First Training of 2011

I did not stick to my well-thought out resolutions. The road to hell is paved with good intentions and all that. I had some lovely courses to work on that were well adaptable for all the different levels of the dogs, and would give Dylan some jump workouts and some Aframe practise, which were my main concerns after Tailwaggers. Sadly though, lots of people had to miss training this week so I ended up setting a different course, it was too much hassle to set up the Aframe with only two of us to put it away. I must be stricter with myself next week!

Dylan’s jumping really does look fairly atrocious right now. He’s reverted to taking off way too early, although after a bit of work this noticably improved towards the end of our session. I don’t think this is necessarily a huge regression, it’s just one of the many indicators of us having not doing any training for a while. Think I’m going to have to start getting the cavaletti out with him at home again, and doing a little more homework. It’s sad for me as I’m a generally lazy person, and thankfully Kim has always been a generally lazy dog, who actually benefits from a break or minimal training. Dylan is just the opposite, the more we do the better he is, and when I get lazy, it’s one of those oh-dear type things. I do have a good excuse this time, to be fair, considering the snow and the ice and the Christmas and so forth.

We also did some focussed seesaw work, which went well with both dogs. Kim has never been very confident on the seesaw, but her confidence grows and diminishes depending on what mood she’s in (which kind of makes sense, I suppose). She did some very nice ones for me this week anyway, so hopefully we can keep that up. Speaking of Kim (and seesaws), I think I’ve made the decision to move her to BAA Veterans. It’s been a tough decision, for all kind of reasons, but if I’m honest with myself it’s because moving her to Veterans is a very final, irreversible decision. Once BAA dogs move to Veterans, they’re in Veterans for the rest of their lives, they can’t go back to normal classes. It means I am finally accepting her age, and of course with age is But I think Kim will love it, I’m going to drop her to running over Micro height and they don’t use weaves or seesaws in Veteran classes, which Kim will definitely appreciate. And of course she’ll carry on doing occasional normal classes at KC.