Monthly Archives: February 2008

Flyball Training 2

  By Leanne | February 16, 2008 - 4:43 pm | Dylan, Dylan's Blog, Flyball, Jet, Kim, Mollie
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Another good training session this morning!

Last week Dylan’s boxwork completely disintegrated. We had one of the boxes at home and I’ve been doing 5-10 minutes a day with him (and Mollie, because she loves anything flyball related and it certainly won’t make her box any worse!) which has been going really well. When we arrived today I did a couple of minutes with him before we did any proper runs, and then asked Katie to just make sure the cone was in for all his full runs. It made such a difference! He was turning nicely and towards the end did a couple of brilliant swimmer’s turns that I was very pleased with. He was also a bit more enthusiastic this week, and did some great changeovers with Amber. He’s still not very confident about Chip running into him, and we had a couple of run-outs, but overall it was a positive session.

Kim and Mollie are due to run in the same team at Carlton Towers, and their old team-mate Jetsome is also due to rejoin them for the day. Jet is running wickedly fast times in our top team at the moment, but I’m sure she won’t mind running over little 10″ jumps and playing with the old gang for a day. They were all running together today, and were absolutely flying despite the mud and the lack of opposition! They can all step up a gear in competition but I haven’t seen them so fast in training for a while, some of our stamina training must be paying off.

On a completely different note, I’m also back on MSN now, so as a reminder my hotmail address is kayanem@hotmail.co.uk. It’s still more reliable to get in touch with my via my gmail as even when I’m on MSN, I’m usually doing something else at the same time and can’t chat so much.

Training at the Park

  By Leanne | February 15, 2008 - 3:31 pm | Agility, Dylan, Dylan's Blog
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Dylan and I are finally clicking!

We had such a good training session today, even with minimal equipment! I managed to take 1 jump and 6 weaves to the park, and the boy was flying. He’s got crazy-fast weaves, and we’re able to read each other better so he understands what I want him to do and I understand what I’m doing wrong if he doesn’t. I’m so pleased that the hard work has paid off.

Weave entries are something I really wanted to work on today, so I began with a straight jump-weaves run, but with the jump 15m or so from the weave entry. We then worked with the jump at about 5/6m away, but on an angle, which was great for practising rear/front crosses and directionals, plus it was nice to be able to throw in some trickier weave entries. I finally finished with the jump at minimum distance from the weaves, which was harder for Dylan, but he still hit the entry and worked through the weaves well.

Jump & Weave exercise, 15/02/08

I’m so excited about finally being able to train regularly with him when the clocks go forward, he loves agility! We worked for 30mins or so today and he was so switched on and responsive. It’s very strange for me to run a dog who doesn’t get bored and doesn’t question every command. I love running Kim, but she’s very headstrong and very stubborn, and although she loves agility she wants to do it on her own terms. Dylan just wants to work and be happy.

As usual, I meant to take the camera and completely forgot. So still no decent video!

Trick Training

  By Leanne | February 12, 2008 - 4:33 pm | Dylan, Flyball, Kim, Mollie
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Not much to say today, so I’ve also included the photo of Mollie doing her over-the-horizon look. As with all the photos on the blog, click for a bigger version. Mollie

Dylan has been doing his bits of boxwork, it’s going reasonably well. We work for about 10 minutes a day, and then of course Kim and Mollie have to have a go because it’s a flyball box and it’s exciting. Kim does her lovely turn with no problems, but she’s not thrilled about the idea of doing it without a ball in the box. Mollie surprised me by being wildly enthusiastic and knocking the cone flying, but also doing a cracking turn with her bum right up on the box! Shame she won’t do that when the ball is there though!

Kim and Dylan have also been working on their “sad face” trick – covering the nose with a paw. Kim has almost got it, she sometimes needs remining and (weirdly?!) sometimes confuses it with “dead”. I think it’s the paw movement, she tucks her elbow in the same way when she’s going into her “dead” position.

Dylan has mastered “dead”, actually, after 20 months! “SadFace” isn’t going so well, I’ve been using the tape-on-the-nose method and Dylan doesn’t see the problem with having tape on his nose, so he just sits happily. Silly boy!

Flyball Training

  By Leanne | February 9, 2008 - 1:36 pm | Dylan's Blog, Flyball, Kim, Mollie
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We had a pretty good session this morning, and the weather was fantastic for once!

None of our dogs have flyballed since Sheffield, and Dylan hasn’t done anything since Dec 29th. Unfortunately it really showed today, for our first session all his boxwork just went completely out of the window. He did one nice turn and then decided that he wanted to turn in the opposite direction, and it all just went downhill from there. He pulled it back a bit in the second session and was turning the right way again, but it still needs a lot of work. I now have one of the boxes at home in our conservatory to practise with this week, which means I probably won’t get as much agility done.

We did have some positives – he was running second into Amber and neither of them were at all bothered by doing close changes, which was great! We just have to work on bringing Chip in closer after Dylan, but we have a couple of weeks yet.

Kim and Mollie ran really well, although Mollie’s a bit stiff now we’re home and dry. She hasn’t done 13″ jumps for a while, but we know she needs to build up her stamina. It was also nice to practise running Kim into Mollie too, it’s not a combination we use very often but now Mollie is running more with Barking Owlers it’s more likely to crop up. We have a long break from tournaments until Carlton Towers, but it’s good to get some proper practice in!

Dylan’s Blog – Weaves, again

  By Leanne | February 8, 2008 - 6:13 pm | Dylan, Dylan's Blog, Videos
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Finally got a day suitable for practising on the weaves, and the boy did good!Check out my curly eyebrow whiskers ...

He definitely seems to understand weaving, and if anything he’s a little overenthusiastic! The only problems I’ve encountered are when I leave him in a wait and move on ahead. But this is a problem I have with other obstacles, not just the weaves. At the moment he is watching me so closely he isn’t focussing on whats right in front of him, but he’s definitely improving and I actually managed a couple of straight recalls through the poles today, which I’m thrilled about! This was the one area I thought we might have serious problems with, but I can see now that I just have to make sure he is focussed when I leave him in the wait.

Speaking of waits, we proofed those as well today. He broke one towards the end, but that was my fault – I turned my back on him for too long trying to work out where I was and he got worried.

Anyway, I meant to take my camera and then forgot, so I set the weaves up on my driveway when I got back for a quick video. The first set of weaves is from the beginning of January, when I also had to set up on the driveway to get the video! Running on concrete doesn’t exactly show the poor lad to his best advantage, and it’s certainly not something I like doing, but here’s the video anyway:

http://www.undermybed.co.uk/images/dylanweaves.wmv
(click and it should open in Windows Media Player)

We also worked on hitting the weaves at speed, which is something I haven’t really done until now. Dylan surprised me again! He’s getting pretty good at adjusting his stride and getting the entry. We started out from about 10m and then worked back to about 20m, either leaving him in a wait or racing him to the first pole.

I guess the next thing on the list is weave entries, which I’ve always partially done, but never any particularly severe angles. I also need to start proofing the weaves elsewhere. Dylan is almost 100% in our usual training spot, but he’s not as solid when we train at Wakefield. Unfortunately I can’t get up to training this weekend, but I think I might be able to snag half an hour in the local park on Sunday morning. But it is flyball tomorrow, for the first time in ages, so I’ll have to see how tired he is!

One last photo of him, taken after our weaving session, on the left. He’s not stood quite straight so he looks a bit weird, but I couldn’t get him to stand wait whilst I was trying to take a photo.