Wednesday, September 28, 2011

2012 Agility nationals

Indy earned QQ # 6 a while back.....which means she's qualified for nationals and we're going!!

I went back and forth about it....should we, shouldn't we, are we really ready, will she do well, it's really far, it's really expensive blah blah blah, but I finally just stopped and decided, we are going.

It's almost always far away, what difference does it make once you get on a plane!
We are ready, she has just as good a chance as any other dog there to do well
I can't think of a better excuse to take a vacation
We still have lots of time to improve

Friday, September 9, 2011

Been busy

We've been busy lately. Not with anything out of the ordinary, just enjoying some cooler summer weather.

We took all of august off from agility trials, although I did a bit more training than I normally do.

I went to a Lanny Bassham mental management seminar. I've never been one to get nervous, I don't know if it's because of my years competing in gymnastics or performing in ballet. but when I'm at a trial it's all about me and my dog. I just try to do my job to help give them the best experience as possible. Making it fun and making sure they always know where they're going as quickly as possible......but I don't know that I'm the best at setting appropriate goals and really making a plan and working towards them. I also tend to be very hard on myself, and brush off compliments. I'm really working on improving this.

We had our first trial since our break last weekend, and I'm pretty happy with how we did. I took some chances with things, some worked, some didn't, but I think it's important to do things that are outside of your comfort zone. You get stuck in rut and really limit your dog if you let yourself be afraid to try new things, and now is a great time for me to try new things. Indy is still a baby, not even three, but really loving everything about agility.

I set a goal to improve our average yps in both std. and JWW and we made great progress. all of our Jumpers runs were over 5. yps, with one run being 5.6

We're going to try to go on a longer all-day hike this weekend and then we have 3 day trial next weekend.

Hoping for Fall to come soon. I love Fall!