Life is great!

That is what Able is saying here I am sure :-) I absolutely cannot believe that Able is almost 12 years old, yet he lives everyday as if he were a spry 2 year old! He lives for the daily walks, he revels in the daily toy tossing games he plays all by himself, and, he especially enjoys the fact that he is still the boss around here.
I know how he feels, I love to hike, I revel in the daily dog training that I get to do when I am actually at home, I completely enjoy every student I teach and every seminar I instruct, but, I am not going on 12, I just turned 43!
Where did the years go, I swear I can still remember whining about how high school was never going to end and I was never going to be old enough to drink! Well, high school has come and gone, as a matter of fact I could have gone through another entire school career starting at Kindergarten and I would still be out.
I am finding that my joints and muscles talk to me a lot more, OK, they actually yell at me pretty much all of the time now:-).
The really funny part is that I feel like a 21 year old in my head, I just wish my body would cooperate!
No matter though, as I write this I am already thinking about the dog show that I get to play in tomorrow and I am reflecting on the awesome training sessions that I had today with Maze, SoBe, Merger, Danger and Vintage! Yes, all of those dogs require my body to work better than it seems to want to right now, that is what we call mind over matter. I have a killer case of plantar fasciitis that just will not go away, yes, I have finally called and made an appt. with a podiatrist. This affliction seems to be causing all sorts of compensation pains throughout my very young, athletic body, OK everyone, stop laughing!
I refuse to give in, however, and although I seem to be feeling my age physically a bit more these days, I refuse to let a few aches and pains slow me down. I am pretty sure that it sounds like I am whining but in actuality I am simply coming to terms with the fact that agility is as hard on the human team member as their canine counterpart and it is truly time to start trying to take care of myself at least half as well as I do the dogs. I say this on the eve of Wallys chiropractor appt. where we will not only be working on Wallys sore muscles but discussing which cold laser I should buy.
I am pretending that i am buying it for the dogs but I am planning on some serious laser time for myself as well! SoBe was massaged 3 times last weekend at the agility trial, Wally had a ride to see another massage therapist here in town while I was away and today I had a massage of my very own!
Pretty soon we will all be doing dog and handler appts. for all procedures! I plan on running agility for many, many more years and I am requiring my body to hold up so that I can still get all of those front crosses on all of my fast dogs! Life IS great and the time that I spend running around like a loon playing with my dogs, roller skating with my family, riding my horse, hiking the hills around my house, and just generally acting like a kid will definitely keep me young at heart!