Saying Goodbye To America :-(

Camp 2 is all over :-(

My trip is almost to an end ..... just a 2hr drive to Minneapolis tomorrow and then I fly out first thing on Friday morning.

Well the last three days have been full of highs and lows.

I'll start with the low first. Jestah my old boy, became quite sick on Tuesday afternoon. He was apparently fine right up until 3.30pm, then went downhill rather suddenly :-( Vomiting up his dinner that he had had the PREVIOUS night (what the!!) and he was as flat as a tack. So as you can imagine I was FREAKING out ..... particularly being sooooooooooooooooooooo far away. I even started thinking that I would need to look at leaving camp early and try to catch an earlier flight home :-( He was started on antibiotics with the view to see how he went. That night he continued vomiting and was very restless. Mum took him to work to see Dr Louise on Wed morning and he had bloods taken. By Wed night the bloods had come back all normal and he was much brighter. No more vomiting and he was interested in food again. PHEW!!! Today he is back to normal .... though tired. I can't tell you how relieved I am!! And I can't wait to give him a GREAT BIG hug when I get home :-)

The highs have obviously come from the agility camp :-)

Camp 2 .... for me was MUCH harder and more challenging overall. I have discovered my timing for "trained cues" vs "natural cues" is pretty much CRAP!! Scream is an amazing dog to run, he really helped to perfect my timing. If I was slightly out he responded appropriately by pretty much taking the wrong jump!! LOL

We delved more into motion cues, forward motion front crosses over jumps as well as on the flat. My favourite day was today with Ann Braue. She had a course up that REALLY challenged us as handlers. There was one part where you had to send to a tunnel and RUN!! No really you had to run for fear of having a collision with your dog (there was a jump forcing convergence with your dog) So it was EXTREMELY important to get ahead to cue the slight turn OR you needed to "ABANDON SHIP!!!!" LOL I am proud to say I made it with Scream :-) Though I will not be shy in saying that I'm pretty sure my face went white when I could see him flying towards me out the corner of my eye!! It definately got my adrenaline going!!

I'm all pumped to play around with Epic when I get home and I can't wait to see how much Liryk has grown!!

I also can't wait for Ann to come to Perth in December :-)

The photo above has the three dogs that I ran over the six days. From left to right is Sydney, Sizzle and Scream. The people are Eric and Karen Holik, Me, Ann Braue and Jenn Crank.

I can't believe I've had this opportunity for a second year running. I feel soooooo lucky!!! What a buzz!!!