Hello!

We must have left the cooler weather in Washington!

We did bring some fun exercises back and plan to set them up for class on Wednesday.

See you then.

A Very Busy Day

Lots of fun handling games were introduced to the working teams today. It was a good thing we had blue skies all day since we worked outside on the grass. Some of the dogs and handlers may even find themselves in a video that is being worked on.

Tomorrow is contacts and weaves. If it's anything like today we will be busy. We head home in the evening.

Has Anyone Been Checking The Blog?

We've been busy working the dogs, writing notes and absorbing lots of good information. The dogs are having a good time too!

A Day Off

Today we had a day off to enjoy the outdoors with the dogs. It is raining on and off. This morning we took the dogs to a park where Jennifer, Kerry, Lea and sometimes Ube went swimming. Echo and Coffee played along the waters edge wading in up to their elbows retrieving cookies. ALL of us are resting this afternoon before we begin 5 days of foundation and puppy work plus weaves and contacts. Donna and I had two great days working Masters Handling exercises with Inc and Echo. Lots of fun challenging exercises to share when we get home.

Are We There Yet?

The slide show begins with photos of Ube who got to ride in the back seat. He had a "spot" on the floor but would occasionally pop up to ask "Are we there yet?" No wonder -- we left home at 9:30 and drove until 10:30 last night! That left us only 2 hours to drive today. We checked out the town and drove to see Argus Ranch. See the photo of the large covered arena where we will be working Echo and Inc tomorrow. After settling into our motel we let the dogs play and stretch their legs in the field next to the motel.

It is beautiful and green up here and warmer than expected!

How Sweet It Is!

Helen Marie and Magnum were entered in Obedience and Veteran Sweepstakes at the recent Brittany Specialty in Vallejo. Magnum who has his UDX was off to a rough start in Utility B with a non qualifying score but managed to surprise his handler in the next two events. Here is Helen Marie's brag.

I haven't seen a qualifying Open [obedience] performance from him in years, he usually blows the sit stay and IF he makes the sit stay it is only because he has blown one of the other exercises. OK, we have no chance for the Obedience award. He does a beautiful - albeit typical Magnum - job in Open with slow, moon the judge drop, sneezes and nose touches on his fronts. We go in for sits and downs and when I came back from the sit stay he was STILL SITTING!!!! Amazing!!! Coming back from the down stay he almost moved but held it and we qualified. One of five.

Well, I know my boy, one of five puts us fifth, and with the fourth place dog getting a 196 I knew we weren't getting anything higher...BUT he did score a 190 which is one of his personal bests and of course we got the High Scoring Obedience Brittany trophy!!! YES!

We went over to the conformation ring where we did our thing in Veterans, the judge was impressed by my 12 year old physical conditioning and good teeth. Magnum got lots of applause, which he loves, as he gaited around the ring. He got his ribbons and toy and I got a check! WOW! AND we were presented with the Obedience trophy while we were in the ring for Veterans.[see photo]

It was a really great day! Magnum is sound asleep under my computer desk, but he deserves to be snoozing and snoring. ;-}

Truely An Inspiration

Check out Susan Garrett's Blog
http://susangarrett.wordpress.com/
The June 7 post and the video in the comments section of the June 6 post have some truely inspirational video. You may have seen videos of Donna Rock doing obedience work. If not, you are in for a surprise.

For those who are not familiar with crate games, here is what is going on. The object is for the dog to sit when your "hand" touches the crate door. Once the dog sits, you open the door and feed the dog a cookie - high and in the back of the crate. During the teaching process you "step" on the leash when you release the dog so he cannot wander. You then wait for him to decide to go into the crate on his own. Once he does you feed and repeat the process.

The second video shows Donna's young border collie and her older Doberman doing some obedience work. To find the agility video in the comments section of the June 6 post you can quickly scroll down until you see the video picture. Here she is using a tug toy to reward the dog instead of just spitting food as she had done with her obedience training. Pay attention to the excellent timing of her front crosses. By the way the BC is only a year and a half!