Agility Fun Match

Kili and I attended a fun match this weekend. It was at the same location as the last one we were at. We had probably an even better day because there were fewer people, and we also got to practice our teeter, dogwalk, frame, and weave poles. This facility is difficult for the bigger dogs. The ring is very small, probably about a quarter of the size of a regulation ring, which means the equipment really gets packed in there, making the turns tighter. The large dogs land so far out from the jumps that they are practically on top of the next jump, and if it's a row of jumps on a curve... well, that's tough. You'll see in the video that when there's a row of jumps, Kili is basically just bouncing between them as there isn't even enough space for her to put a single stride in. The landing of the first jump is the take off for the next.

Handling in a small ring also brings some challenges. It's hard to take your eye off your dog to check where you are before you are on top of where you need to be! There are a couple of little errors that we make simply because I pull too far without realizing where I'm at.

The second run was a competition. We had all run it once already to get a feel for it. Then they ran 3 dogs, fast dog, a slow dog, and a medium speed dog, and timed them. We then each had to guess what our dog's time would be, and run the course a second time being timed. Which is why you can see me rushing Kili! I had guessed 36s, which allowed for probably one small mistake... but unfortunately we made 2 small mistakes and our time ended up being 42s. There were two "winners" of the competition. The person that had the closest time to their guess, and the person that was the furthest! This way it was fair since not all dogs are fast! We didn't win any prizes in the competition but I was really happy with our run!

In other news, I got cold feet waiting for Kili's second heat. I was expecting her to come into season somewhere between the beginning of February and beginning of May. The further we get the more I started to regret not spaying her over the winter. I was really thinking I'd like to let her have a second heat and then spay her this coming winter, but now she's headed into spring and I can see our whole summer going down the drain. Last year after she went out of heat she became a completely different dog for the next 2.5 months. It was really awful. She wouldn't go on walks, she wouldn't play with toys, she wouldn't run... she'd barely even eat. She had absolutely no interest in anything that happened. She was just NOT my dog. After 2.5 months she slowly started to return to normal, and by fall she was back to herself. The problem is we lost basically the entire summer. And summer is when it's the most fun to train and do stuff outside... especially in Edmonton where the summers are so short. Well, I got cold feet thinking about doing that all over again, so Kili is being spayed this week. I'm not looking forward to it as she tends to be a huge drama queen about procedures, but at least it'll be over and done with and we won't have to worry about it in the future.