Class 4, more practice, and cold weather!

BRRR....it's COLD! We are having January weather in November! When mom and I walked this morning, the temperature was 24 but with the wind chill it was 9!! I love it! I say, "Bring it on!" But mom is freezing all the time. So we don't go outside very often. I don't get it - why is it that we are outside all day in the summer when it's 80-90 degrees and I am so hot I can't stand it, but now that the weather is so nice, we spend all our time inside?

Wednesday morning practice went well again this week. We set up the chute in the small ring like last time and practiced it starting with the material folded up a little and progressing to full-length in no time. Mom was happy to see that I was still willing to do the chute and last week wasn't a fluke! We also did well in the big ring on the course.

Last night was our agility class 4. The most exciting news to report is that I DID THE CHUTE in class too - different building, different chute, but I still did it! Hurray! As a matter of fact, mom had trouble keeping me out of it. We were supposed to do a sequence where mom blocks the path to the chute so that I would take a nearby jump and I went straight into the chute! Not what we ultimately want, of course, but mom was very happy to see my enthusiasm. We also worked on some difficult weave entries - a jump at an angle into the weaves, a lead-out push to the weaves, and a jump straight on into the weaves where I had to collect and mom had to make sure to stay out of my way. In the contact section, I did my fastest dogwalk yet - I was actually moving so fast that I had trouble stopping my momentum to do my 2o2o and ended up running right off the end of the walk! I was not used to moving so fast! Our instructor said that I look like a different dog!

This afternoon mom set up a little agility course in the house. We had a tunnel in the kitchen, 6 plungers we got at the Dollar store for weaves, a jump, and a short board for a mini dogwalk. It was really fun! Mom would have me walk-it and then send me into the tunnel while she stayed in the living room, then over the jump and through the weaves while she stayed on the other side of the couch. It ended up being a good distance challenge (I'll be ready for novice FAST in no time!!!). We wanted to take video but we couldn't get the tripod far enough away to get a good view. So we took photos instead to show you our set-up.

Hope you all have a great weekend! Mom says if the temperature is above freezing tomorrow she'll take me to the park! I'm keeping my paws crossed!

Gotta zoom!

Ricky