Retired??

I'm about 90% of the way toward retiring both Kittie & Abby from agility.

It's a sad decision to have to make with Kittie, because she loves agility, and can be really fun to run, but I'm afraid she's going to hurt herself due to what we believe is a problem with her depth perception. I'd love to bring her out for tunnelers, or touch and go in CPE or nadac sometime, but after the parkersburg trial on new years weekend, I really do think she's going to be retired from AKC competition.

It's a tough decision with Abby too, but after trying everything I can think of....time off, more steady competition, never fixing mistakes, always fixing mistakes etc etc....she just isn't cut out to compete. the trial environment is way too much for her, crating out of the car is worse. It's such a shame because she could be quite good and seems to enjoy running in classes. I probably will still run in practice here and there...who knows maybe I'll try her at a trial again, she's only Five, too young to retire, but too old to be acting like a baby-green-dog in the ring. Five should be a good point in a dog's agility career. Every dog doesn't need to compete, it's supposed to be fun and it clearly isn't for her...even though she tends to stress high and people tell me how much they love watching her, it's still stressful for her (and me).

On other news, Indy earned her AX title, she's now in EX B standard. We still need all three legs in Ex A jumpers. One little thing in each run, but she's doing beautifully, I watched the videos of her runs from this past weekend and even the ones with mistakes are so fun, there's such joy in that little dog when she does agility.