“The afternoon knows what the morning never suspected.”

It is fun to be young. Fearless, foolish and invincible. All hold their attractions. 

But there is a certain wonder in maturity too.  It's DaBAD day - and this time the topic is aging! Dogs, People whatever we wanted ! My bet is there will be lots of great ideas and thoughts on this - click  RIGHT HERE  to go to the page our fearless Steve will be updating through the day!

Within  seven years of agility blog entries I have both seen my canine partners age and gotten a little older myself. (Hey a girl can dream right?).

I have reflected on Brody's aging here  (way back in 2009) and Sally's recent episodes have driven home the fact she is no longer anything but middle aged. Brody is over 13, Thea is 10 and Sally is 7.  I am much more than the combined total of all of them. And yet we all have fun. In fact I truly believe that, episodes aside, we are actually in better shape than we were when the blog started. 

Why? 

We 

are fitter - the foray into competitive agility has fueled a thoughtful, organised approach to being fit - farm 'gility, hill work, a little obedience, fartleks, road walks  all help the dogs, add in riding horses and bikes for me and we have it pretty well covered!

cross train both our fitness (see above) and our brains; learning scent work, meeting horses has all been great for the dogs of all ages, working outside of my normal gig (and outside) has been wonderful for me and I think the dogs have benefited too 

eat better, less processed food  - the dogs currently eat a limited ingredient kibble with home sourced enrichment  (our organic apples and tomatoes are real hits with everybody - Sally gets our fresh laid eggs twice a week). I think about adding supplements and would (and have) if there was need but generally we are (touch wood) in good health. I am feeding Brody carrots quite often  in the hopes that the wives tales about them being good for sight are true    because he loves them. 

spend more time together so it's easier to notice little things and treat them -  and of course we've had seven more years together so we all know each other that much better too ... so lucky! With my leave from work it's unusual for the dogs to be alone more than 4 hours in a day. 

train in brief meaningful doses - we used to go to classes once a week and that was wonderful for being social and for exposure to new things - but the power of short doses of targeted training is so evident. If we want we can work on something 4 times in a day. Readers of this blog know I am a big believer in short sweet training sessions. I think as we all age this becomes even more important.

The benefits of loving and playing with aging partners can't be overstated. I wish we had longer to love and cherish our canine friends in each stage but the aged stage is mighty special!


Aging can be fun if you lay back and enjoy it.
Clint Eastwood 

No one can avoid aging, but aging productively is something else.
Katharine Graham 

I'm a really happy person, I enjoy life. I think you see that on people. I think there's nothing more aging than misery.
Michelle Pfeiffer