It’s a case of no space, as in my back yard is not big enough to lay out a full sized rally obedience course. This will not stop us from practicing the individual exercises, although the sogginess of the yard and the on-and-off rain might move us indoors to an even smaller space.
Although I usually don’t mind living in the city with all of its conveniences, sometimes I truly envy those of you who live in the ’ burbs or beyond. Your jagoff neighbors are separated from you by yards or even miles, not inches. Your basement is big enough to set up a full 40' x 50' AKC rally or obedience ring. Your yard is big enough to set up a full 50' x 80' APDT rally ring, or maybe even a 100' x 120' agility ring or 100m x 80m Schutzhund field. Space and distance, what a life! Or at least I say that until I need an open-24-hours grocery store or veterinarian or whatever within five miles or less. Tradeoffs, always those tradeoffs.
For the rest of the week, Freya and I will be practicing individual Level 2 exercises in whatever time and space we have available to prepare for Saturday’s trial. So the small size of the back yard won’t really matter. Heh, now that I look at our schedule, we have trials every weekend for the rest of the month, so it may not matter until March 29!
What I would like to try at that time, though, is to design some fun practice courses that will fit within a 20' x 20' space. Last summer, most of our back yard practices were done using the diagonal plus a square. I really had no idea what I was doing in terms of layout. Most of those practices took place after our very first trial in July and before our second trial in November, so I had been on only one trial course and a few practice courses. Oh, and learning whatever I could from downloads on the Internet. We did manage to learn and practice all of the novice level exercises for UKC and AKC, so my simple squares weren’t totally ineffective, but they were a little boring.
Now that I have a bit more trial experience, a few more classes, and a lot more reading to draw from, I’m hoping to come up with some better and more enjoyable practice ideas.
(NaBloPoMo | March ’10: 9 of 31)
Nick says
I think I would hate (HATE) country living, but enough flat land for a full sized SchH field could probably get me to do it 🙂
kathi says
I’ve always lived in or very near a city, so I doubt I would be an ideal candidate for country living. I also worry about buying property in a place where the only other Asian people the residents have ever seen is the family that owns the Chinese restaurant in town plus the ones they shot at in whatever war they were in.