Don’t get me wrong. I’m still going to work. And the grocery store. I take the dogs that can run to the beach, rain or shine. And I saw Black Swan last week. It was creepy, yet somewhat boring. Ballerina wants to be a champion. Ballerina somewhat crazy. Life is hard for ballerinas. Ho hum. That took a good 2 hours.
It’s been so cold/wet/dark/late/early/windy/freezing/muddy outside that there hasn’t been any agility at all. Not a scrap. Also I keep listening/reading/internetting the news and interpreting it as if you do not live on an out of reach compound with your own water supply and heavy stockpiled ammunition and food stuffs for what you can’t grow, you are pretty much screwed at some point in the future. If the diseases don’t get you first.
So then I’m all, hmm. Clicker train a new trick? Or climb into a dark hole somewhere and wait for the future? Which one sounds better? Then I dig through my clothes cabinet and pull out everything that doesn’t fit/look right and give an armload away every day.
It’s that kind of hiatus. See you on the other side.
My snow-bound team has been on hiatus, too. There is no agility in 24" snowbanks and the arena is closed until 2011. My own small dog team member is pretty gosh-darned good at playing King of the Snow Mountain. It's good to be king.
We're not working any tricks. We're not even working basic obedience. The big dog is learning to pull a sled, but that's the extent of training.
Life would be better for ballerinas if they would start choreographing routines that applied the Greg Derrett Handling System and Susan Salo jumping principles. Everyone knows bar is spelled "B-A-R", not "B-A-R-R-E" and its to be jumped over, not used for balance. Silly ballerinas. (Of course, it's always okay to drink alcohol at the "B-A-R", not "B-A-R-R-E", too…)
Go see True Grit. Ever wonder what a 14yr old female cowboy looking for the murderer of her father on Blackie the pony may look like? Highly recommended. No tutus involved.
On the eighth straight day of rain, I finally broke down and trained a new trick. Not a very impressive one, mind you, just the one where they put their front feet on a stool and rotate the back end around, but Sylvia Trkman says thats how to teach them to heel (maybe? not sure I was paying close enough attention) and that heeliness is close to godliness when it comes to agility (or something like that).
They liked it a lot better than just lying on the couch staring out at the rain, at least. And also at our tunnel that seems to have rolled off into the next county during the last windstorm and has not been heeding my repeated requests to roll itself back home.
Next year will be different. That much we do know.
I diagnose a severe case of S.A.D.! Come up and do some forest agility. You'll feel better! (Or paint even…yikes! I still need to send you some pictures, my bad…..)
Yes to do agility and paint agility bathroom murals we just need all these things to happen at the same time: day off/light/dry. We keep having work/rain/dark any times we would like to do some agility! We hope soon!
We will see True Grit in the meantime. Next year will be different. Or it won't. We may try to grow a vegetable in a box. Or not.
Yeah, that perfect triad is hard to come by this time of year. Fortunately, the powers that be have granted us artificial extra daylight two weeks early again this year. That helps…..