Can I Bring the Dog?

Add this to the list of intended posts for 2016 that didn’t quite make it to fruition until now.

In late November, we went to the Thanksgiving Cluster in West Springfield, Mass. I swore I wasn’t going to go, but I went to help with a fund raiser for a friend, so I entered both dogs.

Chico ran Jumpers with Weaves and my goal was for me to stay calm enough that he wouldn’t die on the start line – that’s how he shows that he’s feeling my stress, which is usually caused by waiting for our turn. It’s a tough one to unwind. Anyhow, we got it right because the standard course time was 50 seconds, and we went through in 35.8 (or was it 38.5? No matter really). An off-course, muffed weave poles and something else that I now forget, but I had a fast, happy, almost 12 year old, dog. Winner, winner, chicken dinner! I was walking on air for a good twenty minutes.

Then Bonney did a very short course in Novice Jumpers, and had two runs in the non-competitive, after hours, B Match. I have video of her first run, which includes what I realize was a kinda mean trick – I didn’t give her a chance to explore the seesaw before she ran it, and it was full height, something that was pretty new to her at that point. You can tell by the way she flies off that she was totally surprised. But I think she made an excellent recovery.

Sadly, there is not video of the spectacular fall I took when she ran around a jump and right between my legs in the second run. I cued the jump, honest I did. Voice and body. But it seems I needed to hold that send-to-jump position a fraction of a second longer to assure her commitment to the jump. I moved and she came with me. They call that handler focused. Or they say your dog has a lack of obstacle commitment.

Eighteen months ago, when I was thinking about adding a second dog to our house, this sight was one that I … well, I wondered if I would ever see it.

And now I have.

When the snow is just right for making snowballs, Bonney’s fine hairs do just that.

and if it wasn’t a fluke, Bonney has learned to respond to Chico’s emergency recall word.

She was headed for the neighbors, and not responding to here (which had worked at greater distance from the temptation), but I used Chico’s special, I-need-you-here-right-now-no-fooling-around word and she turned and came.

I’ll take it.

Happy New Year to all of you and your families.

Today, it looked like this:

Just a few weeks ago, when we were having extended fall, and finally got some rain, it was like this:

Same spot, twenty-five days apart. I love having the Bearcamp in my life.

Is that what did this? Chico is snoring. 

Yesterday,  while her husband shucked oysters for us, Ellen and I played with the dogs in her basement agility room.

The room is big enough for a set of six poles and plenty of room to enter and exit them. For the very first time Bonney raced through the poles like a trained dog.

What a super Christmas present. 

On the top.

How snow sticks to Bonney:

On the bottom. 

Happy Christmas and Merry Hanukkah.  

Of course they took off like a shot running when the camera was in my pocket. There were gun shots off in the woods, but they sounded quite far away.

Yes, I was also wearing orange. And what a beautiful late fall day it was.