A couple of days before Christmas Lexie and I attended a course held by Raptus Hund (@raptushund). Packed with fun excersises and knowledge like: How to strengthen various bodyparts, Confidence building and Body awareness. Higly recommend this course. Lexie do too.

Photos: @raptushund

Cavaletti: Body awareness, you know those hind legs dogs seem to forget they have:

Balance training with the help of buja boards:

Push Ups for dogs:

From stand to sit with front legs on balance «pillow»:

Yes, it is all about dogs, but I got a bit sidetracked last autumn. Not every year my son gets married. The wedding took place in Loen, Stryn at the top of the mountain Hoven. The wedding ceremony was held on the runway for paragliders, of course, and the wedding party inside the beautiful Hoven Restaurant. If you ever are coming to Norway, Stryn is a beautiful place to visit. My dream is to revisit Stryn, take Loen Skylift up to the mountain top and explore the mountain with my fourlegged friend before heading down. Taking hikes in Olden, Lodalen/Lovatnet, Strynfjellet and refilling batteries for at least 2 weeks.

The happy couple:

Lexie and I have continued our training, but we got to a stage with no further progress in our working under distractions training. I therefore lacked confident in attending rally obedience competitions. I knew there was still a pretty good chance that without the leash on, Lexie could be tempted to look up some people outside the ring. People perhaps with dogs on leash that would not appreciate another dog, although ever so friendly, in their face. My responsibility to avoid such incidents, and to make our debut in class 2 as predictable and safe as possible. Although one can never be 100% sure, the odds should tip heavily in our favour. Would I ever be able to enter class 2?

I knew we had to train in a different way, as more of the same of course gave the same «half way» results. I just did not know just how. And then another training course with Helle Sejer Damkjær came along giving us just the tools and understanding I needed. Suddenly I am filled with new hope and motivation. More on this to follow another day.

In the meantime – who is the boss – any wonder the jury was out on that one – look at that lovely face :

The theme «The competition dog». Instructor Helle Sejer Damkjær from Denmark. A brilliant two days course from which I took diligent notes. A heap to learn and to note both from instructors feedback to me and Lexie and from the feedback to the other participants. Before entering level 2 in Rally Obedience I have a lot of training to do regading off leash training and competition training. It was two days well spent, and I hope to get the chance to sign on another course by Helle in future. Lexie was really focused during the course. It was only by our third training session on the second day I could tell that she was a bit tired. Proud of my girl.