Project Go Dog: Post Apocalyptic Agility

Ok it’s happened. I think I finally need therapy! I've had the strangest agility dream ever.

While it isn’t unusual for me to dream about post apocalyptic societies or agility, it’s rare that the two combine.

I mean, I thought the dream where I was running at the Nationals staged in a fiery Zombieland was relatively normal in comparison- the worst part about THAT dream was that my teammates totally blew the relay final.

So anyways, we are at Cynosports and its being held at this crazy square building on a military base in a barren, remote location and then it was suddenly World War 3- bombs flying, huge planes coming and going. Total chaos (and of course we are still running). Then it got weird. So, we are at the USDAA Nationals. But it’s really the World Games, see? So USDAA is actually revolting against the USA… and siding with the world stage? So it’s rebels and Japanese and some people from Mexico, etc. And most of us are banding together in packs to fight off the onslaught and then all of a sudden all the people on the AKC World Team are putting on their Red, White and Blue uniforms and turning on the USDAA supporters! And then they let the American Government in and woo boy. It was all over pretty quick. It wasn’t so bad though, being captured. I mean, Karen Holik was nice; she helped get me medicine for my injuries and I was being marched off to the internment camp.

What does it MEAN??

I must be feeling more subconsciously conflicted than I thought about wanting to do more AKC in the next few months?

Or my first theory- totally losing it.

***

But we had a nice lazy (read: recuperative) weekend involving no agility and very little training. The dogs are both bored and hate me now so that’s the end of that. I suppose it’s time to get back into it again- veerryyyy slowly though. Don’t want to pull anything. We’ve got one half day of showing this weekend (in search of elusive GP and pairs Qs!), then THE FIRST SEMINAR with The Pup (EEK!) the following weekend, then an out of town USDAA show (again, elusive GP and Pairs Qs), then AKC at the end of November and beginning of December.

To prepare, I’m even going to start heading to class again for the first time in months, this time though with BOTH dogs. I’m excited (nervous) to see how The Pup handles it on an on-going basis. While I don’t love taking group classes, I need to not always run my own sequences and get both dogs working happily around distractions and when I am annoyed (though The Pup will be the annoying, distracting one in HER class so that will be a fun change!). Also winter here really limits getting on equipment so there is some necessity if we ever want to see a dogwalk again (though I REALLY hope The Dog is past the need for twice daily reps…). Though the table and a jump fit well in the living room so we can keep drilling happy table (which hasn’t happened since last winter, oops) and cik/cap turns! The Dog remembers it really well from all our work last spring though she did try and hug the standard the first dozen or so times. While I’m still not sure I’ll use it with The Pup it really can’t hurt (and admittedly she probably does need work on driving out of turns joyfully since I recently discovered her hated of decelerating).

***

Our one thing we did over the weekend was take a nice walk on probably the last gorgeous day of the year. We went to a popular park filled with people and screaming children, partly because it’s huge and purty so kinda worth it but also partly because I’m putting The Dog into those icky loud situations when I can so she can learn to deal. She got her ball and was mostly happy.

Attempts at cute dog posing: