Time to get serious!

 I have been spending a crazy amount of time teaching and trialing over the past few weeks and it has been a great reminder of how much I am not doing with my own dogs! I admit, I have not had the greatest motivation to do a lot of training since the building has been out of commission but it is time to get back at it.

Speaking of the building the "crew" is down vaccuuming and shampooing my carpet as I write this so I am actually going to be able to get back in the building to play by tomorrow so that is awesome! 

I am really just exhausted at the moment, it has been a crazy couple of weeks with a lot of stress, good and bad.

Besides the FRAC trial, the Jen, Dana and Stacy mini camp, the ACAT trial, building repairs ,and getting Veruca off to Becky for breeding I had the additional stress of Vandals mother Riesen's mammary cancer returning after just short of 3 months post op from the first tumor removal. Needless to say I am scared silly about what this means from a longevity standpoint for this most incredible and sweet 2 and a half year old Border Collie. 

She is having surgery today to remove the 2 affected glands and I guess we go from there.

My wonderful, awesome, dear friend Julie is dealing with all of this so that Riesen can have undivided individual attention throughout the recovery as well as constant spoiling, cuddling and treats I am sure. Prayers for Riesen would be greatly appreciated.

So... with all of that it is probably needless to say that I have done virtually nothing productive with my own dogs! And, I must also admit yesterday and today are purely days of rest and recuperation. I can whine a lot about not getting to train my dogs but I am also smart enough to know when I have to just step back and take a day or 2 to decompress. 

Just because I need a bit of a physical break does not, however, mean I have stopped thinking pretty much non stop about agility and what I need to be doing with baby dogs and competition dogs alike, pretty sad huh?

So where am I currently in the grand scheme of my goals for the year? Well, Wally, Maze and Able are all fully qualified for the 2009 USDAA Nationals, OK the "Cynosport Games", Geoffs dogs are too for that matter so those are big things checked off the list.

I have seriously been on the fence about any AKC goals, i.e. Nationals and I think I have finally decided that it is not a goal for this year. 

I have a few more AKC trials entered and if Wally and Maze happen to qualify I will most likely go but it is no longer a priority. I love the sport of agility and simply love playing the game whenever possible but I have also realized that I have made my primary goals around USDAA competition and IFCS Worlds and I really want to focus on that. 

I am also very busy teaching and traveling and traveling and teaching and I LOVE it! But... to keep loving it I have to find some "me" time and even some Geoff and Me time would be great so I am going to try to dedicate a few weekends a year to non agility related endeavors, hard to believe I know!

With this in mind I figure the smartest thing to do is put AKC n the back burner and dedicate a few of the AKC weekends to horsing around :-)

Back to the goals, in order to meet my short and long term USDAA goals there are a few things that need to be cleaned up on "the boys." 

First, I am still going to find a way to get Wallys running dog walk more consistent, when I figure out exactly how I will let you know.

Wally also needs a bit of work on staying close when there is pressure, i.e. stay on a line with me through a tight jump box, it is very hard for Wally to resist the urge to move off my side and take the lateral jump when we are running through a box, he is very pressure sensitive and these situations are tough for him.

My mission is to spend some quality time working on this over the next few months. In truth, the rest of this summer and fall will be all about getting Wally ready for Nationals so we will be training up a storm both at home and to a degree at shows.

Maze is just 1 gamblers Q away from his ADCH I am very proud to say! When he came back he was still shy 3 super Q's and 5 gambles so he has done well to close in on the prize. Mazes goals for this year are a bit different from Wallys, I am hoping to get Maze qualified for the IFCS World Championships. Wally is too tall for the 22" division so he gets a reprieve and Maze is "The dog" to try out.

I am going at this with a very positive attitude and want to keep it fun, so , although we will be training towards this goal there are others as well to keep the pressure to a minimum.

Last year I was fortunate enough to win byes on all 3 boys into the finals of the USDAA Nationals with the byes no longer available it is a 2009 goal to get all 3 into the finals from the semis.

Maze is a pretty put together dog, I think the most challenging thing in regards to training Maze is the fact that I am never sure what to train, he has all of the skills sets, consistency, accuracy and knowledge, but, his biggest issue is just checking out mentally on occasion without warning. It is a very interesting issue that hopefully will resolve itself with consistent training and more experience.

Able has been feeling pretty good of late and I think the best thing for his is the fact that I am limiting the number of runs he has in a weekend, he still gets to play but not as hard, boy getting old really sucks!

The real quandry right now is the babies :-) I will most certainly put SoBe into that classification as well as Merger and Vandal. 

SoBe had some moments of brilliance this past weekend and she definitely improved a bit in each run. She is still not quite capable of doing a lot of thinking while running so impulse control is the order of the day at this point. Contacts are still very iffy and we spend a lot of time regrouping and withholding immediacy of the next obstacle/reward on course but her start lines have improved and she is still jumping wonderfully!

She did on her very last run of the weekend nail the starters jumpers course with a blazing time of 15.85 seconds! She was on fire :-)

Lots of start line and contact/weave work awaits miss SoBe when I come out of my sleep deprivation coma!

Oh yea, it will still be a 2on/2off teeter and dog walk and a running A-frame, I think all of those choices work well for her.

Vandal is telling me that it is time to start working, all of his adult teeth have come in and he is back tugging and playing much more enthusiastically which is awesome! He and I are very bonded and he is far more interested in hanging out with me than any of the dogs or other people he may encounter. The recall is going great and his is quite reliable off leash even with a lot of distractions, all of these things point to a puppy that is ready to work with his human on more actual agility related stuff.

Merger is also growing up :-) He is learning about where his feet are and is just becoming a pleasure to work with. Merge is just innately obedient and attentive, has tons of toy drive and just likes to work he is really going to be fun, and, will most likely pass SoBe right by :-)

I am going to compile a to do list of what needs to be done with the "pups" to start moving forward and will share it with you when I do.

Until then, think good thoughts about Riesen!