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But he dropped it. Mr. Blue is visiting us for a few days to recover from his de-testiclization procedure, and then this afternoon he is off to his forever home.  His forever home contains one agility friend / classmate, and a super duper Aussie named Duffy.  One day, we will be seeing Blue on the agility course too, we hope!  I absolutely love it when a good dog and a good home come together like an awesome karmic collision.  All dogs should be so lucky!

Of course, we won’t be seeing Blue on the agility course if Dexter doesn’t get it together.  Weaves continue to be his nemesis … at home he can weave on the 20″ spaced poles like a hot damn now, but in class on the 24″ spaced poles he can’t seem to figure out his footing and after nailing awesome entries at speed, he starts to flip flop around like a dying fish.

Perhaps the same dying fish that TWooie rolled in this morning.  We had a hot scrubby shower after our morning walk.

AGH!  I had to see the Food lady NAKED! Our other challenge in agility is our 2o/2o contacts.  We don’t haz them.  Dex and I have been practicing 2o/2o since he was wee, in happy motivated ways, but he still won’t drive to his contacts and creeps down the obstacle.  He loves DOING a 2o2o but does not, apparently, love diving into the position.

Now, I wanted a running contact on Dexter, but the Sadist put his bossy Austrian foot down and said “no way.”  I was to have a 2o2o or nothing.  Now after all this struggle with nailing a drivey 2o2o, The Sadist tells me he thinks I should train a running contact, that it will take a YEAR and that Dex should stay off of obstacles until then.  There are times when I love the Sadist.  There are also times when I wish a big hole would open in the earth and swallow him whole, and spit out his evil-filled bones for hungry dogs to chew apart.  This is one of those times.

So just to be obstinate, I am going to stick with the 2o2o, mostly because I would like Dexter to start trialing before he is an old man dog.  But I need some ideas for teaching him to drive into those contacts.  Piper has BE-OO-TIFUL contacts which I taught her on the apartment stairs.  Dex has had access to all the training / foundation equipment a dog could dream off, and still creeps.  To that end, today my stepdad and I are going to build Dexter his very own dog walk.  Take that, Sadist.

Will this interfere with us playing Dumbball?? Maybe I should teach him a 4 on the floor instead.  But knowing Dexter, he’ll just bypass the contact zone and drop into a crouch straight from the top of the A-Frame or something.

What are you talking about?  I don’t crouch. Anyway, we’re building the dog walk today because the Weather Network says this week it’s going to snow, and snow hard and a lot.  Of course, it’s been singing that same song for some time now, and it has not yet come to pass.  All we got was copious amounts of torrential rain.  But Wootie is still on Snow Watch. My recall improves in the snow! I gotta get my rear in gear here if I want to get to building, so I apologize for the short entry.  To make it up to you, I will leave you with this stellar piece of artwork, which would make a lovely airbrushing job on the side of your new boogie van.  You’re welcome :)