Agility training begins

I registerd Molly and me for agility training, I'll be off for a month soon, and training will be on Tuesday mornings. I thought it would be fun to try. I'm not interested in doing all kinds of competition. We are both way too lazy for that!

We finally have a dog park in the area. The owner of the petfood store we go to, managed to have a nice area all fenced in with toys and water, on the grounds of the shopping complexe where his shop is. No shade, so not to good in the middle of the day, but we've been a few times in the late afternoon or after suppertime and it's very nice. Some dogs are nicer than others, as are their owners, but overall it's great fun and the dogs have a ball (the tennis kind!).

I'm having trouble with Molly running away from me to great people. I'll be in the yard and if she spots one of our neighbours out, she'll bolt right towards them and won't listen to me. So now, when I'm outside, I have to put on a 30 foot lead that is tied around my waist. She doesn't like that. For that matter, neither do I, it's always getting tangled around something ot caught in the front wheel of the wheelbarrow, grrr @#*&^$, if you know what I mean. I figured I'm the culprit of this bad habit. Andre and I have this thing we do: when the other one comes home, we let Molly out as soon as the car is parked in the driveway. She runs over to greet us. Makes me forget anything bad that happened at work to see that smiling face coming at me full speed. I realize this is exactly the same behaviour she displays towards our neighbours or who knows, soon it will be to people walking by on the street. What if a car happens along... I don't even want to think about it. We are trying to change that, so no more greetings in the driveway :-(

On another subject, going for walks is becoming quite the workout, for me that is! She pulls so much on the lead, my arms are sore after a while. Yesterday, I figured a way and it seems to work. I tie the lead just above my knee and have the other end in my hand. Molly then has a 3-4 feet lead to walk off. If she strays it jerks her and she comes back right away. At first, I had it below my knee and I didn't have enough strenght to hold her back - as was demonstrated when she decided she wanted to go see three little girls who were running over to see her. She responded by running towards them...with me in tow. I ended on my ass and was not as amused as the kids were.

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Molly can now be found in Dogbook! With her new found friends: Luna, Bay, Chili, Bosco and Tia.