AX

And today she finished her AX. Although we are pretty excited about finishing these titles a rather pokey jumpers run (leading to 2 bars down) led me to get an opinion from one the top STL area handlers about why my dog does not run as fast as I know she can-even on a good run. She was about 14 seconds under course time on her standard run today but I know she can do better than that. His thoughts were that she does not have the confidence to work at a distance and has subsequently slowed down so to keep from making mistakes on course. So, even though I have tried very hard to never do anything to slow her down it looks like maybe I did. And although I've never been one of those handlers to bark constant commands at my dog on course I have "worked hard" for most of her Excellent Qs so he may have a point. He gave me some ideas on ways to teach her consistent cues on going straight, turning, and coming back in-all from a distance. He feels that if she knows for sure where to go she will run with more freedom and confidence and that will translate to more speed. So now I have more things to work on in addition to the other stuff I was doing with her. Plus proofing contacts and weave poles. And it's dark when I get up and when I get home and I have a lot of trials coming up. I guess we will just do the best we can and hope she's a fast learner! I know he said I'm young and will get to run a lot of dogs in my lifetime but I'm pretty committed to going as far as I can with this one-hopefully to a MACH.

In other agility news I got to meet our friends from CardiParty in person this weekend. It was fun to actually meet someone in person that I first met blogging!

Today is Zodiac's "birthday." We appointed it to him when he was adopted. It's hard to believe he's already eight years old. We think. He's at least that old anyway.

I did get home in time to watch all of the Superbowl. We were hoping for a Kurt Warner win but at least it was close.

I had a cold all of last week and I think going out in the cool and dusty agility arena has provided me with a less than helpful setback since I have a busy week coming up.

Also Barney's bloodwork was normal so apparently he is just a piglet.

And finally our neighbors are now allowing 5 dogs to run loose (in our yard) instead of the usual two. Fantastic.