2012: What do you hold in store?

I have heard lots of people say 2012 is going to be their year, a lot of people I know through work and agility had a difficult 2011, but everyone seems sure that 2012 is going to be better! All the positivity seems to be rubbing off on me as I have had a great year so far! All 16 days of it!

Phaze has been my main focus for the last month whilst the boys have been on their winter holidays.

I decided to give 2x2s a go. I have never quite been happy with how to train weaves, and don’t believe any of ours fully understand entries, so thought 2x2s may be the way forward. I have certainly not worked up to 12 weaves in 7 days but I am happy with how we are progressing. She certainly understands her entry work, and she seems to be developing a nice stride in them and I am hoping we will be up to 12 weaves in time for our private lesson at SWAT next weekend.

I am really excited about Phaze, she has such a good work ethic and really enjoys learning; she is very bright and very fast so I have my work cut out for me!

I am hoping to breed from Phaze in the future and so will be spending a bit of time this season watching some potential boyfriends for her. I already have had a few people asking about puppies from her, so no pressure on us to look good on the agility circuit! Lol

The BVA have managed to send Phaze’s Hip X-rays back twice now as they can’t work out how to look at them on the CD sent. I knew I was in for trouble when the vets told me Phaze would be the first one they were sending on CD rather than physical X-Rays, so hopefully sometime this year we will get the results back!

I have a few ideas of some dogs I would like to know a bit more about, and have had a few suggested to me, I enjoyed watching all the Olympia runs on You Tube and thinking ooh that dog would compliment Phaze nicely!

We have also spent some time over the Christmas break sorting out our Show Diary for the year. Our first show of the year will be Carn Brea, Dan is judging so I will not only have 3 dogs to run but one of them will be Phaze! I have several people on hand already to walk me to the ring and remind me to breathe and then pick me up on the other side of the ring.

Then we are at Kernow K9 for Easter, always a good show and nice to be close to home as you never quite know what the weather will be like. We have a trade stand there this year, which will be a good chance for us to let everyone know that we have extended our range of products at SWAG and that we now own Bungee Dogs

We hope to have trade stands at a couple of other shows too this year. Both SWAG and Bungee Dogs are going really well at the moment and Dan is keeping busy, busy enough not to make me all the products I ‘need’ before the show season starts at any rate.

Dan and I went to a Training day at Coombe Park on Saturday, the home of South Devon Agility Club in the winter, we both really enjoyed it. It was a slightly different format to the usual workshops in that it was a 3 hour workshop with 2 different trainers, Toni Keating and Neil Ellis. We spent the first hour and a half with Toni concentrating on handling and contacts. The second hour and a half we then concentrated on jumping sequences, weaves and handling with Neil. This was Cruze and Thai’s first session back after being on their winter break, and we were both pleased with how they worked and took a lot away from both sessions. I would recommend Toni and Neil to anyone who wants a really interesting and varied training day; they are also both very motivational and provided e, which is especially helpful at the beginning of a new year.

I think this year might be an exciting one for us, agility training is going well, business is going well and future plans are all exciting. I like 2012 already J