Admiring, Baby Steps, and Distractions

This makes me feel a little better. A handler I obviously admire, a team capable of amazing things and has accomplished much despite some hardships that have struck (after the making of this video). Keeping the bloopers in. Not everyone gets it right the first time they try. It does take work. Mary's off to Canada this weekend for a seminar with Kayl. Really wish I could have gone, but I really have to watch money this year. Just sank $1800 into my car for new head gaskets, which it had been needing for a year. So I will just have to be content to absorb what I can when she gets back. Local seminar announcements for the spring are starting to roll in. Not sure I will get into J & J, but maybe if I don't, I might get into Rosanne D's or Anna Eifert's, which happen to be the same weekend which will maybe help dilute out how many people are trying to get into either one.

In other news, a slight step forward in maybe getting my connection back with Kraft in trials. This past weekend we did three days of AKC, T2B and Standard on Friday, then Standard and JWW Saturday/Sunday. 6 runs, 4 felt super connected and just how I want them to be, 2 were Q's (T2B and standard on Saturday). The other two standard runs, I just made one wrong handling choice on each and set the wrong line, but he did everything he needed to do perfectly. The two runs that did not feel connected AT ALL, the two JWW runs, he broke his start line and there was just no recovering. I verbally marked it and stopped him the first one, then continued, but we still weren't together and he blasted off into a tunnel when he should have been turning. I laughed and yelled "Naughty!" at him and he came out of the tunnel and just stood there blankly staring at me. We were almost done any way, so I just left and headed for the finish jump. I'm just not going to fight it any more if he feels he needs to walk away and think. I don't think this was him "shutting down", he just was confused about what went wrong, and he just cannot think and do agility at the same time. Doesn't mean he was overfaced, he just needs time to process, and if the run was going that badly, why not give him that time? But after that, I didn't want to correct him again for breaking, so when he broke the next day on the very next run, I just kept on going. Will probably put us back in our start line training, but it kept his confidence up, which is priority #1. If I have to get creative with start lines, I will do so. For now, it seems like one jump he can handle, so for standard I set him up very far back from the first jump and only led out just past that first jump so that when I released him, I had time to move forward and cue jump 2, and still decelerate to cue the turn to obstacle 3. Won't work with every course (since not every course has a ton of room behind jump 1 to set him up), and it will be nice to work back towards having a reliable stay no matter where I go, but for now, baby steps. I'll work around it. Will be very interested to see what Tammy's online course will look like.

And in still other news- look what came home with me Saturday from the trial!

He is Kraft's nephew and he will be staying with me for a while. He is NOT going to be permanent, I really can't add a young dog right now with everything I want to do this year with Kraft. If I get another agility dog, I want to be able to do seminars and classes and really focus on building a relationship with the new dog. In order to do that, I need to be in maintenance mode with the currently competing dog, and Kraft and I are far from that level. But a puppy to play with? Socialize? Crate train? Yes, I think that is just the happy distraction I need to stop worrying about what the heck I'm doing wrong with Kraft. He's just so stinking cute! 

So here is "Treble", officially 3BF All About That Bass