We are heading back into summer here in Missouri, which means high humidity and high temperatures. And this year, a massive invasion of periodic (13 year in this case) cicadas. I have thousands and thousands of them in my yard. Who knows, maybe hundreds of thousands. They coat every tree, reside on every branch, and are deafeningly loud. The dogs think they are candy.
All this coincides with my attempts to teach Prada to weave. At the beginning stages, I like to train weaves at least 5 times a week, preferably daily. And I have weaves right here at home. But they are mostly useless, covered in cicadas. So this morning I drove all the way across town, snapped all the weave wires on a set at the building, then trained her for about 3 minutes. Then took all the wires back off so the next person who might need the set wouldn't have to deal with it. And left. It took a lot longer to set up than to actually do the training; typical in agility. At least I have a building to go to!
I am aiming Prada for a debut in ASCA at the end of August. She's taking to agility like a duck to water and has a natural running contact (thank God!). She does far prefer rubber to non-rubber; I hope more clubs switch over soon. Our biggest challenge, as is common with Min Pins, is focus. In her case she's not quite as glued to the floor as Zipper is, but she IS very motion sensitive and thinks she is tougher than any dog out there. She does not want to fight with other dogs, but she does want to dash over to them, see who they are, and pose, all 9 pounds of her up on her teeny tiny tip toes, so they can see how superior she is. Problem is, she's gonna get hurt if she keeps it up. Her recall is coming very nicely, but I am hoping that once we really start more sequencing she will find that so self-rewarding she will quit looking around for other stuff to go see.
