Mary Ellen Barry and Jennifer Crank Seminar

Summit is doing fantastic with his PT and is healing quickly. The Rehab vet thought he would be fine for the upcoming CKC AKC 4-day trial in a couple weeks but I decided to be very conservative about his return to competition and cancelled his entry. That was hard as that is my favorite AKC trial of the year. But I think it's a good decision. His first trial will be a three-day USDAA the second week of March. He is on a DAM team (hoping to get his brother qualified for Nationals) and we'll be looking forward to getting that second GP qualifier.

Soleil has really matured in the last month. She turned 8 mos. old the end of January and I think she is absolutely stunning beautiful! She is so much fun and I love her Sheltie attitude. I took her ears out a couple weeks ago and so far, they have stayed tipped. With Summit on rehab, Soleil has gotten a lot of training - especially on the weekends. This is what we've been doing:

Flatwork with speed. The binder clips are gone and she's heeling nicely at my side. We've incorporated speed and turns on the flat. Now its finally easier to execute rear crosses on the flat now that she is driving ahead. She has a good understanding of lateral motion for the FC and RC. She is also learning pushes on the flat. The push was the most difficult for Summit and I'm seeing some similarities between him and Soleil in regard to "space".  She is pushing well at a walk and trot right now.

Increasing duration and distraction while in sit/down stays.

I enrolled her in an advanced foundation class. This is her first official "agility" class. My goals were to get her in a group of other young dogs and work on focus in a distracting environment. She's done quite well so far. The instructor is having us sequence jumps (no bars). Simple 3-4 jump sequences incorporating pulls and front crosses. I've been continueing some of that at home and Soleil RC's, FC's and pulls around a jump upright. Its been fun (almost like *real* agility ;-) but once I start DJS jump training, I'll stop having her go through jump uprights without bars.

I haven't done any work with the teeter. I have continued with running plank work. The plank is still low and right now and I'm focusing on just speed across the board. We've had cold snowy weather for awhile now so training has been indoors doing precision work.
I've been very busy (which explains no blogging) coordinating the final details for my agility club's Winter seminar. I invited Mary Ellen Barry and Jennifer Crank back and I'm looking forward to four whole days of excellent APHS instruction!  The unfortunate part is Mr. Summit will not be participating. But Sage and Soleil will be plenty busy at the seminar. I have Sage in the full day Balancing Cues with Mary Ellen, full day APHS Masters handling with Mary Ellen, and full day APHS Foundation/Basic Skills (for the RTH Flatwork, I will use Soleil) with Jennifer Crank. Then on Monday Soleil has a full day of puppy foundation and foundation flatwork with Mary Ellen. 

Once the weather warms up I will be back outside training and hope to get some video uploaded next week as well as post an update about our 4-day Seminar.