Abby Blows Bubbles

Agility videos

This is Ryan's first ever Standard run. He has only learned 6 weaves so far so I decided to have him get the entrance and then move on no matter what (don't want him getting frustrated when he hasn't I haven't taught him the full set yet). He stuck all his contacts and didn't knock a single bar! Other than those weaves it was a pretty, clean run.


Ryan's Jumpers run was nice but I somehow got distracted watching him and forgot where I was going!


Abby's Gamblers run - not the smoothest to those jumps in the first mini gamble but she did it twice and the other mini twice as well ...but the buzzer went as she was going over the 2nd jump of the 2nd mini. Oh well - she got the main gamble giving her a 3rd place and 100 points. Oh, and you can see the issues we are having with start line stays. She doesn't actually take the first obstacle, but she stands, creeps, barks, lays down...anything but sit like I ask her too. We don't have this creeping problem in class. I have let it get like this by not working on it in trials. I really need to get her start line stay back!

Training Challenge

Some of my friends and I have decided to start a training challenge to get us motivated to keep teaching our dogs new things.

We're going to post them here:
Dog Nerd Training Challenges

The first challenge was to train backing up a wall. 7 started us off (he is so good at it!) and I'm following with Abby. I still need to get video to prove it, but here are Abby and 7 side by side at the trial this weekend.

Does this face look familiar?

That was at 4 months...

How about now?
It should....

Now?
Yep, that's Ryan's brother! I found out by accident when I asked "Steve"'s owner if he was a Border Collie x Retriever. She said she wasn't sure since he was from rescue, and that he was 2.5 yrs old...that's when I remembered that one of Ryan's litter mates was renamed Steve! Steve is a good bit taller (weighs 60-65 lbs to Ryan's 50) than Ryan and *much* more mellow. Nature or nurture? Who knows. He also has very hairy feet :) and a very poofy tail but shorter hair on his body than Ryan. It was nice to run into Ryan's 'real' brother since we usually only see the brothers from the (most likely related) prior litter (Zephyr's litter). Ryan actually looks more like Zephyr, I think, than like Steve - he acts more like crazy Zephyr too!

Speaking of litter mates...this was Mr. Splits aka Bru, now known as Chase.


I haven't had an update on him in awhile but I know that he is also much bigger than Ryan. When they were 6 months old Ryan was 30ish lbs and Chase was 48...at 16 months Ryan was 45 lbs and Chase was 70 lbs. That is a big difference among litter mates!

Happy Sun Dogs

Abby and Ryan enjoying the road trip