Monday, February 25, 2008

M&M's....for Boogie

(Oceanside, CA) Can you believe it?! We awoke to sunny skies today. Just as we are about to leave California for good, the weather turns nice. We’ll take a couple nice days for sure.

Boogie attended his last little Rally class today. He just couldn’t concentrate today at all. His little nose was glued to the ground and he was eating Rabbit M&M’s (I’ll bet you can figure out what I’m talking about). They were plentiful and they must have been fresh as even when I offered him treats he said No Thanks. What a pill – I think he may be starting to go through puberty…or his terrible twos…or something of that sort.

Even though I didn’t have much of a partner, I really enjoyed today’s class. We learned how to teach our dogs a lot of new exercises and got to try the Honor station while another dog did the course. I was so sure we’d do this perfectly. But I guess Boogie ran out of M&M’s in the spot where he was in a Down so he had to move…bad little puppy!

Here is a little portion of the course we worked on today.



This is one of the stations...you don't really leave your dog...but I couldn't do the exercise and take a picture at the same time so here is Boogie doing his portion of this exercise. Good Boy!



We’ll really miss this class. Our instructor, Jean, was really nice and was so helpful. Boogie and I were so lucky to have come across her classes. Interestingly enough, I first “met” her online on a Rally list I’m on. Then while we were at an agility trial I saw a flyer posted about Rally classes. I contacted the instructor – and wouldn’t you know, it was the person I had met online.

Boogie and I thank her tremendously! You know, you can learn Rally all on your own (as we did for some time) but we found it much more fun to have a little class to go to. Our instructor was so supportive of us – it really gave us a lot of confidence going into the shows. We’ll definitely think of Jean every time we do Rally.

After returning from class we had a leisurely afternoon. Mike took the girls on a long off-leash hike somewhere while I took Boogie on a walk on some of the trails around the park. It was a very pleasant walk other than the deep clay mud trails. If you look closely in the bottom of this picture I think you'll be able to see the mud.



There are wetlands on both sides of the trails (as you can see in the above picture) and as we walked we could hear critters of some sort jump into the water as we approached. Only once did I get a glimpse of any animal. The one I saw looked like possibly a muskrat of some sort. I have a feeling many of the critters may have been large frogs – but I have no real confirmation of that. As you can see in the picture below, it is hard to see the water so seeing the critters go in the water was difficult. But we could hear them and see the big rings in the water.



We rambled across a lake nearby that is very pretty.



As I mentioned the other day, there are a lot of ducks and geese here. I saw numerous people feeding them today – no wonder they come running toward you when they see you. Boogie wanted to play with them – what a cutie.

Debbie
2/25/08

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