A Standard Course ~ Not for the Timid

This is a standard course (follow the numbers) that can be run under whatever set of rules to which you subscribe.

I was playful in the use of the pipe tunnels on this course because the course itself becomes a premise for my teaching. We do tough things in training that I probably would not do as a course designer.

Busy Week

I’ve neglected my blog. I had camp last week, I had a mini-clinic on the weekend; and I have camp again this week. Just as these folks leave me on Thursday I have a private party arriving who’ll be with me over the weekend; and then I have another camp this week.

Neglect might be the wrong word. I’m truly not being negligent. I’ve just got so much to do that I can’t keep up with it all. After camp ended last week I had a couple days in which I could have kept up with correspondence, the blog, TDAA course review and so forth. But I would up planting about three dozen trees that I dug up at the end of last Fall. I have to get them into the ground, or all I’ve wound up doing is killing a bunch of trees. And that was never my intention.

This weekend the work will be light. I’ll do two or three hours of privates each day. So I intend to use my spare time to get my garden in. I have a bunch of seedlings that I’ve been protecting in the basement… carrying them out into the sun for the day and back into the basement each evening in case of a freeze. I’m trying to give my tomatoes a bonafide head-start, basically. This weekend though I want to get in my seed potatoes, plant a heap of broccoli plants, and maybe pick up a dozen or so pepper plants of different variety.

Hopefully the roto tiller is going to start right up. I didn’t drain last year’s gasoline. And gasoline is kinda like beer. It doesn’t like to sit around for a long time and will lose it’s zing for resting too long.

Last week’s camp and this week’s have both been an absolute delight. Last week I had a bunch of return campers… mostly from NY state and from more local digs around Ohio. It’s fun working with continuing students because I don’t have to go down to foundation every time we get together. We can move on to strategy topics and so forth.

This week is a Pyrshep camp. Yes, that’s right… they’re all Pyrsheps. I find it to be a remarkable breed with quite a bit of built-in drive and desire. A couple of these folks have trained with me before.

More and more my camps have gone over to the “private” camp, which means that the attendees are self-assembled friends and acquaintance who share the camp and training experience. While it’s a bit of a vacation; they find out very quickly when training with me that it’s a bit of a working vacation. I just about never allow my students to dally in the comfort zone.

Okay… I’m off to save the world. I’ll try to write more tomorrow.

Bud’s Google-proof Trivia Contest

What is a Duncan Dogwalk? And just to give you a hint… no, it isn’t a place where police officers eat doughnuts.

The first correct answer, posted as a reply to this blog post, wins a free copy of the April Jokers Notebook.

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Questions comments & impassioned speeches to Bud Houston: BudHouston@hughes.net. Check out my latest publication the Jokers Notebook ~ Dog Agility Distance Training Plan – April 2010 available on the Country Dream Web Store: http://countrydream.wordpress.com/web-store/ . Readers of my web log get a discount: Enter “special04” in the box for the discount code. And that will take $5.00 off the price of the order.