In the Beginning...

We took our dogs to the agility training field yesterday and went through a class on jumps and tunnels. My husband runs our baby girl, Seneca. She does a great job and my husband wants to put her through a trial this year. I think she would do well, but I'm not big on competition in any fashion. The other handlers at the trial can be really mean too. They make such snarky comments. We took the pups to see my cousin run her boxer and one of the handlers came up to us and told us our dogs were fat. Out of the blue. RUDE RUDE RUDE. Her dog was a skinny scared little thing and she said it needed to lose some more weight. Egad.

I run our Papillion, Quinn. Quinn is attention deficit with hyperactivity. I try to get him to go through the run and he runs off and sniffs and pees all over the place. One thing we hear often is that the handler is the one giving the signals and therefore the errors are the handlers fault. I just can't figure out how I'm telling Quinn that he doesn't have to go through the tunnel. Perhaps I should take Quinn to the dog whisperer at the dog show next week and see if she can get him to tell me why he is so spastic when we get onto the agility course.

The third dog, Fremont, is a rescue. The people who had him before he came to us kept him in a crate for most of the first two years of his life. He came to us a broken little spirit. He didn't know how to play, couldn't walk on a leash, and couldn't speak dog with Quinn and Seneca. Two years later, he is playing and happy. He still has his Jekyll and Hyde moments when he attacks Quinn for no apparent reason. This seems to hurt Quinn's feelings, but a second later he is a spastically happy dog again. We started taking Fremont to the agility field when we first got him. At first, he was fearful of everyone and everything (including a leaf blowing past him). He now runs up to people and asks for belly rubbies. It makes me very happy to see him being a normal little dog.