Back Into it... And Swim Lessons too...

Over the last week Clover and I have gotten back into the swing of Agility etc.

Since thunderstorms caused class and Course of the Week to be canceled last week, Friday was the first opportunity to run. Teamworks had their staff picnic and the agility rings and pond were open. Michele built a dog pond with a dock, it has been open for about a month but I have never tried to get Clover to swim. On Friday I did. There were a lot of other dogs jumping into the pond and fetching balls etc. I thought maybe it would get clover excited enough to jump in, but it didn't, so I scheduled a swimming lesson for Clover with Michele. Clover has only been exposed to water one other time, and that was at the beach.

On Saturday we had a show-n-go at teamworks. It was run by the Youngsville agility club, so we could raise some money. we actually set the course up after the picnic on Friday. The weather was absolutely gorgeous day, Cool with low humidity. I ran mostly Jumpers runs on Saturday because I ran through all levels of the standard run on Friday night. When we did the standard run, Clover had a tendency to rush contacts. I am definitely going to have to work on contacts with her....still.

Tuesday morning was clovers first swimming lesson. It was interesting. Michele stayed in the water and I through the ball out. Clover just paced back and forth trying to figure out if she could get the ball without going into the water. Clover would go in a few feet and when she got to the point where her feet would no longer touch the bottom, she wouldn't go any further. Michele then carried her into the water and Clover swam just fine. She would even swim out to get the ball, but she would never take the step from standing in the water to swimming byherself. There was definitely improvement by the end of the lesson though and I think I will reschedule another one for next week.

Tuesday night we had masters agility class. It was suppose to be the third class in the session but all the other so far were canceled due to weather. Vanessa is our teacher again. We worked on a jumpers run and discussed different approaches and lead outs.

Clover has been doing extremely well on the weave poles. I don't even think about them "much" any more.

OK, Enough of this.... Let's do some Agility!

Wouldn't you believe it, we had thunderstorms again last night. It has been about a month since we have had class. Hopefully we can get back into it soon.

My wife and Clover were relaxing on the couch and I just had to take this picture!

Clover is getting lazy...

The real problem is we haven't been working much on agility. We were suppose to have class this week and it was cancelled due to rain and I had to cancel course of the week because of thunderstorms. I have been running her a little at home with the ball, just to keep her in shape and also to keep her from making me crazy. Hopefully the weather will improve next week and we can back into the routine.

Wow, Have I been slack....

I admit that it has been a long time since I posted. We have gone through 2 trials and Clover has made great strides.

The first trial was the was the Youngsville Agility Club trial held in Sanford. Here are the official results.



We only ran on one day and it went very well. I didn't even think about qualifying, I was more concerned about Clover getting her weaves. She completed them cleanly on one run, on another I had to restart her but, she did them very well. The run I enjoyed the most was the Fast class. The run went jump, jump to a jump and tunnel that were in the distance box. I lead out by standing behind the tunnel, I just made sure I was out of the box by the time Clover got in. I was extremely pleased at how well Clover performed.

The next trial was the NADAC Midnight Madness trial held at Teamworks. This trial is unique because it is held at night. It is a benefit trial for local dog rescue groups. I served as chief course builder. Clover performed well. She qualified in all the tunnelers and jumpers classes. The big news is that Clover actually obtained her first qualifying score in the weavers class! She had to complete 3 sets of weaves and did 2 of them flawlessly. I had to restart her multiple times on the third set. She must have been getting tired. She also did very well in the regular class, she had an off course but she got the distance challenge which had weaves in them! I was a little disappointed in her contacts. In the touch and go class she blatantly blew off the dog walk contact and I made her redo it and she blew it again! I took her out of the ring then. I have been please with how clover is settling down though.

We haven't had any classes for about 3 weeks and tonight was suppose to be the first class of the session, but it was canceled due to thunderstorms.