Training Thoughts (Again)

Dylan and I are going on a training day in a week or so, which I’m quite looking forward to. It was a tough choice over whether to take Kim or Dylan, but the session is for Grades 1-4 and I don’t think Kim will hugely benefit from that. We’re both comfortable tackling the courses and sequences that you find at Grade 4 or below, and I think we’d benefit more from a G4+ type session. Plus Kim is just Kim, we’re not going to make huge improvements now.

Of course, the other reason was that Dylan had his dogwalk fall and hadn’t been back on one when I signed up. I was very worried that if he was still underconfident or anxious about the dogwalk, going to a training day with multiple dogwalk options would only over-face him and make him worse. I know that Dylan does better if he has time to come to his own conclusions, at a slow pace, so I really wanted to avoid that. As it happens, I braved -3 temperatures and hellish ice roads to get to training this week to see if Dylan would do the dogwalk, and he did. He’s actually better now than he was before, much more confident and drivey into his FP. I’ve always maintained that a break can be the best option to overcome a problem, and it looks like it’s worked again. We’ll see how he does at EMDAC this Saturday but I was very pleased with him.

Speaking of, EMDAC this Saturday! I’m really looking forward to getting in the ring again, especially as one of the classes is TFO which is my favourite Games class. I know I say that a lot, but I really do love it! Dylan has only done TFO once before and we got a dismal score of 3 (!), but Kim’s highest score is 23 or 24, I think.

Bit gutted though as we haven’t got in at Doncaster flyball in 2 weeks time. I’m missing my flyball fix to do agility this weekend and next, and I was looking forward to hitting the turf at Donny again with the hounds. We’re definitely in at Rotherham though on the 8th, with 5 teams (!), and I’ve heard a rumour that we might have some long-absent dogs and handlers back in the gang too.