Sister's Family and their Really Big Jumping Dogs

SUMMARY: In which my nieces and sister do some fun stuff with their animals in the heat, and I watch.

Saturday morning, I tossed my borrowed SLR camera into MUTT MVR and swooped up to Portola Valley to finally (after meaning to do it for years) watch my nieces and sister ride their horses. It was wayyyy too hot to consider taking my own beasties along, so they stayed home.

It amused me to see how very similar to agility class their jumping classes are, talking about the line that you use to get from one jump to the next, what lead the animals are on, how your body affects the critter's actions, how many strides the dog--er--whatever--should take between obstacles, being careful about memorizing the obstacle sequence so you don't go off course, whether they should be bounce jumping (well--sort of--), watching the instructor change the jump heights (I'm tellin' ya, those are REALLY big dogs they have up there)--

I espied these nifty but humongous jumps in one of the fields.



In dog agility, it's the *humans* who wear the ankle and knee braces. (My sister's jumping animal.)
My sister didn't actually tell me that she was jumping *before* my nieces' classes, so I got to admire her animal up close and quiet after they were already done. He had to sniff my hands very carefully, just like normal dogs, except with nostrils about the size of some dogs' heads.

Here are my nieces, cantering their really big horse-sized dogs:


What ranch would be complete without a ranch dog? (Shaved just in time for the summer heat wave.)

Or a rambunctious lab puppy helping with the grooming?

Or a visiting dog, watching his human practice her horsework, and expressing his opinion about the whole thing (in between bouts of being a cute corgi)? (Owner claims this dog is sitting. With corgis, who can tell?)

I took a squillion photos of the riders and jumpers and will get around to posting the rest on my photo site sometime very soon. Really. Any day now.