How much is too much?
I started to write my usual Brag post (and of course I am going to brag) but after our doggy day yesterday and some discussion on Facebook about how many sports can or should you participate in on one day and made me think about how much is too much.
Yesterday we participated in Farm Dog Certification testing given by our friend of the Pembroke Welsh Corgi Club of Greater Atlanta. We had a fun day at this well run event and came home with not one but two new “Farm Dogs”. This is the brag part of the post, Frost and I qualified twice to earn our certification and Cali and Cody also qualified twice also so the girls have new letters after their names.
Farm Dog Certification (FDC) is one of the newer AKC events
( http://images.akc.org/pdf/FDC_Test_Guide.Revised.11.2017.pdf )
There are lots new and fun things that people can do with their dogs. Some require lots of training and some are more instinct driven but all of them strengthens the bond with your dog
The event yesterday was held outside, yep on a farm, and the morning was overcast but it is June in North Central Georgia so by afternoon it was 90 degrees. Since it was a farm there were lots of shade trees and everyone took care that the dogs were comfortable and everyone was checking on one another to make sure folks stayed hydrated. It was a smaller event with around 40 dogs, their people and the volunteers so it was easy for everyone to stay aware. But what if it had been a bigger event?
There are so many fun things to do with your dog and we overachiever dog people sometimes want to get the most bang for our buck and we enter everything!
Some of our big clusters now have lots of things to enter. Our big one in Perry, GA offers All Breed Conformation (sometimes with matches), Obedience and Rally (sometimes with matches), Agility, Course Ability Testing, Fast CAT, Barnhunt, Dock Diving, CGC/CGCA, Trick Dog and Scentwork might be added as well. That is a lot of things to do on a weekend. It is important that we remember we are the advocates for our dogs. They can’t tell us in words what they want to do, we often time ask them to do things that might not make sense to them and it is important that we pay attention.
Don’t get carried away, have fun but make sure your dog is having fun and isn’t being over worked or over stimulated. We think a 2 or 3 minute Scentwork run isn’t any big deal but it is a mental exercise add that to multiple Agility runs and maybe Dock Diving and you have a tired dog, add weather conditions, crating conditions and multiple days and you have an exhausted dog. Think about how tired you are at the end of a busy weekend and remember your dog did most of the work.
Have fun! Because you have the best dog ever, I know I do!
Solstice Kennels 