Indy at almost 11 years old on point
Busy, busy weekend. We had to divide an conquer. Karma and Jenny had an agility trial, and Marc wanted to get some training in with Halo on birds. There is a hunt test coming up in April and we are thinking Halo *might* be ready to run. We don’t usually go after the Senior title until our kids are five, but Halo showed a lot of promise this past Fall when we were training Karma. We like our dogs to figure out this game on their own time — no force breaking with e-collars or other forms of positive or negative punishment. Usually, this means waiting until they are no longer adolescents and have a bit more impulse control. But, Halo is a thinker and a pleaser, and she LOVES getting to work and figure things out. So off to the bird fields she goes!
As far as our agility weekend, Karma was GREAT. Super close to 3 QQs. One silly handling thing here and there, but we are feeling awesome about the AKC National Agility Championship next weekend. One of the judges is a GSP person, and she had such nice things to say about judging such an agile bird dog 🙂 The Rocky Mountain All Terrier Club was our host this weekend — just love these guys! They run some of the BEST trials in town. Thanks to them for putting in all the hard work so we could enjoy a local trial in March!
Karma picked up a Jumpers Q worth 12 points, and two Standard Qs — one with 21 and the other with 25 MACH points! Here are links to her runs:
JWW: https://youtu.be/QWBe4dfUat8
STD: https://youtu.be/l8bob1jVzQk
STD: https://youtu.be/foYIi85Gjy8
Halo did great! She seemed to remember a lot of her skills from last Fall, and has maintained her natural honor. She even had some brilliant moments with some wild flushes. But the big surprise of the day was Indy! The old man was absolutely MOTORING! He was screaming back in his crate when it wasn’t his turn, and the second he was freed he took OFF. Our friend Fran was out there and was so amazed at how great he looked. Franny had Indy last fall for a few days after his surgery — this was when Indy was at his absolute worst. He had lost 10 pounds and almost had this failure to thrive thing where Fran had to force feed him to get calories in. Heartbreaking. Needless to say, it made her heart very happy to see him out there running big and hunting hard. Us too.