Rigby is Four Months Old

It's been two months already since Rigby came to live in our home.  Time has flown by and she has grown way too quickly and learned so many new things.  I do wish I had a pill to slow down Rigby's growth, as these puppy stages are quite fun and will soon just be memories.

We've had a good week filled with training and play, happiness and fun.  

We spent some time at a training building earlier in the week and, in addition to her regular lessons, Rigby got to experience the fun of a real agility tunnel.  I kept the tunnel short to begin with and, as she gained confidence, stretched it longer and longer until it was full length.  She would run into the tunnel on my hand signal and verbal command of "tunnel," run all the way through it and meet me at the other end.  After she was doing well at full length I put about a 45 degree bend into the tunnel and even that didn't slow Rigby down, she kept running end to end, even carrying her glove through the tunnel after she fetched it.

Saturday we were happy to be back to tracking, having missed last week due to inclement weather.  It was a cold morning and the ground was covered with snow and we took Rigby to a small field across a wooden bridge to lay her tracks.  It was not at all evident that Rigby had skipped a week of tracking, as she seemed to improve even without any practice.  

On her first track Rigby needed a bit of help to find the first few hot dog slices, but by the end of the track she was working on her own, nose to the ground.  Her second and third tracks, the longest of which was about 30 yards, were brilliant and from the start she pulled strongly into her harness and went from hot dog to hot dog with me following directly behind her, trying to keep up with her.  Even Phil said that this was the week we should have had a camera to film her performance.

We'll be leaving our regular tracking group for 8 weeks while Rigby and I attend a class, but I hope to meet with some of my tracking friends once a week or so to keep Rigby advancing in her tracking skills.

This week promises to bring even more new experiences for Rigby, as she will be starting puppy kindergarten Saturday.  I'm quite anxious to see how she will handle the excitement of a class full of puppies and all the noise and activity that comes with that.  Today we made a visit to the training building where the class will be held and we spent some time training and playing, getting her familiar with the surroundings.

This coming week I'll have to take some photos of my beautiful girl and maybe even get her on video again.