behavior into a clicker game. Create a game where the dog starts to tune into the handler, to look to her for guidance. Since many of our walks are off leash this behavior isn’t always necessary, I’ll have to add a release to our routine so he knows when he is free to go run and sniff, but I think that’ll be pretty straightforward. I think that this is a completely reasonable technique, and I’m going to try it. We’ll start inside, with no distractions, today, since it is about 2 degrees outside.

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