Another seminar weekend, one on one time with the Crickster!

I am so happy it sounds like my fellow bloggers weathered the weekend storm safely! Reading every ones descriptions it sure sounds like a scary weekend ;-(.

This is a picture of My fellow seminar participants and Marla C who put on our weekend seminar -this was at lunch with all our doggies. There was one other BC and his mom who were not in the picture but also attended the seminar. Check out Cricket begging for food....I think she figured with the picture taking in progress she might have found an opening to get her lunch!



I was so proud of my girl Cricket this last weekend. While everyone on the East coast was having to deal with the storms and had such a scary weekend we were dealing with a heat wave. I was lucky enough to get to go to a seminar that was on Puppy Motivation and Play the first day and Tight Turns and weaves the second day. I would like to talk more about what I learned and I will in a couple of days!

The seminar was in San Clemente-about 2 hours from me- it is apparently a very dog friendly town The seminar was held just a few blocks from the beach-how cool is that? I got to stay at Marla's house who was the one who put on the seminar- Daisy Peel had slept in the bed I slept in the week before, too bad her awesome agility handling did not seem to rub off onto the sheets and then to me, I was less then amazing,....I was OK-but definitely not amazing, I really did not see any signs of any sort of greatness that had rubbed off on me, what a shame,hahahaha.

In her agility classes Cricket had been awful the first few classes of the series with her barking in the crate, but I had worked with her a lot during that series of classes-clicking and treating for quiet behavior, taking her out and doing tricks, and leaving the door open and playing crate games so she would sit and watch the other dogs quietly. LUCKILY it seems like it helped because Cricket was a good little girl for the seminar and waited pretty nicely in her crate for her turn. There were a few times she was barking but she really did much better then I thought she would.

The other great part is that she was able to play, tug, do agility in a brand new place and she did great in the first seminar she has attended. She was doing her cik/cap turns (tight turns on jumps and understanding when to jump in collection to get ready for a turn), the whole weekend made me feel like we have been making a lot of progress.

The best part of the weekend was when we all went out for lunch together. It was the neatest feeling in the world to have a dog that was able to climb into the back of a Volvo with a HUGE Doberman and a 30 lb terrier-loose in the back of a car with dogs she did not know-the dogs were all perfect. I wish I had got a picture of those three dogs riding in the back of the car.

The restaurants were so neat, we went out a few times during the weekend with all the dogs. All the restaurants with patio tables welcomed dogs and brought out bowls of water for the dogs, it was really fun to have a weekend with just Cricket and I-able to hang out and do a lot of things we do not normally do.

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One of the exciting events I have been following is the arrival of these two cuties- they are Crickets Brother Jive's babies-Cricket is an auntie!!! Their mom is Nakita who is an amazing and beautiful girl who is a great agility dog. Aren't they cute? I wish I had a bigger picture but there is a super cute video if you go to Jive's blog. http://jumpnjive.blogspot.com/ Some of you might remember Jive participating in our weave pole challenge.