2017 Year in Review

Another year ending.  This last year was a huge change in our household with the addition of a tiny human! 

Zumi

Zumi had a hectic year.  Several breaks in training due to her heat cycle, being bred, becoming a mother, and then getting spayed.  It was just sporadically broken up over 7 months!  

I still tried to train in as much training, and trials, as we could during our times together.  

Agility

In USDAA Zumi nabbed all 3 advanced standard legs she needed to move up to the masters level in all games.  I was grateful she did it before the puppies came!

In UKI Zumi kept searching after those 3 standard legs to get out of novice and into senior.  1 little thing kept popping up and preventing it from happening.  But finally the last trial of the year she did it!  1 from the masters heat class even to count towards her novice title!

I'm excited to get to play with the higher level courses in 2018!  My goal is to attend my first national agility event next year.  right now I'm planning for the UKI Open!

Obedience

In obedience, we had a bit of a setback.  Well, a big set back.  And all the time off certainly didn't help.  Zumi started having vocalization issues on her retrieves.  And then that spilled into go outs.  And I decided to go all the way back to the beginning with her scent article training due to Zumi's tendancy to just grab when she couldn't find the article right away.   

Looking back at old video, I can't see any hint of vocalizing on the retrieves last year, but it started to creep in the beginning of this year.  I didn't really pay notice of it until the CDSP trial in July where I put her in Open for the first time to see how she would handle it.  That, of course, was a disaster in terms of vulturing, and whining on all her sends away from me. 

And now we're still working on.  Progress has been extremely slow and frustrating.  

We did end up doing our first AKC obedience trial to get her 3 novice legs.  Due to her recent issues I I wasn't planning on it, but knew the provisional judge needed the numbers.  At least I'm happy to say that she's out of novice forever now!  I am hoping to show in Open after the new rules take effect, but at the rate we are progressing that's quite the stretch goal!

Vito

Agility

Vito miraculously earned his last Super Q needed in USDAA to earn his ADCH!  I was planning on this being his last spring/summer jumping 20in, so after he earned his championship title I moved him down to 16in.  He doesn't really seem any different at 16 vs 20/22 in terms of excitement, it's really just how he's feeling at the moment!

In UKI Vito also earned his championship IAC title.  A big year for Vito!

I don't really have goals of getting the performance versions of the championship titles so we will just continue playing in a very small number of runs per day and mainly do my favorite classes of the masters heat/challenge series in both organizations.  

Obedience

This was actually a pretty big year for Vito in obedience too.  It was the first year I didn't try an AKC with him at all, just CDSP.  And while Vito was Vito, he really did well for me.  I only did utility with him this year and he was happy in each of his runs!  We had some issues with the gloves in being worried about the stewards on the side, or just doubting his choice. But otherwise Vito was pretty darn consistent in every exercise!

Next year I want to continue to play in CDSP Utility and maybe even try doing 2 runs a day.  I still dream of going back to AKC, but I'm content to let Vito lead me.