"The Secret of Change is to Focus All of Your Energy Not On Fighting The Old, But Building the New"...Socrates

Socrates had that quote right.
Its a new day, I have a new baby dog Katydid that makes all things seem new, I have my best buddy Cricket who keeps me anchored to the past as I try to bring her back to working condition so she can do agility after two and a half years off.

Katydid-14 months and full of it-she has so many truly wonderful traits from her mom Cricket

Cricket- she will always be the most perfect dog I could ever imagine

I decided to blog to keep track of our training journey, to keep my notes, videos and progress here in one place as I try to figure it all out.  I live in a small community and I really don't have the time or the money to travel for lessons and to be honest I enjoy homeschooling my fur girls.  We are currently taking an online handling class, a jumping foundation class with Loretta Mueller, and a Sensational Stays class on line with Hannah Brannigan.

Our agility journey started way back when with my sheltie Chloe, and I didn't know anything about handling systems, or that there were options in handling, so I suppose I started with a Gregg Darrett background, although I did not know that at the time.  Its just what was given to us to start.
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As I started to train my BCs Lizzie and Breeze-I was aware of options and chose to try to learn the Awesome Paws handling system from Linda M- that was just gaining in popularity at the time.  It made perfect sense, but I remember struggling so hard to figure out a handling system.

Cricket was brought up mostly in the Awesome Paws handling and she was AMAZING using that system, but I had a knee injury and had to get a knee replacement, we both had a few years off adjusting to that, followed by Katy's litter and then a small muscle tear Cricket had.  Unfortunately I just don't feel the APHS will work that well for us right now.  Courses are changing and I'm slower then molasses and that isn't changing any time soon.

So here I am with a few really fast dogs, and some really slow legs....what to do?  We have set out on a journey to learn a new handling system.  The new system I have in mind uses a lot more verbals, and concentrates a lot more on sending and the dog feeling confident to go out on their own.  I have trained enough dogs that I think I am doing much better remembering to pay more attention and reward the dogs for focusing away from me more and building more confidence then I have in the past.  I am also having to plain do a lot more training because I realize a lot of the time I plain am not going to be able to be there for my dogs, so we will have to rely on training and not just that I work harder at being there, because sometimes that is going to just be physically impossible.

Its all dog training, and its what I do for fun.  I pay HUGE amounts of money to play with my dogs, so I plan on just enjoying the journey, hopefully connecting with some fun people along the way and just having a great activity to keep my dogs happy and healthy and give us a fun way to connect to each other.