By Mark Laker
October 2020
It is surprising with all the turmoil this year has brought to realise it is October already.
By this time of the year we previously would have had a full season of agility shows, including the Junior and Adult European Open competitions; our social media feeds are currently full of pictures from previous year’s world championships too.
All the hard work both from organisers and competitors wasted due to a virus; it still seems so unreal and just unbelievable.
Doing things differently
We had planned to do some different things this year anyway, but agility would still have featured especially for Chic as she is just Grade 2 and has a long way to go.
I mentioned doing a Summer and now Winter league in small groups which is working well for my customers – developing the youngsters and keeping the more experienced going.
It’s interesting to see that there have been some Covid friendly KC shows with classes capped at 50. As they are not local to us, I’m not sure how it all works, but it is good to see that show organisers are committed to keeping agility competitions going.
Competition is good for motivation
For many just doing agility is fun enough, but that element of competition and knowing you and your dog are achieving, is good for motivation.
For those unable to get to these shows and missing the agility social fix, it’s just a case of knuckling down and finding a way through until something like a normal service can be resumed.
We have had a varied month of looking at new dog activities, walking up mountains and canoeing/kayaking.
Losing Torro
We also sadly lost Torro as despite our positive words, he was not able to get better and we had that awful decision to make. Sometimes being positive isn’t enough and life can’t always be perfect. For whatever reason it was decided that dogs wouldn’t live as long as humans, it is something that every dog owner has to face up to. It never gets easier but the heartbreak of losing them is a small price to pay for the life we share with them.
