Since we stopped doing agility last summer because of his back problem, closely followed by the arrival of Louis, my lovely William and I haven't spent much quality time together
. So we joined the training club that I take Louis to and now we're in their Display Team
The team does displays at local village fetes and shows in the New Forest area every summer. William and I are the only new members this year and we had our first training session yesterday. It was fun but exhausting because the rest of the team have already done a couple of training sessions and they're doing 2 routines from previous years, so know them already, but Wills and I are starting from scratch.
One of them is to Queen's "I Want To Break Free" and the other to Shania Twain's "Man I Feel Like A Woman". It's all basic obedience moves for the dogs, so heelwork, sit and down stays, recalls etc., but it's more complicated for us handlers, having to remember what to do and when.
William was totally unfazed by all of it and trotted round by my side with his tail wagging. He's a bit unsure when he's doing a stay and I'm out of his sight sometimes, but not remotely bothered by working closely with the other dogs and having a bunch of women circling round and doing all sorts of manouevres near him
We have homework to do before next week. William's is to improve his "downs", which I've never really taught him until now. Mine is to memorize the routines, which are typed out for me. So I'll be practising walking through them in the garden every day this week. Let's hope the neighbours won't be looking
