tRicky T-Day! and Last Night's Class Saga

Sara, Oreo and Misty are always so consistent with learning and videoing their tricks for Tricky T-Day - they inspire us to keep posting our trick attempts! Right now we have several tricks in the works but they just aren't ready for video yet! However we read Amanda's post from over at manymuddypaws the other day and she mentioned that her dogs know the "chin" trick - sounded cute so we learned that this week. Also in this month's Clean Run magazine, Sassie Joiris showed her method of training handstand. As you know, we have been working on this for a long, long time using the books up against the wall method. I can get my back feet up on a pretty tall stack of books now but one problem is the books are too deep (far from the wall) so I am not leaning against the wall. Also I get frustrated if the books are too high and I think I can't get my little legs up there. So Sassie graduates the dog to using a plank-like thingy against the wall that starts at an angle and then can basically be put flat against the wall and then removed and the dog can use the wall only. Brilliant! So as an added bonus to this week's tRicky T-Day chin trick, we added our very first attempts at using a plank-like thingy - in our case the lid to a storage container. Mom uses her leg and the couch to keep it from moving. It is a little too slippery and we need to use something else but I think my first tries went well and we can see some real potential. (We're still a LONG way off from being able to do a real handstand though)!

Ok, now for the saga from last night! It was pouring down rain when it was close to the time we leave for our Wednesday evening class - class starts at 6:30 but we leave around 5:30/5:40 because of rush hour traffic. Without traffic the trip would take 20 minutes. So because people in Central Ohio can't drive in rain (not even snow, just rain), we left earlier - 5:20 - and what a nightmare! We live right near a major highway - got on the road and it was bumper to bumper/stop and go from the minute we started out. Mom decided to abandon the highway when it took 15 minutes to go maybe 4 miles. We got off and took a parallel road to downtown and then tried to get on the highway again. After waiting 10 minutes at a stop light to turn left, we finally got on and we were immediately completely at a standstill. Once again we got off the highway and just headed in the general direction we needed to go. Mom doesn't know that area of town very well. So she called grandpa and he interrupted his dinner and got a map and talked mom through a very convoluted route that finally - 65 minutes later - got us to the class! You might be wondering why we didn't just turn around and go home - well the traffic was just as bad in the opposite direction. There was just no where to go! We feel very lucky that we got there safely and with a couple minutes to spare!

And mom is very happy we persevered because only two other people came to class and we got to run lots of sequences without feeling rushed and I did great! Maybe sitting in a car for an hour agrees with me? I did the chute fast (we got to practice it a little too) and mom put a piece of chicken as a target at the end of the dogwalk and I literally flew over it - proved that I can RUN the dogwalk with the right motivation (too bad we can't put food in strategic places all over an agility course at a trial!). I got some difficult weave entries and did some fancy jumping. All in all the torturous drive was worth it. Already they are predicting rain for next Wednesday - what time do you think we will need to leave the house?

Gotta zoom!

Ricky