highs and lows

Rupert and I have done quite a lot over the past few weeks and I have really begun to feel his silly pole knocking was a thing of the past.  Again at Chippy training on Thursday we only had one pole all night, and that was on a tight turn where I over commanded, I wasn't at my best, making silly mistakes which sent him off in the wrong direction but overall I was looking forward to the Bitz show on Saturday.

Now although I love these indoor series I have not really been a fan of taking Rupert, mainly because of the close proximity of the dogs and lots of novice handlers that walk around with their dogs on long leads not even noticing what the're doing, and the tighness of the rings, however as our training has been going so well I thought I'd do some training in the ring.  His start lines are excellent, he is really calm which gives me the time to concentrate on the course rather than worrying about what he's doing, his contacts were fine, he even had a brilliant first time see saw which I was thrilled about, but poles and my handling was a bit pants!! Unfortunately as sometimes happens one of the judges really hadn't thought about the room she had in her ring and had a fast flowing jumping course with very mismatched distances, not ideal for a dog with pole knocking issues!! so I decided to work on a flick away from one tunnel to the next which I am very pleased to say worked beautifully :-))  Amy gave me a little pep talk before the last class as my handling had been a bitt off (for a few days really) and I still wasn't feeling quite right on the start line of the steeplechase. I can't quite put my finger on why?? but anyway we had a very nice run, I managed to get into the positions I had wanted and we only had 1 pole which I knew he would as he was approaching it, I was in the wrong place and spoke to him as he was taking off! so he didn't really have a choice. But we came away with lots of posotives.

Just a little rant!  In obedience you cannot take your judges exam untill you are in Novice (same as grade 3) why is this not the same in agility, just as an example - if you run only small dogs and you are in  grade 1 how can you judge a higher grade in large? yes the judging system is the same (a fault is a fault) but where does your course design experience come from? 

On a lighter note LOL  yesterday we had RAIN and lots of it, I stood in it for 3 hours and spent a lovely hour just me and Rupert, I back trained his dogwalk again, we looked at forward focus and we had a game with the target stick, what a happy dog I have to be so focussed in the freezing rain, he then rewarded me by rolling in somthing unmentionable!  one very smelly happy dog.

We are now on countdown till little Brucie comes home, Amy will be collecting him on Saturday morning while i'm training and then I hve puppysitting duties that evening so I can have him all to myself!..