You have my apologies for being so far off our primary topic lately. After all, isn’t my objective to see if some day, somehow, Lilly might actually be a competitive agility dog? Well, I’ve actually accepted that won’t happen, but I do want her to be a confident, well-trained, agility-minded girl in her daily life that more and more includes being around more dogs. I point only to the distractions from the outside world, the dog world, the work world as my excuse for all the craziness lately. Seriously. How much can one girl think about/worry about before her head explodes? I do have one microscopic agility brag to share. Lilly did several jumps and weaved Saturday on our home agility course, with both Ginko and Katie standing by.
I know. It’s a miracle. Take a minute to savor the breakthrough. I’ll wait.
Check out this 1965 TV performance of Girl from Impanema as your interlude music.
We’ve been doing lots of laps of our pastures as the dogs see if perhaps a three-dog pack makes sense. Once, while we passed the agility field out back, we asked Lilly to jump. And, she did.
Then, so did Katie, whose basic obedience graduation trick was jumping through a hoola hoop. And, with a little food-driven motivation, so did Ginko. It was hilarious. He has NEVER shown any interest in agility tasks. We had all three jumping a single jump one after another. Mine are PVC and permanently set at about 17 inches since I don’t ask Lilly to jump full height (which is 20 inches) every day. It’s fine for her, and since the other two are MUCH bigger, they had no trouble with the height.
Eventually, we got Lilly to do Jump, Tire, Jump, then an out entrance into 12 weaves. Huge celebration.
We had to stop, though, because Katie just LOVES Lilly so much she wanted to chase her through the course, and the last thing I need is for Lilly to think other dogs are going to pursue her as she works.
I know it’s not the legs or titles some of you regularly earn, but it was a pretty sweet victory for your very green, somewhat lame, Champion of My Heart pals.
Hey, that sounds like a huge victory because I know what you’ve been through.
Way to go!
Tiny victory? Don’t you dare sell yourself short! The PQ’s are so often much sweeter than the Q’s. Congrats on your breakthrough – I’m happy for you and Lilly!