Ramblin'

Aaaaaaah. Just under six weeks until our re-debut in novice agility.

SO SCARED.

I've put so much time and effort into reworking these bloody contacts and if it all goes to pieces when we trial I'm out of ideas. If we DQ in everything I don't care, I just want the contacts. I'm not even going to care if I don't get a well behaved start- if Charlie gives me contacts, he will be showered with doggy brownies.

I know he can do it consistently, perfectly. I just can't say that'll happen when we put it in a ring.

I have had the absolute crappiest week, most of which was to do with me being sick and the Commonwealth Bank being a dick. So now my order for a whole whack of training stuff has been cancelled and I need to place it again because it took me a week and a half to get to the bank to get my security questions changed so I could transfer the payment.

And then to top it all off, my computer was a total right-off yesterday and while it's been behaving itself so far this morning (touch wood) I don't think that it's the end of my woes.

On the positive side, I did get my replacement SD card in the mail yesterday. Finally. It's only a class four, though, which ticked me off because I thought it was a class ten and I didn't buy one for that very reason. I haven't tested it out yet in regards to filming with the bigger card so I need to do that today. I really do think a little camcorder thing would be a better option, though, for filming.

But anyway. I haven't got any videos of Zeke since he was eight weeks old because of the stupid thing so it might have to do for now.

Speaking of Zeke (I am trying for some coherent thoughts in this mess), he's so much hard work. He's fun, I love him to bits and he's exactly what I asked for, but my God he's intense.

We've been doing a lot of shaping- everything he "knows" has been shaped which I'm very chuffed about; that was one of my goals, hehe- and while he doesn't have a cue to anything really except for sit and drop, the latter he's still in the very learning stages of, he does have a fairly impressive range for an almost twelve week old puppy.

What have we been doing so far... He's been going to a mat; targetting a cone; putting feet on a box and rotating around in line with my front; some very beginnings of focus (in motion and in front); get it; give (still a work in progress and has varying degrees of success depending on whether he's in monkey mode or not); go play; getting in a box; recall work; 2o2o (which isn't proper, it's just something I ended up shaping when he jumped on a box and only got his front feet off); forward focus and drive to toys and food; self control with the crate and ex-pen on exiting which he's super solid at now- I even have to actually touch his collar as well as give a verbal before he'll budge, which I think might be because when I was doing this he was always getting put on lead before coming out.

So he's pretty awesome. And it's only about two and a half weeks until he can have his final puppy vaccine and he can go everywhere. Yaaaaay!

Charlie's been doing some getting in a box work as well. I'm still concerned over his back again, but I haven't managed to get a hold of the chiropractor yet so that's been a bit of a hindrance. He's being such a princess lately so I've been ignoring him in the hopes of snapping him out of it; he's just gone super sensitive and if anyone even so much as breathes in an annoyed way he slinks and does his huge worried eyes. It's driving me crackers. Urgh.