Still in the tunnel

Grete loves her tunnel so much. She's been sleeping in it.

Grete's New Tunnel

Grete's tunnel from NTI arrived at work today. Damn! It's HEAVY! I totally should have skimped and gone for the 6" pitch instead of the 4" competition pitch. Oh well... We're that much closer to have an USDAA sanctioned agility trial in the halls of Amazon.com now.

Grete is no longer amused by the "party hat"

I think Jason is right. She was no longer amused by the "party hat" -- or by the whole bathing experience. The funny thing is... When she was a puppy, she didn't seem to mind baths quite as much. I think that I fell out of practice (and thus she forgot about them being an ok thing) and I think her trip to the groomers put the fear of shower-heads into her. Don't get me wrong. The groomers we went to -- top notch. She just seemed a little more ... timid ... about baths after her professional salon experience a couple months back. I haven't quite had the heart to take her back there.

In any event, so many good photos were taken tonight. You should check the rest of them out in Jason's flickr.

And with that... we bid you goodnight!

So Pretty

I love how perfect her nose looks in this photo.

Babushka Grete

Subject line says it all.

ahh... toweling.

See? She's happy. Sort-of.

Bad Touch!

Seriously -- she loves being dried. I had no idea she was making this face at the time. Jason just took the photo, reviewed it, and snickered. Told me I would have to see them on the computer or some such nonsense. I believe him when he says there was chicken licking involved -- but still -- you would think he would have warned me I was in imminent danger of face biting. :P

Butt dryer

Grete loves the towel -- but mostly on her face. She grows impatient as I dry her massive butt dreadlocks.

Just like when she was a puppy

Enough ACTION SHOTS of agility. Let's move on to the ultra-super-nitro-cute bath pictures!!

Seriously... I melt when I see this photo. It's almost as good as her shelter puppy shot.

hoops!

I have to face it. Neither of the hoop action shots turns out as well as I initially thought. However, you should totally imagine us RUSHING through them at light speed. That explains the blur - our break-neck speed!

Box!

I won't say it took forever to make the box fun -- but it took longer than it should. I kept trying to be a purist about shaping it. BTW, I'm totally a cheater now when it comes to shaping. I have been known to bait or lure to get her going.

Enough confessions... This is probably the best ACTION SHOT we're ever going to get out of the "box" command. Yay, Jason!

Backyard agility training

One last ACTION SHOT of the weaves before we move on to something else. This doesn't look like a great shot - but check out the leg swoosh on the right. Also note the complete lack of head because she's already bent to the left. That's awesome. Headless dogs == all good.

Beginning weave-poles training

Here's another ACTION SHOT of the weave pole method we're using. I have to admit that I'm pretty proud of my right foot forward - throw with right hand pose in this shot. It's just like I "bowled" my dog forward (a word that both my instructors have used to describe handling the dog.) Too bad the odds are good that she started on my left side -- not my right. Oh well. It's a great shot and it even shows how I'm throwing the ball to her left to get her to bend around the pole. She's a wiggle butt who can bend almost in half, and she's gonna have great weaves. I hope.

Backyard agility training

I know... I know... All this talk of training... Boring mundane lists of training tasks... I know you hate it. I know all you really want is ACTION SHOTS!

Thanks to Jason, I can now oblige.

Here's a great shot of Grete doing a single gate of a weave pole. She's building up some speed because I've been using the tennis ball almost exclusively. I bet that's causing some weird leaping habit that I'll need to correct later, but for now... it's all about having fun going through.

We're using the Susan Garrett 2x2 method to teach her the weaves. I like it a lot because it doesn't involve guide wires or angled sets or lots and lots of pvc.