More contacts

I haven't done any running contact work with either Apollo or Rampage since our "Field Trip" back on the 6th of August. It's funny how I can obsess over something for a long time and then suddenly just drop it like it's hot. There was a week after our last trial where I didn't do ANYTHING in my back yard because of the Evil Sheltie. But thankfully he is long gone and my backyard is now my own again. Instead of running contacts I've been doing more work with Rampage on his 2o/2o on the travel plank. I was finally happy enough with is nose touch on the ground that I have combined the two. I'm really happy with how he's doing on that, but I need more work on sending him ahead, as his butt tends to come off the board when I do that. But that's ok, I find it really fun to do the travel plank with my dogs! I'm not sure why, but I do :)

On Thursday morning I was stopped by animal control at the park where I've been going to run the dogs. I was given a warning that I was violating leash laws :(. So I can't go back there. My other 'usual' park is still covered in burrs and foxtails and the ground is so hard it tears up Icon's pads like tissue paper, so I won't be able to go back there until it starts raining again in November or so. I'm not entirely sure what I'll do until then, but on Friday I decided to take Apollo and Rampage to Swiss park to practice their running dogwalks! Foster and Icon stayed home, but got to go swimming for 20 minutes when we returned (I was really late for work on Friday...)

I was really happy with how Rampage did. His 2nd repetition was a bit leapy, but otherwise he did a really nice job of running through.

Oh, and check out my snazzy new shoes. At practice Karen and Jen were talking about wearing red shoes at worlds to complete their 'red, white and blue' outfit, so I decided to buy a pair of red Asics. ;)

082109 - Rammy running dw from Agility Dogs on Vimeo.

But Apollo... OY! He just seemed confused :(. His first rep was nice and then he started leaping and then stopping and then... well I think the moral of this story is that I can't just not practice with him for 2 weeks and expect him to remember to RUN after spending 6 or so years of his life teaching him to STOP. Poor Polly. Time to start obsessing over it again with him! USDAA SW Regionals is coming up and I would really like to get a GP bye with him! But we don't have a voucher for a free pass to Rd 2 so that's a lot of contacts we need to be able to get... We'll see how it goes.

082109 - Polly running dogwalk from Agility Dogs on Vimeo.