Weaving ....

Well, no secrete the last two weekends we were having weave troubles and they got worse each run. At first I was just frustrated and thought it was a training issue. I thought she was practicing them wrong and that was the reason we had more and more difficulties.

On the day after the trial I noticed Breeze standing and her back looked really rounded upward (roachey) like a mad cat when she was standing and I had thought I had seen her left rear leg sort of stiff and not moving just right during the trial but sometimes I think I just imagine things so I had sort of pushed that out of my head. I did notice on the day after the trial that leg was definitely moving funny and she would hold it up and sort of out at a weird angle. When I laid her on her side she really fought me doing the stretches, and she loves her stretches. She also kept her back left leg flexed up and away from her body, very odd looking. When I tried to massage her she would flinch when I touched her back end, and kept putting her face by my hands trying to get me to not massage her.

I took her to the vet today and sure enough, her spine is way out of whack, her vertebra are all out of whack and she definitely is roaching her back. She flinched and was really not wanting to be examined and the vet was very sure she was in a lot of pain. Her left hip was way out of whack and she is holding that leg at an odd angle.

Poor Breeze, gosh I just feel so horrible for her. Can you imagine how it must feel to try to weave when your back has been thrown and is sore? Not to mention jumping and hitting contacts and turning tight in the air with a bad back? No wonder she seemed so off, and no wonder she was only trying to weave every third pole. I should have known because we have issues getting the entries of poles, but once she gets the entry or if we go the second time they are always great until this last two weekends. I think as the two weeks with that much agility wore on her back just started hurting more and more to the point she would not even try the weaves. I am so glad the last two runs I just went on past the weaves, I tried to load her but as soon as I saw it would not happen we went on.

So Breezie girl got an acupuncture and an adjustment and is on some pain meds and is getting ice packs, but she still gets to swim with the life vest so it helps support the back. We are supposed to give it until the end of the weekend and see how she is doing, she might be ok to go back and she might need more treatments and more rest, it will all depend on how she is feeling.




At Breeze's point in training it is so hard to tell, is she hurting, or are we having training issues? How do we get the weave entries trained without tons and tons of reps? I guess my gut feeling is that when she is doing weaves well, gosh they are gorgeous, she really does not know to do them very well once she gets the entries. It is just the entries that can suck, so maybe I just use three or four poles to train those (which is what I was doing...) and try to really think about training so that each repetition is doing something. I also think she is just not going to be allowed into the 21 inch weaves, all the classes have them because people are still switching over to the 24 inch poles, but I think they are just too hard on her, so not sure how I will handle that in classes but...now that all the trials we would do have 24 in poles there really is no reason to keep putting her into 21 inch poles.

Whats Pink and Polka dotted? WHY our life vest!

I had to show off the pink polka dotted life vest I found for Cricket. That is SOOO us! We have one of those above ground pools, so there is no where for the dogs to put their feet on the ground and rest, so when I want to bring all the dogs in at once I do let them swim for awhile and then put a life vest on them in case they get tired. I worry that when there are four or five dogs and just me I might miss if someone needs help, yep, I am a worry wart. I need to figure out how to make a ramp so the dogs could sit and rest in the pool, but I have not figured out how to do that yet. Anyway, the playgirls had to start playing while we were walking to the pool through the agility yard. Poor water wubba...not exactly made for the dirt.

We survived the heat!

The day started out bad, I ran out of the house with Breeze, prepared to just hang out at the trial. I had to stop at Target for a spray bottle for water and I looked down and noticed my shirt had a big glob of Oatmeal from my breakfast on it, then noticed my shirt was inside out. LOL. Off to a great start. Breeze would not get up this morning and her eyes looked horrible, like she did not feel well. I figured we were definitely not running. I was going to meet my friend Denise at the trial, so I did decide to go and just watch.

BEATING THE HEAT:

TRIALING IN THE SUMMER IS EXPENSIVE! By the time you get all the things to keep the dog safe...geeze..I could have taken a trip, to some beach location, what was I thinking trialing instead of that? The funniest thing was when I checked on Breeze and she made a little ice nest, she had taken all the frozen things in her crate and piled them all around her. She was laying against a frozen 2 liter bottle, she had the ice pods under her and had one between her front legs on her chest. She was laying her head on the other ice bottle. She had the rest of the ice pods all against her other side, I do not know how that could have been comfy but she looked great.


The temps were over a hundred at 2:30pm when we left the trial so I knew in the middle of the day it had to be hotter then that. I had taken the advice AC gave and brought a few frozen liter bottles of water for the crate. I also had four ice pods from clean run under the crate pad.
http://www.cleanrun.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=product.display&Product_ID=1889&ParentPage=sale. I had put a wet cool coat on Breeze http://www.cleanrun.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=product.display&Product_ID=918&ParentCat=152When Breeze was outside I put a reflecting coat on top of the chilly coat http://www.cleanrun.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=product.display&Product_ID=1380&ParentCat=152. I had my Ryobi fan blowing over the frozen bottles, so I am sure that helped. Anyway, I got a sprayer bottle on the way to spray Breeze's coat down when it started drying and of course there was the power boost to give Breeze to replace the "stuff" she lost in the heat and while she was running http://www.cleanrun.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=product.display&Product_ID=2429.



That list of things that I got for our hot weather trialing does not include the cooler I bought to keep enough water in for me, and the two cooler thermas things for Breezes water, one so I had enough water to dip her coat into and so I had water to wash her down with, the sun screen, the hat I bought from petsmart on the way to the trial for protection from the sun. I also got a couple of umbrellas from Costco and a couple of metal umbrealla holders, then the cart to haul all that stuff and of course bungees to hold everything onto the cart, does it ever end? YIKES, writing out all I invested is shocking, LOL.

Now here on a commercial they would list out all the expenses involved in trialing... they would hold up the little blue ribbon and say the first place ribbon.....priceless-of course with a picture of the person hugging their dog and their dog looking so very proud and happy. LOL, well, no "priceless" ribbons for us, just the knowledge that we made it out of there and had some fun on the last day.



OPEN JWW
The open classes started around noon, which was hours earlier then they had started open runs yesterday. Right before the jumpers run was going to run a gal sprayed me with the neatest sprayer, it seemed to have magic water! I had felt so poopey but after the spritz I actually felt pretty good. I was over checking Breeze and she came out of the crate jumping up and down and barking and chasing her ball. She looked terrific. I decided to go ahead and run Open JWW even knowing the course had a tunnel to the weaves and we had almost no chance the way Breeze has been doing the weaves of getting that. I made a plan to go and make a fast, happy run, work the start line and just try to get Breeze running and driving ahead. Well, it was a fun run and Breeze had a good time, she had no clue what to do with those weaves, but....hey we had fun. I did not even try to fix up the weaves, they were not going to be fixed at that trial and usually if we restart them she always does them well but not this weekend... she went around a jump and I did not fix that because at this point I only wanted a fast and happy run after the runs that seemed so sad for Breeze yesterday. Breeze thought she was a super star and thought we had our best run, so that was the whole goal. Only two people Q'd in open JWW, so I was in good company.



OPEN STANDARD
As soon as we got out of the ring from JWW Breeze looked great and she had ran happy and fast, so we ran over and had to run into the standard ring. I was sure we were only doing one run, but Breeze looked so good and the weaves were not until the end of the course, so I thought we could work on the contacts and the start line only had a short lead out so I thought that would be terrific for working the start line. It was a fun course. As we hit the end of the dog walk and then ran down the line of jumps of course the dogs built up a ton of speed, and you had to hit the tunnel on the off side. Breeze was way ahead and did not turn and twirl, so VICTORY, because it is hard for her to read a long line of jumps and keep going- she read what I was showing from behind and turned and hit the correct tunnel entrance. On the second tunnel this is where a lot of people in excellent and open missed because if you did not keep the dog in handler mode and if you let the dog go into obstacle mode they took off into the chute. Well, We got that just fine. It was a good run until it was all over in the weaves. We never did get those, Breeze actually hit the entrance and got five poles then sort of went over two and caught one, I think we went back and retried and she just hit a couple of poles so we went on, we already knew the weaves are now totally broken, so yep, adding that to the list of things to work on, LOL.



Anyway, so I met my goals and we had some fast and happy runs. We kept the judges doing the YMCA dance with not doing the weaves, but hey, it was so much better today then yesterday so I will take it.

BREEZE HELD HER START LINES,she was SOLID, and she was happy so I am so glad we did not have to take any time off trialing with the horrible runs of yesterday as our last memory. :-).

I talked to Daneen Fox about what was going on in trials with Breeze and I. I met her when I got to go to world team tryouts and she is always so helpful, a very nice person. Anyway, Daneen was jump setting so she watched our runs and she said that she just thinks I need to train in a higher mode and that is why things are falling apart in trials. At home or in our classes Breeze is happy and comfy and not totally amped out of her mind. She feels the key is to get her over the top and excited while we are working on those weaves and then to get me to quit flinging my arms around, LOL. I am better at the arm flinging then I used to be....but apparently still have not left my flinging ways behind. Daneen suggested coming to a few of her classes during our break from classes here and she said she would help us out. The classes are pretty far away, but I think we are going to go for a few times to be able to keep working while the classes here are on break. I think these last two weekends have let us know we are not quite there yet, getting there, but not quite there yet....LOL

Well, I think we are done with trialing for the summer...

This is definitely our last trial we are signing up for until the weather turns cooler. I want to trial and work on the things we are finding need work so much, but trialing in this heat is just not fun at all, and today I ended up wondering what I was teaching my dog...nothing good I am sure. It was all the more miserable because they did not have any water available for cooling down the dogs, so I had brought some for drinking and some ice for cooling but I had not carted in enough for washing poor Breeze off.




I feel a little stupid even going to the trial today. It was so hot (I know it hit 100 and was humid today) and open ran at 1:30 so we had been sitting in the heat for hours, the rings were running slow so we ended up sitting in the sun for a long time. I really thought we would be going in a lot sooner then we did which would have helped. This was the first time I have seen Breeze just really look totally not into things and she was really not committed to the course. Of course I was not thinking that clearly....I should have scratched the run but I was there and it looked like a course that was very do able. First run was Open JWW. Breeze was a little weirded out running in the heat and would not play which should have been a clue.. and then having to start next to me did not make her happy. Shooting out of the tunnel she missed the weave entrance, then she was not sending like she usually does so I was totally off trying to figure out how much to push to help her out with each jump-- I have never run with her when she was like that. The real tough part was the jump 12 to 13 jump which was at an almost perpendicular angle and really close to the 16 jump-by the time they landed the one jump they were committed to the next jump, well, Breeze read a deceleration to do that but I did not trust her which totally messed her up--I said her name, ughghghghg, why do I keep doing that????? I was worried about that turn, and the only thing calling her name did was cause her to look back at me, and I am sure that was a refusal. I did not even bother to go and look.

I REALLY feel stupid even admitting I went ahead and did the standard course, but it looked like fun and I thought we might be able to do it and after sitting in the shade and drinking a ton of water it all felt better. I guess it is hard to just say that I just decide to not do something I signed up for, how silly is that?



Breeze missed the entrance to the standard course weaves and by that time I knew she was not feeling that good, if I had been thinking straight I would have skipped the run, but greedy me, I thought we might actually be able to do something with the course. It just feels so funny to chose not to run a course, but think that is what is going to happen tomorrow if it is not a lot cooler and we don't run a lot earlier. I did have the sense to not even try to fix the weaves and just figured it was a training run and went on. The jump right after the Aframe was close to the off course jump and almost all the fast dogs took the off course jump...including Breeze. We got the tunnel discrimination's correct. Breeze did her contacts well. On the table Breeze left the table when the judge said GO. I thought no not today especially since we were just training at that point so I did not know if it was legal but when Breeze jumped off the table and had been told go by the judge I made her jump back on and wait for me to release her. I figured the worst that could happen is the judge whistling us off the course, but she was great and nothing happened. Other then the weaves, the table the off course it was a better run and Breeze looked better physically then she had in jumpers.

After we got off the course I checked and Breezes little belly was so hot, I was really worried about her-she looked ok but she was really hot. We are supposed to go back tomorrow and I have some friends coming so I think I am going to go but I am really not sure if I will run-chances are really good we will just sit in the shade and visit and watch the trial. If I do run I am only running in one run. Hopefully it will be a little less hot tomorrow. I am taking the suggestion and frozen some liter bottles to stick in the crate too. The temps really did not feel too bad as long as we were sitting and just watching, it was just when we went out to walk and then run that I thought we were going to fall straight over!

Getting ready for tomorrow......

Oh my gosh this week has seemed to go so quickly, and has felt so busy. We were trialing on the weekend, we had two agility classes on Tuesday and two on Wednesday, Thursday has been a day of catching up on laundry and packing for the trial tomorrow. Friday and Saturday we have another trial.

I am SOOOOO stressing on the heat, today it was 108 degrees, then we had a thunderstorm in the afternoon. Yikes, I just do not know if we can sit outside and run in the heat of the day for two runs both days if it is that hot. The forecasts call for a hotter day tomorrow and the area of the trial might be a few degrees cooler then it is at my house, but...we will see if we make it for all the runs, LOL.

I have some of the ice pods from clean run to stick under our crate pad, I have two cordless fans, a zen tec crate pad,one dog coat that can be wet down with water and one that is made of the aluminum meshy stuff, and I got some of the Power Boost that is to replace electrolytes after runs, so Breeze should be ok, but I know I am going to watch her like a hawk with that heat.

In class this week Breeze is back to missing all the weave entries, ahhhhh, she had been doing so good ;-(. I think she is just getting more and more excited every run we do and she just has not learned how to run full out and then brake for the weaves. ON top of her having trouble braking I have pulled her out to restart the weaves so many times when she does not make the right entry about the third or fourth pole a lot of times she stops and checks in to see if she got it right, so that is something we are going to have to change about her weave training, on top of that she is really freaked when I do rear crosses into the weaves, so....I have tried to verbally check her stride a little as she approaches the weaves, but that puts her into total handler focus and so she misses the weaves because she is staring at me or she pulls into me and starts to try to circle me then remembers the weaves and that makes a really big mess at the weave entrance, Deanna and I both deceided I should not try to do that this weekend, LOL. So we are going with the pray method of weave entries for the weekend.

Lizzie completed her class and was sooo awesome. She is getting to where she is working in such a high state of excitement and just sooo fast and wild, but the exciting thing is that she is able to think and is handling that well. If Liz is ever to trial, she will be in a really high level of excitement, that is easy to tell so she has to be able to handle that type of excitement in training to have a hope she could do it in competition. She did fantastic with an exercise we did in class with some very hard object discriminations....lots of them and was even able to do some fantastic weaves.

Cricket has been really doing a lot of training, I need to get some video together. We are doing tons of foundation work, starting some little sequencing with bars on the ground of the jumps and lots of driving to tunnels and the table, and of course a lot of foundation for teeter work. She is just so much fun to work with!!!




I did some time off this week to go to the movies and saw Despicable Me, that was sooo funny. It is an animated movie, but great for adults in my opinion, I laughed through the whole thing.

regrouping before the next trial which is coming way too soon

I just do not have words to say how grateful I am for all of you that left such nice and supportive comments to my last post. All of you just made me feel so much better, how do you all know just the right things to say? Agility people and dog people can be the BEST! I was just plain down thinking about how hard this is all seeming again, I really felt like the last trial knocked us down a peg, but it was a good thing because it really has highlighted what we need to do to get to the next level. Thanks so much Morganne for the suggestion about the rear cross exercises, I am going to set those up the first of next week. If I finish teaching the weaves so they are taught better and not just taught good enough that would take care of more then half of our refusals ;-), so no way around it I am going to have to make that happen.


WE HAVE A BUSY WEEK with agility things ;-). I am resisting the urge to run out and try to fix all the holes I saw last weekend by the next trial. Realistically, that is not going to happen, four days that are also full of lessons and where the heat is going to be well over 100 just is not four days where we can do anything more then tweak a few things in how we are running and I do not want to start to feel like agility is a pressure cooker for us. So this week I am going to play some stay games, we can do that in the house. We will do some playing around with the weaves and I am playing some games with the table because it would have helped so much to be able to have her send to the table better like she does to the tunnel. For some reason at home she LOVES the table but at trials she will twirl before she jumps on or waits for me to tell her again to jump up. I do not hover over her, in fact I usually step well away from the table and she does just jump up and gets into a position and holds it, and she releases with a blast, it is just she waits for me to get there and to resay to jump on the table. I figure that is about all we can handle in addition to all the classes we have this week. The last week of classes for a long time ;-(.

Hopefully we can get some things worked on during our classes this week, but I am not looking for huge things to happen before this weekend at the trial and I am leaving a few more weeks open for training before we get another trial lined up. SOOOOOOO Friday and Saturday are the big days of the next two trials. Friday esp. promises to be a real scortcher, I am dreading that. The trial is at the same place and Friday is going to be a one ring at a time trial, so it will be a little more low keyed and it will be easier to park and we will not have to hike in as far. Saturday is a two ring trial and will be a lot less low key and it will be way busier then last weekend or then Friday will be.

It's getting there...but, sometimes it just doesn't feel fast enough

The short story, is NO q's on Sunday. Open JWW had 2 refusals, the weaves and a missed rear cross, and the standard run, well, that ended up with the judge doing his exercises raising his arms repeatedly during our run, he got a good workout, LOL. We always try to do our best to keep the judges fit in standard runs lately. I felt GREAT during the runs and was so happy with so many things I saw and I was so happy with Breeze, but as I drove home and thought of all the things that we really need to work on.....sigh...I started feeling discouraged.



I really have to say this weekend I ended up feeling a bit frustrated because now we have been making a lot of little mistakes, and some big ones...but luckily my training buddy Denise had come to the trial to watch today and she really helped me look back and more accurately look at what we have accomplished. Less then a year ago we had just got to the point of four or five obstacles and short little sequences like pinwheels, some good foundation and we had started us on our current handling system, but I had no CLUE how I was going to get into the right place on a real course or to actually handle my fast little BC girls. I had no idea how I was ever going to keep up on a course-NO CLUE. We did not even have rear crosses at that time, so it would have been really hard to imagine keeping up.


Not even a year later-I am figuring it out and I am keeping up-we have so much to learn but it is coming together. For a couple of years I have had so many people reminding me how slow I am and asking how was I going to do it, and they did intimidate and scare me a lot. When everything is said and done, Breeze and I are keeping up with each other and it really is coming together, just this weekend it was feeling a little frustrating and overwhelming thinking about all that we still have to work on. A big part of the reason I wanted to start trialing now was so I could see what we had to work on, I think some holes in our training just were not going to become apparent until we put them to the test by trialing, so shoot I can see where the holes are pretty clearly now that we hit that Open Standard ring.


The really great things that have been developing is that Breeze is getting faster and more confident. With each run Breeze is doing less looking back at me and just going on and finding her line. Our contacts are holding up really well. The best thing I have seen is that Breeze has went from pulling to get back to her crate after a run, she wanted to duck into her crate as quick as she could. This morning going to the trial her ears were set up higher and she was so happy to get into the car. On each run she pulled to go to the run, and just walked quietly back to the crate, she seemed to want to run, so that makes me really happy. Breeze enjoying agility more and more is a HUGE accomplishment I think.

I think we might end up stuck in open standard for a little while, which after going three Q's for 3 runs in novice, well, I was hoping open standard would be at least almost as easy for us, lOL. One could hope you know! We just needed our last jumpers Q to get our open JWW title and I thought we did so good but the last place I needed to do a cross the rear I had planned just did not work, and looking back I had plenty of time for a front, which I originally planned then changed my mind, grrrr, so we got a second refusal. The deal is that would NOT have been a second refusal if we had got our weave entry more then one out of four runs this weekend. We had worked weaves a LOT, and they had got so much better, and they have been awesome in class, but in trials she is just zipping on by, but she always does them the second time, yikes, that has been killing us.

BC are sooo weird, and the start line in jumpers is just not there...so that is a real bad thing but the start line is perfect (well as perfect as Breeze and I do) in standard runs. That is pretty consistent. Breeze gets an idea in her head and she just knows that is how it is supposed to be -- start lines are no exception and that is what she has decided, you stay until mom looks ready to go in jumpers, and you hold your start until released in standard runs...so that is going to need some major work. I always said I would maintain my criteria with the starts and the contacts and not let it go...and yet...here we are doing what I said I would never do and just going with the sloppy start lines. BAD handler/trainer/mom (slaps wrists).





CHECK IT OUT BREEZE HAS CHANGED HER WEAVING STYLE TO HOPPING BACK AND FORTH NOW IN THE 24 INCH WEAVES -SHE HAS FOUND A NICE RHYTHUM FOR HER AND I THINK SHE IS STILL SORT OF SINGLE STRIDING THROUGH THE 21 INCH POLES





The open Standard does not have video, but the first obstacle was a tire and Breeze ran around it, so we were done before we started. Then I had to run with her because I brought her back to do the tire... we did a rear cross into a serpentine (plan B because I had to run with her so could not do the FC I had planned) the serpentine was really nice, up to a gorgeous Aframe, then coming out of the weaves she came really close to going up the aframe but read my front cross came back for the dog walk but she was frustrated. At the end of the dog walk she really almost didn't stop and do her contact, but at that point I insisted. When Breeze gets frsutrated she switches into a herding mode and is very handler focused sort of dancing around me, so she went into the tunnel and was not looking for obstacles at all and totally veered to miss the jump. I need to figure out when she gets that frustrated if I should stop and try to collect her or say thank you and walk off because she really isn't thinking when she gets that frustrated, silly girl.

July 10 AKC trial, JWW Q and a first, Yippie!

We trialed in Walnut, CA today. It was the first time i have been at this trial site and it was so pretty. There is a little stream right behind where we were set up, there were a lot of trees and this was a little one ring trial without a lot of entries, so it was QUIET. If the weather was not in the nineties it would have been perfect,....did I mention I am trialing next weekend and it is supposed to be TWENTY degrees hotter? Here in this part of the country Excellent ALWAYS runs first, excellent jumpers, excellent standard, open jumpers, open standard, novice...well, you get the picture. So in the summer Excellent gets to run in the cool morning, set your watch by it, when open gets to run the weather has just cranked up to boiling. How about once in awhile changing the order? The good part is that we don't have to be there until noon, maybe that would be nice in the winter months? By the time I ran my two runs I thought I was going to die! It is going to be hotter tomorrow, so we will see if I survive.

The bad news is that I was nervous and I could have paid the service there to tape my runs, but I felt like it would be bad luck, seriously....LOL. Next week I will be telling you I can only wear my holy under ware and dirty blue shirt so I can Q, LOL. So silly or not I set up my video camera on a tripod and then had to edit a lot of other peoples runs out, and if you want to see the runs you might have to squint really hard (just pretend it is all perfect while you are doing that). You can also make the video full screen on youtube if you really want to see better.

Aliens came and beamed me up and left weird, stiff, pod handler I think for our first run. I felt all shaky, and nervous and it took me a little bit to warm up. I ended up CALLING Breeze when she was heading for the tunnel I wanted....like what??? I NEVER call her when I am practicing, and I think I called her when I did the 180 into the weaves, I heard her foot tick the bar, but by the grace of the agility gods it stayed put. We missed the weave entrance, but all in all a nice run. In honor of those weirdo mistakes I picked music where Lady GaGa is reminding me DON'T CALL MY NAME! LOL, I hope you all see the humor in that. Anyway, a Q and a first, so I am not going to complain too much, but I really hate that I got so nervous.





An Open standard Q eluded us for another run....of course in the video I got all the bad stuff, which is good because I wanted to see what I did wrong....but did not catch any of the great stuff.

1. Breeze held her start line beautifully, GOOD GIRLIE!
2. We had a GORGEOUS four on the floor, but this was on the side she should have done a four on the floor, but hey I am happy about it.
3. Breeze did her Aframe contact really nice and really seemed happy about the Aframe today.
4. Breeze sat on the table and stayed which is not her favorite and it was a down all day until the open class....then it changed, yea thanks, but it still worked!
5. SECOND time Breeze did some great weaves, lets not talk about the first pass, we are staying positive remember.
6. Not caught on tape but right before the end there is a 180 and I did a landing side front cross that was GORGEOUS! Unfortunately like the fish that got away, no one else gets to see it!
7. OOOH yea, on the dog walk contact I was able to run past and Breeze held her down without being told stay, that is a first, ...getting better!


After watching the video I think first off...I was worried about the distance to the jump, triple, front cross, Aframe, so I should have STOPPED, WORK EACH OBSTACLE UNTIL IT CAN NO LONGER BE FAULTED...I should have pushed on the line from the dog walk to the tire then to the chute. Then I got all flustered and was late in my front cross and caused Breeze to drop her legs over the triple, causing a dropped bar, then....like that was not enough, did not follow the second basic agility commandment CONNECT WITH THE DOG OUT OF THE TUNNEL, if I had caught her eye and got her back to handler focus then I could have taken her past that Aframe. Well, next time. Poor Breeze, she does not like running with Pod handler.

If anyone wants a course posted I will do that, but I am tired and getting even more tired thinking of going again tomorrow, LOL, getting all stressed out takes it out of you. So I can post the courses later if anyone wants to see them, but they were all pretty nice, straightforward and not all that hard. Now the one interesting thing about the courses was that the open standard course had only ONE jump in the ending changed from the excellent course, that is right one jump--the angles were the same, nothing else was changed, and seriously the one extra jump did not add a lot of difficulty I thought.

Staying the Course-non dog related!

Some of my new best friends, LOVE that it is summer and all the great fruits and veggies are in season! Do you know how many berries you can eat and it is still just a point on weight watchers? A LOT!








I have been trying to lose some weight and get healthy and I do feel so much better, BUT...for almost 4 weeks nothing was happening! I was weighing and measuring all my food, tracking everything I ate, taking my walks, doing all the right things and the scale went up a bit at first then just refused to budge. It was not like my clothes were getting loser..so it was frustrating. I reminded myself that I needed a change of life so really did it matter in the long run how long things took? Toward the end of thise little stretch I have to say it was a little harder to stay on track with nothing happening, but I felt like what other choice did I have, I had come too far to just throw the whole plan out the window.

WELL, all of a sudden things are paying off and the scale is moving once again, like I went down three pounds in a matter of days, YIPPIE! Guess with all things really worth doing...you have to be patient and stay the course. It sure is easier to do all the right things though when it feels like it is paying off, LOL!

I have done WW before and I really like the program, but I have to say this is the easiest time by far to stay on the program. It is a little harder being vegetarian, I am going to have to do a lot more cooking and get creative because it is harder to find easy things that do not have meat. On the plus side meat has a lot of calories and points so not eating meat has made keeping on track with points easier!

I do consider myself very lucky because it is summer and the summer fruits and veggies are all in season. I love the produce I have been getting at Costco, and that makes it so much easier to eat healthy and stay on track!