Spotted by the Bay

We took Peyton down to the bay front Saturday night - the weather was just perfect! He was really good, but apparently wasn't in the mood for pictures since all I got was a bunch of tongue shots and random funny faces. :)

The sunset was gorgeous though and it was a great night out for my spotty boy...

A Good Week!

After our not-so-great performances in class last week, Peyton did much better this week. In fact, he actually managed to impress me quite a bit. :)

On Monday night we worked through some challenging small sequences. I lost him a few times, but was able to get him back without too much trouble. With the exception of missing a few jumps, he worked really well. At this point I'm not worried about him doing everything *perfectly* - it's more important to me that he's playing the game and maintaining a decent level of focus.

On Tuesday night we ran a couple of nested courses. Again I lost him a few times, but his focus was so much better this week. He handled some tricky parts of the course very well and for the first time I really felt like we were running as a team.

I have to say when he's focused, he's so much fun to handle. He really reads my motion well and I'm loving the fact that I can walk a course and think about where I want him to go and not spend the time thinking about where I don't want him to go, like I tend to do with Indy. And I don't mean that in a bad way, it's just that I trained Indy quite differently and even though I'm trying to change some of my ways of handling her, we're just not quite there yet.

Anyway, it was a good week for spotty boy and I think we made some good progress. Now if we can just keep it up!

And yes, Peyton still thinks all this talk is boring. :)

Pizza Party!

Well I'm a little behind, but Pongo had his birthday pizza party this Sunday. For the record, none of my guys ever get to eat pizza - generally they have very healthy diets. But since this was Pongo's 14th birthday, we thought he deserved something special. :)

Needless to say, he was very excited...



And we even got a little bit of a funny smile...



And then the bug eyes came out!



Pongo says "yuuuuumy!"



Pizza must give the spotties crazy eyes...



Peyton says "but what about me??"



"I want pizza too...puleeeeeze!"



Poor Peyton was very disappointed - no pizza for him.



Pongo may be slowing down a bit these days, but he sure can gobble up pizza - and anything else food related for that matter! He really is my special boy and I can only hope that we can celebrate several more birthdays together. :)

Meet Layla and Rescue!

Here are a few more of my favorites from yesterday's photo session with Layla and Rescue. Aren't they just adorable? Layla is 4 months old and Rescue is a year and a half. They were very good spotties, even though Layla didn't hold still for long - talk about some puppy energy! She's a sweet one though and I absolutely *love* her eyes.

I had fun taking pictures of these two! :)

Trial Recap & Videos

Friday
Elite regular round 1: Our first run was a little rough...Indy decided to take a few extra jumps before the dogwalk and then I sent her the wrong way coming out of the tunnel. Oops!

Here's our first regular run:


Elite regular round 2: This time Indy went out of her way to take the off-course dog walk. I guess she wanted to make sure she got it this time. :)
Elite jumpers: A decent run, but for some reason Indy decided to veer right on a straight line of jumps and went off-course.
Elite chances: This was a very doable course for us. I'm not sure what happened, but I'm thinking we were both half asleep because that run was just u-g-l-y.
Novice touch n go: Finally a Q! This was a nice run that earned Indy her title AND was the last run we needed for our novice versatility award.

Here's our touch n go run:


Saturday
Elite regular round 1: A decent run, but Indy pretty much ran into me to take the a-frame instead of the tunnel. I think we need to revisit discriminations. :)
Elite regular round 2: Nice run, but we got called on the dogwalk contact.
Elite chances: A really great effort on Indy's part! This was one of the toughest chances courses I've seen and we almost got it. Since I've pretty much stopped working any distance I was pretty impressed.
Open weavers: A great run, but she popped out after the 10th pole.
Elite jumpers: A clean run, but we were over time.

Here's our jumper's run:


Overall, it was a pretty decent weekend even though we only had one Q - hey, at least it was for our title. I'm really happy with how Indy is running, even if she still sometimes thinks her course designs are best. :)

Layla & Rescue

On the trip home from Ocala today I stopped to photograph two gorgeous young Dals and their family. I still have a ton of photos to go through, but here are a couple of my early favorites.

Meet Layla and Rescue - more pictures of these two coming soon!

NADAC Weekend

Well, Indy and I survived a rather long and tiring weekend! We had a two day NADAC trial on Friday and Saturday night in Ocala. It was definitely not our best weekend Q-wise, but we did have some pretty nice runs, and other than some rain early on Saturday the weather was beautiful.

The little spotted monster stayed at home this weekend - as much as I like taking him along, I couldn't bear the thought of two nights without sleep - since last time he decided the hotel was not for sleeping. I really do need to work with him though, so he'll probably come along for the next trial.

I hope to post a few videos soon, but in the meantime here are some random pictures from this weekend. Poor Indy - she was so tired that she slept most of the day on Saturday. I don't think she was very happy with my attempts to take pictures... :)

A Very Special Birthday

My original spotty turns 14 today!

I would be up all night if I even started to write about how much this special guy means to me. So, we'll save the mushy tribute for this weekend when we'll be actually celebrating his birthday. And Pongo will just have to wait a few days for his birthday - pizza! Yup, after many years of counter-surfing and pizza thieving, he's going to get his very own. Yummy! :)















Happy birthday Pongo!

Tired Spotties

It's been another busy week here in spotty land...with agility classes back in full swing, I've thinking we should just pack our bags and camp out at SOTC.

This is what our weeknights now look like:
Monday - Peyton has class
Tuesday - Indy and Peyton both have class
Wednesday - I teach class
Thursday - I assist classes
Friday - Free at the moment, but I'm teaching a new class that starts next week

And this weekend, Indy and I have a two night NADAC trial up in Ocala.

Yikes! I think I must be a little crazy. :)

Actually I really enjoy all of it - teaching, assisting, and of course playing with the spotties. Agility really is a lot of fun, and it's a nice little mental break after a stressful day working.

Speaking of breaks, Indy is a little annoyed that this past week has been all about dogs *other* than her, so here's a few fun pics of my spotty little girl with the big ol' head. :)