Sunday, January 9, 2011

Weekend

Well the nest is once again empty of human offspring as we put engineering guy on a train back to school this morning.  Computer Dude left on the 29th and has already put in one week of his work term.

Max and I went to the barn........oops I meant the arena yesterday morning.  I met two of our classmates there.  Peanut the pug/terrier and his handler have about the same experience as Max and I - Peanut is a bit faster though.  The other lady has a lovely Sheltie called Maddie May.  Maddie is a bit more experienced and her handler has a lot of experience - her older Sheltie is a masters level dog.  She set up some gambles for us to practice as Peanut and Max are both in their first gamblers class.   She also said she'd walk the course with us next Saturday and help us plan our route.  Max and I also practiced the teeter and weaves.   The teeter is certainly not Max's favourite thing but I think it's coming along.  His weaves were awesome.

Today I took both Rylie and Max to practice.  Max and I worked some more on the teeter and I had both Max and Rylie run the (very easy) sequences that someone had set up.  I realized that the tunnels have amazing sucking powers for both dogs so I will have to be cognizant of that next weekend.  Rylie really is stinking fast and my brain is going to have to work double time to anticipate what he is going to see - there is no doubt he drives a line.  He did pull off the tunnel today when I called him though (but I only called him because that was the line he saw in our previous try).  The advantage is that the advanced jumpers is the class before starters and they usually aren't terribly different.  I will be able to see where Max wants to drive and hopefully handle accordingly with Rylie.  All in all it was a fun couple of days in the arena because we could work on the things that we needed to work on.

It was interesting training both dogs together.  They haven't both been in the arena at the same time .  Engineering Dad was with me but in the end I had to have one dog on a leash while I ran the other because the one not running  wanted to get in on the action.  I can see if I go alone I'll have to bring a crate because there is no way I'm going to get either to sit on a table and wait patiently for their turn.

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