Sorry dear readers, it has been over a week since the last post. Chico and I have been busy with agility and living life, I’ll try to recap.

On Saturday, we spent all day (like, 8AM to 6:30PM) at Julie’s, as participants in a marathon agility session/seminar. I think we did six different courses that day, all of them at maters or international level. Julie critiqued each run for all eight of us. Well, by 4PM, it was down to six of us. Then, because by some small joke of the universe, I live closer to Julie than any of her other students, Chico and I let everyone else have a crack at the last course before us so they could start their long drives home, and it was suddenly 6:30 and we were, in Julie’s words, “the last ones standing.” We were all wrapped up in the seminar (you can learn a lot from listening to what Julie has to say about someone else‘s run), so no pictures, except this one of my map.

It was blank when I got it, the equipment never moved all day, but we ran these different courses. Triangles is one course, circles another, squares a third.

Biontology is a therapy that some people have used for dogs with seizures, one of the seminar participants practices and teaches the technique, so I got some info for Jimbo because Chico’s friend Buddy, in California, suffers with seizures.

Chico and I had a blast at Julie’s all day Saturday, then we went to a trial the next day and had three runs that were, to be charitable, mixed. We couldn’t connect, Chico refused the same jump in two runs, in the third, he stopped after the tunnel to scratch himself – he hasn’t done that since early, early days in the ring, he stood barking at the dog that ran before us long after that dog left the ring. In the words of one classmate, it was a hot mess. Except, there were a couple things that were really tricky and we got them. So, onward through the fog.

The tree cutting is done. I’m trying to find a home for the old cabinets and an oak dining set, so I took some pictures for Habitat for Humanity.

I told them the table and chairs are available, but the dog is not.

This week is also passing fast, Wednesday was spent with a friend from high school days who was in the area for the week and free that day. What fun for the humans! We didn’t really do much beyond eat, talk, and laugh all day.

I met with the builders who are doing my renovations to look at the first round of drawings for the house. There’s a lot I thought I said that didn’t make it into the drawings, so I hope to see them during round two, in a week or two.

On the nature front, these guys have been showing up in the front yard almost every morning this week.

And now we’re off to rent the arena at Julie’s for a half hour so I can practice the skillful placement of rewards. So there.