This And That....

......I sat down the past two nights and started looking at conformation events, agility trials, obedience trials, rally trials, and matches of all sorts. The result? My weekends are now booked through May. No joke. Granted, some of that will be flexible should I decide that I have overloaded myself. And some of those weekends are not entirely booked with dog related things. Shocking, I know!! There's a wedding in there. A kick ass bachelorette weekend that I'm planning for a friend. And a two week vacation for another wedding that will be lots of fun (the dogs will be staying up at Georgia's where I won't have to drive myself silly about how they're doing).

And as though that's not enough, I got to thinking that I need to make more time on week nights for regular training of various behaviors. This gets a little tricky. Usually I come home from work and chill for a bit, then I take the dogs out for some cardio. Then they get fed. And then I have to wait a bit for the food to settle before I can really do anything more with them. Unfortunately there are only so many hours in a day, but soooooooooooooo many things that I want to do with them!! If only I were independently wealthy, didn't have to work, and could just work my dogs on whatever I wanted to throughout the day. Now that would be the life!;)

I did decide that in a few more weeks, once I get Heffner back up to snuff on running, I'm going to start running with both the dogs. It's something that I've altogether avoided because they are most definitely the gruesome twosome! However, they will both be wearing their gentle leaders to give me some leverage. Otherwise, all it would take was one cat, squirrel, or whatever darting across our path and I'd be toast with those two! Hopefully that will free up a little more time in the evening for training.

I've also decided that I need to get the dogs out to a high distraction area at least once a week to work on obedience. And for Heffner, to also work on his reactivity issues. There's a newer dog park that's not terribly far from our house that will allow for plenty of area to work with the dogs. I don't plan on actually taking them into the dog park. For Heffner, that just won't ever happen. For Bess, it could happen, but I'm not overly fond of being inside dog parks any more with either of my dogs. However, they do provide some very intense distractions. And thankfully, those distractions are mostly contained behind a fence. I just have to be on the lookout for the random dog that gets loose. The area is also large enough that I can start working Heffner from a distance and SLOWLY work up to his threshold. Plus, they both really need to learn to work with distractions.

Hmmmmm......I'm pretty much just rambling along here. I do have to say, the more I get into trying out different things and training the dogs to random "exercises," the more I enjoy just the act of training! It's just so much fun! Both dogs have their strengths and weaknesses and are so completely different from each other.

I wonder what our next dane puppy will be like.......he he he......did I mention that we're getting a third?:)