Agility Saturday!

This morning found me sitting lazily at the kitchen table drinking tea and chatting with my husband. We were relaxed and talking about our day. Suddenly, I realize I'm supposed to be at a fun match in hollister at that very moment. It took me about one minute to decide to get dressed then I ran out to the car with two in tow.

Off I sped in my little PT filled with enthusiastic (ok, one enthusiasic, and one that feels he was kidnaped) pups to our friend Susan place in Hollister (http://www.workinpaws.com/). I got there and the festivities were in full motion. I was surprised to see so many people. I guess they took the "burn off the bird" seriously. I always love to see new people working their dogs and I noticed alot of new faces. Of course there were some old friends there too.

Since I had not walked any courses, I skipped jumpers and decided on a good path to work contacts. For Fin, my plan was jump, dog walk, and release early, and then loop around to the dog walk again and work the contact. After that we would loop out.

She did great. No problem on at all. I did the same run with Tazz, but he runs (or rather trots) his contacts so he just got two chances.

Next time we were able to walk the course and both Fin and Tazz were great. Fin needs more work on picking up her rear cross, but FC and running straight are going well. I even felt that there was improvement on her go on.

We had time to play fetch in the big arena where Fin played with me while Tazz went around wooing the ladies.

Back at home, I grabbed some clean runs and started looking for a drill that I could work my rear cross. I love the drills by Nancy Gyes and so pulled one that seemed simple yet had some good work on change of direction. October 2008, has a great drill called "nine."

I'll give the dogs a bit of a rest and this afternoon, we'll be working again.

Let's just cover it all!

Ok, I've been bad. Didn't get blogs done this week. So here is goes:

Fitness report: Another .5 hits the dust. Gotta do better than this, but I'm happy about it. No fast food. Lots of apples, veggies, and fish.

Training: going good. Fin is having fun in her personal class with Moe. She likes Moe and all the other people and their dogs. She especially likes the water buckets and splashing! She started doing a full dog walk this week. Pretty special. She runs fast and stops at the end...we'll see how long that lasts once we start trialing.

We still need work on the weaves as she does not understand the importance of doing them with distractions. She'll get there. Everything else is going great!

Fun match: Fin participated in her first fun match. I was a bit nerve wracked, but all in all I consider it successful. First time out I only did 3-4 obstacles and then gave her a reward. Last run of the day I let her do all 15 jumps in the jumpers course. We dropped the first bar and I had a VERY late FC after 10, but all in all, she is getting it. The best part of this entire video is the "finger." The gal taping had her finger in the viewfinder the entire time! In addition, a fly landed on her finger and takes center stage!

What I learned today: She needs a little more back chaining on the dog walk to keep the speed up. Her A frame is BEAUTIFUL! She locks onto the tunnel very early and will have NO problem with a gamble. Her table is quite nice. She loves to jump :) She'll stress at the start line if I push her to play too much, but once running will take a break and play just fine.