Hello, and welcome, to 2023 with us! My fingers didn’t even get comfortable with typing 2022 and keep defaulting to 2021 still, but we will get it figured out someday. 

Last year we participated in a challenge to train every day, and post a video of our training in a group called No* Missed Days 2022. We finished all 12 months, but the asterisk is there because they give you two “skip” days a month in the event that there is a technology fail, you or your dog can’t participate that day for some reason, etc. We completed all 12 months, and while I missed posting some days we trained every day. It is amazing what you can do when you put something in your routine. I said I was done with it and not going to participate this year, but have not been able to stop posting, so we will keep at it.

Mando did a lot of hunting last fall, and put in some really great work. We had some awesome experiences in the woods this fall. Starting with a trip to a game farm with a hand-me-down over under shotgun and without my dad for the first time on what would’ve been Stryker’s 10th birthday (Stryker does not have a page yet, but someday I might have the heart to create him one). I took a gopro with because I wanted to be able to keep that memory and share it. He flushed a ton of woodcock, and I even managed to hit a few of them. He was steady, hunted in gun range, and adjusted his range to the hunting conditions well. We started an agility class and he has brought back my joy for training. He currently has somehow injured his pectineus muscle, I assume from slipping in snow or trying to launch onto the bed from halfway across the world on a slippery floor, so we are rehabbing and taking a break from anything agility or requiring a lot of movement or jumping.

Joule worked on being a puppy and existing. She came with to hunting/field trial training, but I am not sure I am committed to that with her. She is Mando’s best friend, and loves every person she meets. She can still tailor her play style to suit dogs of different confidence levels and play styles, and I’m really enjoying her.

The coolest thing Gigi did last year was find, flush, and retrieve a woodcock after we had not done any training for…a long time. She continues to be Josh’s house pet and lap warmer, and recently received a joint injection in her previously injured hock with success at bringing her comfort and more flexion (practically normal now). 

Domino came with hunting one day this year (when Mando had an infected nail bed/toe and I couldn’t “waste” a perfectly good day of hunting season) and she had fun flushing grouse half a mile away which was what I expected, but I didn’t expect for her to find a grouse on a place I’d stomped through a thousand times and not seen a single grouse.

I worked in a people emergency room for most of the year (and the 5+ before that), but in October I took a job that would benefit my dogs and myself in ways I wasn’t aware of when I took the job. It was the right choice, and I am so grateful for both my experience in the emergency department and my new opportunity. The new job is working in an animal rehab and sports medicine clinic as a technician. Some of my credits from my pre-nursing school have transferred to my vet tech program, which is a blessing because I do not have any desire to take another English class so long as I live (although I may need one, do not judge my grammar or punctuation choices). New Job gives me the opportunity to learn stuff about dogs, pet dogs, and help them feel better every day. I work with an amazing group of people who seem to care about each other as human beings and make an effort to communicate things with each other in respectful ways. I don’t take the stress of work home with me, and my work-life balance has improved greatly. Josh is still working in a hospital and taking care of people, like he was made to do. We spend most of our free time listening to or reading books in different rooms in the house curled up with a couple dogs, when I’m not training or exercising dogs and he isn’t playing disc golf. 

What does 2023 have in store for us? Hopefully a whole lot more of the above. I have intentionally avoided setting lofty goals focused on getting a title of some kind, and rather focused them on making progress and moving forward in ways that are not exactly measurable. For quite a while my goals were focused on “get this title” and somehow that changes the way I think about the training I’m doing in a way I dislike. Our agility class has really reminded me how much I just love to do the things with my dogs and that it is the most important part of the whole thing. I have been a member of Recallers for 5+ years and not gone through any of the exercises, this is the year we do that. I have wanted to do obedience, but don’t know if I like the atmosphere or stress of trials so we are going to work on the Fenzi TEAM behaviors this year with no goal of submitting toward a title, but gaining proficiency in the individual behaviors. We are going to enter a field trial, show up, and do our thing (whatever that may end up being or looking like). Mando is going to work on blind retrieves. Joule is going to work on tracking. We are going to work on conditioning and keeping everybody as fit as they can be, myself included. I am going to work on my schoolwork and try to learn as much as I can and be a sponge in all the appropriate situations. We are going to be present and have fun and focus on progress which is my word of the year for 2023.

Happy New Year to you and yours, from us and ours. We wish you enough of whatever you need this, and every, year.