Change of Plans

Nothing in my life ever stays constant.  Well, work, family, and that does but with my animals, it has never stayed constant.  I decided years ago it was because I was a flake and had no focus, but that's actually not the reason.  I'm brutally logical and stick to my plan normally way longer than I should.  I don't get in over my head and I'm quick to call a spade a spade.  I work hard, make calculating decisions, and manage my time super efficiently.

Part of all this was knowing that I was going to grad school this summer and I knew something had to give.  After evaluating everything in my life, I decided to let my dog training business go.  I loved my clients but most were coming to me as a security blanket with no real plans to continue on with their showing/goals.  Basically they had tapped out and were too sweet/loyal to stop coming.  So I told them all as of Jan 1, 2015 I was no longer training them so I could work on grad school and my own dogs.  Everyone weaned off nicely before the end of the year and so I left it at that.

As I worked on shutting my website down to the bare minimum, I decided to leave a newer sport up called Barn Hunt.  Its a really cool sport that the dogs find hidden rats (secure in PVC tubes) in a straw obstacle course.  The sport is really, really new but its fun for me to teach as it draws on my SARK9 and other K9 scent work knowledge.  Now in 2014 I couldn't PAY people to take these classes with me so it seemed like a good bet that I'd have no takers so I left it on the site.

Jan 5, 2015 I was contacted about doing some training for Barn Hunt and I thought..  sure, whatever.  We started and my business has grow by leaps and bounds based off this one sport!  Now we're hitting shows, working on becoming a judge, and even heading up the biggest dog show in Texas' new Barn Hunt event.  I'm... not sure how this all happened but for the first time in my life something I'm working on is EASY.  Its hard to ignore that and while I'm tired, its so fun to introduce people to the sport and get out.

So for now, that's what we're working on and I'm riding when I can  (I do have two working students but its just constantly wet out here right now so riding is hard to come by).  I still need to get my horse numbers down plus I have a few dogs available to good homes when the right ones come to hopefully streamline that stuff but we'll see.  I (finally) bred a litter of Aussies I've been wanting to do for years and the people on my waiting list are super happy.  Hopefully I can use that money to hit this big show and get a return on that investment.  At some point something will bleed over into the horses and it'll be good to go!

The view from the farm.