This is Where We Are

Rio has moved on to Robbins Recalls in flyball, which she finds really tough. We haven’t really got to proper RRs yet, since I can’t run in the opposite direction to her, I can only walk. Running is Rio’s favourite thing, she will always choose running over box turns and definitely over stupid tennis balls. She is spitting a little early but it’s coming together now.

Agility was fun this week too. Our Aframe has been out of action as the top bolts weren’t co-operating, but we’ve finally got some new pin bolts and so there will be lots of Aframes in the future! Rio couldn’t even remember what an Aframe was initially, and then she did, and she was awesome. I love having a dog with a running Aframe again. We tried a single tight turn and she still hit the contact, and that shouldn’t really come up at G3 anyway.

I don’t want to say Rio reminds me of Kim, because that’s not quite right. Rio is very different to Kim, but they share some of the same beliefs. Just like Kim, I know that if Rio’s not barking at me on the line, she’s not ready to roll. And the running. Both Kim and Rio get a lot of joy from just running.

We also did some driving lines and she was super, she’s going up a few gears now and really running on ahead. Her jumping is looking more consistently clean as well, although she does launch hilariously sometimes as well. After having seen Dyl stutter into the long jump for years, I can only smile when I see Rio clear it from 6ft out. Not the most economical, but she’s learning to adjust and find her take off points.

We need to work on turns at speed a bit more though. She can turn very tightly and very neatly, but sometimes its wide and messy. Quite often I’m just late with the cue, but sometimes she does a silly launching jump and can’t control it through the air. Definitely on the list of things to work on. Dogwalks are currently top of the list, and that’s this week’s plan!