Let's fill you in!...

So, I suppose I should actually give a real update about what's been going on during my blog hiatus. I've officially quit flyball with 7. It was fun while it lasted, but I found it to be too much pressure to be on a team of such a high calibre (they were the Regional champions for, like, the past bazillion years). I guess I never caught the "bug" the way I did with agility. That's all well and good though, it'll be nice to have an evening off!
I've been investing more time in Cooper lately. While any type of formal training still puts him into a self-hating spiral. We've been having fun shaping nonsense tricks and he's LOVING the tracking we're doing with Aunty Jessica. While I still see him stress a bit if we go to far, too fast it's nothing like it was before. I think he really enjoys this game and it's nice seeing him puffing up and prancing when he "rescues" his lost Aunty.
Jazz is the same old Jazz. I'm going to make an effort to take him out on little neighbourhood walks, as he really enjoys those and I think they'll be good to help him stay in shape. He's still hiking with me 3-4 times per week, but his muscle loss in the past year or so has worried me. Jazz is a dog who is held together essentially by pure muscle. There is not a structurally sound area of his body...gotta love back yard bred designer mutts!
7 is continuing to be a dork. A lovely, happy, fun, slightly neurotic dork. With the longer days we've been doing more training in the yard. I've been focusing on jump grids and some flatwork to get my handling up to snuff. I am taking a break from trialing right now, I'm telling people it's to really focus on getting his running contacts but in truth it's mostly due to a sever case of "don'tgotnomoney"itis.
We just had our last SuperDogs training session/tryout tonight and so I guess I'll have to wait and see if we hear from them. Remember how last year, I was all excited because the "director" told me that if I took a few flyball lessons 7 would be ready for the team this year? Well, she got canned, so now I have to prove how super fantastic 7 is to a whole new person. It's alright though, these sessions were pretty much the most fun thing 7 has ever participated in, as evidenced by these photos...


Those eyes and ears say it all, don't they?
Apparently, running wildly fast down straight lines of 10" jumps with the occasional tunnel thrown in is THEMOSTFUNEVER!

Well, that's about it, I'll leave you with some photos of 7 at his first Regionals. Honestly, it was such a long time ago, I can't remember exactly how each run went but I do remember that each run got better and better. 7 was dealing with (and still is) a sudden-onset bug phobia. As in, he decided after getting a few fleas when I came back from Mexico that there were bugs crawling on him ALL THE TIME and the slightest amount of stress will send him into a tizzy of itching and flank biting that would put a crack head to shame. This made our weekend interesting as he would decide in the middle of a course that he had to stop and bite at the imaginary bugs that were crawling all over him. This caused a very large number of refusal faults. Judges just don't like it when your dog slides to a stop directly in front of tunnels to nibble his flank. Besides that, though, I was extremely happy with him. Each run was better than the last, culminating in a grand finale...we got the gamble in our last run on Sunday. Yup, my baby dog executed a flawless masters gamble (and a pretty hard one at that)...couldn't have asked for a better end to the weekend!