It Sure does Not Pay to Be Lazy

I seem to be pretty bad at my time management skills, so I figured I will just do a quick post!

I'm in a reflective mood so thought I would share one of my thoughts from the past few days-because I know everyone wants to know what is on my mind ;-).

Cricks and I...well Breeze and Liz also-have been working on heeling, something I was only interested in teaching if I could have help to teach it the same way we taught agility with an emphasis on FUN!  I have been learning with Denise Fenzis online Precision Heeling, then Heeling Games classes.  TA DAAAA we are loving heeling!  All of us!  I think we are going to start the Ring Prep class Denise is starting tomorrow.  I am just going to audit, because I am poor, hahahaha, but I learn well that way.   Denise has the first lesson from the class on her blog entry from July 17th.   http://denisefenzi.com/

So I will get video of our heeling work when I get this time thing worked out.....I'm excited to share...in the meantime.....

CAN I TELL you how happy I am now that Cricks is 3.5 yrs old, and we have stuck our feet into lots of different types of training,  I AM SOOOOO GLAD we were not in a hurry to go on to the "fun stuff" and spent her whole first year in foundation skills-body awareness, learning how to learn, building our bond and understanding each other, recalls, etc.... I have seen the big pay off with the two classes we have been doing, they involve some new things but I keep finding we usually have a little head start in almost anything we have been doing.  For example take this simple skill, going around a pole......

1. Sylvia uses going around a pole and learning to bend their body as the first step in cik/cap which teaches dogs to use their body, helps prevent injuries, helps with object focus and teaching dogs to go out away from us, and helps with speed and motivation
2. Linda M starts her jumping course and her jumping course with going around a pole, to help with body awareness, using their body to curve and flex, help them orient to the jump and to help with other exercises she uses to help the dogs focus their head lower while jumping. 
3. Denise uses going around a pole and pivot work (going around in a circle with the front end on a bowl or brick) to increase body awareness, help the dog learn to move their body so they can turn corners beautifully, etc, and she uses going around a pole and rushing back to heel position to help the dog understand heel position, to add movement and more fun to something that could be BORING,

Not sure where else that particular skill comes into play, but I bet there are some other sports!  I keep finding places where our foundation has really helped.

Now just to keep everyone unbroken long enough so that we can put that great foundation to use and learn ANY advanced skills!!!!!!!!  When I hurt my leg over a year ago, Cricket and I were just starting to gel and work on some higher level skills......sigh......hopefully we will be back working on those soon and hopefully those skills will still there there....I think we will be pretty rusty. 

FOR FUN: I have a picture of why you should take the time to sort out leashes and perhaps put them in a pillow case or bag before you wash them in the washer, hahhahah, might take me awhile to untangle this mess.  I got home from the beach and just threw the entire mess into the wash, mistake!  I should have taken some time to put in the foundation to a good washing experience, LOL, OK very bad but I did try to tie that into my post!