Went to the golden retriever club trial this past weekend. It's held at my favorite trial venue, the Pittsburgh indoor sports arena. Field turf, LOTS of room around the rings and for crating, air conditioning, a creek to play in near by and it's only about 20 minutes from home. Sadly this was the last trial of the year being held there.
Indy picked up another QQ on Friday, we messed up our standard runs on both sat. & sun. On Sat. I front crossed at the end of the dog walk, (late I'm sure) and she didn't pick up on it and ended up behind me, and we danced around for what felt like 5 seconds with her behind me, not knowing where the heck she was supposed to go. Then she came off the table. On Sunday, I was too focused on her finishing the weaves (she did) that I had no idea where I was and pulled her off the correct jump. She did get 2 Ex B JWW legs though, finishing her MXJ title!!
Indy hurting her back has got me really thinking about conditioning, and proper warm up/cool down I always do a fair bit for conditioning, but I'll admit I'm not great about warming up. We just go from crate, walk around a bit, maybe do a few tricks, tug a little and off we go.....afterwards is just about eating a jackpot of chicken and then (whenever possible) getting away from the trial a bit to go chase her ball for few minutes, a short walk and then she sometimes hangs out with me for a little to watch agility or just goes back to her crate to rest a bit. Now I'm wondering if there are some specific things we should be doing, and there are a ton of things on the market to buy......this is big business.
I imagine the whole products for performance dogs is a relatively small market, but seriously there is a product for every possible problem you or your dog may have. Products to calm them, to perk them up, reduce stress, fix all manner of structural/muscular injury. You can set up a whole gym worth of equipment for your dogs. I'm not saying any of this is a bad thing, we've used a lot of these products, but some of it does bother me a bit. There's a vibe of "my dog doesn't like agility, so I need to fix it with special powders, drinks and pills" when rather it's probably a training issue or an actual physical problem. People get desperate though and our society loves a quick fix.
I'm off to shop for canine conditioning and stretching dvds. Now that I'm closer to 40 than 30, I find I need to stretch (when did this happen?)....so I guess it would be good for the pups too.
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