Sonic and I have been hitting the trial ring a little bit of late. Still just doing the Masters Jumping class but really enjoying it. I do miss Masters Agility but I'd rather jumping than nothing at all. He's doing super and has had some really great runs including a very close third behind Liryk and Rosi two of our fastest Masters dogs. It was a perfect Sonic course that suited him to the ground and he showed how much he loved it by running such a great time. He knocks the odd bar but really, who cares. His next trial is the Royal Show. He's only entered in teams this year because I don't think his body will cope with two full days of trialling. So hopefully the team has a good one for 2014. Last years Royal was total crap! I haven't even entered Cassie this year after last years melt down.
The pap with the attitude is doing OK. We've worked our way through most of the Bridging the Gap course and I'm pleased to say that we probably achieved more than I thought we would. She is now jumping into my arms which I never thought I'd be able to teach her and is consistently doing courses with minimal rewards. Even more exciting is that it no longer terrifies me to not have food in my pocket when I'm training her... I think we are pretty close to going back in the ring again. But we've come so far I don't want to rush it (OK I'm shit scared that it will go wrong!). There is a Show and Go scheduled for mid October so my plan is to run her in that. I'll do something like do half a course and then surprise her with her fav tuggy. Then if that goes well we'll do a full course and do our set up of to her lead and to her treat bag at the end. If nothing else I'm really keen to see if what I've been doing has made an impact when she's faced with the trial environment. If that goes well then we will attempt an NFC run at a trial. That will be the ultimate test.
Before that happens I'm going to attempt to get a Gold spot in another upcoming course that Denise Fenzi is running. The course is called "But I'm Only Little". It looks like it works through all the play stuff a lot of which I'm pretty comfortable with after doing BTG. But there are parts of it where she looks at dealing with pressure in little dogs and I think that will be invaluable to us. I still feel that there are times when Cassie is really susceptible to pressure and I'm not confident that I deal with it in the right way. Fingers, toes and eyes crossed that I can score a working spot as I really want to get Denise's feedback to what I'm doing. That is probably the thing I've missed most from doing the online courses and sometimes it's really hard to know if I'm making the right choices. But I am really pleased with mine and Cassie's progress and I think we are a long way down the road from all the ring stress in the first half of the year.
And I'm finally back into my fitness regime. After being a depressed slob for about six weeks I snapped out my stupor, pulled on my running shoes and got my arse back pounding the pavement. After about three weeks I already feel significantly better, trimmer and able to breath normally after working my dogs. I've had to tone down the work out a little bit so it's just a run and Jacob's ladder now. For some reason running up Mount Street aggravates a muscle in my hip. If I don't do Mount Street it is fine. And I purchased a Fit Bit Flex which is great in that it keeps track of what I do all day (or rather what I don't do). But I find it's supposed "messages of encouragement" such as "you only have 2,000 steps left to make your daily target" the equivalent of "get off your fat lazy arse and do some exercise"!!! It works...
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| Jacob's Ladder...going down! |
