Could have gone swimming....

After four days in a row hitting 70 degrees, today it was a whopping 82 degrees when I came home from work. I was very tempted to take the dogs to the river for their first swim of the year. Because none of us are remotely acclimated to the warm weather yet, 82 degrees felt pretty hot and I didn't know if I felt like actually DOING anything that would require effort.

That said, I sucked it up. I was a good agility trainer and I decided to work the dogs. Honestly, they probably would have rather gone swimming. lol Oh well, we all had fun doing this, too!

This is the Happy Hurdles course posted on Ann Croft's Agility Coach Facebook page last Wednesday. That was the other reason we had to do agility tonight, because a new course will be posted tomorrow!  :o)  I thought this one looked like lots of fun and was slightly more technical than the last one with the wraps and backsides. I haven't pulled the weaves out of the garage before tonight, either, so that was another bonus to this drill.

I'm very happy with how well Secret ran tonight! She was kind of lollygagging around the yard while I set the course and I didn't know if she was going to feel like doing much of anything in the heat. She came out ready to play, though! The first run in the video was actually our first try at the course and she nailed it. I opted to not push my luck and we actually quit right then and there. I played with her a bit longer and then put her back in the house without bothering to drill the course again at that point. I knew I'd bring her out again and I wanted her to know she did it right the first time!

We had a couple of flubs the next time out, but those were mostly due to me not following through with cues because I was ready to pass out. Goal of the summer -- get into shape. Especially with Champs coming up this fall...

I tried to push myself to use a few different handling options on this course. Kaiser was the only one who really handled an inside wrap at number three well. Secret and Luke were both better off going with the blended front cross to keep up the momentum, even though it was a longer path. The 4-5-6 sequence seemed to run equally well with a front or blind cross on all three dogs. I threw in rear, front and blind crosses at the weaves (yay dogs!) and did blinds and rears out of the last tunnel. Lots of fun!

Secret ran this drill with all bars set at 24" (except for my jump that only goes to 20"... and now has a busted jump cup at 8", 12" and 16" and is pretty useless....). I thought she did great with this height! One thing I really noted from this video is how efficient Secret is -- she really hugs those turns, doesn't she? Luke was knocking the 8" bars left and right. Remember what I said about him knowing the difference between practice and trials? I'm convinced of it!

Look how pretty the driveway is looking! This picture was from yesterday and today they actually finished the part at the bottom. The dogs have been good supervisors by the sound of it and have been watching from the window each day. Yesterday one of the guys apparently jumped the fence to get in to open my garage door (I missed the call at work). That kind of made my heart stop for a second when I heard about it, but I was told, "Oh don't worry; we rang the doorbell to get them all to come to the front while our guy went in the back." Ummm.... Well, I'm glad it worked out! But seriously, some people...

We had a good visit at the vet's office yesterday. Secret was a social butterfly and was saying hello to everyone. She was, however, an evil bitch to my vet's foster dog that we got to meet -- She's about 5 months old and a heeler mix of some sort. Super cute! But apparently her puppy license had expired because Secret wanted nothing to do with her. If anyone is looking for a nice little prospect, check her out!