long time, mostly agility update
Its been far too long since I've updated. Life has been crazy for a long while. A lot has happened. I'm going to try to keep it brief.
1. Tara got her first two RAE (rally advanced excellent) legs over the summer, with 4 placements. A leg equals a qualifying score in both advanced and excellent on the same day. You have to get 10 total legs to get the title RAE. The only reason we don't have it yet is because I've been too poor and too busy to get her into trials. 2009 will be another big trialing year for us though, I can feel it.
2. We moved back to MA. ME was too difficult for us to sustain financially. We are now renting a cute 2 bedroom house in MA. Tara gets to attend classes much more frequently and has more dog friends to play with in our fenced yard.
3. Tara almost has her weaves! We are pretty much ready to start competing as soon as she gets her weaves. I don't think it will be long now at all. She's so close. I'm actually hoping to enter her in agility for the first time in the Collie National Specialty in MA this coming March (i think). We'll also enter rally. Maybe we'll go for our HIC again too, just for fun. I think she would like that. I can't believe we are almost ready to compete in agility, we're going to have so much fun. I would have some video of her running courses if my camera wasn't busted -- I need to get another one so I can post her on youtube. She's awesome and so fast! She's really going to excel in agility.
4. We had a great workshop this weekend just on jumping. We learned a lot and Tara had so much fun. It was the longest I have ever worked her for in a group setting: 3 hrs. We obviously had multiple breaks, but she did very well, and now we have lots of fun jumping exercises to work on. I can't wait to trial with her.
5. Rally run-thrus start back up tonight at our local training place. We're kind of out of practice, so this will be good for her. We've got to start practicing so we can place at Nationals. : )
6. We're going to be taking an advanced clicker class with trainer Carolyn Barney at Dogs Learning Center. We get to pick our own projects to work on, and I've decided to work on freestyle with her. I really want to get working on a routine with her. She has a lot of freestyle skills already, but we haven't put any of them together. I think its really cool that you can enter freestyle competitions via video. That way we don't have to travel! Again, I need to get a new video camera.
7. Come spring we will get started in herding. There's a new positive training herding place that's 25 mins from the house we are renting. Tara really liked herding the one time she tried it, so I would like to be able to let her experience it more. I think its cool for dogs to do what they were bred for. Maybe someday we'll get to compete in herding too, but right now that's a ways off. We'll see how she does.
Anyway, I guess that's about it for now. Tara is such a great dog. So much more than I ever could have hoped for. She's pretty much perfect. : )
1. Tara got her first two RAE (rally advanced excellent) legs over the summer, with 4 placements. A leg equals a qualifying score in both advanced and excellent on the same day. You have to get 10 total legs to get the title RAE. The only reason we don't have it yet is because I've been too poor and too busy to get her into trials. 2009 will be another big trialing year for us though, I can feel it.
2. We moved back to MA. ME was too difficult for us to sustain financially. We are now renting a cute 2 bedroom house in MA. Tara gets to attend classes much more frequently and has more dog friends to play with in our fenced yard.
3. Tara almost has her weaves! We are pretty much ready to start competing as soon as she gets her weaves. I don't think it will be long now at all. She's so close. I'm actually hoping to enter her in agility for the first time in the Collie National Specialty in MA this coming March (i think). We'll also enter rally. Maybe we'll go for our HIC again too, just for fun. I think she would like that. I can't believe we are almost ready to compete in agility, we're going to have so much fun. I would have some video of her running courses if my camera wasn't busted -- I need to get another one so I can post her on youtube. She's awesome and so fast! She's really going to excel in agility.
4. We had a great workshop this weekend just on jumping. We learned a lot and Tara had so much fun. It was the longest I have ever worked her for in a group setting: 3 hrs. We obviously had multiple breaks, but she did very well, and now we have lots of fun jumping exercises to work on. I can't wait to trial with her.
5. Rally run-thrus start back up tonight at our local training place. We're kind of out of practice, so this will be good for her. We've got to start practicing so we can place at Nationals. : )
6. We're going to be taking an advanced clicker class with trainer Carolyn Barney at Dogs Learning Center. We get to pick our own projects to work on, and I've decided to work on freestyle with her. I really want to get working on a routine with her. She has a lot of freestyle skills already, but we haven't put any of them together. I think its really cool that you can enter freestyle competitions via video. That way we don't have to travel! Again, I need to get a new video camera.
7. Come spring we will get started in herding. There's a new positive training herding place that's 25 mins from the house we are renting. Tara really liked herding the one time she tried it, so I would like to be able to let her experience it more. I think its cool for dogs to do what they were bred for. Maybe someday we'll get to compete in herding too, but right now that's a ways off. We'll see how she does.
Anyway, I guess that's about it for now. Tara is such a great dog. So much more than I ever could have hoped for. She's pretty much perfect. : )
posted by Jenn at 4:35 PM
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