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