the hunda rally chronicles continue...we did rally again today which i must say took a lot of guts on my part after being booted out yesterday.  but i spent yesterday and this morning clicking and treating for heeling around a rally sign so i was pretty sure i could do about 20 seconds in the ring.  so i walked the first four signs, which included a SLOW sign as the first thing we had to do (sucks for the poor novice rally dogs to have to do a slow right off the bat).  hunda was a TOTAL spazz and the ring steward had to back away because he thinks he should go up and visit everyone.  then he tried to visit the judge but i got him back and started.  needless to say, there was no SLOW in hunda's today so we just heeled past the first sign and got to the normal sign which put us almost at the ring rope which was a left turn to a stop and down.  hunda and i got all the way to the stop and down which he is amazing at with a verbal cue only and i paused for 2 seconds and then ran for the exit thanking the judge on my way out who was standing with her mouth open.  hunda and i ran for the tree where the treats were stashed and bailed for the car.  the comments i got for the rest of the day were great:  "you should teach him to watch you when you heel" (really??? it's a vallhund, it took me 2 years just to get eye contact during a stationary sit), and "does that dog do agility? he sure is a spazz" (i don't think hunda's spazzyness is due to doing agility), and "he sure is cute" (of course he is!!!!).  i am proud that we were able to function together in the ring and have a rally show n go planned in two weeks to practice more.

pickle held his sit stay during group today in open!!!!  woot!!!!  he had already failed for not jumping the high jump after the retrieve so pressure was off.

a story i wrote a while ago:

Clear

By: ffluffy

Dedicated to: Goop (who used to live at Magic Carpet Golf) R.I.P.

I saw a sky bigger than anything I could fit into. And green hills rounded and mounding and a black rock or two, darker than what’s inside and rivers twisting through steep canyons. The backing was peeled of the mirror and I could see straight through myself into nothing. I wasn’t even sure I was alive. But the space between the ground and the clouds was painfully visible. Foxtails tickled my ears, I looked so hard it hurt and I held on too tight, my hand wrapped around the air, knuckles dug deep.

Goop