This is old enough to compete in an AKC trial. I believe that her brothers and sisters are beginning this right away! Since I haven’t even registered her in AKC, and since we just learned a running a-frame last week, and since her 12 poles are about a half inch away from being completely closed, and since our dogwalk still requires a start jump wrap exactly 1.5 meters away to get her adjusted 5 stride hit, and since her teeter totter needs to start from a wrap jump, and since we have not done any contact and tunnel discriminations or turns yet, and since she goes totally apeshit at the sight of a dog doing agility still, we will sit out competing for now.

Don’t tell Banksy I said that. I suspect she will LOVE competing. She is a full fledged drama queen and that is going to be her kind of drama.

Competing at entry level USA courses will possibly prove our downfall. We’ve been diligently training on our super hard twisty turny Slovenian euro courses. We have a long ways to go, but the tight backsides and tricky turns requiring a lot of collection are our thing. Big, wide open courses with basic turns, straight lines from speed into the poles, these are going to be a great show for the spectators who like to see some dramatic crash and burn, I predict.

Another thing to add to the training list.

Since my knee surgery, we’ve just been working on basics that can be done with a stationary handler. Dogwalk, teeter and poles has been the thing for a while. Handling around any type of course is still going to take me a while til I figure out if my legs are going to work.

I still don’t even have any idea how big she is and how high she’s going to jump.

Everyone that sees Banksy always says, “She’s so tiny!” She looks huge to me. Her 25lbs feels like I’m lifting a whale when she doesn’t want to jump in the car because she would prefer to stay somewhere and play. Coach Nancy measured her at 17.5″ the other day. And a scooch under. The scooch under, if she stuck with it, could earn her a lower height in USDAA than I’ve been expecting, which would give her a lower a-frame. This would be awesomely rad, but I’m not holding my breath. We will train for 22″, and if she ends up at 18″, then a super duper bonus.

I guess in AKC she would jump 16″ If she could squeak in under 18″? Not sure, have to look this up. Maybe we will do some AKC. That’s a whole other universe. We don’t really have an agility budget right now, so this all remains something to worry about in the future. For now, I am still dogwalk obsessed. Trialing can wait.

Anyways, happy birthday, Banksy. All this agility talk. No mention that she can actually do a photoshoot stay now. She stood there a long time with everyone while I was fumbling for my phone and looking for Gustavo and finding him a spot to sit on that didn’t wrinkle his fur and getting him to look at the camera. He’s a high maintenance photoshooter and Banksy stood there patiently the whole time. This, to me, says 15 months. Growing up fast!