Wow - I suck at blogging!

:)



Well if you are a friend on Facebook then you know what I've been up to... if you aren't and you care what I've been up to lately - well join Facebook and read over my profile for the last few weeks! ;)


OK - just kidding (sort of) - here is a quick run down of the highlights.



Canis Major #1 - rained out twice - 2nd time produced some awesome dogs playing in puddles pics. http://picasaweb.google.com/HiFiAussies/CanisMajor5InLakeOtisAndrew# One highlight was Groovy choosing to play disc with Jack for about 10 minutes instead of chasing dogs - and she was off leash!


Trip to Skyhoundz Worlds - Chattanooga, TN: (Facebook has a photoblog of the weekend)

Thursday - left for trip - took 4 dogs - Mickie stayed home with grandma. Groovy puked an hour into the trip but that was it for the whole weekend so maybe she's getting better about that. We stopped in Calhoun, Georgia for Groovy to try her hand at herding. Took her a while to catch on but she did good! We met Donna and Tony Padgett of Coosawattee Aussies - SUPER nice people. I should be able to post the video soon. It became apparent on the trip up that Groovy is re-entering a fear period which she is right on time for according to many books so not unexpected at all.

Friday - Open Qualifier - Tali kinda sucked - wouldn't drive towards any of the discs on one side of the field. Ended up placing 40th or something out of 60+ teams... far cry from last year's finish around 14th or so place. Oh well... even dogs are allowed to have bad days! Ruckus was a superstar - he was entered in Expert and Masters (for dogs 9 and over) D&A. In Expert he placed 15th out of 149 dogs. In Expert he placed 1st (out of a handful of dogs). The neat part is that had he had his 2nd rd 1st he would have made the cut for Expert and his total score would have put him in 2nd place in Expert and he would have qualified for Worlds in D&A. Not bad for a 9.5 year old dog.

Saturday - Freestyle Worlds - we weren't qualified so slept in late - by the time we got going they had already called the competition due to rain so we spent the day in the hotel and at Walmart. Went to the banquet that evening - very nice event as always!

Sunday - D&A Worlds (and the rest of Freestyle) - Tali again had an off day - she did well but dropped the disc on two returns in the 2nd round which is very unusual for her. This caused her and Jack to not get in a 5th throw which caused them to be 1 place out of the cut for the 3rd round. Overall she placed 13th - so not bad at all considering she was competing against the top D&A teams in the world (Skyhoundz World) and it let us head home early as the competition didn't end until 3 hours later (7 or 7:30pm).

Groovy's fear period kinda acclerated on Sunday and she totally freaked out when we walked her without another dog with us - if we had other dogs with us she was fine. Hope this fear period ends soon and with no emotional damage as she was doing SOOO good before it came on.

This weekend coming up we have USDAA agility with Tali! We are running on a DAM team with our friends Sarah (with Java) and Michelle (with Sheltie - Tuff). Our team name is "Tuff Red Dogs"! Tali is also entered in starters standard. We have our Q's in all the other starters stuff so that'll be it for the weekend! Looking forward to it!