Keeping It Local

The mountains have been getting hammered with snow so Jonny and I decided to go snow shoeing up at Golden Gate Canyon State Park, just under an hour's drive on a good day.  But Saturday was not a good day.  At 11:30 a.m. Boulder Canyon was already mobbed with people coming down from the Eldora Ski Resort so we made a quick detour up to Betasso Open Space, a mere 20 minutes drive.  Because it was going to take a lot longer than an hour to make it through all the ski traffic.  Ski Traffic!  In Boulder Canyon!  If that's not a sign of Too Many People I don't know what is.  We got caught in Leaf Traffic this fall too.  Crazy times.

Anyway, we had a bunch of snow in town too so the snow shoeing was good and shockingly the trails were quiet.  I guess everyone was on I-70 or Boulder Canyon heading to and from the ski resorts.

How now Brown Cloud?

It was a beautiful, peaceful day on the trails, saw only a handful of people in 3 hours and saved ourselves an asston of driving aggravation.

Woke up on Monday and the snow was pretty much gone.  The strong warm Chinook winds blew in and kept overnight temps. well above freezing and warm into the next day.  Ruby needed her coat and booties on Saturday.  She wasn't happy about them but she was happy to get out of the house.

Is there anything cuter than a wee dog in booties?

Her agility training is coming along.  My goal is to have her sending to a tunnel, sending to a cone and doing a wrap and doing some short jump/tunnel/cone sequences before the seminar next month.  And to that end I rushed her training a bit going directly from a straight tunnel to a curved tunnel.  Poor thing was a bit confused.  Today I set up an almost straight tunnel with a bit of a curve to it and she had no problem.  Dog Training 101.  How did I forget how to teach the tunnel?

Or maybe the other dogs all loved the tunnel and it was no big deal to go directly to a curve.

The weave poles are getting closer together but still not enough to cause a weave.  Poor Lola, a sudden burst of unpredicted snow came.  Poor me because there goes my nice dry yard.  Supposed to get a bit more tomorrow, less than an inch but enough to shut down training for a day or two.

Probably a few more sessions before the poles will be close enough to cause a weave.  I'm getting some 2x2's this weekend to work on entries.  She still ignores the channel altogether and heads straight for the treat gizmo if I don't set her up right in front of the channel so practicing entries this way is not working.  I'll work on entries with the 2x2's then try again with the channel.  Hopefully the snow will melt by the weekend and I can get started on teeter training.  Fun with baby dogs.  Think I'll take her to the USDAA trial this weekend to hang out for a bit and pick up my 2x2's.  I always have agility dreams the few nights before a trial and even though I'm not competing I still had one last night.  I was going to run Ruby in the International class even though I hadn't walked the course and she still hadn't done a sequence yet.  Thankfully I woke up before my run.  Stupid neurotic agility dreams.