Last Practice!!

Last night was our last practice night before Champs! No activity tonight because everyone saw the chiro this morning, I'm working at the shelter all weekend (and now it's almost dark when I get home, sadness) and then have way too much to do Monday & Tuesday.... So yes, last night was it for us!

Because of this, I thought it might be a good idea to set a course. I planned to go through my course book and just find a "normal" Regular NADAC course to run through -- but then I came home to find this:

*SOB* So much for limping it through the rest of the season. Upon seeing the picture posted on Facebook, my dad responded with, "We can fix that." Uhhhh.... My dad is pretty amazing, but I don't know about that. I told him he'd have to look at it. We'll see. But regardless, there was no way I could use it last night. That left me all, "Hmmm..." about my training plans for the evening.

I scratched my head a bit, thought about what things I wanted to work on and then just started to wander around the yard with obstacles. I knew we absolutely needed a discrimination, and with only one contact it was a given. I needed a tunnel at the dismount of the dog walk for Kaiser, so that placed itself as well. I wanted an opportunity to practice rear crossing the weaves, figured it wouldn't hurt to throw a wrap at a hoop in there somewhere (since many of us are expecting to see this at Champs this year!) and of course a few changes of direction. This is what I came up with!

Yes, the spacing is off and I'm a pretty horrible artist, but it was actually a very nice course to run! Not nearly as boring as what I usually come up with. :o)

The start of the course with the big loop around the outside was fairly Champs like. I was able to layer the inside jump & hoop with all dogs to allow me to take a shorter path and be ready to push out for the discrimination. I really tried to stay back and work on doing the discrimination at a distance and it worked well.

I handled the next part in several ways. I worked on rear crossing the weaves (Secret rocked!) and wrapping left at the hoop as well as running ahead and doing a push with a wrap to the right. Really, both ways worked. In this situation I think the push/wrap right might have been faster because it presented a straight line through the next two jumps.

I did try a front cross between 12 & 13, but overall I liked rear crossing between 13 & 14 better. Staying outside the pinwheel and doing a front cross on the back side of 17 seemed quite a bit faster than pivoting on the inside and rear crossing at 18 -- Plus doing a rear cross puts you behind for the upcoming "up" discrimination.

Secret was pretty awesome through everything -- AND for the record, she held her contacts until released. Yes, I actually maintained criteria. :o) Might not hurt to try to find time for one more "deposit" session this weekend.

As I mentioned at the top of the post, we made another trip to the chiropractor in Viroqua this morning. All three dogs came in this time. While it certainly is a handful, everyone remarked at how well behaved they are together. That's always nice to hear. Everyone was very relaxed and well behaved today.

Secret was up first, mostly because she was mugging everyone this morning and seemed to want attention. She was a good girl, didn't put up too much of a fight about getting into position and more or less relaxed pretty quickly. She kind of zones out in my hands while Dr. Engel works on her.

Secret was still pretty flinchy through her mid-back, so Dr. Engel spent a bit of time getting that all worked back into place. Everything else was pretty good and Dr. Engel was impressed with her elasticity in the hind end. By the end of her session the flinching was gone and Secret was a happy camper. It does look like she will be a dog that needs continuous maintenance going forward. Perhaps monthly, but we'll see.

Next on my list of "Things to do to prepare for departure" is to go buy our 20 pounds of chicken... (Okay, maybe a *slight* exaggeration, but not much, lol) Who wants to help me cook and shred it? Anyone? Anyone? No? Well then, you can get started cutting two pounds of cheese into cubes. :o)