A very tired, silly border collie.
And what does that mean?
A VERY peaceful evening...
The "official" move-in day for me and the dogs (and Kenny) to Wellard is Monday. Everything is more or less packed up and ready to go. I did enter a trial tomorrow but with the double today at Gosnells and a lot still to get ready for Monday's move I've decided to give it a miss. Plus I really want to sleep in tomorrow cause I'm very tired!
Today's trial at Gosnells was interesting. All the Masters courses were quite tricky and I'm quite happy to admit, a bit too hard for Sonic at this stage. Even though he understands my body cues pretty well, there is so much choice available he isn't responding nearly as well as I'd like. As per normal our runs tended to get better as the day progressed. His first run is consistenty awful, but I think it's because he's so over excited that his brain and body are not working as one and he certainly isn't listening to me! Even though his Masters runs aren't particularly impressive at the moment he is having a blast and I think they are great experience for him. The day however did provide one saving grace with a really nice big flowing Open Agility class with a very doable distance challenge with no layering involved (hooray). With all the complicated handling required in the Masters classes it was a great opportunity to let Sonic stretch out and kick up his heels. He flew around the course full of confidence and presented me with our first win in open company beating a couple of our very competitive border collies. It was quite a surprise and a very pleasant one at that!
I've been giving a bit of thought on how to help get Sonic up to Masters standard. I don't believe that running him in Masters is doing him any harm because he's having a ball everytime he's out there. I don't think that running him back at Excellent level is going to achieve anything as doing easier courses won't help him develop stronger skills. I just need to help him not get so overwhelmed by all the choices on course and focus on where I'm telling him to go. So I think grids, grids and more grids will be on the training agenda. I'm going to copy down the courses from today so I can set bits of them up at training over the next few weeks. Now I just have to hope that spring decides to finally bless us with it's presence and this awful, crappy winter weather to go away!!
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