Happy New year - Winter is finally here!

Happy New Year to everyone! I hope you have a wonderful 2011 filled with fun and new adventures! We had a good finish to 2010 and so far 2011 has been treating us well. The dogs and I relaxed in December. We didn't have any competitions, so we relaxed, did some training and went for hikes. Trek even got to go on his first snowshoe trip and he loved it!

Trek and Brisco hiking near Boulder

Trek and Indigo Snowshoeing


When I wasn't out playing with the pups, we started some remodeling work on our new home. We replaced the old wood burning fireplace with a gas fireplace and put up new tile. It looks really good now. The next project is a complete kitchen remodel. We currently have all the old cabinets out and are working on electrical, drywall and soon we should be able to install the new cabinets. I'll post before and after pictures later on.

Since things have been slower, I've finally been able to start introducing Trek to agility. He figured out the tunnel all on his own by following Brisco through, so that was easy. We started working the dog walk and teeter at low heights and have slowly worked the height up. He wasn't too fond of the teeter at first, but now he's doing just fine. I'm still debating on training a running contact for the dog walk. Right now I'm working on speed across the dog walk. Lisa Bonker has been training a running dog walk by putting a tunnel at the end of the dog walk so the dog has to drop their head to get into the tunnel at the end. I tried that with Trek and he has an awesome stride with all 4 feet running through the yellow! He really enjoys it and I'm sure if we keep at it, the muscle memory will really work well (like flyball box turns). Eventually we will start to move the tunnel away. Here is a video of some of his repetitions with the tunnel.



I've tried the tunnel method with Brisco to help speed him back up on the dog walk, but he still has a way of striding right over the yellow and into the tunnel! It's like the yellow is fire and he'll melt if he touches it! Silly boy... I've been working Brisco as well and he's been doing well. We had a USDAA trial scheduled for Jan. 7-9th. Brisco has been doing awesome so I was excited to run him. Of course he had to do something silly and he started limping on Wednesday morning before the trial. Argh... He sprained his wrist so he didn't get to play. It should heal quickly though, so he's been taking it easy.

Mariah has been doing really well! I haven't done much agility practice with her, but I managed to get in one quick practice before the USDAA trial and she Q'd in 4 of 6 runs over the weekend. The gamblers course was tough, so she didn't get it. None of the 47 Masters/PIII dogs got it, so I don't feel so bad about it. I think Brisco could have made it, but I won't know unless I set it up at home to try. Mariah picked up Q's in Jumpers, Standard, Pairs and Snooker. She only needs one more pairs Q for her Accomplished Relay Dog title. Her favorite thing about the weekend was having snow on the ground to play in before and after each run. Snow is definitely her favorite thing! On Saturday night after agility, Mariah got to run in a flyball demo during halftime at the Colorado Mammoth indoor lacrosse game! She did good and we all had a blast!

Next up for the pups is the Superdogs show at the National Western Stockshow next week, then we're off until February when we have 2 NADAC trials. If we finish the kitchen, we'll get out to ski and snowshoe and enjoy the snow that's finally here!