Monday, January 28, 2013

Getting my green thumb on

I've been feeling a bit nostalgic this weekend after spending most of it working in the garden so I decided to look back at some old photo's of my agility areas humble beginnings. 

When I first started my agility area it looked like this;

October 2010
Today it looks like this;

January 2013

Did I mention that ALL of it has been painstakingly hand planted by me!  At this point in time I recon it's about two thirds done.  So if the weather is kind over the next month and I can get the rest of it weeded, then get some more runners in the ground, by next summer I should have the whole area to play agility on!  It's definitely been my saviour with Cassie.  I don't know how I would have gotten her running dog walk trained without it (and of course my speccy dog walk).

I haven't really done that much dog training since the end of last year.  Mostly because of our usual summer heat which makes it impossible to get more than five minutes of training done before your lathered in sweat.  I decided over Christmas and New Year that we would all have a break (puppies included) and of course then we went to New Zealand for a couple of weeks to go to Kriszty's wedding and have a bit of a holiday while we were there.

New Zealand is a great place.  If I didn't want to live in Perth anymore I could easily live there.  Huge open spaces everywhere, so green and picturesque.  Did I mention they don't have snakes!  I think we'd only been there a day when we drove past a lady walking her border collie's out in hills.  We did all the touristy stuff.  I think Queenstown was my favourite place.  Even though it was busy and full of tourists like ourselves it had a real atmosphere and vibe to it.  And no I didn't go bungee jumping...  I did however go white water rafting and loved it.  We had massive rapids thanks to the huge amount of rain they'd had.  I only fell out once and it was very dignified.  Just don't ask the german girl sitting behind me who I appeared to have kicked in the head on my way overboard....oops!

On the way down (I'm camera side second from the back) in my oversized life jacket.

Yes that would be me doing the splits....what a wonderful moment to be caught on film!

However all good things must come to an end and I'm back at work and back to full training with the dogs.  Cassie is going well and if we can overcome her over arousal issues we'll be hitting the ring hopefully sooner rather than later.  My plan is to enter her in Novice Jumping at the Classic which is on at the beginning of March but I will run her only if I'm satisfied that her running off has resolved and I can run her through sequences without it happening at training.  Then if her jumping run is  successful I will look at entering her in agility as well.  I just want to walk up to that start line 100% confident that she's going to stay with me and it's not going to be too much for her to handle.  It will certainly be very exciting if it comes off!

Little Fizz is going well.  She's in the middle of her first season.  Riot her father has had to go on "holiday" for the next couple of weeks as he can't handle having a girl in season at home.  Boy brain doesn't even begin to describe it.  For all our sanity it was best that he's not here until it's over.  She won't leave poor Sonic alone and of course he's quite bambozzled as to what's going on...  I'm not doing much with her agility wise other than having a lot of fun getting her to chase me and just learn to play.  She's not hugely confident so I don't want to put any pressure on her at all.  I doubt we'll do anything much equipment wise for quite some time to come.  Which is really good considering how much work I have to do with Cassie yet!  Hopefully I should have some video coming very soon....


 

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