It's Over Already!

So a month off seems to have come and gone in the blink of an eye :-( I still feel like I've accomplished things though with all the kids, but mostly the baby dogs, Liryk and Edge, who I felt kind of needed more "skills" under their belt. Well obviously Edge as he's only a puppy still, but with Liryk even though she's done no contacts or jumps, we still worked on "body cues" she will see on courses and the beginnings of blind cross training.


Edge is now 6mths and has grown taller, longer and stronger. His body awareness skills have become much better thanks to Silvia Trkmans puppy class, and we are lucky enough to be continuing into the next class thanks to the generosity of Silvia, as he fell behind quite a bit when he had to have his surgery at the end of Dec. I REALLY, REALLY like this puppy, ALOT! I LOVE his attitude, and enthusiasm for learning. He's all cute and cuddly, but will turn into a crazed beast the minute you start to wind him up :-D He's just FUN! And I'm having a ball with him!!


This weekend we had Daisy Peel come and present a seminar. The nights were LOTS of fun! I was a little worried that Liryk, being in the advanced class, may not have had the skills to be able to deal with some of the sequences, but OMG I honestly have to say, I was REALLY stunned and SUPER pleased that Liryk dealt with each sequence better than I could have hoped! On the first night I learnt I have a tendency to flap my arms around a smidge to much! And I need to focus more on what my shoulders and my legs are doing. And the result was amazing :-) Now to just make a habit of it!!

 I was also able to do a private lesson on Liryk's running contacts and got some ideas of how to use her obsticle focus to help with handling her on turns and teaching her that just because there is a jump in front, I may just be calling her off it :-)

Speaking of running contacts..... I've signed up to Dawn Weavers running contacts course. Just to get a different spin on things I guess. Turns are H A R D! And if there's someway to make the learning of them easier for the dog to understand, then I'm all for it :-) Liryk doesn't seem to get that she can complete the dogwalk AND turn on the flat and thats obviously a flaw in my initial training. So I'm going to try something different, because what I'm currently doing just isn't really working for her. I also wanted to make sure I have as much information available to me before I start Edge's contact training. That was one of my mistakes when I started with Liryk.... I pretty much went in blind. And I have to say I REALLY like the turns that Dawn gets with her dogs! You can check them out at www.dawnweaveragility.com and click on the running contacts tuition link.

Well the R & R is over and it's only another 2.5wks before the next trial. I'm excited but I must confess I kind of liked blobbing in front of the couch the last month in the evenings, rather than chopping up treats and organising dogs into the car before shooting out to training. Oh well the 2012 year of trialing will be a load of fun I'm sure and once I get back into the swing of it, I'll wonder how I took 4 weeks off!!