WOW WOW WOW WOW!

THIS IS VERY BIG NEWS, WHICH IS WHY I AM SHOUTING. Pie has an OTCH point. It is my very first OTCH point ever. I have no idea when she got it, but I was looking at how close (or far) she is from her Mach 2 on the AKC website and it shows Pie has one Obedience Trial Championship point. Only 99 to go! OTCH points are very hard to come by because you have to beat other dogs to earn them. It can be confusing for people who don't do obedience, so I won't go into all the rules, but it is enough to explain that Pie and I hardly ever beat anyone. We are not precise enough because I don't spend enough time training, nor am I a very detailed oriented trainer. Sadly, our last show this past weekend demonstrated this when we got nine points off on the heel free and figure 8 in open. Ouch. I do hope to make that better.

I was going to enter an obedience show over Memorial Day weekend but I missed the closing date and the agility trial the same weekend is full. But Friday and Monday are not full so we'll go then. That gives us more time to get better at obedience before our next trial. Better get busy. Even though our previously mention show wasn't that great (hit the broad jump for NQ in open although she finally did the groups right and no sit on the first signal in utility) I will brag for my obedience student who got her first leg the on her first time in Novice A. That means she has never trained an obedience dog before and on her first try went in the ring and qualified with a second place and a 191.5. Nice job! Also, ffluffy took her Vallhund in the pre-novice ring and qualified with a 195!!! Hunda is not an easy dog to train and that is an amazing score. Especially since he used to be so bad/ strange that people advised her to put him down. ffluffy is a very hard working, dedicated trainer. If that wasn't enough, she also took Pickle into Graduate Open which is basically utility, only slightly (just a tiny bit) easier, and Qualified with first place and another score in the 190's but I don't remember exactly what it was. Pickle is ready for utility and she has done all the utility training herself, with out a class. Another awesome job. A great weekend for the ffluffy dogs. :)

I taught my second beginning obedience class tonight. I think it went well again. ffluffy and I also ground a lot of dog food before class. I expect it will last a long time. We had some fish heads that we had chopped off the bodies that where too large to fit in the grinder so I fed them one each to my dogs. Fancy ate hers almost whole which was very shocking. Pie's was huge and she took quite some time to eat it. Dottie was put away inside her crate so I don't know how long she took.

Off to bed now. The new work schedule is hard. Last night I was too tired to go to agility and stayed home instead and slept all afternoon and night, except when I talked to Melissa. Hi Melissa! Today was better, but that probably had something to do with sleeping close to 12 hrs.

And by the way- Pie has 4 QQs and 400 plus points towards her Mach 2. Looks like we better get back in our groove if we hope to make Mach 2 before I drop her down to preferred to go easy on her back.