Enjoying the journey..and taking a break

The last few weekends I have been back on the trialling scene, and enjoying it. The weekend before last I had THREE trials, with a single at Canine, and a double-header at Carine, and last weekend Karen and I made the trek to Bunbury, to give our babies a go at travelling and trialling. Despite the lack of passes, Red was not at all phased by the long trip, or the overnight stay at Aunty Karen's, and was very keen to do agility. The trials have showed up some more areas we need to concentrate on, specifically jumping. She is still at times inclined to launch all feet in the air instead of striding and properly jumping, especially on the 1st jump. So it is back to jump grids and jump training for us! Her A-frame is going pretty well, and the dog walk is getting there, still not the speed she does it in training though.
Here are some vids that Karen took and uploaded. No clear runs but a LOT of fun:





And here is Shim, also having fun. She is starting to pull quite a lot of bars in her runs, so she is doing the jumping training as well. With her, though, I am not sure what is causing it (whether it is caused by hip discomfort), so I will never make any sort of a deal about them coming down. As long as she is happy, I am happy.




In other news, I have decided to retire Ink from agility, at least for 6 months or so. I cannot seem to keep her sound (Shimmer is much 'sounder' than she is). She is no longer lame on her LH, but when I did a few minutes of jumping with her the other week she held up her RH again. Psoas again? I don't know. We will see what a big long break does for her. I am trying to convince Mike to start tracking with her, she is too young not to have anything to do.