Today's fun is brought to you by the letter "S"

I have quite a bit of time on my hands to think about stuff at the moment.  During one of my spare moments of pondering when I wasn't playing bingo online (yes, my days are full of fun...), it occurred to me that while we have been doing little to no agility during the heat of this brutal summer, this also means that Secret has had precious little value-building time when it comes to agility equipment.

For dogs who find agility itself highly motivating this is surely not an issue.  I have not worried about a lack of agility training this summer because the dogs are more or less "trained" to the point where we don't need to drill, drill, drill.  Where I have failed, however, is to continue finding ways to link Secret's ever growing crazy toy drive to the agility equipment.

While it has been a hot, hot summer, I guarantee you there has been plenty of ball and frisbee play going on in our backyard.  It has more or less been out of sheer laziness that I have failed to connect this fun time to agility training.

If I wish for my dog to show more speed on the agility course, I need to continue to work on building that speed -- not just wish for it to magically show itself one day (although you have to admit, that sure would be nice).

So tonight I set up the dreaded S-shaped tunnel and Secret had to run through it (with speed) every time she wished to chase her ball.  The S-shaped tunnel wasn't so bad when there was a tennis ball attached to its performance, imagine that.

Now if only I could get my hands on a 20' tunnel to work on that issue -- although today (again in one of my many moments of free time) I watched video from our last NADAC trial and Secret didn't trot through THOSE 20' tunnels...

Going forward I need to make the commitment to cut way back on the "free play time" every day and instead try to once again put forth the effort to connect play to agility with the goal of building more value into the equipment itself.  We used to do this a lot, I simply got lazy.  This goes double for the weave poles, which haven't come out of the garage in ages....