NADAC Bound

Basil has his first NADAC trial next month. I haven't competed in NADAC in over two years. I'm so lucky this trial is 20 minutes from my house!

I get the feeling that if we can conquer distance we will do well in NADAC. Basil is already starting to get confidence being handled 10-15 feet away on 2-3 obstacles in a line. It is hard to believe that six months ago we were quite a different team. My handling still had tons of Flying Arms and we were plagued by continuous start line stay issues.

I finally got another hard sided crate to practice crate games with last week. I didn't have a spare portable hard crate to practice with so in the meantime I changed my start line stay cue to see if that would help.

I don't know why I didn't think of this sooner. We play a game, basically it is chase but he does most of the running around. My cue is "I'm Gonna Get You!" but I whisper it to him and make little claw motions with my hands while bending over. He immediately goes into a down until I suddenly jump at him and then he runs around all crazy happy. This game has never been associated with stress so I haven't poisoned that cue. Something at some point poisoned my stay cue with him which is why my start line became such a mess.

Karen Holik also made a good point that if your dog breaks the start line don't keep forcing them to do it over and over, just put them back to the first obstacle and do a running start. I think that was another mistake I'd made was stressing him out more and more by making him do the start line stay when he was obviously not happy with me leaving him.

Basil has always been a bit "special". He is definitely a Momma's Boy. I think if he could stick to me like velcro 24/7 he would be thrilled. Little things can make him nervous and he can be jumpy at times. We've worked through a lot of it and he loves agility so much not much can phase him while he is playing agility with me.

It is nice to have a few weeks left to practice some more start line stays and weaves. My friend Ellen was so kind to give me a six pole set of channel weaves! I can work on Basil's entry at a distance and different angles and also start Byron on super wide channel weaves, running back and forth.

So yeah - First week of February should be fun. :)

Movie Review
The Green Hornet was not a movie I was itching to see. I like Seth Rogan and all, but kind of getting tired of the whole comic-turned-movie genre. Ringo was dying to see it and it wasn't so awful looking (I.E. - Aqua Teen Hunger Force Movie) so I relented. I'm kind of glad I did, it was a fun movie to watch. I had no idea it would be more comedy than anything. It was not as bad as critics said it was.