Chico and I spent a few days last week with my cousin Eva, her sons, the wife and kids of one of those sons (the married one), their cousin Jon, and Jon’s wife and their son. Six adults, three kids under age ten, and Chico; coordinating over four houses and several cars and lots of social events. It was, on the whole, happy, happy chaos.

All the kids love dogs, and wanted very much to force their attentions on Chico. Which he pretty much hates. So we got to do a lot of teaching them how to keep Chico from feeling cornered (which made him snap at young Alex – it is hard to be patient and wait for a shy dog to come to you when you are an almost eight year old boy who loves dogs and wants one more than words can describe- more than once). It was work. More than once Chico asked if it was time to go home yet. He slept all the way home when we did make the drive.

On Friday of that week we took a break from family and went to Hamden, CT to do some AKC agility. Chico is down a kilo, two point two pounds, and that made for a super fast dog in the ring. Check out the results from our Standard run:

Excellent Preferred Standard – 16 Inch – Judge: Christie Bowers
Distance: 181 yards  SCT: 68 seconds
Eliminated  Time: 61.47 seconds

Obstacle 3 was the dog walk and Chico aced it but launched off just before he got a foot into the yellow, the mandatory contact zone, so we were already eliminated. When he bobbled his weave entry for the third class in a row, I took him back through and he went SO fast and so perfect (except the judge made a happy noise and I reacted and that pulled him out between poles eleven and twelve, dang) I could have cried for joy, but he still cut the corner on the closing and I took him back around, and we did all the obstacles and we STILL were seven and a half seconds under standard course time.

Three runs with problems in all of them, mostly with the weave entry and slowing down enough to do all twelve poles (I’m sure it’s handler error), but in all of them we got the really tricky-handling bits. It was super fun to have such a fast dog, I just need to be able to give information a bit sooner and maybe a bit more precisely.