Secret = Saluki?

We were at an agility trial in La Crosse this weekend and on Saturday I had someone approach me to inquire about Secret's breed. She said she was wondering if she was Saluki, or at least partially so. I kind of laughed, that is, until I started to look at pictures of Saluki online this morning. lol Okay, maybe I can see the resemblance. Granted, we have absolutely zero idea of Secret's dad, but I doubt there are many Saluki running around loose in the backwoods of Kentucky.

Secret continues to do well and we haven't had any re-occurrence of the issue with her hind end. I discontinued the aspirin after giving her 1/2 tablet on Saturday morning. She will finish the 28 day Doxy treatment.

I gave up on trying to keep her "quiet" and let her play with Kaiser. We did a brief round of frisbee on Saturday following the trial, with mostly just rollers and short tosses to keep her on the ground. She didn't have any problems at all with this level of activity. I expect we'll start back up with low jumps this week, although it's supposed to be so blasted hot that I'm not sure we'll do much more than play with the hose!

Secret did well at the trial this weekend, but she did her fair share of barking. I elected to take all three dogs out together the majority of the time in order to spare everyone her barking fit. I heard her barking in the background on a few of my recorded agility runs -- Generally she would join in with Kaiser, as I don't believe I ever heard her while Kaiser was running.

There were a couple of dogs that she did NOT like, and a few of them were very surprising. One in particular was a little mixed breed male named Sparky. Sparky's owner describes him as terribly submissive and I didn't see anything from him to suggest anything otherwise. Secret decided from the get-go that she did not like him and did not want anything to do with him. She growled at him when I had her working the gate with me and would bark as he passed her kennel. I'll never understand what triggers her with some dogs and not others. She has an obvious preference for females, but she was terrified of the female Rottweiler that passed us and that made her skittish for some time. On Sunday I brought my bag chair over to the gate with me and Secret laid there for the entire class. That worked out quite well. :o)

There was an agility table set up outside the ring in the waiting area, so I made good use of that several times with Secret. She did a great job with sends and thought it was quite fun. I really need to get a table built for home if I have intentions of doing USDAA and AKC with Secret. As a whole, that was the only training Secret did this weekend.

One of the best parts of the weekend was seeing how much better Secret is doing with people in general. She seems to be exiting that fear stage and she sought out several people to my surprise. There is one woman who has always freaked Secret out in the past, and Secret was even okay with her! She has made great strides in that department.