Goals yesterday and today

These are the goals I set for Lucy last January:

• Regain her worry-free teeter and dogwalk (she had freaked herself out on a teeter which translated into dogwalk fear as well)
  Woo hoo! Done.
  
  
• Add tunnel/contact discriminations to skill set
  Nope, didn't work on that at ALL.
  
  
• Add "out" to skill set
  Nope. Hardly worked on that at all.
  
  
• Add soft weave entry to skill set
  Nope. Didn't work on that at all except for maybe a few living room sessions.
  
  
• Take time out (from trials) at some point to train a running frame
  Procrastination won out despite Lucy telling me loud and clear that she needed this. Unfortunately I didn't listen until she had to practically scream it to me. She has been on trial and a-frame hiatus since September.
  
  
• Achieve fully independent contacts
  Nope. Hardly worked on that at all.
  
  
• It'd be nice to get her up to Masters in some events to reduce ring conflicts with Walter.
  Nope. She got partway there in Snooker and Jumpers, except with the new rules now she'll need two more Qs before moving up. (Which is fine by me.)
  
  
• To keep her agility tail wagging.
  Nope. She kept her happy table, thank goodness, but a combination of a-frame stress and a general lack of practice led to quite a few stressed out, unhappy runs that I'm not proud of. My poor dog!

Well, 2008 sure was a good lesson that things don't always go as planned. With the exception of that last one and the frame issue, I'm not bothered by any of our failed goals because the plain fact is Lucy got next to no practice last year, which was really focused on improving Walter's skills. (For most of our green fee season it's too hot to leave a dog in the car, and it can be a hassle to dig out the big clunky metal crate from the bottom of the trunk every time, so most of the time I brought just one dog to the practice field and 9 times out of 10 that dog was Walter.)

Moving on to goals for 2009:

• To get her agility tail wagging again.

Yep, that's it, that's all! : )