My goal for deuce is to get to as many seminars as I can possibly afford while he is young and we are in full training mode. I enjoy getting him in different situations to see how he will handle it, especially because he does seem to be having a slight stress issue. The more rewarding we can make training and agility, the better and the more situations we can do it in, the better.
Saturday morning dawned way to early, with all the dogs thinking we were getting up to go to a show. They had predicted that we might get a wintry mix but in Wamego, it wasn't doing a darn thing so Deuce and I headed out. The road actually seemed wet once we got to Topeka, which I thought was a good sign, even if the temps were way below freezing. As long as the water is on the road, we are okay right? WRONG! The water hitting my windshield, that i mistakenly thought was coming from the road and other cars was actually coming from the sky and even thought it wasn't freezing on my windshield, it was everywhere else. In a way, I am glad I didn't know till I was almost there and there were wrecks every few feet. It really didn't hit me till I had to pull off and pee and I almost busted my ass walking from the car to the convenience store. Lori called to check on me and that was when I went into full fledged panic. I think the last 20 minutes lasted almost an hour and I crept about 10 mph the whole way. Then my stupid GPS took me to the wrong address and I had a break down in the parking lot of where ever it took me. Luckily, we were only a right turn away but my nerves were FRAZZLED! Luckily, everyone that attempted to come came, even if some of us were late. Other than the parking lot of ice (aptly named the parking lot of doom), got in and got started.
It was really nice because most of the dogs were young so we got to work on alot of the same issues. We had several tough sequences where Lori said we had to do them one way or another and then we tried it our way and her way. Of course as usual, her way worked the best, although I did like the sequence where i did 5 front crosses in a row LOL! We all learned so much and I for one have a ton of skills to work on. I am really jealous of those who have that building for working their dogs. While it isn't huge, the footing is nice and the chance to work at any time of the day or night regardless of weather would be SO nice. We did do a very hard sequence at the end that I did see some stress from Deuce in. The funny thing was I was trying to handle a threadle out of the weaves to a 270 that we had previously done as a 270 but this time we were only doing the first part and then pulling through to do the a-frame and I as a handler wasn't getting it. He must of read my body language or something because he decided I wasn't fun anymore and he left me for a lady that was standing watching. Got him back, told him over and over how awesome he was (he had just gotten a very hard weave pole entry several times over as I tried to figure myself out) and then got through that part successfully with lots of reward. Wish we could have done more weave drills but I learned alot from what we did. Wished we could have done that whole sequence more than just once as it was the hardest one we did, but we were out of time. All in all, learned alot, got to see some awesome young dogs figure some hard stuff out, and was very proud of Deuce's weave poles as he got all of his entries. This was very close to a show as it was a new place, the dogs were super excited and barking and whining and we waiting in a semi-sort of line so the dogs I think thought we were at a show. Add in our nerves as everyone was watching each of our runs so you got that show type feeling. Other than the very end, I was proud at how deuce handled the stress of it all. Other than the last sequence where I was screwing up, didn't see any of that running past stuff unless I didn't Q it correctly. The most important part I learned from the whole seminar is that baby sitting ANYTHING does you NO favors and it is better the keep your body language consistent but maybe make the exercise easier for the dog, not baby sit it and allow your dog to lay on that crutch.
Thank goodness by the time we got done, the roads were better and we could all go home safely. Had a fun lunch with some ladies that I don't know really well but would like to and hit the road. Still took it a little easy going home. Now of course waiting for the stupid snow to melt once again so we might be able to practice some of the things we learned. We have a show this weekend so another crack at open and another crack at figuring each other out as a team. FUN!!!!! Drug a jump in the house tonight, waiting for it to thaw out a little so I can drag it upstairs and work on some little one jump work.
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