Mud

Autumn is so pretty from the waist up, with all the golden trees and blue skies. From the waist down, mud.

Flyball in the mud is not as difficult as agility in the mud, so we plugged on. Kim thought the whole thing was kind of stupid, but she’s a professional so she ran paw-perfect, apart from slipping on the box a little. I’m not sure Mollie even noticed the mud, but towards the end of the session she was struggling to see the mud-caked balls in the box and we had to have a special clean-ball-for-Mollie campaign. Her eyesight is kind of noticably failing now, it’s really sad. We have said for a while that her eyes will be the reason she retires from flyball; she knows the jump rhythm and the strides to the start etc, but there will come a point where she can’t see the other dogs very well, and that’s not safe.

Dylan stuttered horrendously on his first run, and then realised he was running into his old, familiar teammate Lucy. So, perfect striding all session, despite the poor footing and the occasional slip and slide moment. It really does confirm that it’s a confidence issue, which is a relief, but also rather frustrating! Unfortunately he’s probably going to be running into Norah this weekend, because we’ve had to switch the teams around unexpectedly and it’s not been possible to put him with dogs he knows and is confident with. Circumstances that I can’t change, and the team can’t change, so we’re just having to work around them!