"It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop."

I took Pizza field training with my friend - she was spot on perfect on her birds and her honoring. After we worked about 4 birds, we just let the two dogs run in the fields. She needs to get back in shape, so the exercise was good for her. It was a really nice, relaxing, happy day in he field. I needed that!

Dolphin, Noodle, and I headed to an agility trial in Cincinnati for the day. What a rotten, stinky, poo-poo day. Both Noodle and Dolphin bombed their FAST run, Noodle came out of the weaves in jumpers, but did have a halfway decent standard run for a Q...my only Q of the day. Dolphin was horrible. This was by far the worst agility trial he has done. He missed his weaves MULTIPLE times in every run, had zero mojo going, and was just plain lazy and unmotivated in every run. I have no idea why, I tried food, steak, toys, and he would be a little motivated and then it would just poop out of him. At times I get so frustrated with this guy, it's like I need a dog psychiatrist to figure out what is going on inside of his head and why he is so inconsistent.

I left the trial extremely discouraged. This is probably the lowest I have felt in a long time.

I had signed up for an agility seminar today, but I really didn't feel like going. I decided to take Pizza and Dolphin, and focus mainly on Pizza. When she tired out, I would then work Dolphin. Well let me say, Pizza was fantastic! The attendees of the seminar sat in chairs in the middle of the ring while we took turns running sequences, and Pizza NEVER visited a single person! She ignored everyone for the first 3 hours of the seminar, and only left me once right at the end of the seminar to check out someone standing by the dog walk. I am amazed, and really thrilled with her focus and work ethic today! She was so awesome, Dolphin only got to run one short sequence.

I am actually toying with the idea of entering Pizza in an agility trial this month! She hasn't been to a trial in over a year - since April of 2023. I have been working in class and seminars on keeping her focus on me and NOT visiting ring crew or other people in the ring. She has been improving a lot all year. Now I am wondering if it is time to see how successful my training has been. Part of me doesn't want to enter, only because I don't want to be disappointed. What a stupid way to live, but that's how I have been lately. What to do, what to do?

This morning Noodle was not feeling well. Her Lymphangiectasia really flared up and she was miserable. I decided not to take her to agility class this monring, and took Pizza instead. Pizza was pretty darn good! I am really leaning towards entering her in a few weeks. We worked on a lot of hard stuff involving backsides, and backside blinds. She was amazing at it.

As usual, I packed my day pretty full. It was a beautiful sunny day, but the temps were in the mid 80's whihc is very high for this early in the year. Dolphin and Noodle went to go field train with me today after Pizza's class. Dolphin worked first with my friend's dog. He had one pretty darn nice honor where he did stop (with a little quite whoa from me when I was behind him), but the biggest improvement was that when he stopped, he sayed facing the pointing dog and didn't turn around towards me! HUGE. This has been such a hard concept for him to grasp. I think he is getting the idea of stopping when he sees the other dog on point, but he always wants to turn back to me. Hopefully this sticks. He worked two birds beautifully, pointed from a decent distance and was steady as a rock on the flush.

Noodle worked with my other friend's dog. It was pretty darn hot, so we tried to keep things simple and not a lot of running. She had two nice points, one super nice honor and one messy one. Her first point was a little "footsy", where she did move her feet about an inch or so while I was flushing. She was much better on the second bird. We have a bonanza of a weekend planned, just her and I - Rally trial on Friday and a double double hunt test on Saturday and Sunday. This was supposed to be our last hurrah together before the puppies arrived. Now, now puppies, so it's just one more hurrah in a long line of hurrahs for her.

I took Pizza to Dolphin's class today and worked both of them. Dolphin was completely unmotivated, even with Pizza getting attention. Interestingly, Pizza was a little more stressed in this class (a lot more high-energy dogs), and right off the bat she went to go visit a couple times. I got some very good insight from my instructor, so here are a few points I am going to highlight so I can refer back to them in the future:

1. Do NOT call her back, wait for her to come back to me.
2. NO reward when she comes back, just go on working. A reward is reinforcing her to leave and come back for a treat.
3. She needs time to acclimate to her surroundings. Stand around and don't demand her focus 100% of the time, let her look around, sniff, etc.
4. She doesn't enjoy being touched a lot when she is working (this one is new to me, but my instructor noticed her ducking away when I was petting her before we got started on our runs).

All very interesting things. As for entering her, I think I might do it, with zero expectations. That's what my instructor recommended. Not a problem! Nowadays I tend to have zero expectations anyways!

This weekend is all about Noodle. I had planned this weekend when i thought Pizza was pregnant, as a last fun weekend with Noodle before I was tied up with puppies. I still thought it would be a fun weekend for us. It was fun...kinda.

We started off the weekend by heading to Bloomington, Indiana for a rally trial. It was a double trial but I only entered the second trial. Well, we had something new happen today that has never happened in Noodle's entire rally career - we actually FAILED a rally run. We failed Master. She was SO unmotivated and not wanting to work, she refused to pay ettention, did not want to lay down on the rough asphalt ground, did not want to sit, you name it. The judge said she was "a bit too uncooperative" to pass today. CRAP. We went on to do ok-enough in Excellent and Advanced to pass those with fairly low scores. On the plus side that makes Double QQ #9 towards our RAE title. Unfortunately, no triple Q and no Master points. I was really surprised at her, Noodle is normally so motivated and happy to work. Not sure if it was the 4 hour drive at the crack of down, or maybe she wasn't feeling well? Hard to tell.

After we were done with the rally trial yesterday, we headed an hour north to hit the double double hunt test in Amo, Indiana on the weekend. This was much more to Noodle's liking, for sure! While we didn't have the most successful weekend in the field, I did have fun and she had LOADS of fun.

Our first master test in the morning went OK at first, we didn't really get to do much as she went on point early in the brace. On the shot, she leaped forward a couple big steps. She stopped on her own, but that is still unacceptable so I picked her up.

The second test was in the heat of the afternoon. Noodle took off from the start like like she was shot out of a cannon, and soon she was out of sight. The judges were talking and really didn't notice that she was completel absent during the entire 15+ minute backfield. I couldn't see her anywhere! We got to the birdfield and I still didn;t see her, and I was really afraid I was going to have to pull out my tracker to find her. Then I spotted her - waaaaay at the far end of the bird field standing staunchly on a big dramatic point. I found out later from the gunners that she had been standing on point for about 9 MINUTES! The bird had already got up and walked off, so I wasn't able to produce a bird. I heeled her away and we continued to hunt. We had a really nice honor on our bracemate, but the gunners missed the bird. Our second honor was not as pretty, as it was one of those situations where I had to bring her in for the honor (and it didn't happen naturally). She stood well for the honor through the retrieve. She ended up having two finds, and two really nice retrieves. She did hop a little bit on the shot, but nothing quite as dramatic as this morning, so we were good. She ended up with all 8's, a 9 in retrieving, and a 7 in trainability.

Sunday was a much warmer day. We started off the morning with a distinct feeling of Déjà vu. She had a beautiful solid work on a chukkar in the backfield, but when we got to the bird field she took a big jump forward on the shot and I had to pick her up again. So dang frustrating!

I worked hard in the afternoon brace to regain control over her. This time I didn't stay silent and let her run huge, I managed her run a little bit and kept her within eyesight. We started off with a beautiful find in the backfield - she pointed from about 40 feet away from a chukkar, it was gorgeous. She was a little jumpy as I flushed it so far, but she stayed under control. We had a nice honor fairly early in the birdfield. My bracemate took out 2 more birds in the birdfield before he was picked up. At this point I knew there weren't any birds left in the field, but she continued to hunt hard in the heat for another 10 minutes before the judges decided to put a bird down for her. This bird was suicidal. I tried to flush it and it got up and walked, and kept trying to walk under Noodle's head. I did my best border collie impression trying to herd that stinking bird away from Noodle. I finally got it to flush, and the stupid thing did a u-turn and skimmed Noodle's head...she could not resist temptation and she mad a jump at it. She didn't catch it, but we were done. Poop.

While passing only 1 out of 4 Master tests wasn't exactly how I had planned things to go, such is reality. I was pretty darn crushed for a while, then I started thinking a little more clearly. Noodle earned her 25th Master Hunter pass this weekend. Most people can never even get to Master Hunter, let alone pass 25 of them. I have to keep things in perspective. She is still such an amazing dog, and everyone who watches her agrees (love it when the judges tell me they would choose her to hunt over every day of the week, even though they had to fail her). As for our rally fiasco, I have decided not to panic about that and we will see how our next trial goes in a month. If that one is equally bad, then I will have to sit down and try to figure out why.

This evening I took Pizza and Dolphin to our bird dog club's training night. Pizza never got to actually point a bird, but she had two spectacular honors (made me all puffy proud!). Dolphin got to point two birds and he was solid as a rock, and looked so pretty and dramatic on point, it made me proud. I really didn't get any "training" done per say, but it was nice to get these two out in the field again.

The past few months I have watched a lot of people at hunt tests put way too much pressure on their young dogs. There seems to be a thing where everyone is trying to get senior and master hunter titles on PUPPIES. WHY??? I guess there is some sort of bragging rights you can claim if you can finish a MH on a 7 month old puppy, but to be honest all I see are puppies that are worked to the point of losing their spark. I don't understand it. In the end it's just a title, and no one cares if your dog is 6 months old or 12 years old (which might be Dolphin's age by the time we finish master LOL!). Enjoy the journey! Don't forget that...

It was all about agility today. I started off the day with Noodle in an 8am class. She was wonderful! We worked a lot of complicated backside exercises and she nailed every one.

In the afternoon Pizza did a drop in class. She was a little nervous and maybe a little stressed with some of these dogs and their hard stares at her (why oh why can't dog owners notice when their dogs are hard-eyeing other dogs, and do something about it?). She was doing pretty good with her exercises until we did one with someone and their dog standing close by inside the rung as we ran. She immediately left me and ran to the instructor and visited. We both figured it was a stress response to seeing that other dog standing there while she was running. Interesting...earlier in the class we all worked backsides on individual jumps in the ring together and she had no problem, but when someone was standing there in the ring with their dog watching her, she melted down a little bit. Something to think about...

In the evening, I took Dolphin and Pizza to do a little training with my friend. Dolphin started off amazing - fast and motivated and we got a lot of good work done. I switched and got Pizza out, and she was fantastic. When I went to get Dolphin back out, he was asleep in his crate and lost all motivation. Interesting...I thought by getting Pizza out he might get a little jealous, but it was actually the opposite.

We have a week and a half until Pizza's first agility trial in well over a year. I hope and pray I see scads of improvement, or this year off was for naught.

Dolphin had agility class today. He was, um, OK. Very OK. Not great. Just OK. My trainer has a plan, we are going to do a private lesson tomorrow to discuss a new training plan for him. YES!

After class, I took Noodle and Dolphin to my field trainer to do some formal training. We had birds in Launchers for Dolphin and his bracemate. He was very steady (although he did kind of steal point at one time...ugh). Noodle was also steady. We even didn a little retrieving with the big gun and I got to correct her slightly, but she knew it was training so she was on her almost-best behavior.

Let me just start off by saying how happy I am that I have a trainer that believes in me and my dog enough to put the time in to figure out a training plan to help us get through our issues. I feel valued, and that doesn't happen very often.

We are going to work on putting Dolphin's reinforcement outside of the ring, teaching him that no rewards come until he completes the task - the whole task. We started off very slowly, by asking him for one simple command (like "sit"), then saying "Jackpot!" and going to the chair where the treats are and giving him one. We gradually moved this into the ring, where I would take off the leash and put it in the leash bin, ask him to sit (or down, or whatever), and then Jackpot!, put the leash on, leave the ring and get the treats. Eventually we did just a tunnel, then a tunnel jump, then a sequence of tunnel and 3 jumps, then a longer sequence of a tunnel, teeter, and some jumps, and then graduated to a long sequence ending with the weaves. At the end of each sequence, I would call out "Jackpot!" and we would go to the leash (walk, not run!), put the leash on, leave the ring and get treats.

It sounds so simple but it really seemed to motivate him and by the end of the hour he was happy, excited, and running great. My plan at home is to start simple, reward as usual from me and every 4th or so sequence I will "Jackpot" and leave the area to get treats. I will gradually increase this frequency until after several weeks we are doing only jackpots outside of the ring.

I think I am going to start doing this with Pizza also. I am excited to have a plan. Plus I have a plan that I have help in negotiating through, which is HUGE.

Well, the past 5 days we have worked hard and played hard. I am seeing way more success in the latter than the former. We have had off and on good weather, so I have been doing little spurts of training with Dolphin and Pizza outside. My results have been a mixed bag for the most part.

Yesterday (Wednesday) I took Pizza to Noodle's class since it was week 6 - course week! Pizza did absolutely wonderful on her courses. She was fantastic. I am terrified. I have hope now, and that's a very dangerous thing to have with these dogs. I left class and I told her, "You're going to break my heart on Sunday, aren't you?" I guess we shall see...

Today Dolphin had class, and he was awful. Just terrible, zero ambition. Talk about draining my hope...I think even my trainer is lost as to what to do. This evening I took both Dolpin and Pizza to the training place across the street to work with my friend. I worked Dolphin first on a few short sequences and he was awesome. I put him up and got Pizza out, she was a little distracted but we worked through it and she ran really well. I then got Dolphin back out and it was like someone drained his battery - he had zero drive. What to do? I don't know. I know our training plan was not going to yield instant results, but I had hoped to see a glimmer of improvement. We will keep on keepin' on for now.

Let's talk about Noodle today! I have been working on running her in the warmer temperatures to get her heat resistance up. She is loving that! I have been doing a little rally training with her - took her to the rally drop in class on Monday and worked the whole time with no treats on me, making her do a full course before releasing to the treats. She was marvelous! I have done little short spurts of training at home where we do a few things and then run over to get the treat.

The Weimaraner gun dog (field trial) rankings came out and look who is in 5th place! Pizza got bumped off the list, but Noodle jumped in at #5, so awesome! Unfortunately she will probably fall off the list soon as there just aren't any walking field trials around here pretty much the rest of 2025, but it's still nice to see her get a little recognition.

And the BESTEST news - Noodle's latest blood test is NORMAL!!! Granted, her albumin is on the low side of normal, but still! And look at her protein level - right in the middle, probably the best it's been in a year. We are getting control of this dang disease and kicking it's butt!

Agility trial - the good, bad, and the ugly. Let's start with Noodle. While she definitely didn't run her best, she ran "good enough" and managed a Triple QQQ! I kept her crated outside in the van today, only bringing her in to warm-up and run. I was experimenting to see if it made a difference with her, but I don't think it did. She's pretty cool to wait wherever - she isn't usually bothered by outside forces. Her Jumpers run was pretty darn nice first thing in the morning, her standard run was fair-to-middlin' but we got it done, and her FAST run was shocking since the send was tunnel-jump-tunnel and she sent to both tunnels no problemo, which is unusual for her as she HATES tunnels. All of the courses were pretty tunnel-heavy today, which did affect her time as tunnels slow her down.

Pizza was good, bad, and ugly in her two runs. We started the morning with jumpers and she was a hot mess. Left me after the first two jumps and did an extended visit with the barsetter in the corner. Then she blew past her weaves. I opted not to correct her, and we managed to get a few more jumps and a tunnel and ended our run. Needless to say I was pretty crushed after this run. This was our first time back since April 2023 - we have not done any trialing in over a year to work on focus, confidence, and getting rid of the visiting issue. She has been doing fantastic in classes, run-throughs, and seminars. Today the trial setting reverted her back to where she was over a year ago, and I was really disappointed.

I spent a lot of time with her in the building, just sitting with her and letting her absorb the atmosphere and take security in me. I feel like she got better as the day went on, and we went in to Standard with a little more confidence. She did leave me twice to visit in standard, but both times it was in flow and she didn't get any refusals called. The best thing - she nailed her weaves! YES!!! When a dog is stressed, that is the first thing to go. After we got through the two visits (one in each of the far corners), she ran amazing. Best part - we finished strong and she actually qualified! This finishes her AX (Agility Excellent) title! We have zero Excellent Jumpers Q's, but hey, maybe that will be next.

When I was entering my Q's into my spreadsheet (I keep one for each dog and each sport), I saw that Pizza's last Q was in February 2022. That's a whopping 2 1/2 years ago. Notice the comments - we had similar situations back then. I wouldn't call any of these three Q's a "clean" Q, but I am really hopeful that will be coming soon.

Today we (my vet and I) decided to stop Noodle's Mycophenolate. I just hate having her on an immunosupressant for so long. Since her blood results were normal last week, we decided to try pulling her off the drug completely, keep everything else the same, and re-test her in a month to see how her protein and albumin levels are. I am hopeful...I pray we are on the right track!