Merry Christmas

We are lucky to have a beautiful picture by www.pet-ography.co.uk given to us by our lovely club members last Christmas and he makes them into Christmas cards too. What better way to wish everyone Merry Christmas.

The Christmas party was brilliant this year. I worked out a rota so everyone got a chance to join in and also then got a chance to take control of the games :)

We really need to try that memory game out again - brilliant and challenging if you got it but not so easy to enjoy if you got knocked out. It was good shouting at the others where to go if they got it wrong though.

The Santa game was great fun even though Billy decided to play tuggy with Santa's scarf.

Boxed trios, well what can I say, a must for next year especially if Sandra's coming.

I hope everyone has a lovely Christmas it is such a special time. Cherish your time together with your loved ones and spare a thought for those that may have lost loved ones this year.

Polishing Coconuts

Hi long time no blog :( sorry folks.

I have been very busy doing loads of interesting things that would have been interesting to blog about too – ironic.

Here’s the list
• Course work and preparing for my thesis for my ICAT Canine Remedial massage therapy Diploma
• Choosing dogs for above thesis and arranging Vet Permission Forms
• Booking time to do thesis and arranging swimming for the swimming dogs
• Getting to grips with new routine and back to office employment for 1 day a week.
• Revising what I know about Credit Control and researching national averages for debtors re above job
• Training Rhyme
• Preparing for Christmas Match V Wallingford
• Preparing for Christmas
• Sorting Diary out for all the things to do and lovely people to visit over Christmas
• Writing cards & designing email card
• Preparing for UpAndOver Christmas party
• Checking supplies of CSJ & Orijen to ensure customers don’t run out of dog food over the Christmas break.
• Buying presents for family and friends
• Buying prizes for match & Christmas party
• Updating diary with shows I know we will definitely be interested in next year from the Agility Show Diary

I will come back to some of these at some point, as they are all interesting. I feel very lucky to have a life when I am busy doing loads of different things that I love.

Well why polishing coconuts? Well a good book to read if you want to take a bit more control of your destiny is a book called “Write it Down Make it Happen” by Henriette Anne Klauser. I will be re- reading it this winter and again I’m sure it will feature in another blog. The polishing coconuts is a reference to a study of some monkeys on an island that were cleaning sand off coconuts and more and more monkeys then joined in. When the number of monkeys on that island reached a certain number then monkeys on another island started to do the same thing. This shows how activity in one area can generate activity in another.

As you know I have a few key areas that I want better performance from Rhyme in – recalls, focus and play drive. I have been working on these using different methods (including tearing my hair out LOL) so you can imagine how thrilled I was with these comments
Great Recall – Lesley Olden - training afternoon
Good focus – Lauren Langman - training day
Lovely play drive – Gemma Hanekom - jump grid session.

Each of these comments were not relating to what we were working on in those training sessions so I could have easily not registered them but as consciously these are key areas for me my mind sat up and took notice and I thought RESULT.

In fact Rhyme’s work at the things we were supposed to be doing was not amazing so had I wanted him to excel at those things I would have come away feeling disappointed. The strength of knowing what I want and setting my own goals meant I came away from each of those sessions knowing that me and Rhyme are most definitely going in the direction I want to go in ☺ ☺