Hiking at Mt Macedon

I started this post a few months ago and never got around to finishing it, so rather than deleting and starting again, here is a now out of date post - bit like computer technology, buy it and it's already becoming obsolete. 
End of Autumn, beginning of Winter is my favourite time of the year at Mt Macedon.  As agility trialling has been very quiet for the kelpies, we have been doing some walks with them on Sundays, usually alternating between Mt Macedon, Kyneton and Anglesea.  Hopefully it's getting them back in condition for eventually returning to agility.  So here are some photos from our last Mt Macedon hike.


View from the trail



The hydrangeas are amazing this time of year - pity I can't spell them though

The gardens are magnificent, with lots of interesting stone pots and sculptures

And I'm always a sucker for holly

The Autumn leaves are pretty awesome too

We came back through Woodend and had another walk around the town, much to the dog's delight - as there were plenty of good interesting smells for kelpies on the oval obviously.

And they were even tired enough to sit and pose for the camera for a brief moment, so a good time must have been had by all.  The Border Collie is still rearing to go though ! Although they are all happy enough to walk all day, the kelpies have at least had the good grace to discover 'couch potato-ism' when the mood suits, a concept that we are still having a lot of trouble selling to Ivy.

And now back to agility.  Atilla is about to make comeback number 3 for the year, so lets's hope that third time's a charm. After recovering from the back problem and the sprained toe, he then collided with Cruz running around in the yard and came up limping again, this time with a pulled thigh muscle.  So back to trick training and not much else.
We've been doing a little bit of agility at home over the past few weeks, and I took him to training last night for the first time in over a month.  Ran 2 jumping rounds on lower height jumps than usual, but he ran 2 clears and was keen to do more although I wouldn't let him.  I have him entered next weekend in one Masters agility and one Masters Gamblers run only, so we will see how he pulls up.

Cruz has had a couple of runs at the last 2 trials and seems to be fine.  No passes, but a lovely agility run where the wrong end of a tunnel discrimination caught me unexpectedly when he decided to speed up and left me behind and a couple of Masters Jumping runs that weren't too bad either.  He has been doing some nice work at training and I am happy with his progress considering he has also spent most of the year on the sidelines with Atilla. 

I have come to accept that a couple of runs is really enough for Cruz at a trial - after this he tends to switch off and lose a bit of focus, so I am going to enter him sparingly so that he remains motivated.  I don't have a problem with doing this, especially now that I am trying to get Ivy up and going.  Running too many dogs does my head in, especially as all 3 of them are so different to run and I feel like I am switching from one handling persona to another. 

I also feel as if I have lost a bit of spark with Atilla because we haven't been able to run together for most of the year - last night at training he did everything perfectly but there wasn't the connection that we normally have and I just felt like he was going through the motions in a point and shoot kind of way.  I don't want to feel like this when we run so I think a new training project might be on the cards where we work on a new way of doing something.  I am leaning toward trying to train a running dogwalk with him at the moment - I feel as if I have nothing to lose if he starts missing a few contacts and I would really like to speed his contacts up a bit more too.  So we will see if we can teach an old dog a new trick.