Class

Rylie kicked my butt in class tonight.  I so need to run faster to handle him.  He's such a good boy.  We'll get there.

Another Seminar

I took Rylie to a handling seminar on Sunday.  He did really well.  My legs were sore after three full days of agility earlier in the week.

I'm still thinking about camp.  My goals are to improve my handling by being more decisive and to give myself visual landmarks on course to help me be where I need to be.

It was also suggested to me that if Max has more value for the individual obstacles he will be more confident when the courses become more complicated.  I had to think about that one for a bit because I didn't think he was lacking in value but I realized that he doesn't have the same kind of quivering self control at the start line to that Rylie does.

Agility Camp

I just got back from a three day agility camp.  It was an amazing experience.  There were three incredibly talented instructors who each had a slightly different  teaching style.  I got a lot of great feedback and have some specific things to work on.  My fellow classmates were so supportive of me and each other.  I've been to a few other camps before but this one certainly topped all of the others.

My dogs were just awesome.  I got so many compliments on them and they really did work hard for me.

Another first for me - I drove our motorhome the two hours to camp and back ALL BY MYSELF!

Thunderstorm

We had a thunderstorm late yesterday afternoon.  Max only barked a couple of times.  He came right over to me when he heard the thunder so I could do t-touch on his ears.  I put the thunder shirt on him while we ate supper.  I am so thrilled with how he has progressed and from being a skeptic I have turned into a believer of the bach flower remedies.

We went to Pawlooza in London yesterday.  It was wild and crazy.  Rylie "almost" tried dock diving.  He was so excited but when he ran to the end of the dock (a couple feet high - not regulation) he stopped and said "Are you nuts"?  I was going to let Max try lure coursing but they had stopped running by the time we got back to the course.  I did talk to a chiropractor who works out of London so I was pretty excited about that.  All in all it was a great day and the dogs had fun.  When I was finished talking to the chiropractor Neil said to me "You need to come to the booth two doors down" - you have to know him - to encourage me to stay at an event with lots of people one second longer than absolutely necessary is totally out of character.  Anyway, I was intrigued so off we trotted.  I met a beautiful 9 month old try-colour girl :-).  I don't even remember what they were selling at the booth lol.

Tomorrow night the dogs and I head off for three days of agility handling camp.  I'm excited and nervous.

You know you're old when........

The fur boys and I are on our own this weekend.  Engineering Dad and Engineering Kid have gone on a golf trip.  Last night I settled down to watch my newest video Unleashing Your Dog's Potential and realized I had no idea what settings to push on the remote to get it to play on our new fangled system.  Normally the TV is on sports so it's not like I "get" to use it much.  To tell the truth I didn't even try - that's what computers are for right?

This morning we walked down to the farmer's market.  Both dogs walked really nicely even though the brain suckers (aka squirrels) tried to steal Max's brain he fought back and I didn't have to put on the brain retainer (aka gentle leader).

Next on the agenda is bath and then we are having a celebration for a classmate and her dog who came second at Nationals last weekend!  Awesomeness!

Bad Aura?

I seem to have a really bad bird aura lately.  A couple of weeks ago I was walking the dogs in the morning.  I saw this bump in the sidewalk.  It was a baby bird.  Not quite a hatchling but certainly not a fledgling.  The poor thing was just sitting there shaking.  I couldn't see a nest although I'm sure it fell or was pushed out of a nest in the tree.  There certainly wasn't a nest that I could reach.  Now I know you aren't supposed to try and put fledglings back in the nest but I'm not so sure what you should do in this situation.  I suppose it's natural selection.  My dogs wanted to say hello in the worst way but I figured the last thing this poor little guy needed was to be traumatized by monster dogs so we just walked on and left the poor guy sitting in the middle of the sidewalk.

I don't know if my lack of action brought me bad bird karma but last week when we got to agility class I spotted a dead bird stuck in the wire fencing.  I very gently disposed of it before the dogs noticed it.  Last night I was a bit early for class and was standing outside the field watching my trainer work with her two dogs.  Out of the corner of my eye I saw a flutter and then this little bird kind of skimmed the grass in front of me and did a face plant right in front of my feet. It's wings fluttered a couple of times and then it stopped moving.  I have NO idea where it came from - there were no trees for it to fall out of close by.  It seemed to be walking/running rather than flying but there was no doubt it was dead.  I think it may have had a broken neck but since the poor thing died right in front of me it was still warm so maybe the neck would be floppy anyway?

I just want to put it out there to whoever is in charge of bird karma that I actually like birds quite a lot and if I felt my intervention would have helped the first baby bird at all I would have picked it up.

I was going to google what it means to have birds dropping dead around you but I decided it can't be good and it might be one of those things I'd rather not know.

Yoda?

We took the dogs for a swim today.  They love to swim and it's been so hot that they haven't had much exercise lately.  I think Rylie enjoyed himself.