13 August 2012

Masters Handling Seminar with Tori Self.



This is one of my favorite new agility pals, Tori. She has been having an amazing time of success and awesomeness during the last few years running her dog Rev. She is out this week from Florida for World Team practice, so she came down here for the weekend to visit Hula's Tiki Room and hold a masters handling seminar up in the forest.


Sometimes Tori gets a little nervous teaching. We have a reputation for being mean and scary around here, and sometimes eat seminarians for snack time. She is an extremely mature, talented and poised 20 year old, and some of the agility people here are extremely immature old people that aren't even sure if they're old people or not. So that may balance out. Also I helped Tori work on a mean face she could use on people like us if we become unruly or won't start sequences again from the beginning.


I think she still needs to work on the meanness a little more. Although she scared Dig.


Tori is a brave course designer. She doesn't mess around with her courses. Every single person running had to work hard to get around. These are the kinds of courses I love to run. Very, very fun! I wasn't even officially in the seminar. Gustavo is under the weather from some dental surgery last week, and Otterpop isn't up to a whole day of running. I snuck in a couple runs at the end of the day and at lunch time. There were a lot of Laura's there. This Laura ran a lot, and had to start from the beginning more than once. That Tori, very, very mean.


She's also great at explaining. This team had very little experience on international style courses, and they did great! Not a lot of teenagers do agility around here, and I was so happy that she was able to come and learn from Tori.


Most of us needed help figuring out how to get through some of the most challenging bits. Tori stayed very, very patient.


Karla, are you out there? This is when you finally got that gnarly threadle!


Dave did a really good job. Me and Dave were the only ones who Ketschkered. Do you Ketschker? I do now, thanks to Tori. Not very well, but I am very motivated to learn better Ketschkering. And yes. I was putting in the blind crosses. I am leaning towards the dark side.


Also, at agility, when people say, "Laura," they are talking to this Laura. Here she's shown training her puppy with a giant wad of lunch meat.


Even though Gustavo couldn't come we had a great day. Although I don't think that we're ready to Ketschker together, so maybe it's better he wasn't watching. I hope that Tori can come and help you sometime! Be careful though, because if she works hard enough on her mean face, you may be starting some long, hard courses from the very beginning a lot. Good luck!

2 comments:

Karissa said...

I'm a big fan of Tori & Rev (alas from afar, as I've never actually met them), so I loved this post lots & lots. :o) She has been within driving distance for clinics a couple of times this year, but they were both only for those darn juniors and had big "no old people allowed" rules and stuff. lol

Karla said...

I, too, am a big fan of Tori & Rev, as well as Team Small Dog. Many thanks to Tori (and Bounce) for their patience as I finally figured out that threadle!