Just added some great agility pictures like this one to Tish’s page!
Nina is doing great, she is very mellow and cuddly, which is not unusual for this stage of her cycle, but it does seem like she is MORE mellow and MORE cuddly than usual. She is also licking everything and anything in sight – she is always a licky dog, but she is REALLY licky just now. If she is pregnant, she is three weeks pregnant as of yesterday, already a THIRD of the way through!
We had a very nice visit with my cousin Susan and her daughter Rebecca (my god-daughter) this weekend. Tish always loves having company, since she’s a social butterfly, but she was absolutely enthralled with Rebecca, sleeping on her lap and following her around and buzzing at her for pats and attention. Nina opted to sit on Rebecca’s lap and be cuddled and admired and needy rather than play with Tish and Rakki outside for a while yesterday…I hope that means she’s pregnant! I’m looking for signs and omens like a crazy person just now!
Tish earned her first AKC Q today in Jumpers with a lovely run! The timer malfunctioned, so you hear the buzzer go off before we’re finished, so we were given the option to take standard course time or rerun. I reran…won’t do that again! Our rerun was a disaster, so since you can’t do WORSE on a rerun, we ended up with standard course time anyway!
Tish JWW (first AKC Q) – look at those weaves!:
Tish Standard (she knocked the first bar, and that threw her off from the start, I opted to just work on speed and end on a really up and happy note, so I didn’t fix anything after the second try at the weaves. REALLY happy with her table performance and the speed she was showing near the end! Need to reward the teeter a TON):
THANK YOU MARI AMIOKA! I had my camera with me but forgot to ask anyone to record, but Mari happened to record us on her iPad, awesome!
Today was great, no Q’s, but Tish was really starting to work like an agility dog. Still puppy brain here and there, and inexperience, but she is working really nicely, I am thrilled with her.
Jumpers:
Standard (I told her to stop too early on the dogwalk, but she sure listened! Another teeter bail-off, we obviously have some work to do, although she’s been doing it really well and consistently in practice, but look at that table!):
Tish and I attended Western Lakes AKC agility today, Nina was completely outraged to be left behind, poor baby!
This was Tish’s first “official” AKC trial (she ran one day at the National Specialty last year, but that was just for fun, she was nowhere near ready). I was THRILLED with how well she did today! The FAST send was really hard, the Open one was easier than the Novice. She did her teeter in FAST just fine, but I could tell she was worried about it in Standard. BUT!!!! She got her weaves in Standard on her first try! You can’t quite hear it on the video, but I was shrieking with delight at her! And look at that table! You don’t make the same mistakes twice, you just make new ones…
Tish Novice FAST (look at her go!):
Tish Novice Standard:
Very happy with this one, she came back and worked after going to the teeter and dogwalk (I think she was worried about the teeter).
Yesterday we started off with a bang – Nina earned her first Open Standard Q with a gorgeous run. We scored 95, would have been 100 but her ABS failed when she hit the table at full speed and she slid off it half on her side.
Here’s her Jumpers run, would have been a lovely Q except for the bar down (Lisa apologizes for the butt shot at the beginning, her leash got stuck! And that’s not me holding her up by her collar, she was standing on her back legs trying to get going!).
(thanks Lisa for recording for me on your iPad!). No Q’s today, but we had a crazed crack monkey run in Standard, but then she settled right back for another almost-Q in Jumpers (one bar again). Really fun weekend, lovely courses, great weather!
Day 1: Nina finished her Novice Weavers title today, and qualified in Elite Tunnelers and Open Hoopers. Tish qualified in Novice Hoopers and ran a great Tunnelers run for an NQ, but a fast, responsive Personal Q!
Nina’s Elite Tunnelers Q (leg #2):
Day 2: Nina finished her first Elite title in Tunnelers (now we get national rankings!) and finished her Novice Chances title to put herself completely in Open/Elite. Tish was the star of the day – she won the Most Memorable Run award for her lovely Hoopers run last night, she’d never run Hoopers before and had only seen hoops at all a couple of times. She also qualified in Jumpers today (her second leg), went visiting in her first Touch N Go run, but came back and worked, and on her second run, she worked beautifully.
Nina’s Jackpot run, lovely run but knocked a bar in the gamble so NQ:
Tish’s Jackpot run (a Q):
I dropped Tish back down to Level 1 in Standard, to see if I could get some more speed and drive out of her on simpler courses, I think it worked!
Standard Round 1:
Tish earned her first level 2 title (CL2-S) AND her first level 3 Q (in Fullhouse). She is not trial-ready for Level 2 courses yet (weaves and teeter aren’t there yet), but I need her to start seeing weaves and teeters outside of where we train, so I will keep running her in Level 2 for now.
Nina did OK, I pulled her once for a really egregious start line stay break. We have one day of AKC next weekend, we will see how we do.
Videos to follow (I am LOVING my new Sony Bloggie camera that Santa brought me! It meets all my requirements: not so expensive that if it went walkies it would be a disaster, easy for anyone to use, takes good video).
This past weekend at Boom Towne CPE I went in with two goals (on my birthday weekend!): 1) a Standard Q for Nina (it had been over a year since the last one, admittedly I pulled her a few times for start line stay issues and the like, but still…a YEAR! She is most of the way through her C-ATCH requirements in the games, but still in level 4 Standard!) and 2) for me to run Tish properly, more like Nina and less like a babydog, so Tish could run FAST, stay in the ring and have fun (since she got rewarded for leaving the ring at the NADAC trial, she has wanted to leave at the end to see if there are cookies or playmates available). Well, in the first two runs of the weekend, my awesome dogs fulfilled BOTH my goals, so the rest of the weekend (and it was awesome) was gravy. Jeannine said she thought I was running Nina twice until she saw the Tish-tail! AND TISH FINISHED ALL OF LEVEL 1!!! She finished THREE titles (easy to do in level 1 CPE, but very motivating nonetheless!). She also came right back into the ring when I called her (she did leave, but came right back, that is a HUGE improvement even over the National Specialty). I am also mixing up how I start her – she sometimes starts faster if I carry her in and get a bit of opposition reflex happening by revving her up but not letting her go right away, but she also worked her start line stay very well. I was so proud of my girls. Jen K kindly did some Flip filming again.
Saturday:
Tish Standard (you can see me do my silly tiny-steps mince here and there, instead of running her like she’s Nina, as Jeannine keeps reminding me to do, but I opted to let her run around and explore a bit, and she did come back and work):
Tish Snooker (very nice run, a Q, and she has a send to a tunnel AND called off the off-course tunnel wonderfully!):
Nina Wildcard (this is a classic Nina-Amanda disaster, from knocking the first bar after creeping on her start, to the off course at the second obstacle, and you can hear her shrieking at me the whole time – when we run well, it’s smooth and usually pretty quiet, but when we go off the rails…this is what it looks and sounds like – nice pull to the weaves at the end though!):
