Sunday, March 17, 2013

WHEEEEEEEEEEEE

What a smelly weekend!

New class started Friday night!
Crazy location -we were between dogs barking in the adjacent hall and dogs barking waiting to get picked up for day care. It was a wee bit chaotic to say the least. But it was a hoot and a half! The dogs all started working for scent very quickly  and  the handlers show good natural relaxed handling! Some very perceptive folks in the group too.

Then today was the last agility class. (It was hilarious - let the participants make up their own course to introduce in a no stress way the notion of crosses. Let them play with that for awhile.) Again good handlers; great dogs!

Then ran my first Designated Odour Test with wintergreen. AMAZING dogs. 7 seconds - 20 seconds -bing  bang boom. Was so proud of the handlers - across the board they all worked hard to read their dogs. Some super distinctive alerts too. Handed Sheila Sally's leash and suggested they try it. No sweat at all. Sal was just delighted to be playing; didn't worry at all about the fact it was aunt Sheila instead of me!


Good great fun weekend - just a wee bit tired now!

Saturday, March 09, 2013

oh here comes spring!



and sproing!





Lovely walk/atv run at farm today with the youth! Snow is still deep for the oldies to battle through it but Yen , Sam and Sally had a blast helping us cut wood then running to the ridge for a rest ...

talk about SACKED now tho!

Wednesday, March 06, 2013

It Really Didn't Matter

The internationalization (what a word!) of agility seemed mighty irrelevant in my life until we were asked to blog about the topic as part of our quarterly blogger day.

I play agility. I love agility, don't get me wrong, I was hooked before I had a dog I could share agility with and I am quite sure the game will be a part of my life for many years to come. I spend quite a bit of money on coaching, learning and participating at trials locally. That said, I can't see a time where I will be regularly traveling internationally to play this great game.  I am a backyard player who is excited if I can fit more than 5 days of trials into my life in a year.

So when the awesome Steve posted the topic I thought that I had nothing to say on the topic and might even not participate. Mulling it over I realized that internationalization of courses here could contribute to better attitudes for handlers. As courses get more complex are handlers going to rise up to the challenge and understand that one mistake on a run doesn't ruin a run? That mistakes are opportunities to learn? That an error made can be a cause for celebration? I sincerely hope so.

The flip side of that frightens me. Humans getting angry at dogs for holes in training; dogs being over faced/over challenged for the sake of 'getting it'; possibly a sense of failure if courses universally get 'too hard' . Starters courses should be fun places to play and learn how a dog may change in a trial setting. In the AAC we have a class called Challenge that is designed to let those who want to play at the most complex level do so. In my part of of the world there seems to be a great divide about these courses- people believe that the courses are way too hard for them or they think everything else is too easy. Many trials locally have either stopped offering the class or only offer one as people seem afraid of it.  I hope the attitude changes and the class starts filling up with people wanting to test their skills and find the holes!

I'm looking forward to checking out what other people have to say on this topic - we are an eclectic bunch on the agility bloggers group some folks have less experience than me -others trial around the world regularly. it should be a fun couple of days of reading - here is the LINK again if you want to see what people are doing!

Perhaps internationalization will help people grasp this concept too:


I can but hope.