AX Abby!!

Woohoo!! Abby earned her AX (excellent agility) title this weekend, doing it in style taking 1st place too! She had a great time too, actually beat out some world team contenders...who knew!?

Abby's a tough little cookie to figure out. When she's really there, not too over the top or worried about something in the environment at a trial she's amazing, but it's tough to get and keep her at the right arousal level. So often, she's literally shaking before she can get in the ring. I can always tell when she's way past her ideal arousal level because she stops blinking. I do think she gets worried about the environment around her, especially at trials where it's crowded near the rings, so I had anyone and everyone feed Abby throughout the day on Sunday and I'm working my way through the exercises in "Control Unleashed" and marking her looking at other dogs (calmly of course) it seemed to really help. I also decided to ditch a lead out with her. I'm not sure if that's going to be a permanent change, or just something to play around with, I'm thinking about it and plan to write more about lead outs in the near future. Anway, I'm just thrilled with this little girl!

CLANG, CLANG!!! aaaawwwww. That was the sound of Kittie's runs this weekend. All beautiful, every single one of them would have been 1st place finishes, but every single one had at least one bar down. Ugh, the points we lost this weekend! I'm not sure I'm going to run Kittie anymore at this particular building, the floor is a bit slick and there are big colums in the building and the course is set around those colums, so in just about every course there are jumps, where I disappear from her sight for a split second behind the colums, and every single time the bar came down and then she starts to worry, and she stutter steps and flings herself at the jumps becuase she's really trying to keep the bars up, but doesn't know how to fix it. Poor kid! This building isn't good for her mental health, but I'm not sure if not running her there, if I take Abby to run would be good for her either.