Expectations

The weather has been so bad all week that our training field is flooded, once again, so no flyball training today. That’s why I haven’t been able to take any photos recently either, I can’t take the camera anywhere because it’s always raining.

It’s Rio’s first training day tomorrow, I’m quite nervous. Mainly because it’s outdoors, and she’s never done any agility type training outdoors, but also because it’s 90mins long and I’m pretty sure she won’t last that long. She is a super puppy for working with, but when she’s switched on, she’s really on, and on constantly. She does this during her 30min class on Tuesdays. She doesn’t switch off between exercises, so although she might only physically be working for 5-10mins, she’ll be mentally working for the whole 30mins, attempting to get me to engage with her. I love that about her! I’m actually not too concerned if she doesn’t last the whole session, I will still get a lot of information and ideas from watching the other dogs and handlers work. We’ll see!

It’s also a Foundation class, which means it could be full of puppies like Ri*, or a lot of adult dogs; as Rio is only just 8 months so she could be the oldest or the youngest in the class. If it’s a class of puppies, I think her attention span will probably be shorter, since puppies seem to have a collective attentiveness, which decreases by 10 with every 1 puppy added to the group. A room of ten puppies has a collective attention span of zero, I’m pretty sure that’s scientific fact.

Actually, having written all that, I’m now feeling quite excited about it too. Look at all the new things Ri will get to experience, and all the things I learn about her in the process. This is the fun bit!

*I don’t know how people read this (?) but that’s supposed to be pronounced Ree. But typing Ree doesn’t seem like shortening Rio at all. She gets called Ri a lot, or Ri-bean, which is also hard to type because Ribean looks a lot like Ribena. I did not think this through when I named her.