breathe

Hey readers. Long time no post.

These summer holidays were W.I.L.D. I mean, I was sleeping in till 10am, lying in the hammock, napping on the couch, eating icypoles and not having lunch until 4pm. Outta control.

Between all that, I’ve set up a new blog to document my travels with Loki given that I plan to move us to Europe for at least 1-2 years at the end of 2017 and thought it could be a nice way for other dog-lovers to follow our journey and learn a bit about travelling with their dogs. It’s funny because living in one of the least dog-friendly places ever, I’m inclined to find National Parks in Europe and then google “National Park Name – dogs?” and of course every time the results come back something like “well yeah, duh, of course dogs are allowed” and sometimes “Yeah, duh, but on lead.” It’s taking a bit of adjusting to realise that dogs are pretty much allowed anywhere. Weird.

If you want to follow along, you can find it here:

breathofwildair.com

In the meantime I’ll probably only document training goals and stuff here as a way to have it recorded. Way less interesting than pretty pictures of Europe with Loki.

Loki goals for the beginning of this year:

• Add speed when approaching weaves, start to add more obstacles before the weaves to increase inertia and continue to work on his hardest entries in this kind of scenario.
• Dogwalk. Consider pausing running him in agility trials while working on dogwalk behaviours. Look into a class because seriously we don’t seem to be getting anywhere. Otherwise try and consistently go out and do 5 minutes a night. That’s all. Just something, consistently.
• Collection. Begin with collection recalls, add distance (me and him), then motion. End goal: some kind of collection with landing-side front crosses (relative or true collection depending on situation)
• Jumping. Work through LM’s advanced jumping drills class.
• Verbals/relationship/handler focus stuff. Martina’s Special Games class.
• Jumping/self control. Continue playing with Mark buckets in between jumps (especially in small sequences of 3-4 jumps), to see if this helps with jump mechanics and with ‘keeping a cool head’.

 

Lumen’s goals:

• Well, really, the goal with this dog is to just run hard, run fast and run clean…
• Collection: I probably should do some kind of work to teach her to collect, it’s just so tedious.
• Turns off the dogwalk. Same sentiments as above.
• Obstacle discriminations, especially weaves vs. anything and dogwalk vs. anything.
• Japanese turn timing. Actually not bad with Lu but can still improve and I think this turn is a really good way to handle a lot of stuff with her.

in the end

Well, the 2016 trialling and agility season has officially finished for us this weekend.

Thank. goodness.

Not that we haven’t had a good year. We’ve had an amazing year in terms of dogs and agility. But it has been non-stop weekends of trials or seminars for the last month and a half and all of us are ready to just stop, sleep, recover, rest. My hip-flexors are asking for a rest, my neck, my back, even my triceps, though I’m not sure what part they play in agility aside from maybe carrying the crate to and from the car. I imagine that if I have all these little niggles, that Loki is feeling exactly the same.

Some events, some seminars, have melded from last year into this year, but we have been busy. 2016 has been full. We’ve trained with some top Australian handlers, more than once. We competed in the Nationals and came so close to getting into the finals, with both dogs – at the fault of either one bar, or just not being quick enough. We’ve driven thousands of kilometers, trained with Jouni and Isabelle from Sweden, which was amazing. Trained with Dave Munnings – also amazing. I was told I could get a spot on the Australian Team for WAO but with everything else going on, didn’t apply this year. Lumen gained her Masters Jumping title, and her Excellent Agility title. Loki had no titles but started to knock less and less bars in his last few competitions, showing promise for what’s to come.

I feel like I’ve grown significantly as a handler through the second half of this year. I’ve improved my timing with both my dogs, but Lumen I think in particular, on certain handling moves, and have become more aggressive in the way I handle. I’ve learned how to work Loki through a course, and while we still have a long way to go, it’s the first time I’ve felt we’ve been a team.

My little training club on the side has grown, too, and I’ve been so enjoying seeing my couple of advanced students experience success, consistently, with their dogs.

The end of this year has opened up an idea in me, a potential for something exciting and scary in the future, for stepping WAY outside my comfort zone and embracing a once-in-a-lifetime adventure. If I can make the pieces fit, if I can pull together all the threads that need to be woven, if I can find some other metaphor for ‘getting my shit together’, then maybe… maybe on the horizon in 2017 will be a year even more full, of learning, of experiences, of agility, of mountains, of hikes, of rivers and lakes and new friends. We’ll just have to see if I can pull it all off.

For now, we’re going to charge toward the end of the school year, wind down my classes at home, pack away the equipment, get back into conditioning (all of us!), hit the beach for long walks, try and avoid snakes, and sleep in.

things I learnt this weekend

It was our first trial back for a month and a half, maybe 2.

It was the first time in about a year that I entered Lumen in agility (not just jumping). My plan had been to use those two months to find a way to teach her how to do dogwalks, but then it got very wet and muddy and I trained it maybe 2 times. Still, I had a plan… though, we hadn’t trained weaves, a-frames or seesaws in those 12 months, either.

So, the learning bits.

Lumen:

• Must train her what I’m on about if I do any kind of V-set. Once she decided that cos I was kind of in her way that maybe I meant go do the backside of the bar (but then not really so maybe just avoid the bar altogether???), another time she thought it maybe meant go out and do a tunnel somewhere???? So while I’m trying to be very helpful to her by shaping her line, she’s finding it very strange. Maybe I got in her way, I’m not sure, anyway, there’s work to be done.
• Um…. practise on the A-frame. She missed 2/3 a-frame contacts and she’s my RELIABLE A-framer. Whoops. So, maybe actually work on an a-frame before the next competition. It’ll come back, she’s always been a beautiful A-frame hitter.
• Maybe actually do some weave entries sometimes. Y’know. Even easy ones. Though I can’t fault her independence in them. A+
• Holy moly dogwalks!!!! I only saw one of them, and I heard one of them and it sounded DEEP… I worked out, at home, during one of our two training sessions, that I just need to shut up. With both of them. No “go go go go go!!!”, just “GO!” as they get on, and that means go, unless I say turn. At home, Lu cottoned on to this beautifully and worked out all manners of ways to hit. Her turns of any degree still suck bigtime, but suddenly, even though she wasn’t going full speed, she always hit. What what?? So, having hardly trained dogwalks, and knowing how nervous she used to be on dogwalks, we went to this trial and I said “GO!” then shut up. One she didn’t get faulted for (I didn’t see it, too busy running) so it must have been in… one sounded deep, lots of feet right to the end (didn’t see it, too busy running), and one was a nice safe Lumen-y front foot hit. Confident and happy. Gone was my stressy high, no-separation hits that I used to get from trying to impose speed with yelling. Now she could work it out herself. And she wasn’t trotting, Lors no (been listening to “The Stand”), she was running – not full speed, but when does Lu ever do ‘full speed’? and she was happy!! So, lesson learnt. Shut up and just run, Em. She’ll make it work. She’s a good girl. Now if I can just figure out how to get her to understand turns. This is going to take some thinking, since she’s such a bouncy, non-forward-driving dog. Hmmmm….

 

And little crazy Loki-pants. Huh. Well, after 2 months of no trials he was a little high. Usually he settles by the 3rd run but no, there was no settling for my boy.

• He has a very nice start-line stay. Good boy.
• I have some ideas of some jumping grid type exercises to work on over the next few weeks that shouldn’t suck too bad or be too boring I hope. This was a weekend of many, many bars.
• We should probably train weaves sometime. Maybe before a trial. I started walking him out if, after the 2nd attempt, he still had lost his brain and couldn’t do them even vaguely correctly. Boy’s gotta learn and he’s not gonna learn there’s anything wrong if he gets rewarded with more agility.
• And dogwalks… well… they’ll come. He was just too excited.
• I started working him with food outside the ring, doing heeling obedience-y type stuff, and this was actually lovely. He had fantastic focus on me and was able to ignore all the agility going on. No wrenching my arm off, no crazy-eyed whining as he watched, biting madly at his rope and getting my fingers in the process. Just a lovely, calm, focused dog. So, I’m hoping this helps. And I might start using food in training more, too. Let’s take Loki from OMG CRAZED NEED TO GET MY TOY AS FAST AS I CAN dog, to a bit more thinking, a bit more of a working dog. Yes. I think this is a good plan.

agility: then and now

I was thinking, as I drove to the trial today, how I was looking forward to meeting the challenges of the courses I would run – maybe more with Lumen, in Masters, than Loki in Novice, but even with him there are challenges. I was looking forward to looking at the lines and the angles. I was looking forward to visualising where Loki would land based on the approach from the jump before. I was looking forward to making Lumen’s run as flowing and as smooth as I could, on the courses we would run.

And as I thought about all those things, I remembered how it used to be – at least with me. When I would run Mallei. I would drive there wondering what would go wrong, maybe, what he would do wrong (or right), with little thought to how my actions on a course would influence him. I was just steering the ship around in a fairly general and haphazard way and hoped he would understand what I meant. Didn’t we all? Relying on rear-crosses and big shoulder pulls and just yelling their name, a lot, when we didn’t want them to do an obstacle. We (or I, anyway) never looked at or considered the lines, only wanting to make our path easiest.

I quite enjoy the technical-ness of course walking now, in a way I never have. I enjoy looking at a part of the course from the perspective Loki would have upon landing a jump and consider the need to call him, to rotate my shoulders, to avoid the sneaky tunnel trap that didn’t seem obvious from MY perspective, but was like an inviting vortex from his. I really enjoyed walking the two Masters courses I got to run with Lu – the 2nd in particular, as there were multiple options for handling multiple sections of the course, and moved from somewhat technical, to big and open, and back again. A nice balance, I thought. Talking to the judge of that course later she told me that many competitors had complained about the first part of the course. It looked like this:

There’s about 9 ways you could choose to handle that (in fact I worked out 9 just then, for fun)! Trying to think of the best way to run it with Lu (we did forced front-cross, Japanese and lateral motion, but I could have possibly done another Japanese or K-turn type thing after 3 to bring her in tighter) was fun! It should be fun! It should be fun to try and strike a balance between convenient running for the handler and what will work for the individual dog. I will always, if plausible, try and choose a route that keeps Lumen in extension, for example. But maybe most competitors don’t think this way. I watched one team – with a small dog, not quick. The handler ran up to a bar – well ahead of the dog, and came to a stop. Waited for the dog to catch up, and then she rear-crossed. For me, planning and running feels like such a fun little technical exercise now, and with Lu, getting to know her more and more, I try and make it as smooth and effortless as I can. I know it’s not like that for everyone, but it’s interesting that despite the increased technicality in courses, some people are stuck in the ‘drive the ship’ kind of mindset we used to have.
My camera went flat today so unfortunately I have no videos and Lumen and my cool runs together (she brought down a bar in each), nor Loki’s one-bar-only run. Next time!

lessons from lumen

I feel as though Lumen and I are hitting our stride. It’s been such a wonky, unexpected journey.

This dog, as a puppy, wasn’t motivated. Hated drills. Still does. So trying to teach her a skill that requires some degree of repetition? Painful. I sort of gave up on her, especially once I got Loki. I thought she’s too slow, she’ll never be the dog I want to handle, I’ll never be able to do all the cool stuff with her. Plus she doesn’t really like agility, so whatever. She showed that she was pretty anxious about dogwalks in trials, so I stopped entering agility, only entered jumping. I’ve always liked jumping more anyway so it worked for me. I pulled us from all the trials over summer for this reason or that (too hot, too tired, too fluffy, too can’t be bothered). I stopped training her, for the most part. Sometimes if I had a course set up for Loki or for my Monday night class I would run her through it. Every time I ran her through I was surprised by how pleasant she was to run. How it was nice to have time. Time to think, time to catch her going wide, going to the wrong obstacle, time to redirect her if I needed.

I love running Loki, it’s the funnest. But he is like running while juggling chainsaws. Any slip, any accidental shoulder turn can result in disaster. In fact, I’ve had to tone it down with Loki, become a handler I never wanted to be. Rely on distance work over running, because running just makes him so frenetic and there’s no ways bars can stay up and he really needs to be able to THINK right now. So I’ve slowed down. I do rear crosses. I send him out out out and front cross him way over here.

And then I get to run Lu. Suddenly, Lu is so fun. So much fun. Never the dog I had expected, and it’s taken me 3 years with her to find this joy, but we have it, I think, it’s growing. Every competition, I come out laughing and loving her because I can be stupid and brave in my handling. I can look at a threadle and go: “Lumen HATES threadles!!! How can I handle this differently??” and put in a Japanese turn instead (on the course this weekend, there were 3 Japanese turns I put in because I know how much she sends out and didn’t want her thinking everything was to be serpentined and also call-offs from jumps are stupid and confusing for her, too. I need to be super obvious in my handling to keep her happy). I blind cross where nobody dares to blind cross. I race her, everywhere, all the time. I never stop moving. I shape every turn because she hates to turn so much. I trust her commitment so much that sometimes it’s too much and she runs over to me and goes; “You’re an idiot, what are you even trying to do right now?”. She will never be the winning dog, unless the winning dogs don’t make it around clear. Her jumps are HUGE, just because. She likes to get maximum height and minimum distance. Totally the most ineffective jumping style I’ve ever seen, but can you imagine me trying to do repetitions of jump grids with her? Ha! But she rarely knocks bars. And maybe with time and more experience, she’ll get more confident, get the hang of her striding, her jumping.

So I suppose Lu has taught me not to give up, to give things time, to enjoy a steadier pace, to not assume you have to have a fast dog to enjoy the run, that you can usually handle a setup in a multitude of ways, even if 90% of the handlers in the ring are all doing it the same. So today I am glad for Lu. I’m sorry to have given up on her for a little while there. I’m glad we’re a team, that we’re finding our ways to work together.

She is such a splodgy dork, after all.

herding!

I took the dogs herding today at Lumen’s breeder’s place, who also does herding lessons.

After last time Loki herded and got very, very, VERY stuck, I was curious to see how he would go. It’s so weird, the first and second times he herded, he was BRILLIANT. Kept great distance from the sheep, was so easy and natural… then we did this ‘competition’ and he was doing fine until we turned around and then he couldn’t do clockwise circles, he just got stuck on their heads… so I took him in today and almost instantly the pressure was too much. He ran at them and got all frenzied and then just wanted to stare at their heads. When I tried to wait him out, he went to the corner, sat down and stressed… so I tried to encourage him, moved around, talked to him, called him to me… lots of things… and a couple of times he got behind me, found balance, made them walk up, and then he would stress out and go back to their heads – his safe place. If he can make them stop, he’s happy. It didn’t help that Lu’s breeder was outside the paddock telling off another dog, so of course Loki was worried about that, too…. But… well, maybe herding isn’t for him.

And then I got Lu. Lu, my dog who cares less even when the most exciting dogs are running agility… who doesn’t show much interest in dinner, and none in car rides… who had been yipping and trying to climb the fence to get to go play with the sheep… DRAGS me down to the paddock, comes in with me, sits at my side and stays, solid, ready. I send her around, she’s a little crazy but not bad… and then she’s doing it, beautifully. She’s learnt from last time – when was that? 6 months ago? She’s not coming in as close, she’s not weaving back and forth, she’s keeping her eye out and working beautifully. Her stops … well, they need a bit of work, but she was happy enough to call off the sheep and come out with me after her turn, and then DRAGGED me to the water trough. This girl knows what she wants.

And then Mal had a go!!!! 12 year old Mal! Who has a herding title but was never very good because he just wanted to sniff their butts. Omg he was so good! He’s ‘old school’ herding style, before they taught them to kick out and give more space, but he cantered around and around and around and had the best time. THE BEST. He was so stoked. He proved he could hear me before we started, turning when I called him to me but then became conveniently deaf when I tried to stop him once he was working. He was lovely. He didn’t bite them, even if he cut one out to chase it. And he was happy. And so good for 12. I’m so glad I took him with me, I wasn’t going to give him a go but we decided why not?
THEN, Lu got to go out in the big paddock! There were 3 sheep out there and they were flighty as… running like CRAZY when we got in, even with Lu on lead. So we had to walk back and forth trying to calm them (which was actually a good exercise for Lu too – YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO OBSESSIVELY STARE AT THEM)… and when they calmed a bit, we released her and um… sheep everywhere… She had the best time, getting to do these BIG FAST runs to fetch them. And they were being NAUGHTY, and she wasn’t having any of it! She was bumping them with her shoulder, barking at them. Kate (the breeder) was really impressed that she didn’t give up – I think her litter sister had a habit of giving up, but not Lu! Finally we got them to me and they calmed down a bit and Lu worked on doing big circles, and then we put them through the Y-chute which was a new skill, and she did really well for her first time.

So hey… my girl is a herding dog, that’s for sure. She can do agility, whatever, but herding is her thing. So… I have to try and find time to do it with her, cos it was pretty fun today, and she loved it so much. She was a different dog when herding… especially compared to my, “sigh, do I have to? FINE..” agility dog… I wouldn’t say she was necessarily more attentive, as such… but hmm… different. More present. Yes, that’s what I’d say. More present and more purposeful. I liked that. I really want to try her on cattle, too. Apparently her litter sister looooves working cows… I reckon Lu would too, to get all cocky and angry at them, and not back down even when they put pressure on her.

Now to find some free weekends from agility… HA.

like the fog has lifted

I spent the last few months feeling paranoid about Lumen.
I wasn’t the only one who noticed, how she seemed flat, not herself, like she was in a fog. When we went to the beach with her favourite person in the world and her favourite dog friends, she was on the outside, doing her own thing, trotting along, not getting involved – there, but not there.

She had blood tests and thyroid tests but everything was normal and I began to wonder where my big personality dog had done. She had never been a dog that was motivated the way Loki was, but she was big. Bigger than Loki in every other part of life except agility. She was naughty. She was into everything. Was she just more mature now? More chilled out? Was she sick in some way we couldn’t see? I had accepted that she didn’t love agility, she didn’t see the point. She didn’t see the point in running fast and earning rewards for it, no matter what I tried to make them more fun for her. Why work hard when you can work half-hearted? She reminds me of some kids at school. You know, you’ll have your border collies- the kids who try and who challenge themselves. Who want you to look at their work and go “awesome job! and here’s how you can make it better…” and they’ll go off eagerly and make it better. And then there’s the kids who are like huskies, maybe. Who do their own thing, enough to get by, but your agenda is not theirs. And then there’s Lu, who still reminds me of a teenage girl, who, if you find something she finds fun, she’ll do it in an overly enthusiastic kind of way, to the point of not really doing what you wanted at all… or, if it’s not that interesting, she’ll get it done, sure, but why try harder than you need to?

And so, I’d accepted that she was this teenage girl when it came to agility, but then she began to slip away in other places too. She wouldn’t bring us toys as often or, if she did, it was sort of half-heartedly and she’d lose interest. She looked worried all the time, especially if we were going out for a walk. She would attack Mal randomly whenever he accidentally bumbled his way near her and her toys. She would fall behind Mal (the 12 year old dog) when out bushwalking, seemingly unwilling to keep up.

So sleepy all the time…

And then, maybe a week or two weeks ago, she felt… better. She seemed brighter. And then she dropped again – I kept a record for a few days of her energy after I wormed her, wondering if there was a reaction happening there, trying to identify what had triggered her originally to seem so… tired.

In the last week or so, she is back to the dog I knew. Still not loving agility- I think I’ve pretty much given up that dream – but big again, naughty, in to everything. Sampling the decorations on the Christmas tree. Pouncing all over the bed at night as we settle in and shoving toys in our face. Bringing us toys to throw her while we sit on the couch. Showing off, incessantly, when Penny came to visit – climbing all over her, balancing on chair arms, pinning her down and licking her all over the face. She seems to sleep less, or, when she’s sleeping, she’s ready to wake up, instead of the heavy deep sleep she seemed to fall into before.

I don’t know what’s turned the corner with her. What caused her to fade out for a good while there and seem lost in herself. Allergies? Changes in season? Food? Worms?! All that has changed or been addressed in the last couple of weeks, so it could be anything…

All I know is that although she’s a pain in the butt, Christmas-decoration-eating, in your face naughty, agility-disliking dog, I’m glad she’s back… I missed her making me laugh with her stupid antics.

This is the dork-brain we missed…

trial weekend

A big weekend for a little border collie (and a Lumen). Our first overnight trial. It was a nice one because they started at 12.30 on Saturday which meant we didn’t have to get up at 5.30am to get there. Yay! It was super humid all weekend with thunder rumbling away in the distance for most of it. Luckily none of my guys mind thunder so it didn’t really affect them. Though, the heat absolutely killed Lu, she doesn’t do heat, nope.

Loki’s runs on Saturday were…. reasonable. He knocked about 4-5 bars per run. He looked like he tried to adjust on the DW, and he missed his weave entry but once we tried again he weaved beautifully.

Here is a video of him going very fast and knocking some bars down.

Lumen had a run in masters jumping because I like the judge and it was a very fun course. People were doing all sorts of things – threadle tunnels, layering things, forced front crosses… because I had Lumen I opted for our Go-To handling style which is for me to run as fast as I reasonably can, blind cross everything where practical, and keep her in extension at all times. I actually managed to do handling completely different to anyone else I saw walking the course because they all wanted to go “COOOOOMMMEEEE’ into a tunnel, and I looked at that and remembered how Lumen thinks tunnel threadles are just the stupidest thing invented, so I ran really fast instead, looked over my shoulder and did a blind cross, putting me where I needed to be. No need for threadles. Hey! Here’s a video.

Unfortunately I didn’t connect with her after that 2nd jump so she blew me off and went in the other end of the tunnel. Turning does NOT come easily to Lumen and she really, really needs my help in these situations. Other than that, not a bad run!

Then we camped near this big, big lake! It was excitingly big because Australia doesn’t really have big lakes. This lake could have been in Switzerland. It was cool. Except there’s a lot of water in this whole area which meant a lot of mosquitoes. We woke up in the morning to the sound of buzzing as layer between the tent and the fly was COVERED in them. Eww.

So much lake. So many mosquitoes

Then we went back for day two. Loki had mixed results. As in, at one point I was questioning whether he was at all ready to trial. With bars down, and in both agility courses not being able to get his weave entries, hit dogwalk colours or actually do anything that resembled the course. Oh he likes going very fast, but this is a problem when I need him to ACTUALLY PAY ATTENTION. His agility runs were a mess.
But then the afternoon came and I decided to take a leaf out of Silvia’s book (explanation in a moment) and went in there calm and non-frazzled. His jumping run? 2 bars down. Not bad! His agility run? An acceptable dogwalk hit, still didn’t manage to get the weave entry, and only 2 bars. Otherwise a clear run. Of course, neither of these two-best-runs-of-the-weekend got filmed. But that’s ok.

I remember when Silvia started trialling To she said that she basically stopped running – she wanted to make sure To wouldn’t drop bars so she could get out of A1. Now, look, I’m not necessarily in any rush to get out of Novice – though to be honest I think  all the GO REALLY FAST IN STRAIGHT LINES AND DO WHATEVER IS DIRECTLY IN FRONT OF YOU!!!!!! is very much working against Loki in that whenever I DON’T want him to do whatever’s in front of him, he finds it very hard not to. But I did find that when it came to the home run of the jumping course, my instinct was RUN HARD, RUN HARD! But I told myself no, I was doing an experiment, don’t run hard. Take it easy. So I did, and the bars stayed up.

I had some advice, too, from an old-school competitor that I shouldn’t do long leadouts with him because then he focuses on me, not on the jumps (after he misjudged his takeoff and crashed into the first bar of the course (here’s that video)) to which… I was not overly convinced. I actually think setting him up far from the first bar doesn’t work for him – it’s not like he needs a big run-up after all. As soon as I started setting him up closer, he had no trouble with that bar. Plus on the course I had to do with literally 5 jumps in a straight line leadout (including the spread – an obstacle I think he hasn’t NOT knocked so far…) he didn’t knock a single bar there (even the spread! Verbal praise galore!) because I WASN’T RUNNING. I took it easy. So maybe this is something.

And I have to work on weave entries from stopped starts (tables, leadouts with a jump before, etc). These were very hard for us. Possibly any entries would be. But they were looking so so good at home.

Oh! And I nearly got a pass with Lu but temporarily forgot where I was going so then I tried to push her back onto the right line and the bar came down. DAMNIT! It would have been our first excellent agility pass.

Oh, and while I was waiting to run Loki, people started shouting “Loose dog! Loose dog!” so I looked around and there was a big orange bundling bundle of fluff. Apparently my senior citizen dog had done a jail-break when we weren’t there, smashed up his crate, broken out, avoided the people who tried to blockade and coral him (he’s too spry for them!!!) and found me all the way on the other side of the field. He was quite pleased. He got relegated to the boot (trunk?) of the car for the rest of the afternoon. Poor Malmal. Still, surely after so many years of competing, he knows how to be crated. I don’t know why he chose that precise moment to come find me. Weirdo. Maybe he wanted to relive his glory days.

poor neglected Lumen

I feel a bit bad for Lu at the moment…

When I come in from training Loki her eyes are all big and hopeful. If she’s outside watching she barks and yips little excited and frustrated barks of wanting to join in.

But I haven’t been training her. Usually, I train Loki first – he’s my priority so if I can get something done in the daylight and go for a walk, I will. Then, we either finish on a really good note and therefore I don’t want to ‘punish’ him by locking him away and running Lu (the worst thing in the world for him), OR… we finish up feeling a bit deflated and I don’t want to train Lu with that attitude.

Or… I finish a nice session with Loki and we all go for a walk. Plus it’s hard with Lu – you have to warm her up and cool her down for literally 5 minutes of training.

Then again, I don’t know how much she actually gets out of training given she seems to think  that most of the things we do are stupid and pointless… So maybe it’s not that big of a deal.

neige

We managed to make it up to one of our favourite places to frolic in the last snow of the season, bask in the sunshine, take 1000s of photos of our dogs running, and enjoy each other’s company. We hiked for probably 11km and stopped at the town nearby for kebabs on the way home. Lumen didn’t run off once, Mal wasn’t too tired, Loki didn’t smash himself to pieces trying to go very fast. It was lovely.

Here are my favourites:

Ready, set, go!!!

I love the trees up here. Some are burnt and are just white trunks… some still have splodges of colour and are all twisted and cool shapes.

She’s just so beautiful and so photogenic…

Sometimes she even poses majestically…

Mal is, as usual, yelling at everyone. Loki’s trying to round up Lu, and Lu is just having the best time because snow.

Badgers are pointy and handsome…

And you can race fast dogs across nice scenery and backgrounds…

And Mal, even at nearly 12, still walked the 11km without pulling up lame or being too sad.

I

Loki can do it better than his biggerer brother. 😉

3 proud dogs on a rock