Time out for the Basics.

I went over to Dee's to practice with the dogs last night after work. (This is becoming an agility blog again, which is what it is supposed to be!). It made me want a ranch so badly, or at least a new house with a large enough yard so that I could practice. We were going to be going in as a partnership with my parents so that we could swing financing on our ranch, that was happening all along, even when we had the offer in on our DREAMRANCH that was ripped from us on the overbid last July. Through various financial events, this partnership is off for now and our price range has been considerably reduced to basically not being able to afford anything remotely ranch like. Everyone feels bad about this, especially my parents, but I've been trying to figure out other creative ways to get us to our price range which basically come down to I would need to quit doing the things that make me want a ranch and take a horrible art director type job in a place like San Jose just to be able to barely afford a house payment. Not a good plan. Or move to another state. Not a good plan. Gary buys lottery tickets. Not a good plan.

So anyways. I took the dogs over to Dee's to practice last night after work. Agility blog. Practiced on just a few drills. Otterpop's quick release and sometimes long hold contacts. Ruby speeding up through the weave poles. Both dogs insta-downing on the table and staying put there. Otterpop is so crazy fast when I practice and turns on a dime. Ruby was pretty fast last night, and was hitting bars off and on so I was able to rerun sequences where she dropped them and work on my handling. I have to really keep my arm somewhat rigid and extremely still when she jumps and try to keep a little less distance from her, which helps her not leave that last stride out. She should probably go back to jump grid work again, if she was a pony that's what I'd do, but again, it's something you need space to practice. Ruby's contacts were all of course perfect, the "I am jumping off this A-frame thing" has never happened practicing. Her first run Sunday is a standard though, so that is where it creeps out.

This Sunday we have an ASCA trial. We haven't done much ASCA, I don't even have title tracking numbers for the dogs, so it's just for fun. I gave up the team one in Turlock for this, just thought what would be funner. Drive to a small close trial with no pressure, or a far, hot trial with a lot of pressure since the events are all team and if you screw up, you screw up your team. Hence ASCA. Maybe next year is the year we get serious and make sure both dogs get qualified for the Nationals. Ruby isn't qualified in anything this year. We haven't run any grand prix or steeplechase at all! Or team. Sunday trial goer. Somehow I managed it with Ruby last year on our meager set of trials. But going to the Nationals is a huge time and money committment that I can't really figure out how to make. Kind of like where I'm at now with my whole future since we need a new plan.

I like corgis a lot, but not to eat. The dog world has a lot of white hat/black hat issues, with people vehemently on both sides. I like watching the Animal Planet on Monday night, because they have traditional choke the dog training with friendly Monks! at 8pm, then British dominatrix training with sound aversion but giving treats to wacky British people at 8:30. They are pretty much diametrially opposed in their techniques, both of them offer pretty interesting dog whispery advice, and I sit somewhere in the gray hat view of them.