It's a new day...

...Not a new puppy, but a puppy still in almost every sense of the word :-) I had totally forgotten what a cute puppy Merger was! I spent a fair bit of time going through some old dog photos today. There is something about losing one of the beloved family members that inspires a trip down memory lane.

It is time to move forward though, it is a new day and it is time to really get cracking with the Merge man and SoBe DoBe DoodleBug!

Off we went to the building today and what a great time we had!

First up was SoBe, she makes it very clear that she is to be first always and it is in my best interest to oblige.

I have mentioned in past posts that I have been very much on the fence about what to do with SoBe's contacts, I have decided to go with a running A-frame and she is doing fantastic! I am really a huge fan of running A-frames and I think they are very trainable, although training is a must and you definitely have to get creative at times.

Her teeter was the best it has been today with beautiful slides fast and flying to the end of the board into her lovely "Bang" position.

Now that pesky dogwalk, which continues to be brilliant in training extremely fast and always a perfect princess sit on the end. I have seriously thought about changing to a running but will more than likely go to an early release and keep the basics that I have.

BTW, after this past weekend at the AKC trial I am an official believer in 24" weave poles. I was never opposed I just did not see the absolute necessity of 24" poles. The boys did incredibly well with them, yes they have been on 24" poles lots but it really was obvious at the trial this past weekend that they were just that much more effortless in their performance that I say why not just go with it, now we have to convince everyone :-).

Allowing myself to digress a bit after the horrible night on Thursday, I pulled myself together and double Q'd both Wally and Maze on Friday so they both get to go to AKC Nationals this year!! I am pretty excited to go as I have not been to AKC Nationals since Secret went.

Anyway, back to training, we worked some pretty difficult sequences with tough weave pole entries and SoBe was brilliant, I guess she is just brilliant all the way around :-).

Merger is really figuring out the weave poles and I believe he is actually ready for his debut this weekend in Utah at the Wasatch USDAA trial. Merger and contacts, Hmmmm.... we will call them modified running just for fun. He has adopted Wallys philosophy on the teeter and runs to the end, drops the board and moves along, I like it!

A-frame and dog walk running/moving contacts lots of reps, lots of reinforcements! His jumping is looking good too. Merger continues to be a thoughtful young man who is going to put in amazing times with minimal effort, or what will look like minimal effort. Mergers stride is immense, I am really excited about his future!

I have set some goals for next year which really helps keep my training fresh and gives me a place to go as it were. Short term goals are to get Wally and Maze all tuned up for AKC Nationals. I am also planning on taking Maze to the FCI World team tryouts in May and going to the European Open in July with Maze and Wally.

Those things along with coaching the IFCS US World team should keep me plenty busy! And, of course there are the youngsters...

Ahhh, coaching the IFCS team, I have made no secret of the fact that I was trying out this year with Maze, the good news is that he ultimately tied with 2 other dogs for the 2nd and 3rd places on the team. The bad news is that the tie breaker criteria which was a numbers issue left me in the 4th position on what will be a 3 dog 26" team. I was pretty bummed but at least I know that Maze and I did our best and that in theory we DID make the team. The other interesting factoid is that Wally, who is just about 1/8" too tall to compete in the 22" height class at Worlds ended up the top point earner of that height division! I am really proud of how well both dogs did in such amazing fields of competition. There is always 2012! For now, I am going to be very proud and happy to once again coach the US team and a great team it is!

So, for those of you who have not yet established goals for next year, what are you waiting for? Everyone needs goals, both short term and long term that is what keeps us motivated. Next post, Goals and how to achieve them! In the near future top 10 things that every trainer must teach the up and coming agility prospect, until next time...

Happy Thanksgiving, I think?

Our family did what we usually do for Thanksgiving only we did it on Tuesday instead of Thursday... You see we are not even remotely like a conventional family, my job guarantees that! OK, not always my job, sometimes what my job doubles as, which is my hobby :-) I had entered an AKC trial in California over Thanksgiving weekend which I would be flying out to on Thanksgiving night so we decided to have our Thanksgiving feast on Tuesday.

As we sat down to dinner each of us had to say what we were thankful for, it was pretty much the usual, we were thankful for each other, for our great friends, our fantastic dogs, and really just thankful for being fortunate enough to have such a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner!

The next couple of day were glorious, beautiful weather allowing for long hikes and lots of outside time with the pups.

Thanksgiving Day was no exception, as a matter of fact the weather was the nicest it has been for quite sometime! Geoff and I took the dogs for a very long walk and really got to enjoy them just being dogs. At the same time we were marveling at how Geoff's little tiny barely 10" tall sheltie could run so fast that she could keep up with the border collies. We talked about the previous night when we had taken her down to the training building and tag teamed teaching her to run across a low dog walk and A-frame and what an incredibly bright future she had in agility.

This, of course was just icing on the cake as Geoff is just so madly in love with her that it is really a non issue if she ever does agility.

We laughed at her silly antics and constant boinging straight into the air and how she had the most incredible zest for life!

These are just a few of the many things we will miss about her.

Boing passed away on Thursday night just before midnight at just barely 6 months of age... After such a wonderful morning and afternoon without warning Boing was struck by a neurological episode of undetermined reason that left her essentially paralyzed and Unresponsive.

Unfortunately, Geoff and Nick were here alone as I had already left for CA. and so he was essentially faced with this catastrophe on his own. Geoff rushed Boing to the Animal Emergency Clinic where it was determined that the anurysm or whatever it was caused her to bleed from the brain and ultimately go into cardiac arrest.

Boing was with us for a very short time but she will live on in our hearts and memories forever!

It was during this short time that we got to know her incredible howl that was her plea to Geoff to get up and get going, her insatiable desire to tug that was sometimes diverted to border collie tails when there were no toys or when they were just a better option. She had to attack all closing doors including her crate door when she was sure she did not need to be in a crate. There were so many things to be Thankful for with our little girl Boing, and so many things to be thankful for in general, but this Thanksgiving not so happy.

Hugs to all your dogs!

Long time no posting :-)

Hi All!

OK, I know it has been beyond a ridiculous amount of time since I have posted anything to the blog... I do not have a very good excuse other than the pat, WOW, have I been busy! I have not had loads of time to train the baby dogs as I have been concentrating on the "older" dogs, getting ready for Nationals, etc...

So, what has been going on, Ummmm, let's see, I have been doing lots of seminars, I think I have become an honorary Canadian citizen as I have been up north so many times the past couple of months! What a wonderful bunch of people those Canadians :-) I have to say I am never disappointed when I head up to the frozen tundra to teach, OK, it is really not always frozen, and, a good time is always had by me, if not all!!!

I do have to give a huge shout out to my friends Phil and Mary Zacharatos as they can put on a party and boy can Phil cook!!

I have also had opportunity to show my dogs a bit :-) Actually it has been a very good year for me in the agility arena, Wally and Maze have been tearing up the courses and SoBe although still pushy, mouthy and just plain naughty has already qualified for team at the 2010 USDAA Nationals and just 2 weeks ago proved that she "can" weave in a trial where she laid down a 21 second open jumpers with weaves course including starting and completing a set of 12 weave poles on the first try!

Have I mentioned lately how much I love that little dog? Oh yea, I have been missing in action so I have not really mentioned anything!

Besides having a great year in agility in general I just returned from USDAA National Championships where Wally got to play in the Steeplechase Finals and Maze got to play in both Team and GP Finals! The boys had fabulous clean runs and other than a slight face plant by Wally and the small collision between Maze and myself in GP Finals we ended up 4th in Steeple, 5th in team out of 180 some teams and, 6th in GP. Not bad I say!

The very best thing of all was the completely and totally unexpected perfectly clean and ultimately fast enough PGP semi final run that landed Able in the PGP Finals on Friday night. Ask anyone and they will tell you the most fun of all at USDAA Championships is running at night under the lights, Able will second that. He absolutely loves the big ring at night! I admit I had to tear up a bit when I was walking the course because this was the perfect way to retire Able from the Championships, thank you Able for the great runs and great memories! Don't worry he is not dead or dying, he is just too old and arthritic to jump 22" very much longer. We really need to live for the moment as the time goes all to fast and the ride ends way too soon.

What a great Nationals it was from a spectator standpoint as well. Every year the competition get stiffer and I come home with all sorts of things that I "need" to train. The sport continues to evolve and just gets more impressive every year.

Hey, I am actually going to AKC Nationals this year! I have not been to Nationals since I took Secret and I am truly excited about going. Maze is fully qualified and Wally is sitting on 5 double Q's with a 3 day trial after Thanksgiving to hopefully procure that 6th double Q. Next year I may actually have to commit a bit more time to AKC as I do love the Nationals and the pups are really doing quite well in the AKC venue.

I realize my foray back to blogging is primarily shameless bragging which I really try not to do but I just needed to :-) I promise now that I have gotten back to it there will be actual training talk forthcoming!

Geoff and I returned from Nationals last night and although I have several lessons today and am of course exhausted I did manage to get a little training in with the Merger man.

After watching all of the incredible running contacts at this years nationals I am determined to get Merger running his contacts, so off we trudged to the building today ready to do a bit of analysis trying to figure out exactly how I am to accomplish this very daunting task with Merger the giant! Well, although I have been working on a stride collection cue on the dog walk for a short time I certainly did not believe that he has yet developed a behavior on the walk that would have anything to do with the steady command I have been incorporating. I was absolutely dumbfounded when he ran the dog walk at speed with a voluntary stride collection at the bottom, both directions :-)

His teeter has evolved into a thing of beauty and the A-frame is most certainly coming along. Weaves are nice and getting better all the time, and his jumping is really awesome!

As a matter fact I entered him in his very first AKC trial in JWW only as a test run and he was brilliant! He Q'd in both runs and the courses were vastly different a really great test of where he is at. The course on Sat. was very open and flowing and the course on Sunday was practically a grid exercise for Merger with a 4 jump pinwheel taken twice. He judged his jumps perfectly and adjusted accordingly.

He had a perfect stay on the start line and was completely at home in the trial environment, playing and acting as if there were not tons of people and dogs all over the place. I was very proud of him!

OK folks next time we talk training!