Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Happy times

I can't believe it's just under four weeks till our big trip. Soooo excited for both the tour of Europe we are doing beforehand and of course WAO itself. Our Aussie jackets arrived last week and the shirts are being collected tomorrow. It is all getting very real as we finalise our preparations.

Obviously I love my dogs and I'm going to miss them a great deal while we're away but given how many additional commitments I seem to have these days with full time work, teaching, Better Pets & Gardens and organising our team for WAO there is something especially appealing about our 17 day tour of Europe prior to WAO. Getting up everyday with the only commitment being to enjoy the next city/country we are going to will be nothing short of awesome. Our tour map looks like this.



March saw young Soda turn 15 years old! I truly can't believe she is 15. She's still going pretty well considering her age but then she always was a very stoic lady. You just never know when they get to this age how long you'll have them with you so I continue to treat each day I have with her as a blessing. Except when she's being a difficult old tart! But lets face it, at her age she can pretty much do what she wants.



March has been a pretty good trialling month for Sonic. The Western Classic was awesome with Q's in Masters Agility and Jumping plus fourth place in both, a first in Masters Gamblers, second in Excellent Snooker and first in Excellent Strat Pairs with our trusty partner Deb Baile and Maggie then to top it off a win in the Agility Teams, third in Jumping Teams and overall top team. He really didn't put a foot wrong all weekend.

I've mostly been doing skill work with Sonic of late. In particular lots of work on reinforcement zone and jump skills. It seems to be working well for us as he's qualified in every masters agility run he's done so far this year. Now to try and hold form for the upcoming State Agility Trial and Nationals!


Bugger!

Cassie is now just shy of nine months old. She's coming along in leaps and bounds and does the cutest sit pretty ever. I love how she tries to press her front paws together which looks like she's praying, a by product of a behaviour she was offering me when I was doing some shaping with her a while back. Her core strength is really coming on and finally I've got her offering me a back up. Her recalls are pretty good and I'm trusting her more and more at training. In fact her focus is pretty good. I'm still not game enough to take that lead off but I don't think that's too far away. We've managed to trim that tubby little middle down a bit too thank to carrot sticks instead of Smacko's and also by me feeding her like a little dog and not a border collie.


Pretty girl