Some Days are Diamonds, Some Days are Not (but emeralds are nice also!)

Today (Saturday) has been a productive day. We did our morning hikes and then I worked on my book prospectus (proposal). The book is coming along very well but I have learned I should probably send in a prospectus to a publisher and try to line up a "deal" of sorts. And so I worked on that and got quite a bit of it done while the dogs rested up for our busy afternoon...

Here are Zoey and Asia resting up for their tracking adventures.


And here is a cute picture of all three of my young girls -- Zoey, Asia and Sydney.


Sydney continues to be such a cuddly girl -- here she is using Zoey as a pillow.


After lunch it was time to get to work! My neighbor is nice enough to let me use some of her 20 acres to track on and so I laid a long track with lots of turns and lots of articles for Asia on about ten acres. Asia nailed her track, although she needs more work on picking up the articles. This is not a new problem. She got her TD at the Specialty last year and her article indication was terrible so at every stop across the country I was whipping out gloves and rewarding her for picking them up. I gave her only a 50% chance of passing because I knew she preferred to keep tracking rather than stopping for a stinking glove, but all that cross country rest stop training worked and she picked up her glove and got that title. Well, the next level of tracking requires that she find THREE articles on the track (plus the one at the start) as opposed to just one -- this is going to require some focused effort! But I was very happy with how she tracked and we will work on article indication as a separate exercise.

Zoey was next. I laid a four turn track for her -- the most she has done. There was not a lot of food on her track -- once a puppy catches on to the game the food can be cut back significantly, although I never eliminate food from a training track as I think it is such an easy and important way to motivate and reward. I used maybe half a banana in six food drops for a track of good length and she did great -- I was really proud of her. At the end of her track was a glove stuffed with steak -- she thinks tracking is darn fun!

I found a relatively good spot for a jump and practiced agility with Cadi and then with Maize. I used the jump to work with Halo on directed jumping and we also worked on signals (these are both exercises in the level of obedience Halo is now in).

Here is a picture of Cadi practicing her jumping:


Some days one feels productive and others not so much -- I have learned not to fight either kind of day. On days like this I feel accomplished, but on the days when making my bed seems like a lot of trouble, I end up feeling rested -- so both kind of days must be important. One thing I have learned with experience is to just accept whatever kind of day arrives and trust that the other kind will roll around as well :)

I hope that no matter what kind of day arrived at your house this morning that it was a good one, and one you appreciated!