Change Is Hard

…but change is certain.

Tag Archives: Katie


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Rally report

Mom! Can we get to work yet?

Katie and I survived and she’s pretty full of herself too.  Cause she has a pretty red ribbon to add to her collection.  She thinks she looks particularly good with red.   But of course it’s a much longer story than that.

We arrived early, way too early, again.  Lesson learned.  We were there for 3 hours before it was actually time for me to walk the Advanced course.  By then Katie was pretty much over it, but she waited patiently in her crate for me to go through the course.  There were only two of us in Advanced A; a woman named Kim and her sheltie Mona.   Mona is just the sweetest girl I’ve met in a long time!   Kim and I did the walk through together.  Good thing too, because I fixed something she had a misconception on and she pointed out we had missed station #4 totally the first walk through!

I’ve been working on memorizing the signs and perfecting my footwork all week.  I practiced pivots on my lunch walk yesterday.  I called ‘”come!” and “down!” and “heel!” on my commutes.   I worried about her popping up from downs, following me too fast when she was supposed to stay.  I worried about forgetting to ask her to sit when I should, or asking her to sit when I shouldn’t.  I worried.

What I didn’t worry about…ever…was her jump.  She loves to jump.  She’ll jump anything…and then she will often turn around and jump it again.  So the fact there was a jump at station 2 was not alarming.  Until she walked around it and then looked at me like ….”What?  You wanted something else?”  So there goes 10 points right off the bat.

I sighed and shook my head and we finished the rest of the course.  Other than a couple of crooked sits she was perfect.  The things I had worried about were beautiful.   She’s something else, she is.

Then we were out of the ring and I told her she was a good girl, which she was.  I think I just wasn’t going fast enough to get her running, and she didn’t realize she was supposed to leave my left leg and go jump.  We watched the other woman in our class do the course and they did great too.

Afterward Kim was excited for me because the score they put up for me was 99.  Her score was 95.  But I knew that wasn’t right, with no jump the best we could get was 90.  So I talked to the steward and at a break we talked to the judge who was grateful that I told her.  I was glad too.

So we ended up in 2nd place of two…but I’m proud of Katie and her score..the judge gave us 90 and I’ll take it!

Katie says it was a long day for a little ribbon…but she’s willing to do it again, and if I give her enough warning she’ll even do the jump!

Maybe.

Mine!


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It’s rally time

Katie here.  Mama says she’s too stressed to write tonight.  But I tried to make her feel better.  Really I did.  It’s not my fault she keeps signing us up for stuff and then gets all freaked out.  Not my fault at all.

I guess I should start at the beginning.  Mama, signed us up for our first leg of Advanced Rally.  Next Friday.  When she signed us up it seemed like a really far away date.  Lots of time to practice.  And stuff.  But now here it is.  And she just got the latest book with all the new signs and she’s freaking out!

But we went to the park today, my Mama and I.  She read the book and we heeled around and around.  I sat when she told me to sit.  I turned when she told me to turn.  I backed up when she told me back.  I did MY job. But it’s HER job to read the stupid signs.  And all those arrows and halt marks get her going good, that’s for sure.  She keeps telling me I need to learn to read real quick, so I can do it right even if she tells me wrong.  I think that’s a silly idea; how’s a dog supposed to read AND execute I ask you?

So we did a lot of signs out of the book.  I was off leash and everything.  I even ignored the chipmunk I heard off in the field.  I debated, but I ignored it.  I figured….Mama with CHEESE  or chipmunk…Mama with CHEESE or chipmunk.  Mama won.  She said I was a good girl and I got two pieces!

But after about 10 gazillion pages of signs I had enough and wanted to play!  After all we were at my park!  So Mama put the leash back on me and we went for a walk for awhile.  I got to sniff lots of stuff.

But pretty soon Mama wanted to finish the rest of the pages of signs.  I thought that was a good idea too, but I let her think it was her idea.  She’s so SLOW though, reading the signs, thinking about it.  I just want to go Go GO!

By the time she finally got to the last sign I was huffing at her.  Enough of all this sitting and downing and sitting and standing and heeling and turning and coming and stopping.  GEEZE Mama!  Can’t you see that I’m PERFECT?

She says we have to practice all the signs every night (except Tuesday when she’s practicing at band) the rest of the week so that we are all set for Friday.

It’s gonna be a long week.


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Reality check

Katie and I went to school today.  We’re hoping to enter a Rally Trial at the end of October to start working for her advanced title.  Before we did our practice run this morning I put her in a down and walked the course with our instructor.  Ok.  Maybe a few things to worry about, but as I told Katie just before we begin…”if it goes wrong girl it will be your mama’s fault.”

Mama needs to learn to read better.

And it was.  I was so worried about whether I could send her over a jump while I stayed behind that I skipped two or three stations entirely!  Entirely!  Well that would be a NQ for sure. Plus I misread a sign and didn’t ask her to do a down.  At all.  Katie on the other hand did pretty much everything I asked, including correcting herself on one of her sits.

I myself learned to read when I was quite young.  Just saying Mama.

We’re going to try again at class next week.  Katie thinks I am a total goof.  To make it up to her when we got home we played a rousing game of frisbee.

You want THIS frisbee Mama?

Mostly she just got to run and run and run.

Let’s race! I win!

She’s napping now.  Nothing like a fun class, a good lunch and a good romp.  Yep…it’s a beautiful day in Sheltie land.

Nighty-night. (sigh)


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Katie time

I think we could all use a little Katie, no?  So this morning I tried to take a new photo of her for all of you.

I took a new picture this morning, truly I did.  But I can’t find where I uploaded it…and the photo archive on my computer is acting weird and I don’t have time to mess with it.   So I posted an old picture of her.  But she looks pretty much the same.

Just sleepier.


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Attention all WordPress users

I’m going to need a little help.  I’ve been trying, admittedly sporadically, to get this blog setup finished.  I’m trying to get my blogroll to appear on the right.  As you can clearly see the list of blogs I follow only indicates a WordPress blog.  Which, by the way, I don’t follow.

I have a lot of your blogs all lined up on my links page, and I’ve moved the little widget thingy over to the right side bar place.  Which is how the “blogs I follow” title showed up.  But obviously that title is not connected to my list of links.

I tried to study the WordPress link that does show up there, to see what was different about it than the rest of the links I have ready and waiting to go…but don’t see anything.

I think this is the limit of my computer tech abilities.  So all of you out there that work with WordPress…if you have any hints I’d appreciate it.   I know someone out there will know how to do this.  And that it’s probably something stupidly simple.

Katie says “Please help my mama, as she spends all her spare time, and she has so little of that, working on this stupid blog.  She should be spending it playing with me!”