Garden, or Jungle

Dont look too close at the weeds-there are a few in there. After the last couple of weekends that have been very busy the garden has suffered a bit. But it has also grown. The sunflowers in the bean trellis are head height now! If you look at the peas in the front, there are absolutely loaded with forming shells. Another week and we will be eating many of our meals from the garden.

But there is food in there- quite a bit actually. Num!

Back to training ramblings

Tonight Magic and I are going to venture back to some obedience training, and try to figure out some happy heeling. Most of the various things I have tried with him, work about once, then he is back to hating it. I want him to get his CDX, but that is hard to do when he refuses to heel off leash.
I am trying to decide if I am going to enter Magic in UKC rally. Part of me wants to, but then part of me says why? He already has his AKC RE, and APDT RL1, do we need another venue? But, he likes rally, he likes when I talk to him and we are having fun with the various stations. We are going to be at the show for the weight pull, maybe we should play at Rally? Its the straight boring heeling patterns he doesn't like. I don't know, I have mixed feelings about entering him in another venue for rally. I would love to enter him in the APDT rally trial and go for his RL2, but that trial always seems to conflict with other stuff as well. That weekend there is conformation in lacrosse and local AKC agility that I want to do. I guess I have to sit down and figure out what is more important to me- Peaces conformation or Magics other stuff, local or having to travel?
I was hoping that if I put all this down the answers would come to me-not so far though.

agility photos from Saturday

http://www.greatdanephotos.com/store/index.php?do=photocart&viewImage=89648

If you are interested, you can see Magic freezing on his first attempt on the teeter. That is as far has he got before he jumped off. The gals at Great Dane Photos take the best agility pictures. If you are ever looking for photographers for a trial, check them out. The work they do is really wonderful. They seem to get the dogs expressions so well.
In this bunch, you can see that there is no reason (other than my screwing up that is) Magic shouldn't have his Jumpers title at 12 inches, at least its not that he doesnt jump big enough! I also like that in a couple of these I am no where in view. I may need to get another T shirt made, I just need to caption and select one of those big jumping pics.

NO Q at all!

I can honestly say, the first NQ was totally Magic since he has now decided teeters are evil. But the other was just so STUPID!!! I completely lost my way on course, and Magic the good boy he is ran a SUPER JWW course-just not the right one! Even the judge commented after the trial what a great course we ran, laughingly of course. I have to say, being on the trial committee I was able to spend time with the judges and they were sure super. Its too bad though about the teeter thing. I am hoping that if I can just get him to do a couple he will be fine, he just wouldnt even try this weekend.

I also have to brag on my boy just a tiny bit. He is such a good boy. He has never met a person he doesn't like, kids or adults, he spent most of his(and my) free time this weekend being loved on. Which makes Magic a very happy boy.

Agility trial

Today was day 2 of the NSHGC agility trial. I am exhausted! I worked yesterday starting at 9 am, as we had an excellent only day that ran until ofter 730. Today we arrived at 6, and along with working all day, I ran Magic too. Tomorrow, back at 6 am for the last day.

Today had some really good moments, and a few concerning ones.

Magic made it clear today that after getting bounced off the teeter a few weeks ago, he has no intention of working that again. Nope, not gonna do it. So I guess we have to go do some serious teeter work. Since he wouldnt take the teeter, of course we NQ'd in Standard. That was OK though. The rest of the run, was nice enough. He gave me wonderful weaves. I think I have been so worried about them, that I have been invading his space. Today since I knew we already had an NQ, I just sent him on and he took them like cleanly and with more speed than normal. (In other words, he moved faster than a crawl-LOL!)
In FAST he decided that he would rather take the 2 point jump a bit further out, than the 1 pointer I asked him to take, which was A_OK with me. He did the send beatifully, stopped dead in front of the teeter, so we just decided to skip it. Finished the rest of the run just exactly as I asked, finishing the course under time with a Q! I was very pleased with my boy.
In JWW, he did knock a bar, but otherwise ran nicely and gave me a very nice directional change and really made me happy. No Q but darn, sometimes I just am so proud of him-he does really well with a not so great handler. Tomorrow no FAST class, but I am hoping I can convince him to try the teeter, in Standard. He has his NA so its not a problem if he NQ's until we get the teeter thing resolved.

Garden

Well the garden is growing. the bean runners are as tall as the trellis we built. I knew they were not going to be tall enough. We may have to add something. Not sure what yet, but the beans are also growing up the sunflowers in the corners too. We have peas, some went into the pasta salad for tomorrow. We have bunches of small green tomatos, and some small peppers. the zucchini will flower in the next week. It looks really good, although somewhat jungle-ish!

Follow up to the dog show

It was a really good weekend up here for the Cardigan crew. The judge on Thursday commented to Garrett that she was impressed by the quality of the dogs we had up here. And I think it showed in the results for the weekend, as the points were pretty much shared amongst us all. It was nice to see a ringside where everyone was social, cooperative, kind and sporting. I look forward to more show weekends like this one, where hopefully I can actually stick around and enjoy it a bit more. Congrats to all the winners from the weekend!