Sunday, May 15, 2011

Herding Clinic and Therapy Dog Testing

What a crazy weekend!  Tully and I trekked to Lebanon, Indiana on Friday and Saturday to attend a  herding clinic by Larry Painter.  Larry is a highly regarded herding instructor and an owner/breeder of cattle dogs and kelpies.  He was patient and kind and was able to explain things very clearly.  Tully made huge strides in his herding over two days and we were also able to watch more advanced dogs have lessons.  I got to meet a lot of nice herding folks and their dogs and can't wait to keep training!  Larry feels that Tully can easily earn his PT (a herding title), which made my weekend!

After two days of sheep herding, I had to give Tully an extreme makeover.  OK, not really, but I had to get him from filthy herding dog to sparkling therapy dog over night.  Saturday night was spent bathing, brushing, and dremmeling nails to get him ready for Sunday and his therapy dog re-certification.  Tully is a certified therapy dog through Delta Society, which requires all their dogs to be re-certified every 2 years.  We managed to pass by the skin of our teeth, as he was still pretty revved up from herding and really hyper.  Whew!  I'm quite proud of my boy and feel that his therapy dog certification is just as important, if not more so, than the list of titles that follow his name.

It's three weeks until our next agility trial, not much time at all!  Our current goals are to work on the teeter issue that he's having so we can hopefully finish his Open Standard title at that trial and make time to get some herding practice as well.  So much to do!

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