November training

It's been a really thoughtful month. In agility we have had again hard times. I have really bad concentration problems in training and in competition. I have been making really easy mistakes. So I made a decision to take part in mental training sessions. It's going to be a long road but hopefully it make me better as a competitor and as person too. Finding a balance in my head when needed is going to be a very useful tool in many things.

In Ob Pixie and I have been working on towards the nation team tryout. First one will be held during Helsinki Winner Show. It will be really challenging situation for us. Lots of noise, dogs and sounds. I planning to take this as training. I also bought a cd that contains different kind of distraction sound. I tried it today, but it didn't seem to bother Pixie at all. I guess people and movement is harder for her than sounds.

We also had a training session with Nina Manner (National team member in OB). Nina gave us some new tips to improve our work. In Z-walk we have had some issues with sitting so we did sits after I had given Pixie a stand command. This meant she had to listen to me even though I kept going on. It took a few times but after that Pixies focus was just wonderful. We also worked on my walking in Z-walk. I have tendency to do it wrong and get points taking of..... Poor Pixie!! :D I might have to do some videos from all our homework from Nina. It was cool training!

Here is our latest success in agility from few weeks ago:

And some pics by Koirakuvat:

I have also started train again an agility group. It has been so much fun!!! I have beginner group that has just taken their first course and know most of the obstacles. So we have plan to go trough some handling techniques and improve their performance in each obstacle. Teaching is really so giving also to me. You can learn to much more when you share your skills to someone else.

That all for now!!

Marianne, Pixie and Louise

Trouble shooting

Running A-frame training has gone ok. Pixiw is getting it together. I went back to using box. She has done wonderfull with that. I have clicked back feet hitting in the middle of the box. Still lots of work but I have done 5 repeats everyday. Hopefully it will start paying of.

We had also Jaakkos training. Lots of homework with tunnel brake. Pixie just flies straight from tunnel even though I learned to stop during her entering into the tunnel. So work for both of us. I must also learn to be more creative during course walk. Pixie has talents that I could better for my benifit. So new choices must be found to learn to better team.

Today we had our 4th Ob4. That didn't go too well. Competition was in a big arena with mutiple rounds going on at the same time. Pixie was nervous and didn't concentrate very well. We had some nice parts but our heal work was just terrible. Yet again we have to be humble and go back to training.

That's all for now..

Marianne and Pixie