I have been lax in posting, mainly because life has been so busy! So here is a recap.

Last weekend (Sat., May 8th) I showed Pizza at the show in Lima. It was FREEZING. So cold, that I actually showed in my winter coat! This seems really wrong for May. I do love outdoor shows though, and she showed fantastic. She earned a select and owner-handled best of breed, and showed great in group (getting ignored as usual!). I am happy with how she is improving in the show ring. I did have Dolphin entered on Sunday, but it poured rain all day so I opted to stay home and not put both of us through that misery.

Agility classes have been going well - Moodle has been doing fantastic, and Pizza is improving every week. Dolphin is a work in progress...I have to always remind myself that comparing him to Pizza and Noodle is really a bad idea as they are all so different and learn differently. We will get there, slowly but surely.

On this past Tuesday, I did some field training. Dolphin did surprisingly well, but bot Pizza and Noodle had some errors. I worked on retrieving to the shot with noodle, and after she successfully completed one retrieve, she had to stand on "honor" while the other dog retrieved...and she broke on the shot and I had to correct her. She never does that! It seems ha==after she gets one retrieve under her belt, she is a bit over-excited and hot off the trigger. Something to think about, for sure.

I haven't talked much about the pandemic for a while. It has become such a daily part of my life, I honestly don't think much about it. This week we hit a major milestone - the mask requirement was lifted for those who are vaccinated (that would be ME!). Of course, businesses have the right to make their own requirements, and most stores are still requiring masks, but for the first time since February 2020 I was able to enter a restaurant without a mask. It was so free-ing. What a crazy, unusual, unheard-of year. I am ever so thankful that mark and I managed to make it through the pandemic unscathed...at least so far.

Speaking of Mark, he is recovering slowly. I had hoped things would move along faster but his injuries are way too severe to heal quickly. It certainly changes things and plans for the summer.

“You are never given a dream without also being given the power to make it true. You may have to work for it, however.” - Richard Bach

The definition of insanity - entering THREE Weimaraners in a field trial, and traveling alone with said Weimaraners and staying in a hotel room with all 3. Yes, insanity = me. Noodle, Pizza, Dolphin, and I headed to Polk, PA for a walking field trial, to try something new and different and to see how my dogs would do under pressure.

Dolphin was entered in open and amateur puppy, Pizza in open and amateur derby, and Noodle in open and amateur gun dog. I will start off by saying that none of my dogs placed. However, all 3 did magnificent. Dolphin hunted hard in his puppy classes, but favor went to the puppies that ran a lot farther than him. He was more intent on carefully checking every bush and clump of grass for birds than running straight forward. I am OK with that. Pizza was great in derby, she found birds every time and NEVER once broke on the flush or shot - by golly I think she is pretty close to being ready for senior hunter! Noodle was a true star in my eyes, finding tons of birds in both of her gun dog classes, holding perfectly though the flush and shot, and one of only a handful of dogs that got around clean (out of 22 entries!). I was especially proud of her on Sunday, she got a big dose of confidence and ranged way out from me, hunting hard, and having 4 clean finds. None of my dogs were bad, none had to be picked up, so in my eyes that is a major win! I don't really think the field trials are my cup of tea, as I prefer a different hunting style than what is being judged at these events, but it was a great learning experience and I am glad I did it.

My agility classes went well this week, I think. I was dressed today ready to head to the barn to go ride Cadence when Dolphin ended up with an ear injury that bled and bled and bled and bled. Ear cuts are SO hard to heal on Weimaraners. We got the bleeding to stop (finally!), bandaged up the cut and put Dolphin in a no-flap-ear-wrap. The person who invented those should get a prize (though maybe my buying THREE of them was prize enough!). There went my ride, and also there went my plans to show Dolphin tomorrow in Marietta. One more chance to practice for our futurity gone down the drain. It's always something, and I can't help but feeling there is more to come. These things tend to come together in waves. I am bracing myself for impact.

Pizza and I headed for Indiana to a weekend show. It was a girls' weekend! We got to the Comfort Inn in Kokomo, Indiana only to find that even though I made a reservation at this "pet friendly" hotel months ago, they only have a handful of rooms that are actually pet friendly, and they are first-come, first-served. Of course, NOTHING of this was said on their website when I made my reservation. The very unhelpful person at the front desk basically told me I was out of luck, and said we couldn't stay there as all of the pet friendly rooms were taken. For about 15 dicey minutes I sat in my car desperately searching for another pet friendly hotel that had a vacancy...no simple feat in a small town hosting a dog show. Luckily we found a room at the Super 8 which ended up to be nicer than the original room at the Comfort Inn. Crisis averted!

Saturday started off well, even though it was HOT HOT HOT...we won best of opposite and pulled off an Owner-Handled Sporting Group TWO! Big win for my Pizza Pie, as the group was large and competitive. She showed wonderfully, so i was pretty happy.

Sunday was a bit less successful, as we only pulled off a Select, and no placement in group. It was a good weekend with my girl, and she is such an easy traveler that it makes everything fun. Back home to reality, andworking on healing Dolphin's ear.

Well, so many things seem to be crumbling in my life. Cadence is not riding well, Dolphin's ear is not healing well, Pizza is not training well, Mark is struggling with his injuries...the list goes on and on. I had two extremely frustrating classes this morning. Dolphin was awful in his agility lessons - very unmotivated. I am not sure what is going on in his head, is it all just because he is growing and trying to figure things out? I am not sure. Pizza's agility is going well, but her training outside of the ring seems to have fallen apart, and once again I am clueless as to why. I keep doing these long moments of soul searching, wondering where I am going wrong with all of my goals. It has been bringing me down so much this week. I have to take a large step back and breathe. These problems are tough, but they are problems I have because I am blessed to have these talented dog, this talented horse, and an incredible husband. If none of these were any good for me, I probably wouldn't care as much. So I am blessed and cursed all at once. That is the danger of blessings - the incredible disappointment when you encounter failures is much higher.

Well I had some success today at the agility trial with Noodle, but her edginess put me on edge, and makes it a little hard for me to enjoy the smidgen of success. Noodle was on edge all day. She was great warming up and keeping focused, but immediately in the ring she started looking around at the start line every run, and was very distracted by the judge and leash runner in the ring.

Our first run was Masters Jumpers. She was really lookey at the start line so I opted not to lead out as far as I had planned. Of course, that put me a lot further behind than planned, and I ended up executing a very poor rear cross at the last second when I had originally planned a front...and my bad timing pulled her off the jump causing a refusal. The rest of the run was OK, and we were clean other than that.

Next was Excellent FAST. We got the hard part - the send bonus, which had two tunnels and a tunnel bypass into the weaves...she nailed it! Unfortunately she got to the top of the A-frame and was giving hard looks to the leash runner, so I made her stay on her contact position until she gave me eye contact, thus losing valuable time. I thought we would still be OK, but my bad math skills put us just under the required points, so we got another NQ.

Masters Standard was last, and it was a qualifying run by the skin of my teeth! She was very distracted at the start, very distracted by the judge when she came out of the first tunnel, and she actually stopped at the top of the A-frame when something caught her eye, and wouldn't move. We got through the run clean, but the time was slow and we only earned 4 MACH points. I should be happy with a Q, but honestly I'd rather have a great focused run with an NQ from something like a knocked bar or wrong course than a Q where Noodle was obviously distracted and focusing on things outside of our run. I thought we had licked that issue - our trial last month was so awesome with 4 clean runs...but today is a different day. We will try again on Sunday.

Funny how life is. For once in my life, I was actually really confident going to this trial with Noodle. Our last trial was flawless, and she has been training incredibly. Then life rears it's ugly head and slaps me in the face. Tomorrow is Pizza's first trial since January. I have to admit I am dreading it. I don't have a good feeling, and definitely no confidence anymore.

Sometimes the hardest thing to do is take a step back in order to move forward. I haven't trialed Pizza in agility since January. She was getting wild and out of control in January, and I made the hard decision to stop trialing her and concentrate on training and focus all winter. It's hard to take that giant step backwards after you tasted such nice success for several months, but I had to look hard at the situation and remember that Pizza was only a year and a half old in January, and still very much a puppy with a baby brain

It is so wonderful to realize that my decision was the right one. We went to an agility trial today, first one in 4 months, and she started off with a perfect clean run and Q in Open Standard, her very first open Q! She was focused, fast, and didn't even look at anything other than the course.

Open Jumpers went almost as well. She did pop out of the weaves at pole 10 for some reason (in watching the video, I think I might have put a slight bit of lateral pressure on her causing her to move out...maybe?), but we were able to correct it. She knocked a jump...2nd from the end in a line of 3 jumps to the finish after a crazy wide front cross. I think her timing was off because she turned so wide, and she does have a tendency to knock a jump sometimes when there are 3+ in a row...she gets so much speed going that she flattens out. We will work on that the next few weeks!

Tomorrow is a crazy busy agility day - Noodle has FOUR runs in the morning, and Pizza has two more in the afternoon. Fingers crossed...

Today was a big day at the sgility trial. Noodle had 4 runs (2 Masters Jumpers and 2 Masters Standard) and Pizza had 2 runs (Open Standard and Open Jumpers). Noodle started off the morning with a perfect clean run in Masters Jumpers. Woot! She immediately brought down my high by blowing her second Masters Jumpers run - she took off after the second jump and did a drive-by past the judge. I called her back and made her lay down, and walked her off. I could have gone on, but this was a training moment that I needed to do. She cannot lose focus and go running off in the middle of the course. It was pretty depressing since I thought we had this problem licked. Just goes to show, NO problem is ever truly solved!

Her first standard run was important, because a Q in this one would give us our first Double Q in working towards our MACH. Yeah, and on this one I have no one to blame but myself. I got to obstacle 4 and got completely lost, sent her to the weaves by accident and then just stood there like a deer in the headlights trying to figure out where to go. I had already blown it, so I did a line of jumps and exited the ring. Stupid stupid me.

Our last run was another Masters Standard. Noodle was a bit slow and a lot lookey, but managed to complete the course with a clean run. So we ended up 2 for 4 today, which is OK...better than years past, but not as good as our last agility weekend. A work in progress....slow progress

Next up was Pizza. Today was a rough day for Pizza and I. Her Open Standard run was out of control, she came off the A-Frame without stopping, did an off course tunnel and an off course jump, and then popped out of the weaves at pole #11. It was a myriad of errors that meant no Q. Jumpers went a lot better, she managed to stay on course with no refusals or wrong courses, but knocked a bar, thus resulting in another NQ. When she is running really fast, she tends to flatten out and knock bars. This is something I need to work on with her.

I took Pizza and Noodle over to my friend's place to do some retrieving in the water, and to mainly make sure they would go IN the water. We have a retrieving ratings test in 3 weeks and I need to prepare them. Dolphin stayed home since the cut on his ear was healing and I didn't want to get it wet yet.

Noodle was her typical motorboat - went out and did double retrieves of the bumpers very consistently. My friend brought a duck and we tried that with her, it was funny watching her struggle with that huge, heavy duck, but she did it! Pizza swam OK (she needs a little work in that department - so awkward!) but her retrieves stunk. Ugh.