Mud Pies

I totally mistimed my dog walk on Wednesday and despite blue skies and a bit blowy when I left the car 10 minutes later we had torential rain. As Sandrine would say il pleut comme vache qui pisse.

The Collies continued to have a blast running around. Myself not having the correct clothing on and Oddjob were not so keen.

We bravely carried on albeit a bit of a shortened route and as the rain got worse even a couple of the collies started looking at me for ideas of where to shelter. Oddjob was sorted walking directly behind me using me as cover.

My initial idea on the walk was to work on Oddjobs unhappiness with mud. Not far from where we park there are quite a few molehills. Ideal not too muddy but dirty and weird when stood on.

On the way out before the rain we stopped and Oddjob was given his precious chicken in exchnage for putting his feet on the molehills and due to clever plavement of reward was enjoying eating as his feet sunk into the molehill.

As we hurried back towards the van in the pouring rain I glanced at the molehills and was delighted although surprised to see Oddjob look up at me and deliberately plant his front feet onto the molehill and await his reward :)

Very pleased with this as he demonstrated that he was happy to work in such miserable weather and that he was liking the molehill game. What I wasn't so pleased about was that as I bent over to reward him a gap opened between my relatively waterproof coat and my not waterproof at all and already soaking trousers revealing an area of skin that created a lovely watercourse for the rain down - well I'll say no more LOL.

Last night I took Oddjob along to UpAndOver Dog Agility Club foundation class for his first taste of an agility class and so we can list that he started his agility career with them as it may be a long drive to take him to classes once we move. He isn't really ready for full on classes yet as he is still learning about learning and having fun with us. He wasn't overwelled or noisy and paid attention when called. He climbed on the wobbleboard and walked on a seesaw plank, He got in and out of various boxes and go on to the stools. He even did a recall over a pole on the ground to me and then back to give Dee a puggle. He did the boxes, stools, wobbleboard and seesaw quite happily with a great attitude but was not rushing to get to me over the pole on the ground. I do not want him to learn to do anything slowly so will work on recall speed before revisiting any obstacles. It was great to have a chance to have a taster though and helps steer our training for the next thing.

As it is quite dirty at the equestrian centre I didn't take his brand new favourite tugging toy instead opting for one of Rhyme's similar to another that he plays happily with. It was not a sucess with him so I also have to add playing around distractions to his list of things to do.