Tuesday, March 31, 2009

A weekend of agility and herding

Kant and I spent Friday and Saturday in Albany at an AKC agility trial; Echo came along for the experience of the show. Kant and I had a great weekend. Every run was great and I felt we were a team. We qualified and finished our Excellent A Jumpers with Weaves title on Friday; now we are in Excellent B in all 3 classes. You can watch the run here.
In our other runs we made very minor errors but when you are in Excellent in AKC you have to be perfect. But Kant was listening and doing everything I asked and I was very happy with her. I am looking forward to doing the NADAC trial this weekend.

Echo did great meeting and greeting people and being as cute as ever. And she helped me shop and did great in the big crowd.

Sunday Lora’s Rocking Dog Ranch turned in to a working dogs party. The first time Echo and I went out she was doing great on her flanks and fetching and we are still working on the ‘stand”. After finally getting a few stands we ended that session. After doing some chores, talking to Lora, and thinking of ways to help Echo understand what I wanted on the stand we went back out for another little session. She started out a bit pushy but settled very nicely. I got her stands much faster and we ended after a couple great stands. And then it was Kant’s turn to herd. Last Tuesday I spent a wonderful learning day with Lynn Leach at Brigand’s Hide-out Sheep Camp and this was the first time Kant had herded since then. I wanted to work with Lynn to get some more strategy on a cross drive. I learned a lot about inside flanks and that Kant needs more work on that to be freer flanking and that should help with the coverage needed for a cross drive. Kant has a nice outrun but her lift is too pushy so Lora is helping me work on cleaning that up and again that should help with a cross drive. Overall it was a perfect day of working dogs, talking with friends, the sky was blue, the grass was green, and the baby lambs are TOO cute! And I had two tired blue dogs.

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