Christmas!

Posted on December 20, 2007 by Leanne

The dogs aren’t overly impressed with the whole Christmas thing at the moment, but we’re getting there! Dylan does have a bit of a fetish for oven mitts though, and the new “festive” pair we bought yesterday are already looking a bit worse for wear. All my shopping is done, apart from a few last minute doggy gifts and something for Katie! The present I had planned to get her was tragically missing from Meadowhall yesterday and so I’m going to have to re-organise. Sorry Katie! Don’t worry though, I have a few more plans up my sleeve.

Off to the cinema later (to see the Golden Compass!) so I’ll be missing the Small Agility from Olympia, which is a shame because I wanted to watch those fantastic Obay Shelties run. Good luck to all of them, and to Lucy and Pie who are competing tomorrow in the Novice Stakes.

Dylan’s Blog: Weaves

Posted on December 19, 2007 by Leanne

Weaves are the bane of my existence at the moment! I love seeing weaves in classes and they’re one of Kim’s favourite obstacles, but I’d forgotten how much I hate training them!

I suppose that’s a bit of an exaggeration. I love training with Dylan, and the small milestones we hit are worth the trouble, but I really need to train the weaves everyday with him and I just can’t, which means when I do train, we end up jumping back a few steps from whatever progress we made in the last session.

On Sunday Dylan was doing great in the channel weaves, about 2/3″ apart, but as soon as they closed up to the kind of gap we were doing the week before he was bailing out. I tried again today with my stick-in-the-ground weaves in the park and he actually did really well; the poles were in a straight line at the base and slightly V’ed to about an inch on either side. We finished the session with a set of 4 complete uprights, with a V’ed start pole (because entries are still difficult!) and he did it brilliantly.

Unfortunately I have now discovered another problem! Dylan is much, much happier weaving ahead of me, he’s faster, drives on better, and is more accurate if I walk four or five weaves behind him and let him get on with it. But that means I have to stop, wait for him to pick up the entry and then walk behind him at exactly the right distance! Arg! Not what I want. So that’s another thing to work on.

Part of me is pleased at his progress as he genuinely seems to enjoy weaving, and he has a good technique and he’s fast. I can see he’s going to be a great weaver when we crack it! But it feels like we’ve been doing this for months, but we’ve still got such a long way to go.

Dylan’s Blog: Training Update

Posted on December 11, 2007 by Leanne

Just a quick update on Dylan’s blog. It’s been an immensely stressful and exhausting beginning to the month, and all the dogs have had to take a back seat. However, Dylan and I managed to find a half hour to do some training in today, and we had a lovely session.

I didn’t have any particular goals, just proofing what we already know. Started off with some cavaletti spaced 4ft/6ft, then 4ft/8ft, and then 6ft/4ft, and finally 6ft/2ft, with the final jump being double the hieght. Makes him think about his paws and his jumping technique!

Spent the rest of the time doing jump/tunnel/jump combinations, with a few left/right tunnel entrances thrown in. I’m really pleased with how responsive Dylan is – he will happily run on to a tunnel with me hanging far back, but equally he isn’t completely tunnel obsessed and will pull off the obstacle if I ask him to (although I don’t do that very often, I do want to encourage him to work on ahead still). Kim isn’t a big tunnel fan and I always have to run right up to tunnels with her, so it’s nice to have a dog who doesn’t mind so much.

I’m still hoping to ~~steal~~ borrow Katie’s weaves over the Christmas holidays and get those weaves completely proofed and solid before January. Hopefully we’ll find a spare minute to nip over to Wakefield and try that see-saw a couple more times before the competition too, although I am feeling a bit more confident about that now.

Doncaster Flyball Tournament & Wyre Agility

Posted on December 3, 2007 by Leanne

Wyre

I’m not sure I want to talk about Wyre! We had a nice day but for the first two runs I just didn’t get my head sorted. The courses were fair but erred on the easier side and we missed a weave entry on one (bit of a shock, we haven’t done that for years!) and then got E’d on the other, but I could see it coming when I walked the course. The final run is going to be one of those that haunts me for months; Lee Gibson set a tricky course for the Agility Club Starters Challenge, and after I walked it I came out feeling a bit worried about certain bits, so I had a chat with Brenda (Tenton) about it. She suggested I try layering one of the jumps, which I hadn’t even thought of and I’d never tried before, particularly because it was into a tunnel and Kim isn’t a big tunnel fan. Anyway, collected Kim and queued, and I was actually feeling pretty excited about it, for the first time all day! There was a horrible moment at the start when Kim stood up from her wait, but I decided just to go for it and see how far we could go.

Agility Club Starters Challenge Qualifier (Medium) Dec 2007

Kim was absolutely paw-perfect, fast and responsive and I couldn’t have asked for more from her. Brenda’s layering suggestion worked perfectly, and we had no problems with any of the other pull-throughs and weave exit. The see-saw was a bit slow but it was right next to the ring barrier, and it was the fast Grade 6/7 dogs in the other ring so her attention slipped slightly, but no real complaints. I was ultra cautious with her dogwalk contact and she hit it perfectly, but my caution cost us everything – I turned sideways to make sure she hit it, and as I swung around for the final jump, Kim thought we were turning and took13 again. Heartbroken! It’s so rare for me to get such a switched-on run from Kim, and I know we would have wiped the floor and come home with not only a 1st, but a place in the Agility Club Starters Challenge Final, which would have been amazing. I was so thrilled that she’d been so good, but so annoyed with myself!

Doncaster

Doncaster was a seriously surprising day! We had all three dogs plus Jet (Katie was due to meet us there from Liverpool, having cadged a lift with a friend from Cheshire Set!) and although Kim wasn’t running, she was down on the Barking Owlers team sheet in case of emergency. After I’d wandered up to the main hall (and the famous turf lanes), Julie rushed over to ask whether I’d put Dylan (or Kim) into a scratch NFC (Not For Competition) team, as one of the other teams had dropped out of Division 5. Julie is our trainer and despite a few misgivings (this is Dylan, after all!) I said ok.

All the other dogs in our little NFC team were tiny 8″ dogs, so Dylan looked like a giant! I volunteered to run first on the principal that I had less to worry about with changeovers, our current weak point. Dylan was an absolute star though – he ran his socks off, and only ran out once on the way back when he fumbled the ball and then lost sight of me, which lead to momentary panic. I am so proud of him!

The only negative was that our team were using a narrow Canadian box rather than our Owlers boomerang-style, so Dylan had some issues with his box but Julie, Jo and Jane all stood in to help for him. Jane is now talking about putting him at Sheffield with one of the teams, which is equally terrifying and exciting! We’ll see how his boxwork goes over the next couple of weeks, and try and get some “real” changeovers in to see if he copes ok.

The rest of the guys had an ok day – some fantastic racing but not quite enough wins, with Barking coming last in Div 2, Barney’s 4th in Div 1 and Nights (the team I boxload for) pulling out all the stops for 3rd in Div 4 with a tough seed time.