Sweating to Agility

I took Romeo out to the agility field this afternoon. Of course, stupid me, I didn't check what the weather was like before packing up the car. I knew it was hot, but the weather has been so strange lately with frost warnings at night and crazy wind, that I never thought much of it.

MISTAKE!

It is about 28C (84F) out there. Sure, that may not be much to some of you crazy Southerners. But for us Saskatchewanians, it is HOT! Freakin' hot, to be precise. Shouldn't complain, really, we are finally getting some normal summer weather (a big improvement from snow in the early parts of May). But you know me, I will complain anyways. HOT!

Anyways, Romeo had a good time at the agility field. We worked on some contacts and played around in the tunnels. He isn't super keen on tunnels, not like a lot of dogs seem to be, so I am working on building some tunnel value. Of course, on a hot day like today, tennis balls mean more running and more hot Sheltie, so Romeo prefers food rewards in these situations. And food rewards mean I need to do more running to get to whereever Romeo is that needs to be rewarded.

I was told at our last agility class on Wednesday that I should be aiming for competition with Romeo for this fall. There is apparently a CKC trial in September that one of my instructors is judging, and she thinks we should be ready for that one. I've put in my order for a CKC agility rule book (darned CKC, they don't post their rules public online like most places do ... stick you with charges for buying the rules before you can play) and need to start reading up on what exactly is expected of us in a CKC trial. I don't know anything about the different games or levels or anything like that. If someone knows of a good website that outlines the rules of different agility organizations, that would be great! I would be particularly interested in a site that compares CKC to AAC to NADAC. Break it down nice and simple for me!

Here are a couple of fun shots I got this afternoon. Romeo was pokey because of the weather (hard to run fast when you are nearly tripping over your tongue), so that was helpful in that I got some pictures that were actually in focus!




Here is one hot dog after about 45 minutes of working.

"So hot even my shadow is panting!"