Prague or BUST!

I am trying to get all of my stuff together for the final stages of the LONG awaited European Open!! I am trying to pack - Now if you know me, you know how hard it will be for me to have 8 days worth of clothes and shoes into basically a bag for Cheetah and a bag for me. I fill my bag when I go on a 3 day trip. HOW IN THE WORLD am I going to pack for 8 days!!!

Toni is going with me as my "Cultural Liaison" and "Logistics Coordinator"

We leave Monday evening 6:30pm and get to Amsterdam in the morning 8:15 ( we are 6 hours behind them). We have a 5 hour layover in Amsterdam. This will give me enough time to find grass for Cheetah and get back to the gate. ( I hope there will be grass for Cheetah...) We then take a 1.5 hour flight to Prague. We land at about 2:45 in the afternoon. I have rented a car ( a stick - the automatic was like $200 more) I drove a stick about 17yrs ago for 2 years, so I am hoping it will come back to me. I figure if I can get out of the airport, I am probably good to go. ( At least they drive on the right side of the road.

We will stay over night in Prague at the Hotel Denisa. Wednesday we can site see in Prague and then make our way to Liberec, which is 1.5 hours away. Thursday, we can site see in Liberec until the team dinner. Friday we have practice, then Sat and Sunday is the competition. I know that the Finals will be streamed, but I don't think the others will. Toni will be taping my runs, so I will get those up as soon as I can, but probably not till I get back.

We will stay overnight in Liberec, and go back to Prague on Monday - stay overnight in Prague and get a ...( I don't even want to say it)...a 7:00 am flight out of Prague, back to Amsterdam, then arrive at Dulles at 4:40 pm. Lets do the math on that, a 7:00 am flight means that I will need to drop the rental car off at 5:00 am. Who is up at that hour - much less ready to board a plane. I am going to try not to think about it any more.

We will take lots of pictures and I will try to be a good blogger!

I have the health certificates, passport and Czech money. I have the hotels, cars and plane reservations. I have my uniforms all ready, including shoes ( that match of course!!!) I have to finish calling the credit card companies telling them that I will be in another country and that it is OK for me to spend money there. I need to activate my global phone code and finish seeing how much I can stuff into my suitcase.

I guess I will have to get real creative. I will keep you all posted on how this goes. Wish me luck!

Summertime Freedom....at last!

I am finally out for the summer and needing to get a lot of things done before my trip to Prague. I still need to figure out so many details of how to travel abroad with a dog. I still need to give Cheetah a tune up and hopefully she will finally get her head out of a sling. She has had a hematoma since tryouts that we just can't seem to get rid of. GRRRR! We are doing a local USDAA trial this weekend, so wish us luck. Now if I could just find a trail with DAM team that I could go to.

I will try to get some video up soon, I seem to have quite a to do list to get caught up on this first week off. Keep your fingers crossed that Cheetah keeps her feet in the yellow!

Day 1 WT Tryouts!

Cheetah and I got to MN at about 8:15 am (MN time). We had now problems getting there other than the fact that we had to get to Dullas by 4:30 (YUCK!)...I'm NOT a morning person! Anyway, we got to our hotel and relaxed abit, then headed over to the arena for our practice session. It went well, she did all of her contacts, and had good teeters. I think she likes the footing, it's on dirt this year because the WC are on dirt in Germany. I will post again later today with more info about how we did today!

Back From AKC Agility Nationals!

Cheetah and I are finally back from Nationals today. I traveled with two other people and we drove straight through. We left after the final round and got back at about 4 this afternoon. This was after severa potty breaks and food breaks and gas breaks..etc.

Cheetah did really well except for her contacts (GRRR) She handled like a dream and did every thing I asked of her (except touch yellow) She ended up 39th out of about 83 but time wise there were only 3 24" inch dogs with faster cumulitve times going into the finals. If we had just gone clean in standard and hybrid. She had a beautiful teeter in the hybrid round, both fridays and saturdays were called as flyoffs.

I will get video up soon, too tired tonight!

Let me tell ya what I want - what I really, really want...is yellow!

Over the last little while, I have been working on a 4otf in practice with Cheetah. It has been fairly successful and has been very successful for several students dogs. The problem really lies with the simple fact that there is only 1 criteria that I care about. I don't care if you stop 2o/2o, 4otf, 1rto, or belly slide through I WANT YELLOW!! After pondering this sad fact of my psyche, combined with the added admission that I am a adrenaline junkie and that only leads to one conclusion....you guessed it. I must figure out how to get a running dw/aframe on cheetah and NOT get it on the teeter. So here we go - running contacts take 4,563 ( actually I guess its only 4 or 5)

Poor Cheetah, she's going "what are we doing with wood today you psycho-path?" Luckily, she is game for whatever as long as there is a cookie involved. At last weekends trial, (see video)

She missed 2 dogwalks and it was rubberized. I really liked it and I needed one that I could lower and use flat on the ground if I was going attempt to train running contacts from the Dogwalk perspective. Up until now, I'd only looked at the aframe and that was not real successful. So with the fact that my current dogwalk was homemade on saw horses and couldn't be lowered and was getting unstable to the point that I held my breath when she got on it ( many months ago when there was no snow on the ground) I decided to take the considerable plunge and buy the dogwalk.

I stored most of it in the shed until we have a spring thaw, but I took one plank down in the basement and for the last week, I have been doing Silvia trkman's method with her. I only have 26 feet across, so it is not really enough room to "run" off of it but it is at least giving her the idea. I am using the clicker and feeding mostly from my hand, although I have put her food bowl down when we were on the last rep and she did go to it- if I said "get it" as she was going across the board. Last summer I had played briefly with a plank on the ground and her food bowl, but it made her stop in a 2o/2o - even though it was 20 feet away. Now, she is doing better with that. I just did 12 reps and recorded them finally, so I will get them up asap.

I am so sick of SNOW!

How are you supposed to do any training in this stuff? I haven't even been able to train at the building as much lately..GRRR! Well we are going to get to go to a trail in Lexington this weekend, and It will be inside and SNOW FREE!! Should be fun!

Working on the Teeter

I have been working on Cheetah's teeter recently. In trials I am just saying wait, and it is helping, although we got called on a teeter last weekend. I am able to hold up the end of the board and have her run up it I wait til she gets to the end then give her the cookie, and let go of the teeter. She seems to be doing fine with this concept now, but she didn't like it at first. She couldn't understand why the moving board wasn't moving. I will have to get video of this and up load it soon. I am also needing to remind her about her spot. She didn't get called on any, but they were not as low as they should be.