New Trail Adventures and Fall Training

We are upping the mileage as fall has finally arrived! The dogs have tons of energy to burn off, and spend their days running laps around the yard and chasing squirrels. They love the cool weather, and so do we. It's perfect for rig training, canicross, and weekend hikes.

A few weekends ago, Nick headed to the Katy Trail in the Jefferson City area. Joy was running the Waddell and Reed Kansas City Half Marathon, so Nick took the opportunity to meet up with another team in the area (out of St. Louis) to work on running together, passing, commands, etc. It went very well and the dogs behaved nicely. It was a good chance to work on passing another team on both the right and left side. Sometimes, dogs will struggle with passing on a certain side (for whatever reason), so this was a good chance for us to work before Rig Rondy in November.

Last weekend we tried out a new trail in the Carthage, Missouri area. We went running and dryland mushing on the Ruby Jack Trail. This is a rails-to-trails trail similar to the Frisco or Katy Trail. The surface was a bit harder, but it was absolutely beautiful. The dogs ran well and enjoyed having a chance to run in a new area. We noticed a lot of houses right along the trail - what a perfect spot to live!

We are also gearing up for Rig Rondy hosted in Woodstock, Illinois. Both Nick and Joy will be participating in canicross, Nick will be doing the 4 dog dryland race, and Joy is part of a relay team which includes canicross, bikejoring, and dryland mushing. We had a great time at this event last year and are really excited to go back. We weren't able to participate in the rig race last year as we did not have enough dogs ready to compete, so this will be a fun adventure for us as well.

We are also excited that we will be featured in a special magazine/newspaper section called "Country Neighbor" that is distributed to several Southwest Missouri areas including Buffalo, Marshfield, Bolivar, Stockton, West Plains, and Christian County. This is really cool for us, as it gives us a chance to provide a little insight into our hobby and dog-loving family. We had a great time allowing the reporter to watch hook-up and go for a dryland ride.

Stay tuned as we post more updates about our fall training. We'll share some more photos and videos of the dogs as well.