Ben's first win

I don't want to talk about competitions only, since there are lots of interesting things besides agility we've been doing lately... But I still have lots of work on tricks video I'm preparing, besides, I've pushed hiking aside a little because I've had to study hard lately, so there's not much to say... I should be studying now so it seems a perfect excuse to write something - anything! - so that I can escape books for a while.

Ok, so Ben won the last competition on Saturday in Slovenska Bistrica. We had two clean runs, which means that we also passed our second exam for A2! Jumping run was really nice, it could hardly be better. I need to learn to pull ahead and not wait for him, though, to improve his speed even more. Agility run was nice too, but we had one enormous turn (I was too slow at the beginning and I should have started calling him earlier). However, contact obstacles aren't looking any good... His contacts are close to perfection, but the problem is speed. He's not slow on the dog walk or A-frame anymore, but it's not even close to what we've been training, he needs WAY more confidence on new contact equipment, his jogging over it is not something that would satisfy my taste :)... He does pull ahead in the middle of the dogwalk though and runs full speed over the down ramp and always hits a beautiful contact!

We've also started training turns after the dogwalk... We'll be progressing very very slowly, Ben is very sensitive to changes and I just don't want to ruin his perfect contacts by going too fast, because even the slightest change makes him jump. We still have sooo much to train, sometimes I don't even know where to begin :) I just love it when I find something new to train, it's not a nice feeling when I can't think of anything or any new trick to train, it gets boring...

This is a video of Ben's first four competitions
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a82GKxbxnAc