I just do not have words to say how grateful I am for all of you that left such nice and supportive comments to my last post. All of you just made me feel so much better, how do you all know just the right things to say? Agility people and dog people can be the BEST! I was just plain down thinking about how hard this is all seeming again, I really felt like the last trial knocked us down a peg, but it was a good thing because it really has highlighted what we need to do to get to the next level. Thanks so much Morganne for the suggestion about the rear cross exercises, I am going to set those up the first of next week. If I finish teaching the weaves so they are taught better and not just taught good enough that would take care of more then half of our refusals ;-), so no way around it I am going to have to make that happen.
WE HAVE A BUSY WEEK with agility things ;-). I am resisting the urge to run out and try to fix all the holes I saw last weekend by the next trial. Realistically, that is not going to happen, four days that are also full of lessons and where the heat is going to be well over 100 just is not four days where we can do anything more then tweak a few things in how we are running and I do not want to start to feel like agility is a pressure cooker for us. So this week I am going to play some stay games, we can do that in the house. We will do some playing around with the weaves and I am playing some games with the table because it would have helped so much to be able to have her send to the table better like she does to the tunnel. For some reason at home she LOVES the table but at trials she will twirl before she jumps on or waits for me to tell her again to jump up. I do not hover over her, in fact I usually step well away from the table and she does just jump up and gets into a position and holds it, and she releases with a blast, it is just she waits for me to get there and to resay to jump on the table. I figure that is about all we can handle in addition to all the classes we have this week. The last week of classes for a long time ;-(.
Hopefully we can get some things worked on during our classes this week, but I am not looking for huge things to happen before this weekend at the trial and I am leaving a few more weeks open for training before we get another trial lined up. SOOOOOOO Friday and Saturday are the big days of the next two trials. Friday esp. promises to be a real scortcher, I am dreading that. The trial is at the same place and Friday is going to be a one ring at a time trial, so it will be a little more low keyed and it will be easier to park and we will not have to hike in as far. Saturday is a two ring trial and will be a lot less low key and it will be way busier then last weekend or then Friday will be.