Stopping To Take A Breath!

Well.. life has been nonstop crazy since mid May, and we are just now having a chance to stop for a second to get caught up. Because of my busy schedule, I have to say since our long trip to Chicago, the dogs have not gotten to do much, except for visits to Grandma's and finally last week, a private agility lesson.

Tractor is bouncing off the walls, so hopefully that energy and excitement carries over into Worlds, which is coming up in just a few weeks! Our trip to Chicago was a blast! Tractor got to do an AKC trial, a dock diving competition and all four dogs got to spend four days at Camp Dogwood!

Camp was a lot of fun for the dogs.. Tractor learned a new sport, disc! He is absolutely crazy about a frisbee now, when before we went out there, I couldn't get him to retrieve one to save his life. They also all got to swim, lure course and run amuck. It was a lot of fun and I put some pictures up on our Phanfare, so take a look.

Last week, we had our first dose of agility since May, and like last time we took a temporary hiatus, Tractor's head exploded upon arrival. All in all, it was a productive lesson, showed me that I definitely should not be taking that much time off.. its like I need to be retrained all over!

Anyway, for now, I am traveling, so aside from a few private lessons, the dogs are sitting tight until the end of July. Becky, Steph and I will be making the trek cross country once again, to Minnesota, to compete in the World Championships for Speed Retrieve. I'll try to be better about posting, but if nothing else, will definitely post an update after that.

New video from the private lesson is up on youtube, so take a look! Hope everyone is doing well!

Busy, Busy, Busy

Well, we've been nonstop since Del Mar - including another DockDog competition the weekend after in Phoenix, and then a 3 day AKC trial this past weekend here in Vegas. Its been nonstop - but at least now we'll have a few weeks off - until we pack up and make our annual long trip to Chicago to visit our good friends!

First, our weekend in Phoenix - it was a BLAST and well worth the trip down. Tractor not only came in 1st again in Speed Retrieve finals, every single score he had was under 6 seconds - and his new personal best 5.67!!!! We also worked on his EV issue, and he managed to grab 6'10'' and come in 3rd! His big air was great for him too - so we ended up coming in 4th in Pro finals and then 2nd in Iron Dog! For as much DockDogs as he did in March/April - I figured he'd be slowing down, but he put up a great performance all weekend. :)

This last weekend was an AKC trial here in Vegas, and it was again SO nice to do some agility in our hometown. I can't even begin to describe how awesome he was. He ran SO beautifully all three days, all three runs - I could not be prouder of him. The couple runs we didn't Q in, were completely my fault (of course). He pulled off 6/9 Qs, all first places - a new title (for his Open FAST) and even got to compete in his very first Excellent level class.

Next up is a month off! Yep.. we won't be doing any trialing/competitions until middle of May when we get out to Chicago. We'll be out there for 5 weeks and plan on trialing and dockdogging as much as we can while we are out there!