The weather has cooled down a bit so Dylan and I have been topping up on our training outdoors. We’ve cracked target training — he runs to the target and downs on it whilst touching it with his nose, which is exactly what I was looking for! After a long discussion with various people (part of which I alluded to way back in September, but never went into much detail over) I decided to go with the 4-off position for the dogwalk and A-Frame, as found at the Agility Addicts website. I’m going to start asking him to do it on staircases at home over the next month or so, and then I’ll see if I can find an A-Frame/dogwalk, somewhere!

I’ve also sacrificed some of my stick-in weaves to Dylan, and have bent them at the base so that they’re V-Weaves. Kim learnt to weave with v-weaves, and I’d like to do the same with Dylan, although I’m probably going to use the channel-weaves as well. At the moment the weaves are bent almost flat, and there are only four of them, and so far I’ve just let Dylan have a sniff and walked him through a few times. He’s certainly not going to have the same problems as Kim (whose legs are too short for the left-right pattern!) and he enjoyed himself.

It’s Dylan’s 1st Birthday this Saturday. I can’t believe he’s a year old now! I’m still in no particular rush to get him out on the circuit for his 18 month birthday. I think I’ll aim to have him running at the Northern Winter Series over the winter season, with his first show this time next year at the first EMDAC Summer Series show — April 19th/20th, so it’ll be the day before his 2nd birthday, but it’s all a bit provisional depending on how his training goes and how Kim is doing!

It’s been a hot couple of days! I got the shell out for the dogs to chill in, because both the girls love to lounge in it when they’ve been out for a long hot walk. This is the first year that Dylan has really been old enough to play in it, and didn’t he have a whale of a time! Mollie goes completely mad when I get the hose out, so both the collies had a great time playing with that first. Then Dylan realised there was a ready-made bath for him to play in!

He spent all day bouncing in and out and splashing about, so that’s definitely been a huge success. It’s one of the few things that was missing this weekend; usually, at flyball competitions, there are two or three of these big shell-halves out, filled with water so that after their runs, the flyball dogs can cool off a little. They’re such an asset! I know some people don’t like letting their dogs bath in the same water as thirty other dogs, but I don’t know of any dog that’s ever got an illness because of it, and I’d rather have a cool dog than a overheated one that might catch something in a bit of water. Mollie would certainly have appreciated it this weekend, anyway. Hopefully it won’t become a trend for them to be missing at flyball — there are never any at agility competitions, which is a shame too.

Anyway, back to the boy! His lovely girlfriend Jetly is coming around tomorrow to tell him all about her new found flyballing love, and that will hopefully wear him out a little.

Dylan had a great time this weekend at Selby Game Fair, where the girls were flyballing with their new teams. It’s a huge fair, and had lots of new experiences for the boy. He behaved beautifully for the most part, and wasn’t at all fazed by the helicopter landing and taking off, or the gunshots, or the fun-fair rides. In fact, the only thing that really freaked him out were prams, which wasn’t so good. He also developed something of a dislike for Border Terriers, which I really wasn’t happy about; everytime one walked past, he went nuts, either trying to back up and barking or actually leaping forward and snapping, which is very unlike the dog I know.

I know this problem is based on fear, but I can’t work out how or why he’s got so scared of BT’s. He was fine with every other terrier shaped dog there, so I guess this is just something we’ll have to work on. The sheer busyness of the game fair did cause problems, because when he encountered the BT’s it tended to be in huge crowds of people, meaning there was no way I could stop and calm him down, or remove him from the action.