Happy 3rd Birthday, Secret!

Happy, Happy Day to Secret!  Today she turns three years old!  (Based on the day I chose to celebrate her birthday, at least!)

 Last night I whipped up a batch of pumpkin, yogurt, banana & peanut butter frozen treats -- Topped with leftover chicken from our trial.  Mmmmm.   The dogs were drooling all over the place when I popped these babies into the freezer.  They got a pre-birthday treat when they got to lick the bowl.

By the way, I skipped the Dixie cups this time because they made for an awfully small treat and the dogs just ate the paper cup.  I greased the muffin tins, but holy heck those things still don't come out all that easy...  Just a word of warning in case you decide to do this yourself.  Some pop right out, others make you curse and throw stuff at the wall.

Secret enjoyed her birthday, although the weather has not cooperated at all.  I wanted to take the troupe out for a nice walk on the bike trail today but it has been raining ALL DAY.  Don't get me wrong, we need the rain, but it has kept us stuck inside the majority of the day.

We did get to go play outside for a bit when my mom stopped by with Wes & Lexie to show off Wes' new Westie-do.  He looks so much better now!  No more bushy ears or horrendous bushy tail!  Secret did better with him today; Kaiser was still a turd and was kept on leash.

The rain broke for a bit again this afternoon, so I decided to take everyone outside and actually do agility again for a change.  It's been a good month since we've done any sort of real practice.  I set up the Backyard Dogs drill from the July 2012 issue of Clean Run.  No particular reason why -- it was handy -- but interestingly enough the focus was on "straight tunnels," which we just encountered at Regionals.  Apparently the judge, Dave Grubel, is famous for them or something.  Maybe they are more difficult for people with fast dogs....?

The grass was still a little wet, which meant I was running conservatively -- which means, yup, so was Secret.  Oh well.  She was her usual steady self and only screwed up when I did.  Enjoy the little birthday party at the end of her video.  :o)



I have continued with the mission of combining play time with some aspect of training.  Yesterday I brought out six weave poles and combined it with frisbee time.  Great energy, great speed, great enthusiasm!  It was nice to see.  Even more awesome was that I could set her up between my legs and send her forward into the weaves by herself.  Rock on, Secret!  Let's continue to tap into that enthusiasm.

The boys played today, too, of course -- Here's their video:



Oh!  I decided to enter one day of the USDAA trial in Lake Elmo over Labor Day weekend.  It's outside.....  I'd kind of sworn off outdoor trials because of the horrible weather this year, but I really want to do it as sort of a comparison.  Secret has only done one trial outside -- it was right when she first started, it was three NADAC games classes and it was storming outside.  I'd like to see where she's at now and if she runs any more like she does at home.  I also decided to enter Kaiser for the same reason, to see if he jumps any better outside vs. inside.  We are going on Sunday, when they will both run a full slate of baby classes (minus putting Kaiser in P1 Pairs because he doesn't need it).  No Tournament classes this time -- we need to just work on the basic titles right now!