I thought I saw an easter bunny...

This week has been a "challenging" training week. Now that I am running Sonic on more difficult sequences we are both making a lot more mistakes. That could be quite depressing except that I know we are actually getting better...if that makes sense!! A couple of months ago if there was a particularly hard challenge in a sequence I would get to that bit, stop and reward Sonic, then continue, effectively bypassing the hard bit. Now we include the challenges (which we often stuff up) in our run, working through it and ultimately I think our skills are getting better. It can be somewhat demoralising though when you never actually make it through a sequence without making a mistake (or five)!

We've also been hitting the see saw pretty hard. Now that the Excellent Agility class is imminent and I would like to start doing the Open Agility class we really need to build on his understanding. I had been getting fly offs at least once a training session but I think he is starting to connect the verbal cue to the actual obstacle in front of him. It's just that sometimes, although he hears me, by the time he's put the anchors on he's flying off the end. I did see an improvement this week though so hopefully by the end of this month it will be solid enough for competitions. On another positive note, I think I may be on the way to having restored/fixed Sonic's dog walk. He had some good speed going down the ramp all this week. I will keep doing the remedial work for another month or so but hopefully the worst is behind us.

This next week is some time off for me. Easter is always a good excuse to tack some annual leave days onto the end and actually have a proper break from work. I have nothing much planned other than shopping (to find myself a nice new High Def Camcorder), relaxing and eating lots of easter eggs. Shouldn't be too taxing...

Now time for Sonic's first "official" agility photo's from last weeks Cloverdale trial. Courtesy of Tim Abidin and his fancy camera! Thanks Tim :-)