Dylan’s Blog: Sunday Training

Posted on January 28, 2008 by Leanne

Sunday was a mixed bag at training. I didn’t take Kim with me because I figured she needed a week off, we had a pretty hectic January. So just me and the tall boy!

We started off really well, working on the 12 channel weaves about 1″ apart, and on a basic flick-flack. Flick-flacks are not my strong point with Kim, and I hadn’t tried them with Dylan until now, but he was fantastic! Really responsive to his left/right commands, letting me cross in front and behind, and actually watching for the next obstacle rather than concentrating too much on me. I also figured I give the tyre another go, since it was out and nobody was using it. I had been hoping that the last incident was just a bit of a off moment, and apparently it was because today the tyre was not scary at all. We had a lot of fun with it actually, with Dyl working it with me a long way behind or infront, from a wait, from a full out sprint, and with a few left/right rear crosses thrown in for good measure.

Second exercise was a really simple Aframe with a couple of jumps. Now, for whatever reason, Dylan just threw his wait out of the window. I think I have another Aframe crazy dog; he loves it, it’s like a magnet that suckers him up from whatever else he should be doing. So I wasn’t happy about that! And then when we actually got to the Aframe, Dylan just wanted to do a 2o/2off. I’m not sure why because I have a completely different command that he usually foolproof on. I kept demanding a touch behaviour but he was just doing the 2on/2off and then the touch, and so now I’m really not sure what to do. I wanted to avoid the 2on/2off on the Aframe because I hate the shoulder impact, but Dylan is performing the 2o/2o faultlessly, it’s obviously something he understands and feels comfortable with. So I’m not sure whether to keep demanding the touch until we get it, or just let him do what he’s happy with and work around the problem from a different angle.

Best laid plans, eh! Any suggestions very much welcome though, Dylan is having to suffer being my first properly trained agility dog, which means he has to try and overcome my experiments and mistakes. Poor lad!

Website Updates

Posted on January 22, 2008 by Leanne

I know these website updates aren’t very interesting, but they do help me keep track of what I’ve been doing and when!

The whole site has been reorganised and there are now 5 categories into which everything fits. The Sitemap has been updated (which I am very neglectful of, I know!) and everything should be easier to find. I’ve also got a new layout which is rather more pink than I was expecting but I’m still quite pleased with it. Just a few bits and peices to fix on the blog side of things, the images don’t quite match up and I’m not entirely happy with the left-hand side Menu links.

I’ve also got a few art-y projects in the works too. Sadly I had two pieces that I was really excited about (a Dalmation headshot and a full snow scene Blue Merle Sheltie) that have now disappeared into the ether, but hopefully this new one will make up for it.

EMDAC January

Posted on January 20, 2008 by Leanne

Dylan’s first show! I’m very proud of him, he did far better than I expected him to. We were E’d in Power & Speed because they threw 12 weaves in and as Dylan has never done 12 upright weaves, I wasn’t expecting much! He did 8 happily but then was a bit confused, but his contacts were fantastic! In the Agility I made the decision to get eliminated after he flew the seesaw and took it again. In both Jumping classes we came away with 5 faults and very slow times which really didn’t reflect how well he’d done – the times were due to me faffing about!

Kim came home with a handful of rosettes again, she’s having a good start to the year! We had a messy start to the day in the Agility again, but still managed 4th, and we definitely got all the contacts this time! Primary Jumping was a lovely course but we had a very brief argument over which jump to do next, which obviously lost us time. Still finished 8th so not complaining too much! Power and Speed was a bit of a fiasco – Kim had clearly been watching Charlie too much and made exactly the same mistakes he did, and we were E’d in the Speed section. A lot of fun though, the course was great.

Primary Take Your Own Line Jumping (TYOL) is not my favourite class anyway, and the course was not the easiest! It remained the same for Primary and Novice Plus, which should give an idea of how difficult it was. I went in, had a look at the jumps, and decided just to try and design a course Kim was going to enjoy. The fastest route would have been to use various pull-throughs and pivots, but I picked a route that meant I could capitalise on Kim’s fabulous “out” command, and let her have some straight runs where she could stretch her legs rather than nag her round. As a result, I certainly wasn’t expecting the time and placing we got, which was 2nd place in a time of 27.57, with the winner finishing in 27.26. 0.01 between us! The dog that won is a (Maxi) KC Grade 4 with some decent placings to her name, so really pleased with Kim’s performance.

Next show is Dogs on Top on Feb 2nd with Kim, and March 1st with Dylan. Gives us time to work on a few things!

Sheffield Flyball

Posted on January 13, 2008 by Leanne

I love Sheffield tournaments. The Speeders are a great bunch of flyballers and they always run a good competition, with lovely rosettes and fast results. The venue is great, just a shame about the location. Three cars were broken into in the morning just after we arrived, including one of our ‘Owlers cars, which was the only real problem with the whole day.

Kim was running in Barney Owlers, the top team. The lovely Brooke is still banned from tournaments until she learns to turn properly on the box, and so Kim was taking her place. Unfortunately that meant my little lady had to do 13” jumps all day! She actually did very well, clocking some fantastic 4.7second singles times that I was very pleased about, but towards the end of the morning she was really tiring, I just don’t think she can cope anymore with that height of hurdle all day, so it will be a relief when she goes back to running with Barking over 10”!

Mollie was running in Barking Owlers again, in her favourite spot as lead dog. She ran very consistent singles times at around 5 seconds for most of the day, with a couple of 4.9’s, but we know she runs slower indoors so very pleased with those! I ended up running Jess in the morning as Craig couldn’t make it, but I just could not persuade that little hound to bring her ball right back and over the line. So I ran Meg in the afternoon, which worked out a lot better except when I had to run as lead. I cannot do those lights! Barking did really well, coming 4^th in the end, but obviously without Kim and with poor Jess and Meg suffering me as a handler half the time so a very decent result!

Nights stormed home to win their division, and Lolly ran absolutely brilliantly – she was running the same singles times as Kim! I can’t wait to see how she does this summer; she’s really one of the rising stars at Owlers. Eagles also did well but some of our baby dogs had a few confidence issues this time around, so just a well-deserved 4^th.

Nice to be home before 9pm too!

Agility Nuts

Posted on January 8, 2008 by Leanne

Finally back on form with Kim – EMDAC (Oct) and Wyre (Dec) were a bit down, just one 4th in the end despite a couple of good runs – but she decided to start 2008 with a bang. She came 2nd in both jumping classes, missing out on 1st in the Jumping by 0.3 seconds (my fault, naturally, I caused a bobble at the first tunnel). We’ve never done Primary Snakes before but I did think we’d at least manage to go clear; it’s essentially a jumping class where there are a series of tunnel traps to be avoided. Since Kim is not a big tunnel fanatic I never thought she would be tempted off-course and she ran a perfect clear, I don’t think there’s anywhere she could have gained any time. Having said that, I didn’t think she’d come quite as high as she did, there were some seriously quick Maxi dogs and it was a nice fast course, not usually the kind of thing we do ultra-well on.

We also got a 9th in the agility with a fairly appalling run by our standards; Kim didn’t set off with much enthusiasm and although we got around clear, it wasn’t very tidy and she got a very lucky call on the seesaw contact. Final run of the day was my favourite class; I love Time Fault & Out! However I take full responsibility for our “early” exit – refusal on obstacle 20 – Kim was just going way too fast for me and I couldn’t get into the right place to handle the flick flack. She came 12th (rosettes to 11th only, so just missed out!) but her time was fantastic, she had over 20 seconds left on the clock when we had to exit and she got both dogwalk contacts. Shame she doesn’t have a better handler!

All those places put her up to the top of the Primary Medium Dog of the Year tables! It’s a bit early in the year for talking about the final Dog of the Year results, especially as BAA have a lot more shows this year that I can’t get to, but it’s certainly nice to be at the top for a while anyway. Amazingly we’re also top of the Primary Jumping League (all heights!). I always think of Kim as better at agility rather than jumping, as usually she’s just not quite quick enough for high places in the jumping classes. She seems determined to prove me wrong at the moment.

Congrats to Katie and her hounds for their places, and especially to Sarah and her contingent of collies for their fab top-10 rosettes. Also, I just have to mention my favourite dog of the day, an amazing little Papillion who just stormed around the Introductory TFO and won it with an amazing obstacle tally – who says Micro dogs never win anything?!