The boys never get tired of the woods. They love to run free with all the other dogs and just play around... we should do it more often!
As I mentioned on my last post we are training at an agility school, and I'm really enjoying it! We've been training more than never and gaining a lot of confidence, mostly with Koda. I still have to keep up with High's hurricane competition mood, and try to calm down, but we are doing just fine.
We atended two competitions this year, one was a for fun competition and both the boys did fantastic! I am so proud of High because he really listened to me even when I thought that he would do something wrong he did great, all the mistakes were my fault... we ran on the open category A2/J2 and disqualified, and ran on his normal category A1/J1 and got 4th place. Beautiful contacts, dropped few bars only on the last run because he was tired, and had an awesome day after all.
Koda ran beautifully as always, I walk on the ring confident with this little boy! He doesn't stay yet so we have to let go and ruuun, and he is getting faster and faster, so soon it will be a problem... gotta work on that! He ran only the novice but got first place of all heights. Well done baby!
On the official competition I ran only on the A1/J1 with High and he did really well on the first run, perfect contacts, really loooud but that's fine, I just have to work with him because every time that there's a miscommunication or for any other reason he does a refusal and I try to put him back on the obstacle he almost bites me, and he is not like that on trainings, not anymore at least... On the second run I was mentally exhausted and he was even louder, so after he missed his best contact (see-saw) I kind of gave up, but it went better than I expected! perfect weaves, running contact on A-frame, and did all well until we disqualify on the last jump hahaha. Stories to tell.
Koda was perfect as always, but even faster and more excited! I could not keep up with his speed on the novice's straight lines, but he did magnificent and got first place. Although we had no competition, because there are only few people that attend to our regionals, and it is a new sport around here so not many people practicing yet, therefore he was the only dog of his height on novice.
I think that our biggest struggle lately are the running contacts, such a simple concept and so hard to do it! High have perfect strides, good jackpots, already on full height dog walk, but only for few repetitions than he slows down and misses everything, he is not adjusting well... think I'll try fewer repetitions and vary slower the approach. Koda is a never ending story... the reason why I started running contacts, but my biggest challenge! I don't know where I messed up but he always jumps of the end of the down ramp on the DW, always!! I go back to the ground, perfect. A bit higher, perfect. A bit higher, he jumps. It goes on and on for nine months now... I thought about 2on2off but than I saw a video of Jenny Damm and Miss Lilli and it inspired me, I hate to give up and it's really rare for me to do it, so I will try more, be creative... one day we will have those running contacts.
"I'm going to succeed because I'm crazy enough to think I can"
At last, out tricks... yes!! we have a lot of new things to show, but I'm saving as many videos as I can because their birthday is next month so I have two videos to make =) and I hope you'll enjoy it. Probably it will be my last post before the boys' birthday so you will see all the news and 2014 video update!
till there ˆˆ
