Trial tomorrow and Sunday!

We have another agility trial tomorrow and Sunday in Fairfield, Ohio. Mum was late with the entry so we didn't get in on Saturday, but that's OK, we'll be able to drive back and forth, and we'll still be able to get in two days of agility! We can hardly wait.

The trial is in an indoor soccer facility, so we hope we don't have any elephant or circus animal remains and smells like we did last weekend, BOL! And of course we won't have to contend with any rain, either. Big pluses!

We got in a little practice this week in the backyard. I was a zooming freak on the jumps, tunnel and weaves. Gracie worked on her weaves, but was incredibly distracted, she popped out of the weaves a lot! Silly girl.

She hardly ever does that at practice at our trainers. Mum thinks it may be our weave poles, and the fact that our grass is really uneven from all the drought we had last summer. Sometimes Mum thinks that Gracie touches her toes on the weave pole strip with the uneven grass and gets confused. She tries to go so fast, she's not picking up her feet. So Mum is trying to get the grass to grow more, by starring at it and throwing on some chemical free fertilizer. The fertilizer will work, but I don't think the starring is gonna work, Mum!

After our little practice Gracie and I got in some wrestling and zooming. Here she is pummeling me - Mum didn't get a pick of me pummeling her, what's up with that?

So wish us luck this weekend. We are aiming to break our losing streak and get some Q's!

Weave poles?

Look! Weave poles!

No they aren't really, these are security bollards. Those removable and collapsible vehicle access control bollards to help secure your restricted access areas. You see them at parks, stadiums, construction areas and the like.

Just as we saw these at the park the other day, we got to thinking about all the different things people make weave poles out of. We have a nice set of weaves that we got a couple of years ago.

But when Gracie and I both started out we used PVC pipe with the channel method. First Mum stuck them in the ground, but they left huge hole that I could get my toesies stuck in. So our trainer gave us the idea to get those really small round tall pole markers form the garden store, stick those in the ground and then put the PVC over them.

That way we could move them around the yard, and we could center them in more when learning the channel method of weaves, without worrying about big holes in the ground. It was cool!

Gracie and I did some agility today!

Gracie and I got in a little agility training today, it was warmer and not too bad outside, yeah! And since we got our new camcorder, we were able to vid some of our training.

Gracie has been working on focus with Mum, weaves, and doing a bit of distance and rear crosses. This was a nice little run for Gracie to practice all those a bit. She did great on going ahead of Mum on a jump, this is new to her. And her rear crosses look good. Her weaves are coming along nicely, but she is still working her footing along with the speed she'd like to go. (If any of you have any thoughts on her footing in the weaves, feel free to comment - we'd love to hear your opinions).

I'm not practicing much agility since I'm still doing the last bit of rehab with my iliopsoas muscle pull. And I'm focusing more on tricks to build my core and backside. Tricks like beg, sit pretty, dance and crawl; and of course I'm working out on the treadmill.

But Mum and I wanted to see how I would do for the seminar with Silvia Trkman coming up this next week. I'm doing pretty well, jumping looks good, weaves are still a little slow, but I'm definitely coming along.

Mum has decided not to put me in a trial until probably the end of March, first of April, just so that I really get mended. Hope you enjoy!

With the way things have been going, I wonder if we should look into some travel insurance for our upcoming trip to the seminar?