Monday, November 01, 2010

no boxers, some briefs, a collie mix and a shimaltipoo

Puppy Ryder enjoyed meeting lots of new people and watching agility! Schnauzers, lab mixes, bcs, a portie and more - what a delightful couple of days the Webb Anderson seminar was. The Saturday morning was mostly the dogs natural path which is something I have always considered so find that work very rewarding . All of the courses over the weekend had things I hadn't seen much (if at all)- a teeter pointing at a wall; a tee bone turn into weaves; a pinwheel that repeats with a 180; a serpentine that was a tunnel, jump, aframe. First course I got lost on (this happened in the spring at the Webb seminar too) DOH. Brody was great (of course). Second course was smoother but I nearly got lost - and Webb caught my very slight hesitation. Brody saved my bacon. Good to get caught, usually I fake my way through stuff like that OK. We had a lunch break which was lovely - potluck - lots of yummy pot lucked things :) After lunch we did another course which I hardly remember - except Sally did a good job. And I didn't get lost for ONE second. Interesting huh? Webb suggests maybe I have time to think with Brody and if I think I second guess myself and I wonder if I'm on course. Webb encouraged me to run harder with Sally - and to be SURE I keep moving. Good advice. I let Sally warm up in the other hall. Threw her Frisbee and asked her to touch and weave a little. It was good - she was tired if anything. The last thing we did was a gamble line. Honestly if you'd asked me I would have said Sally would do it no issue at all. I would have been wrong. I didn't really warm her up - it was only 20 minutes between runs maybe. She was INSANE. From the minute she hit the floor til I collapsed on the floor. Her teeter was awful. Her ability to float a pinwheel vanished. She did some nice minutes (maybe just seconds) and we got some of what we wanted. The highlight of this run was letting Webb see just how bad it can be. (aka where I am afraid of going if i let things derail at all). I was exhausted. However, I brought Sally and Brody home and then took Big T out to dinner with some of the seminar folks. We had fun. The next morning was fun. We ended up spending an hour with Sally looking at her aframe, dog walk, teeter, and weaves. She was EXCELLENT. Attentive and easy to work with. (Yes, when we started talking she offered a couple of jumps, a couple of frames, a tunnel of two but it wasn't frantic, it was optimistic!) Watched a lesson, chatted, and had lunch. YUM. Next step was a lesson with Sophie. Again informative and fun. Started with a cool jumpers type course. Lots of pinwheels. I was pleased with Sally though I blew a line or two - they were honest errors. We were both on our game. we played with a couple of interesting spots until they felt great! Brody ran a flawless round. He is such a good boy. The post turn is VERY hard for me... must add it to my list to work on! Last course was also FUN. Zip, zip, flip and fly :) Brody added one jump as I built a wee bit too much momentum for the aframe but that was just fine by me. I could have called him harder and he would have listened but he was having a blast - so I let him blast! Sally was super too. It was a great note to end on. I'm ramped up and have some planning to do - and some goals to work on. What a great weekend. Webb has a perspective that is unique up here .. and it resonates with me.

2 comments:

Sam said...

I'm exhausted just reading about all of this!

Sounds like you logged some good time.

P.S. I never really thanked you for the comments you left me regarding my last trial. I really appreciate that you went through the trouble to load the videos at work! Thank you! Our next trial is this Saturday and Sunday, and I'm hoping it goes okay...

Muttsandaklutz said...

I'm exhausted too! Great work. I seem to recall reading another blogger's post about a Webb Anderson seminar a while back and they got a ton out of it as well.