The Canadian Kennel Club just released their agility statistics for 2012. They had to rework the points system, so it was a little behind schedule. I was very excited when I checked out the page and realized Strider placed 5th in Canada! He also was the #2 Herding breed and #1 Sheltie in Canada as well. What a nice surprise! (stats can be found at http://www.dogsincanada.com/wordpress/wp-content/TSD/2012_TAD_Stats.pdf )
Spark and I continue to work on her skills. We have started a two on two off behaviour on a travel plank with a nose touch to a plastic lid. I will use this for my teeter. I would like a running Aframe and Dogwalk. But the two on two off will be a back up for the contacts if the running doesn't work. Plus I just like teaching new things at home.Spark can weave between my legs. Balance on a disc on top of four pods. We continue to work multiple wraps, send to a table with an automatic down. We have started some heads up heeling, but right now I am keeping it to a few steps at a time.
I have also started the basic skills for handling. Wraps, threadles, backsides of jumps (jump bar on the ground), start line stay, flappy tappy past obstacles, etc. The nice thing is I can teach her all these skills in my basement with no equipment or just my little Ikea tunnel and/or one jump with the bar on the ground. The tunnel is my favourite to play with. Spark is crazy about it and constantly wants to run into it. So we can work on listening for the tunnel cue (sit, down, left, TUNNEL), tight turns out of the tunnel, running past the tunnel mouth and not taking it (flappy tappy), threadle to the opposite tunnel mouth, sending to the tunnel from a distance,etc. There are so many skills I can work on with just this one little piece of equipment. It's fun and exciting and perfect since the weather has been so cold here lately. I will try and video it at some point and post it on here.
Today the weather FINALLY warmed up. Plus 7 right now! We have had about 2.5 weeks of
freezing cold weather. -20 and colder has been the norm. So the dogs haven't been getting a lot of outdoor activity. So today we finally had a chance to change that and head outside for some fetch. Here are some pictures of the dogs from today.
