We are published!

Wow, that was really fast! Look at what came on a FedEx truck yesterday! I was super surprised to see it already, especially considering that the USPS recently took two weeks to deliver something...

So of course I had to prepare a proper photo session for Secret to pose with her book. :o) Natural light disappears by about 4 p.m. these days, so I had to get creative since I really have a pretty sad lack of lighting in my house. I went down to the basement and found the work light that we used for painting the house when I first bought it, which should explain the odd glare you see in some photos. lol Someone on Facebook actually touched up the top photo to take the glare out for me. Wasn't that nice? I'm not very talented with Photoshop...

The book turned out really, really nice! It was really awesome to hold it in my hands and see the final product! It is WAY LONGER than it seemed it would be. I obviously knew it was 152 pages, but it's 152 pages with fairly small font. I am going to need to actually set aside some time to sit down to read it front to back. But oh... It's terribly pretty to look at. And I did go through the entire thing once just to look at the photos and it really did turn out nice.

I can't wait to do the next one!!

It was a nice night last night -- something like the upper 30's or low 40's -- and since I was home for the evening I figured I should try to get some training time in with the dogs. Unfortunately I didn't get home until about 4:15, which left very limited time for setting anything up. For that reason, it ended up being a very simplistic four-loop serpentine design that essentially went hoop, hoop, dog walk, hoop, hoop, jump, jump, jump, weave, hoop, hoop, jump, jump. Great visualization, right? :o) To make it slightly more challenging & appealing, I set all of the jumps at really wonky angles so that the dogs would have to slice them and think about where they were placing themselves a bit more.

Aside from completely not even thinking about stopping on the dog walk the first time (although she did go straight through the contact), Secret did really well with everything. Her enthusiasm was way up there (the new rubber stick was her reward) and her speed was fantastic. All jumps were set at 16" for her and she was pretty much double-striding all of her lines.

She did great with sending while I moved into position for front crosses, she nailed & held her weaves while I ran away from her and she even handled the blind crosses I threw at her. I don't typically blind anywhere other than tunnels on course, but the wonky angle of a few of my jumps lent to a blind being the best handling option, so I figured I'd try it. It worked marvelously for both Secret & Kaiser! (Luke was doing all distance handling and this didn't apply for him.) While I don't typically see a reason to use them in NADAC courses, it's nice to know we have this handling option in our tool kit.


After everyone had their turn, I did a very sad thing. In the dark, piece by piece, I moved all of the agility equipment into the garage. :o( It had to be done, for flurries are forecast for today (it's snowing lightly now) and there is a storm brewing for this weekend. It would figure! Our company Christmas party is on Saturday and we always get hit with the worst weather.

I haven't moved anything into the basement yet. All of my jumps, hoops, tunnels & weaves are still accessible and can be moved back to the yard if the weather allows, but the dog walk is in for the year (we lost the a-frame some time ago and it still needs to be painted after being repaired).

I've heard it's supposed to be a very cold & very wet winter. I hope "they" are wrong.