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Monthly Archives: October 2011
Tell Me Thursday
1. What is your favorite Little Debbie snack? If you hate Little Debbie then I bow down to your greatness. (I suppose you can include some other favorite snack. Maybe it’ll inspire me to get over LD for today.)
I … don’t know what Little Debbie is. Damn these North American type questions!
2. What do you use for laundry detergent?
Whatever is on offer?
3. Tighty Whities or Boxers? (this, obviously, is open for interpretation)
Boxers, way more fun.
4. Dogs: On the bed? In the house? On the furniture? Never? What are your rules?
The dogs live in the kitchen most of the time. They are allowed on sofas when they come into the lounge, but only when we’re chilling. If people are eating, they have to stay on the floor. They all sleep in the kitchen, although Kim sometimes sleeps in my room if it’s cold. She has an extremely comfy basket which she prefers to the bed.
5. Favorite dog-related website (aside from my blog, obviously har har har)? Favorite NON-dog related website? Can be blogs, or whatever.
I love reading all the multitude of dog blogs, it’s fun. Non-dog website? I have loads, but I feel safe posting XKCD, because that is sufficiently geeky.
Training Day
We had a lovely training day on Saturday with Natalie Mitchell. I’m increasingly picky with who I train with, but I’ve known Nat for a long time (and Kai is Dylan’s half sister) so I know how she trains and handles.
There are some “local” trainers that I avoid, in some cases simply because I don’t think their methods are going to work for my dogs. I’m sure they’re great trainers, just not for me. From my point of view, I do not respond well to being shouted at, even if it’s done in a “lighthearted” manner. I also don’t respond well to being told flat-out that I’m wrong (I have some other thoughts on that which I’ll post later!). Nat doesn’t do that, she discusses and tells me how to improve what we have. She also explains why, and that’s important for me as well. That is the kind of training I respond to, and I have a bunch of things to work on from this session.
Having said that, Dylan really surpassed my expectations. His Aframe and Seesaw were beautiful, his jumping was super, he was fast and responsive. We worked on rear crosses and push-outs (or round-the-back), and it turns out that we are both much better at that than I thought we were. His dogwalk was initially slow but improved as he got more comfortable with the equipment, which was frustrating but what I expected.
His waits were actually great, which I was very pleased with. I am working on his wait a lot, and we have plenty of other things to do until it’s perfect. One of which is going to include throwing some of my runs in competition, but there we go.
Mainly what I got was some tweaks to my handling, which I really needed. We’ll see if I can remember them all when it comes to Hare’n'Hounds in a few weeks time.
Tell Me Thursday
Late, oops.
1. If you won the lottery (a big one… I’m talking stupid muchos cash) what would you do with the money?
Buy a big house with some wonderful flat fields and room to either build or convert something into an indoor arena. A lovely caged van and
2. After winning the lottery would you work a day job? If so, what would you do?
Not a normal day job. I’d work with my dogs and rent out my fields and maybe buy properties and rent them to pet people who needed somewhere to live.
3. Do you have any auxiliary dogs? Auxiliary dogs are dogs that are not essential to your main purpose (usually tiny, but not always). If you don’t have an auxiliary dog what might you choose?
Definitely not! My main purpose is my dogs, not agility or flyball or whatever. I’d kind of love a retired Greyhound or something like, but that wouldn’t fit in with our lifestyle. It wouldn’t be fair on the dog!
4. Do you have a favorite crock pot recipe (or other recipe) you can share?
Ahahaha, the idea that I can cook things is brilliant.
FCI Worlds
I’m sat watching the Agility World Championship, thinking “I could do that”.
And then I think, you’re an idiot. I could maybe do that. If I had the commitment to compete every weekend and to travel further and work harder and drop all the other things I have fun doing, I could do that. If I had a pedigree dog, and had lots of money to fund myself, I could do that.
Which basically comes down to, I don’t want to do that. It looks like fun, but really, I don’t have that level of commitment at the moment. And I’m ok with that. Maybe in the future, things will change.
Best of luck to all the Great British team, and secretly to Tori and Rev from the US as well.
