Sonic the star

I'm pleased to report that Sonic and I just had one of our best trial days in a long time with three out of three Q's thank you very much! The icing on the cake being a very strong a second in Masters Jumping on a tricky course beating some of Perth's fastest and most exciting dogs who also went clear. I know Sonic has speed but it's been a lot of work to get him driving and stretching out on course and it felt fabulous. It was also fantastic to be able to run again now that my bad has recovered especially as there was a little bit of a sprint involved to get me where I needed to be. Sonic also had a lovely run in Masters Agility but with stopped contacts I don't expect to place in the top three however he still managed a respectable fifth with a lot of qualifiers in the 500 height. We got to finish the night off with a fun Masters Gamblers run and our third quallie for the evening.

We don't really have much on for the rest of the year. I've entered the World Agility Open tryouts but with Cassie joining us it's not a priority for me at the moment. I'm probably more looking forward to the ANKC Nationals in Sydney next year. So once Sonic has a nice long Christmas break filled with visits to the beach and relaxing I'll start putting some serious work into him (and myself I might add) as we work towards June.




Cassie the awesomest puppy in the world is going great guns. Every time she presents me with a training challenge we are able to overcome it by the next session just because she's so enthusiastic and will keep on trying. One thing that had been annoying the crap out of me though was her duck and bolt trick when I need to pick her up and put her in a crate or in her pen. She's such a party animal that she hates being taken away from the action. So I put up with it for a the last couple of weeks and made a poor effort of only using tug games when I needed to catch her. Of course she got wise to that one real quick and still wouldn't let me catch her. So on the weekend I had one of those moments where you smack yourself in the forehead with your hand while uttering "you idiot". Since then I wear pants with pockets at home at all times filled with Cassie's favourite treats on one side and her Super Doper Squeaky Bear (who shall from this point on be known as SDSB) in the other pocket. At random intervals when she's nearby I grab her collar and reward with either then let her go again. In one afternoon I changed her behaviour from suspicious to being quite happy to have her collar grabbed whenever I want to. In fact I think she's been coming over to visit more in case I do. We've also had lots of success with retrieve to hand including her SDSB outside in the garden. Now she gets the game she's off and running. Did I mention how awesome my puppy is :-)