a plog

Been gone too long.  Parenting, running and now back to agility training is taking all of my time.  I sat down after the debacle that was the USDAA show and wrote down several training plans and i just never finished them or published them.  I do feel like I am moving in the right direction with what we are doing.  I did get to my friend's barn last week and got some good practice in but this week I can't go unless I drag the rugrat along which makes for a long and usually unproductive night.  I did enter another USDAA show in Lincoln NE and I am going to enter another AKC show in april.  I am not giving up even though many think I am.  I did enter one day of a local trial last weekend.  Tony had a class that saturday or I would have entered both days.  Once again, same venue and even though the club made a very big effort to remedy the solution, the sand that was brought in was pretty deep and made running tricky.  Deuce had a horrible JWW for about the first four jumps, then we regrouped and we had a smoking run after that.  Because of the surface, I tried something new and I was unsure and I think he felt it and ran unsure.  The most important thing about the run was that he had 0 bars and that made me super happy AND he had a beautiful weave entry.  The standard run was more together but he ran past a jump.  Someone watching said he hit a deep spot on his take off and scraped jumping the jump and crashing it and chose to go around it and I am okay with that.  He finally is learning self preservation and I am good with that.  He got a very tough weave discrimination and his contacts were awesome!  He had two bars I think and of course wrong course but I will take that.  I walked away feeling better about entering shows and not wasting money.

Our snow is finally melting so I did get my 8 miles in after the show.  It was tough, the wind was pretty brisk and killed my pace and I am sure that the taco johns I had for lunch didn't help.  I just wanted to get my miles in anyway so I was glad to be done.  Stella was glad to be out too!  This week is suppose to be amazing till tonight so I will probably do back to back runs to get them in.  It is suppose to storm tonight and then snow tomorrow.  I am not going to believe it till i see it.  Right now it is sunny and warm and that is all that matters.  

Here comes trouble is right.  He is always on the move now.  Most of his pics are blurry.  We are getting excited to start the new preschool in a week and a half.  He is all about problem solving right now. He is also getting very hard to sleep with so we are working diligently to get his room done so we can try and transition him to a toddler bed in his own room.  

Here he is figuring out to use the step stool to get on the bed.  Every day is a day of learning new things and new words. We now say the words cheese and please and bath and all the dogs names on a regular basis.   We are also dealing with the typical toddler emotions and phases.  So far we have made it through the biting stage, the hitting stage and now we are in the throes of the throwing stage.  Like any toddler, he gets frustrated when things don't work for him or don't move quick enough for him.  We are learning patience but it won't come overnight and i am sure there are many other toddler phases waiting to pop up.  He is also going through a fear period and things that didn't use to bother him at all now do.  Like loud noises.  He also seems to be reacting to scary things on tv so we have been very diligent to not let him see anything lately on tv other than his disney cartoons and the olympics or sporting events.  I am learning so much as a new parent and look forward to learning more.  

An update on the stella situation as several people have asked me.  She was doing really, really good and then had a setback.  I had week where I had to run on the treadmill for pretty much all of my runs due to weather and we were all stuck inside more and she growled at him again.  I think that what we are doing is still moving us in the right direction but I do think her exercise level and mental stimulation are a big part of this and if her needs aren't met, she gets grumpy. My hubby delt with the situation and she seems to be better this week with more exercise and mental stimulation.  She even got a nice bath after our last mud run. She gets so fluffy post bath!