Caos, Chaos and Catching Up

The "caos" are keeping things hopping as usual. In addition to our own dogs, we have two more PWDs staying with us over Spring Break. Never a dull moment, at our house, especially since we are also in the middle of remodeling our kitchen!

A couple of weeks ago, my friend Julie and I loaded Ecko and her brother Cooper into her car and headed for Hansville, WA to attend a land-based water workshop put on by the PNWPWDC and taught by Lauren McDermott. The workshop was great, with Lauren breaking all the exercises down in an approachable manner and illustrating everything with lots of video clips. As you can see from the photo, it snowed on our workshop! Since the workshop, I have been motivated to start playing with Ecko on some of the behaviors she will need to tackle apprentice this summer. We've been dunking for treats (to work on the underwater retrieve), practicing taking and carrying a small dummy with a delivery to hand (for the Dummy Carry and Boat Ride) and working on lots of static retrieves with deliveries to hand. I need to get moving with Stoker too and pick up where I left off on training her buoy ball drop.

On the way to the seminar we stopped with the dogs to check out the Simpson Timber Camp and see if it might work for the Club's summer water trial. It is a gorgeous location, but it looks like it may not work due to some constraints in the way some of the existing dock structures are located.

This weekend Chili and Stoker are going with me to a dog show in Albany. The girls are entered in Rally obedience on Saturday and agility on Sunday.