This ‘N That Thursday is for those times when you want to post about unrelated topics or each topic isn’t quite long enough to make up a whole post.  It can be anything you want, so feel free to grab the button and join us!

I have a bit of a confession.  The picture from yesterday was actually from last Sunday.  Since then, the rain came along, the temperature warmed up and all of our snow washed away.

But last weekend we still had snow and we got out to group training.  It started out a bit cold, but the sun came out and warmed things up.  By around 3, it was quite nice.

The dogs ran blinds and marks.  The first set up was a series of blinds for the more advanced dogs.

You send the dog to the center pile and then to the two on the right or the left.  It doesn’t really matter whether they do the two to the right or the left first, but I numbered them in a the way that Storm ran them.  The difficulty is that once you send the dog to the first pile, you must keep the dog from going back to it as you send them to the second pile.  Then once they have been to pile 1 and 2, you must handle in between the two to pile 3.  This can pose a challenge as the dog may want to return to either of the first two.  Once the dog has been to the first three, you have to switch gears and send them to the opposite side of the field for piles 4 and 5.

Storm did well on the first three, but typical Storm, once she finished three she thought she was done.  She was all proud of herself until she had to go back out in the opposite direction.  She had a bit of trouble on that left side.  We will have to work her more on these kinds of drills.

Thunder got to run a couple short blinds (1 and 2).  We decided that we are going to ease him back into training and see how he does.  There was no limping after these two short blinds or after playing in the snow on Sunday.

Freighter tried a couple of these too, but he was a train wreck.  He is in the transition phase and he needs more work in this area.  🙂  He did manage to get a couple of bumpers before the wheels fell off.

The dogs also ran some marks, and I will share those pictures another time.  🙂

One note of concern.  I got word yesterday that a dog, a 6 month old puppy actually, at the dog show we were at a couple of weeks ago contracted Parvo.  I tried to pin down whether anybody knew for sure that the dog got it at the show and/or timing of the onset of symptoms, but I really did not get a straight answer.  The dog was supposedly fully vaccinated had a titer test done in November.  Since our dogs may have been exposed, we made a call to the vet.  We weren’t too worried about Thunder and Storm since they have had many years worth of vaccines.  We were a bit concerned about Freighter since he is due for a his first booster in April.  The vet said that they use a good quality vaccine which should be effective.  He said that the incubation period should be past so just keep an eye on the dogs.  According to the info I saw, the sick pup is expected to recover and that is good news.

Tomorrow is Follow-up Friday.