Demon Puppy Uprising

Demon Puppy is coming into her own.  It's such a fun time.  She has started her first real agility class.  She and Nacho (one of her flyball teammates) rock that class.  They joyfully run through and over whatever the designated obstacle is.  At home, when I practice with her, she barks continually at me in frustration because I am never fast enough.  Lord help me when we start sequencing.  When I go out in the backyard without her, she leaps several feet in the air to rip down what's left of my blinds.   I'm putting off replacing them until I get a house crate I like to stuff her in during these times.  She's a wire-biter, though, so that limits the range of crates I want to cram her in.

At flyball, she did her first complete run last week at practice, with a dog in the other lane, and I didn't even have a motivator.  She hits the box awfully hard, and without respect for her own welfare, so I will have to work that.  Hard to believe she's only been doing boxwork for a month.   At this rate, she'll be ready for singles at our next trial.  I have to keep reminding myself that she has really just started and so many things need to be proofed.

Herding is the hardest to work on, because it requires sheep, and I don't have sheep.  However, I have been able to go out occasionally to practice at someone's house who does have sheep.  We have moved from the round pen to the big corral. which is so much easier.  Everything isn't on top of you and you can move in a direction for a little while.  Plus, there are corners to play with.  I am hoping to do it more regularly.  Someone who was there this last weekend was helping me, giving me some ideas of what to work on.  That seems to be the sport that she uses her brain on the most.  I love seeing her slink around and she is so responsive,  I am enjoying letting her work and figure things out, like how to get them unstuck from the fence or out of the corner by the gate.   She's always checking in, paying attention to every gesture with the stick.  I wish I knew more.  She brings them to me and calls off when I tell her to, so I think next I will work on getting her to drop into a down instead of coming to me to down.  That dog is going to have so much fun when we start push the sheep around into places they don't want to go and shedding.  She loves bullying them.