Wordless Wednesday: Just Strap on a Cape

Even Randy had to give flying a try

Here Tucker decided he was going to show him how it was done

Stuck the landing!

Black and White Sunday: Up and Over

A to Z Challenge: J is for Jumping

Today is day 10 in our 26 day challenge of posting a letter a day for the next 26 days.  Its called the A to Z challenge.  

Today is for Jumping.  Teach loves to jump.  I taught him "over" an early age and it has stuck with him.  We have a home made jump in our backyard that we practice with.  

Teach isn't the only one that gets enjoyment out of our homemade jump. Randy decided last year him and Teach needed to jump it together.  

This past winter we practiced our jumping skills at Little Beaver. 

This is also a great way for us to stay fit and active.  We are participating in the FitDog Friday Blog Hop.

Flying Collie

Yesterday was a bit on the windy and snowy side, but it didn't stop us from hitting a short trail at our local state park, Little Beaver.  Of course I had my camera handy to get some pictures and had Randy there as well to help with some.

I like to keep Teach in some kind of shape and work on some of our Rally training while we are out and saw a good opportunity with the fence in the play ground.  I had him sit and wait on one side, got in position along side of the fence and had Randy call him.  I've taken pictures of him jumping in this spot a lot but he's always coming right at me.  This time I wanted to get him flying.  So what do you think?  He just needs a cape, right?

Something else you don't see around here to often is people actually ice fishing.  Its not been as cold as I would think for the entire lake to be frozen enough but people were out there on the lake anyway.  

Teach thinking they are crazy to be out there.

And because we were at Little Beaver I had to try out the waterfall setting on my camera ... one more time.  This time I used the self timer function so the only thing that is "smooth" is the water.  In the last pictures things in the background were blurred because the camera wasn't held completely still.  This was edited for color and contrast using SnapSeed App.

This afternoon we have our local awards dinner for the Kennel Club in the area.  Teach will be getting a plaque for obtaining is Rally Advance title this past show season.  I'll add a picture of Teach with his plaque when we get it.

FitDog Friday: Keeping Fit in the Heat

This summer started very rainy and I wondered if we were even going to have a summer ... well my question was answered this week with the heat wave that the East Coast has been blessed with.

So how does a FitDog stay fit in this kind of heat??

We do some heeling exercises and directed jumping.  We keep the sessions short and fun and Teach comes in just as tired from it.  Like he's been out hiking all evening.

The first set of videos is showing some off-leash heeling with focus and doing some Rally moves (backwards,  moving then calling to heel, and stand-stay with a distance command in this case down then come).  This works his mind which is always good.  Our focus is a bit rusty.  At the time of the video we actually hadn't been practicing much.

The second set of videos is working on directed jumping which Teach loves.  I so wish we lived in an area where Agility was readily available.  I do think he would love it.  He lights up when he sees me get his jump out.  He loves it so much that I do have to do some heeling around it with no jumping so he doesn't try and do an off-course jump in the Rally ring.

How have you and your dog been staying fit in this heat??