Our Blog - Miscellaneous Lucy Adventures in June

I try not to put up too many Lucy-things, but she does have lots of activities! A few things here that I've put together for a June update.

First is a "Corginade", which is obviously a made-up word that merges "Corgi" with "promenade", which is a walk. Basically, it is a meet-up of Corgi's from the local area. This time, there were around a dozen corgis, with Lucy actually being the oldest corgi there. We did a walk around a park in Blagnac (the same town as the local airport, so about a 15-minute drive). It runs alongside the Garonne river and it had been raining recently, so there were lots of water puddles along the path, which the dogs took a liking to!

We continue to do agility lessons with Lucy each week, and she has started doing something called "Treiball". We hadn't ever heard of it before but it is supposedly like "urban herding" for herding breeds that don't live where they can go off and herd sheep. This is a good explanation. We are even below the "pre-novice" level right now and are just getting her to sit behind the ball and to push the ball one time. Not sure if we will continue with it long-term, as she still is totally into her agility courses.

She also sometimes still likes to play in the vines at the park near our apartment. She did this a LOT when she was a puppy and we had thought she had grown out of it, but the other day, she was back in the vines again.

Now more agility. Our school did a little "friendly" competition the other day with around 12 dogs. The first part was an individual run, where Lucy had a near-perfect run. I actually thought she got through perfectly but then I realized when I was writing this blog that she actually knocks down one bar as she goes over, but does everything else great!

This is the Pomeranian who is normally with us in the various Agility things, named Maiko, and his "mom", Tine. He has had a few problems with the teeter-totter lately, so he did a tunnel instead.

Until your turn on the course, the dogs all wait in one of 2 other areas. Most of the dogs play or wander around, but not Lucy. She decided to sit, rather impatiently, at the gate for her turn.

The next part was in 2-dog teams, and we teamed up with Maiko. The dogs get along great together, so it is really easy to have them both in the same area. The first part was a relay with a cup of water. One dog did the first 1/2, then the owner passed a cup full of water to the next, who takes the 2nd half of the course. You can see how we go a bit slower, because we don't want to spill the water. There were some who were going REALLY slowly who were told that they needed to speed up. It wasn't timed, so there wasn't the as much pressure on speed vs water.

Then we literally switched dogs! Tine took Lucy through the first section and I took Maiko through the 2nd. Mind you, Tom only video'd Lucy with Tine and not my run with Maiko! This was really interesting for a couple reasons. First, Tine hadn't run a course with a dog that is as fast as Lucy, since you can see in the videos before that Maiko is basically running right next to her the whole time, unlike Lucy who is sometimes 10 feet in front. You can see also that Lucy tries to go to the tunnel instead of the weave poles, because Tine wasn't used to having to call the obstacle out in advance, where we always have to say the next obstacle almost while Lucy is still doing the previous obstacle. My run with Maiko was also interesting because I'm not used to having the dog with me at all times, and with a dog that barks throughout the course!

Then our trainer, Chloé, took Lucy through the course. I was somewhat happy that she messed up the weave-poles with Chloé as well, since then it isn't totally the fault of the handler :-) She had never done the whole course before ... only the first part so she kept wanting to jump back up on the table, which was the end of the 1st part of the course.

Lastly, a couple of play-times between Lucy and a sheltie-friend named Redson. They have played a few times before in various walks, so they are very comfortable together and tend to play the same way. Lucy was a bit tired as this was at the end and so, sometimes, she was doing her "lay down on the ground and play" routine.

The dark short-haired dog that is in the pictures is a puppy that she had been playing with earlier who kept on trying to get into the playtime as well!