dreaming of... agility! or....

maybe this should be titled "I love my Daddy's jammies"

When Roo gets up in the morning, Darwin hops up and takes his spot in bed. In the daytime, he usually snuggles by my pillow but this time I caught him cuddling up to Roo's jammies.

 

So agility class 2 has come and gone & once again I'm so pleased with Darwin. He's focused, attentive and not too worried about things so far.

We've only had small jumps, the pause table and the tunnel so it's not like there's been much to be scared of, but......Darwin is not too sure yet about the tunnel when it curves.

Which is all sort of funny because about 2 weeks ago I got a tweet from CleanRun about their tunnel overstock sale & since I had birthday money burning a hole in my pocket, I considered getting one. But experienced agility peeps suggested other equipment would be a better purchase & I didn't get it. Now I'm not sure if I should be regretting it or not because if I had it here, I could work it every day.

It's just something he needs more time with - and in a class, there's just not that much time to spend on a piece of equipment. That's one of my concerns with the class: too much luring and a teensy bit of strongarming dogs onto equipment.

I think Darwin is balking partly because of his vision problems. While I can't make a real tunnel, I'm wondering if I can make a sort of approximation with gardening hoops & a tarp draped over, to practice a behavior: get in that dark hole and run until you come out the other end. I don't think it's the footing that's the problem for him, as he's running through a straight one with no problems. I'll see what I can create in the yard.

Darwin goes to agility

please, please, please Mama, can I do agility?

YES? Wheeeee!

Darwin went to his first ever agility class last night & he was more than fine. He had excellent focus, wasn't too scared by things falling over (wobbly jump equipment & big puppies & leashes led to several bangs) and for me, the best thing of all?

OMG - he's a normal dog.

He's like, normal.
He doesn't bark. He doesn't lunge. He doesn't cower....though he actually does not like having his butt sniffed & he'll just spin away. If someone insists, he spins around and tries to hump them. OK, not quite normal, but normal enough for me.....

And I was the prize idiot in the class who let her dog approach a dog w/ space issues & minor reactivity. Oooops. SO sorry little cute Boston. I should know better but OH MY! It's so fun to have a dog who, you know, if you drop a leash, they just run around, say hi to a puppy & then come back. And the Boston sort of looked like he wanted to say hello but then after a few seconds he said "GET YOUR STINKY DOG BREATH OUT OF MY FACE". Which is amazingly cute when a Boston says it, by the way.

The only problem I see so far is that Darwin watches me possibly too much. Like, when running. And since he's blind on one side, he'll just run right into things if his head is turned away from them. So I'll be trying some exercises to get him to look forward while running. It also means I'm not sure if I'll be able to handle him on both sides. We'll have to see how that works as we go.

And I'm already thinking that this class is ok for getting our feet wet but I won't be continuing here so I'm keeping my eye out for something a little bit different. Recommendations welcome.

Do you see the problem?

 

Exactly. There is no room for my mug.

Yeah, this is my desk, in what we like to call my office but is actually something the size of a linen closet. You've no doubt gathered that I'm not a member of the clean desk club. In my mind, I'm a minimalist neat freak. In my head, my desk looks like this:

In reality, if you play I spy, you'll find a dog toy & chocolate amidst all the crap there. But no room for a mug....

There's a pull out keyboard shelf underneath & I found myself more often than not putting a cup on that, which honestly is a disaster waiting to happen because really, how long until you put a full mug on the pull out shelf & then push the shelf in, pouring hot tea all over the keyboard, and more importantly, your lap? Not long.

But during the holidays, one of Roo's little projects was to get the gizmo to hang the monitor up, which meant I could put Ondaatje & Mistry back on the bookshelf in the living room, shove the crap a bit further back on the desk, and now I have room for a mug!

Writers who are group procrastinating often will start sharing photos of their workspace &, did you know, there's even a whole website dedicated to sharing photographs of desks.

What is your workspace like? Neat, messy, in between?