Day 220: Kashi's Turn to Shine · Dog Training Community

Day 220: Kashi's Turn to Shine

I'm afraid the dog training was sidelined today apart from their usual morning walkies, which consisted of me trying to look convincingly interested as my neighbour insisted on showing me a million pictures of the Coronation Street set that him and his wife had gone to see over the weekend. Yawn 🥱

I sneaked off at 3pm for a showjumping lesson with a trainer near Tintagel. Man. Kashi was brilliant and stole yet another instructor's heart 😂 couldn't believe she was 24 lol. She jumped everything like a pro and we were set some pretty technical exercises, having to take a fence and turn tightly without changing speed to another fence on an angle. It was so fun and really lovely to feel her enjoying the jumping. She's so tuned into me and the task, just an angel <3 ❤️

The age thing intrigues me a bit with dog sports and "retiring" dogs... in the horse world, many top horses are broken at half or even a third of Kashi's age. Horses are asked to do too much, too hard, too fast and too soon, often in ways that are biomechanically incorrect and mentally damaging. There are some vets, trainers, physios, and other experts really pushing for standards of riding and training to improve for the horse's benefit but it's a long slog. I don't know that this is the same in dog sports as we're not riding them around, but are things like biomechanics/soundness considered much with the kind of exercises dogs are asked to do? I've not looked into it but I'm just curious to know if that's a thing. I'm sure there has been controversy around the vertical wall thing in protection and working trials but might have imagined that.

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