Playing Catch Up!

Ooops, nearly a week without a post again, I can see the number of posts are going to be dropping as we get busier and busier over the summer!

So, what has been happening this past week?

Mum was away in Bulgaria with some friends from church, painting a shelter for abused women on behalf of a charity out there called 'Mission Possible'. This left me home alone and actually, I had a very constructive week! I always seem to get a lot more done when left to my own devices...not sure why that is?!

We had beautiful weather all week so the pups got to spend a lot of time out in the garden and the dogs spent a lot of time out, I left them with the run of the yard and 'dog room' while at work each day. Road walking lunchtime and every evening with my competing collie girls and then some flyball box work and agility training after that. I gave agility training a miss on Wednesday as Teal and I were going up to Hest Bank for a Nigel Staines training evening on Thursday. By this point I had to 'vet wrap' my lower legs because of the shin splints I had inflicted on myself with the excessive road walking all week! Amazing the difference some simple strapping can make! lol

This was supposed to be a Grade 1-4 training session so I wasn't sure how much we'd get out of it as we're obviously not competing yet but it was a useful session so I'm pleased we went. I very much liked Nigels' manner with both dogs and people, very patient and very encouraging. So we have some new exercises to train at home and I have a lot more to think about. I had been struggling with Teals' seesaw still, in fact what I learned is that she totally understands her running contacts...that she has to run to the end of each piece of equipment so what I actually need to do is leave her to get on with it! We did a flowing sequence of dog walk - flik flak - A frame - jump - seesaw (ok, it was supposed to be flowing but I kept cocking up the flick flak by trying to rush it so it took me a few attempts to get it right...cue EXTREMELY patient intstructor! lol)...regardless...what we learned was....when I was running like stink alongside my little dog she was tending to leave her contacts early and only just getting them or missing them completely but when I stayed very wide of the contacts and limited how much I ran with her she nailed them every time! It's ME inadvertently rushing her that's making her do it wrong, she's more than capable of doing it right if I leave her well alone! lol This is going to be quite tricky for me because I have to start thinking very hard, about where Teal needs to go and where I need to go...i.e. not the same route...yeh, I know...that's agility handling but I'm learning ok! I think Teal could be ready to compete fairly soon, me on the otherhand.... ;)