Update

I have been so busy the past year that, much to my dismay, serious training has fell by the wayside. It wasn't by choice, but sometimes life throws you too much to handle at once, and something had to give.

But, we are now getting back into the game. And boy is there so much left to learn.

I have realized that as much as I want to train for and reach my competition goals, I first need to put the time into laying a solid foundation. A dog with a truly solid foundation becomes a dog that is an outstanding competition to live with, and performance dog that can handle everything in stride.  I have realized I haven't put near the foundation on my dogs as I should have. Part of that was due to lack of knowledge, and part of it was I was just in a rush to get to the 'fun stuff.' Lesson learned. This journey sure does keep us humble.

And now for an update. It's been a relatively quite past few months but we were able to try out a couple of new activities.
 

We attended our first UKC show back in March, and Darcie was Best of Breed over competition in smooths, and then went on to win a Group 1 and a Group 4. It was quite an exciting day! She is fast closing in on her UKC Championship. She also ran a couple of practice runs in Lure Coursing and seems to be a natural at it. 

We were also able to go to a Herding lesson earlier this year. Tess and Darcie did EXTREMELY well. Their handler, not so much. Herding is something we all enjoyed and I hope we'll be able to fit in some steady lessons in the near future.