June Wrap Up

June was a fairly mellow month.  Which was a good thing since my summer was about to explode, and I needed the time to mentally prepare for the busy three months ahead.  I had started getting a little twitchy looking at my calendar and realizing that I was about to not have a free weekend until one lone weekend in September.  Some people thrive on that kind of constantly on the go schedule, I was skeptical as to how I would come out of it....

I had one group hike planned to Table Rock near Molalla, Oregon in June.  Since this was a hike I had never done before, Dominic was still young enough and the mileage/elevation gain was enough AND the weather was getting warmer, which now makes me understandably apprehensive with a black dog, I opted to leave him at home and just take Miley.  The hike was great and the view at the top was AMAZING!  Here are some snippets from that hike:

Everyone got to see the froth monster in full effect!

And as per usual, we did our regular outings to the familiar places that are closer to home.  Continuing to remind me that I'm very thankful and lucky to live where I live.

We also went down to visit my parents in Silverton.  The dogs had it really rough...

There was plenty of bumming around the house too.

Miley reminded me that the hole the puppy put in the curtain is still there...

I came to the realization that I have now gotten to the point where I dress for Christmas completely unconsciously, and regardless of what time of year it is.

Towards the end of the month, the dogs and I got ready for the Fourth of July! :)

And at this point, there was still training going on.  I was able to make it to Miley's agility class every week still.  I was able to make it to our obedience lessons regularly.  That all went completely out the window starting in July!  But I'll get to that in the next post.  In the mean time, training was happening, but not a lot of video taping.  Miley continued to impress me with her understanding of swinging into heel position from whatever position she was in (you can see some of the beginnings of that in my Rally Match post).  Jill, my instructor, thought that maybe we should go for more of a formal flip finish and one that had a cue that was more obvious than a head twitch from me.  Something that makes it certain that a cue was given and not that Miley anticipated a cue.  We combined two things that Miley loves to do, swinging into heel and bouncing, and then added the cue for the left finish that I used with Bess.  Luckily, Jill took a quick video of one of our sessions so that I could see how we were coming along.

I watch these videos and I am so proud of how she is coming along in training!  We still have a ways to go to get her comfortable enough to compete, but I am so in love with the partnership that she and I are developing.  Not just in training, but in every day life.  Miley has her quirks and sometimes she can drive me a little batty, but that connection is there and when we're working as a team, not much feels better than that!

Happy weekend everyone!