Agility Match and Happy 4th of July!

Happy 4th of July everyone (well those of us in the US)!! To celebrate, yesterday I spent a little time painting the dogs' toe nails and mine to match.:O) If you know in person, this is just one of the many things that I enjoy doing to my dogs. Thankfully they're great sports about it and are pretty much used to me doing random things to them! No big plans for the day really. Bess and I had an agility fun match that we went to this morning and I'll talk about that in just a bit. Unfortunately Heffner got left at home because he would have totally been melting due to the heat and just wouldn't have had a good time at all. I think that Adam and I are going to go watch some fireworks somewhere near the city tonight, but I'm not completely sure. Both of the dogs are completely unphased by the fireworks and it's no problem to leave them at hom tonight.

And now onto the agility match! We got to meet up with my friend Shana and her deaf great dane Pixie at the match. This was Pixie's first match!!

In case you're wondering an agility match is very different from an agility trial. For starters, you don't get qualifying runs towards a title. It's essentially a practice trial. It's a lot more laid back. You can take toys and treats with you out on the course. And for our club at least, you're given three minutes per run to whatever you want. You can do the course that's out there, or you can use the time to work on areas that need work. You can also just stop while you're running and work on things. It's a great way to get the dogs used to working around lots of people and dogs doing things, while having incentives to listen to you in the forms of treats.

Bess did pretty well today. I was trying out some different things while were running. Some things that I think will work as long as we practice them enough, others that might not. I was lucky enough to have Kitty, one of Bess' foundation instructors, video taping us while we were out there for both runs! Yay!! I just have to make sure that Blogger is going to let me upload both of the videos today!

Both of our runs this morning were a little crazy and we thankfully run better than that at an actual trial. I also do a better job of remembering the course (MOST of the time!). I was a little scattered on the first run, but was having a grand ole time! Even though she views long distance stays as a wonderful sprinting game when I release her, I decided to just go for it and see what I could get. We got just a tad bit of zoomies, but that's okay! She was having fun and I think that was readily apparent!



Our second run started out pretty well, but I really need to pick up the pace with her because she normally runs faster than I'm used to Heffner doing when we start. And then she got a slight case of the zoomies!LOL Again, I don't really have a problem with her doing this. She does come back to me. We're at the beginner level and I'm not pushing to be super competitive right now. She very obviously is enjoying herself, and I don't want to crush that and have her think that agility isn't fun and it's just work. Plus, I think that some of that will work itself out of her system as she gets older. It may take a few years, but that's just fine by me!