Catching Up

It has been a very long time since I updated my blog. What a bad blogger I am. A few things have happened since my last post.

It has snowed a lot. Here is Bosley sitting on a park bench that is nearly covered in a snow drift.

In November, Maggie earned her Masters Snooker Dog title at the CAA trial. This is her very first Masters title :) What a great way to finish off agility for the year.

This past weekend, Bosley made his debut in Open Obedience. One of my goals for this year was to get him in the Open ring - and we did. Not only did we get in the ring, but Bosley was great! I really didn't know how it would go, but he exceeded all my expectations of him. I still smile and get tears in my eyes when I think about how he was in the ring. He was happy, happy, happy for the entire 2 runs that we did. His heeling was great. His drop on recalls, which we have been working so hard on, were perfect. He was such a good boy. Teaching him the retrieve was by far the hardest thing that I have trained him to do. It took an entire year of training to get him to retrieve his dumbbell. In the ring, he RAN, he actually RAN out to get his dumbbell and RAN back to me. It would have been perfect if he had actually waited for me to send him :) He anticipated the retrieve over high jump in both trials. I didn't even care just because he was so enthusiastic to go get his dumbbell in a place that he had never been before. And in Bosley's defense, we have only practiced the retrieve over high jump maybe twice in the past 2 months. I will need to work on this, as I don't want it to become a habit, but for now, I will take enthusiasm over perfection.

I was also happy that I kept my ring nerves so well under control. I was a little nervous before our first trial, but once I got in the ring I was fine. The second trial, I barely had any nerves at all. Oh, but I do need to practice throwing the dumbbell. Haha! I had to do 3 throws to get it far enough over the high jump.

Now I am so excited to get back in the obedience ring. I know that Bosley can get his CDX. Too bad there are not anymore obedience trials until March. Oh well, that just gives us a few months to work out all the little kinks.