the weekend

Long time no blog!

As it happens the weekend was a busy one with both a double obedience trial and Top Dog on Saturday and a double agility trial and Top Dog on Sunday as well. Both days we were just watching and cheering on a few folks we knew who were entered but it was soooooo nice to see so many amazing dog and handlers out there working their best! All of the Aussie's I saw there and their owners did well and I was pretty impressed with how the dogs were all giving their owners a lot of heart in their work! Even when there were mistakes made, you could see the work put in as a team and the partnership and that the dogs were happy to be there working with their person. What we saw of the Top Dog ceremony was very impressive! We didn't get to watch much as DH had a work meeting we had to be at but the dogs and handlers there were very, very nice indeed.

We went back Sunday to watch the agility as well. So many nice performances and some nice examples of handling! Particularly those who were wsorking their dogs at a distance was very nice to see for me. The courses, from my rather novice point of view, seemed to be a nice mix, they had decent flow but also had some real challenges as well where the handlers skills and their ability to be a team with the dog really came into play. There were several times I saw what otherwise were DARN impressive runs get snagged and the handlers had to be very much on their toes!

For my part I had a great time just watching everyone and learning from the nice handling I saw in the more advanced classes. We got in some time working with Si-si ringside and got to catch up with several people as well. Nic came and got to enjoy the day as well and Laurent came and enjoyed it until he was exhausted... and refused to go to sleep because there was too many people and dogs to watch! ;-) What a fantastic day! I am so jazzed and just can't WAIT to train some more until we're back out there on the weekends and having fun competing!

Monday was mostly spent cleaning and recovering from the weekend and today I spent half the day gardening! I still have heaps and heaps more to do but now that the weather is being civilized I'm enjoying being out there in the sun... hopefully Laurent will start taking NAPS again so I can ahve my hour a day to clean and garden again!