Snowgility

posted on Friday

What’re you gonna do. The dogs are clamoring for training, and the road is pure muck, and the agility yard is hovering somewhere between knee-deep in snow and melted into sludge.

Not to mention the next trial is looming, in the big scheme of things–when you’ve got dogs to condition and tune up.

So out we go into the arroyo. It’s more like a pre-arroyo–it has some really steep parts but is mainly more gentle, and it’s within the horse pasture. Now, just the other side of the horse fence, that’s where we’ve got a several-story drop and sheer verticals, a tangle of junipers growing out with no visible purchase, deadfalls, and gutted-out soil.

We’ll stick to this side, I think.

We head out the north side, loop around the back…running leaping happy dogs, sniff sniff sniff *wag* BAWH! And we play the Come Game, which means I wait until Connery has found the very best most interesting SNIFFY thing and I call him, and there are cookies.  (Belle doesn’t really  need this game, but she gets a cookie anyway.)

Along the fenceline, through the arroyo, and climb back up out, where we emerge into the agility yard south of barn. Not much there now–a few half-buried jumps, set low. The dogwalk; the teeter. The table, half obliterated by snow.

Connery, of course, throws himself over the dogwalk, all full of BAWH, and then we play with handling in the little jumping square. Wraps, turns, switches, front crosses…drive out to that far jump and pull around to the teeter. None of it’s very fast, but it doesn’t matter. They’re having fun, and they’re learning to work agility under conditions that will leave them unphased by inclement weather at trials.

Half of the obstacles they perform in tandem; they head for the table together; they run the dogwalk in single file…Belle watches while Connery works the jumping square, and she’s thinking, “I’d rather keep my feet tidy right at this moment.”

Then we cut through the arroyo to skim behind the house and hit the gate we used to get out, and towel off, and if it’s not agility…well, it’s snowgility.

Here he comes to save the day!

Racing for it…

Wuh-oh

“No, really. Pick me up.”

Obligatory artsy piccie

End of the Day: Hat hair and happy Beagle