Thursday Practice

I had a great practice tonight. No video since we were practicing after dark and the lighting was not great for video. I met with a friend and we set up the courses from Clean Runs BackYard Dog exercises. The courses had some killer weave pole entries, or maybe I will say Killer entries because we had some trouble with them. There were a lot of rear crosses and tight entrances and the rear cross entries into the weaves are going to stay on our list of things to work on a bit more....

The dogs have not done any agility except some clicker stuff in the house for about a month I guess....Liz has had some soft tissue injuries so I have kept work light and Breeze had a torn pad that was really nasty and then had some stomach upset and then there were the fires and the air was horrible and classes got cancelled. I had thought we might be really rusty but OMG, the dogs were so excited and fast tonight, and still able to think.

Breeze has come up with a new behavior the last few practices. Breeze LOVES agility so much now, and when she has any hint that it is her turn to leave the field and her runs are over...she runs way far away from me and lays down and as weird as it sounds loses her hearing. She really seems to hear nothing, especially not me calling her to come and leave the yard. She happily enjoys her deafness laying on the grass and chewing her toy. She totally looks like a beat dog as I take her out to the car and put her in her crate, sad times for sure. She was looking so awesome during her run, since we have had so little practice I was surprised. I swear she was a lot faster then she usually is, I think she felt good tonight. When I run Breeze she is so easy and so fun I always remember why I love doing agility.

Liz was awesome, she really is driving ahead better and listening and she was so wild and wanted to play so much that she found these new, wonderful toys all over the agility course. As she was running she would grab the cones. Yep she did not even break stride and kept on going with her treasures. What a talented girl. I did not even see her grab the cone outside the tunnel but when number 4 was no where to be found....it was in the middle of the tunnel. I finally got her to leave the cones alone and thought I had that licked when the next weave pole entrance had a lovely mushroom toy growing right before Liz entered the weaves. Of course Liz knows we do not skip agility obstacles to get toys, she just bent her head down, grabbed the mushroom and caught her entry at the same speed she had been going. I have to once again say that Liz is really a special girl. My runs with her are rarely really pretty, but she is fast and she will put a smile on my face, so who says we do not meet our goals?


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The only bad part of our practice was that the field is in a little tiny town and there is no one around at night, it is dark and a little spookey, it is really quiet and there are a lot of trees and shadows, and tonight someone pulled up in a van and was watching a L O N G time, which just felt a little creepy. My friends dog Kodi kept staring out into the darkness...of course my dogs are not good watch dogs because there is agility, as long as they could stay and play they would let me be kidnapped or killed, just don't take the tunnel please...then a car sat in the parking lot, which never happens-but it did tonight, and then of course I was a little freaked and heard all sorts of rustling, whoooooo hooooooo, yep my imagination was going wild and I knew it was time to scadaddle before any scary things got us. Who says I do not have an imagination?