An Essay Writing Diversion: Kim and Dylan

Posted on April 30, 2008 by Leanne

I really should be writing my essays right now, especially because I entered Shrewsbury this weekend knowing full-well that my essays would be due in next week. Just another 3500 words to go …

Dylan and I had a horrible training session yesterday. I was going to post about it in an attempt to try and work out what is going wrong, but I’ve been chatting to people and wrangling it out that way, and really I already know the problems. Dylan always takes the easy route. This is not like me or Kim at all, and so I’m used to working with a dog who will try something different or stretch herself to reach something if she (or I!) dares. Dylan never dares! He is happier drifting along with what he knows rather than doing something new and scary. It’s all about our mental outlook, and Dylan and I are thinking on different wavelengths right now. Despite all the frustration, I know Dylan and I will have a better relationship when I work out how to fix things.

Kim sulked because I didn’t take her training last night, which also left her enough energy to wake me up this morning. Normally she’s quite a lazy dog and will happily stay in bed until 8am or later. But today she squirmed over 5:50am and, once she knew I was awake, rolled on my head. She then fetched her toy and threw it at me, which was not appreciated but did make me laugh! She’s usually very elegant and dignified so it’s always funny to see her doing something puppy-like or silly. I’m looking forward to this weekend with her, we haven’t had a competition without Dylan for a couple of months and so I’ll be able to concentrate on her properly. I don’t know how people manage to run 3 or more dogs, I can barely make the switch between two! We also have Pairs with Bailey this weekend, which should be fun. Neither Emma or I are very serious about Pairs or Team events, we do them for a bit of fun and an extra run for the dogs.

Lastly, I’m sorry the website went down for 24 hours! I attempted to upgrade to WordPress 2.5.1, and it (for whatever reason) didn’t work. I didn’t have chance to fix it immediately, which has played havoc with my web stats! For those odd people who are interested in this kind of thing, undermybed.co.uk has had over 1100 hits this month, and had about 200 click-outs from the links on this page, mainly through comments. So if you want some more visitors, comment with a link from your name to your website. Plus I love getting comments.

Flyball Training, a blog post too late!

Posted on April 27, 2008 by Leanne

The blog post isn’t really too late, but I just forgot to post it yesterday!

The girls ran well at flyball, although they were both very tired girlies when we got home. Mollie must have a secret drug store somewhere, she’s been off her head with loopyness this week and it showed at training. She did double the amount of runs compared to everyone else! Thankfully everybody is very understanding and she gets on well with all the dogs so they don’t bother about her occasional interferences.

Kim’s team at Middlesbrough (our next tournament) is a 4 dog team, which I’m always thrilled about because it means more points for my little girl! Our normal height dog has pulled out however and so the team is running 13″ all day, with Kim stepping in as height dog. She ran for a whole season as height dog in 2004, in a 4-dog team, and we clocked some decent sub-20 times, but it’s been a while since she’s done it and she does find it harder now. Jet and Lolly, our super-subs for the day, both normally run over 13/14″ so they shouldn’t have a problem, so it’s only Buffy and Kim, (the two older ladies of the team) who will need to step up the game.

Normally we’d have Mollie as well, but Night Owlers need a reliable 5th dog for backup, and we try and avoid running Mollie over jumps higher than 12″ all day. She can do a couple of races over 13/14″ but it’s a bit too much for her little legs. Out of curiosity last night we measured her legs, her elbow to stopper-pad and height compared to Kim, which was interesting!
Kim: Height: 16.75″, Leg: 10.50″, E-S: 7″ (Weight: 13.21kg)
Mollie: Height: 17.75″, Leg: 11″, E-S: 7″ (Weight: 19.02kg)
So Mollie truly does have stumpy little legs in comparison to her body, as Kim isn’t particularly long-legged. We also measured Dylan in the interests of equality, and he is 22.50″ tall (and weighs around 22.30kg, although the girls’ weights mentioned here are from January and Dylan’s is from last June).

Dylan was running with 3/5 of his Little Owler starter team, and is still being both frustrating and brilliant on the box. Again he was doing a wonderful swimmer’s turn 80% of the time, and then throwing in something terrible and different the other 20%. We’ll try him at Middlesbrough with the cone in and if he starts messing about we’ll just roll the ball down the box, it’s quicker and less harmful. It looks as though Dylan will be running lead dog (just like his dad!) anyway, so at least I don’t have to worry about changeovers.

“Real Shows”

Posted on April 26, 2008 by Leanne

There have been some comments on the Agility Form regarding the approach to independent and Kennel Club shows. I feel very strongly about this, and it annoys me no end when people refer to Kennel Club shows as the “real thing” and independent as “training” or “practise” shows.

I’m mainly referring to BAA or UKA shows here, which are seperate umbrella organisations for clubs to run shows under. A series of shows run by one club under their own rules may well be viewed as a training show, but in my opinion BAA/UKA offer a proper organisational system of competition which is perfectly equal to Kennel Club. The only difference is the size of the shows, and as long as the attitude exists that these shows aren’t “real shows”, people won’t enter them and they won’t get the same amount of entries.

What really annoys me is that this attitude infers that the achievements of my dog as somehow lesser than if she’d won at a Kennel Club show. I’m sorry, but winning a class of 180 dogs is a much bigger achievement than winning a class of 6 dogs. Winning Introductory Medium Dog of the Year for showing consistent high placings is a much bigger acheivement than the 4 or 5 classes won at Kennel Club where Kim was not at her best but there simply was no competition. When Kim came home having won her first Agility class of 160+ dogs, running at a high standard, several people said “great! Now you’ll have to do it at Kennel Club!” Those same people seemed to think it was a greater achievement for Kim to win her class of 16 dogs at Lincoln a few months later. They seemed to think it was better to have beaten three ancient Shelties, a dog that can’t weave and a runaway Poodle than to have beaten some of the top up-and-coming Large Border Collies who train with some of the top trainers in the country.

Can somebody please explain to me why this is? Somehow the idea that BAA shows are somehow worse than Kennel Club, that the standard is lower or that everyone just goes to train their dogs and not to actually be competitive or win anything. The standard of competition is higher at BAA shows for my dog. The amount of competition is greater. Some people do turn up to use the shows as training runs for their dogs, in preperation for the “real thing”, but personally, I would happily use a Kennel Club show as a warm-up for my dog’s upcoming BAA show. Not only that, but BAA are more innovative; they’re currently the only organisation to offer up-to-date League Tables and online results publishing.

Unless someone can offer me a valid explanation for this attitude of only Kennel Club is a real agility competition, please have a bit of respect for the achievements of me and my dog. We’ve worked hard for them, and just because they weren’t at Kennel Club doesn’t mean they’re somehow lesser. The Americans here are way beyond us, as they recognise all the organisations equally and don’t consider that titles or Q’s under certain banners might be somehow lesser than another.

(Incidently, this is mainly a defence of the BAA but frankly after their attitude towards certain people who pioneered those new innovations and were the foundation of many a show, I’m not sure they deserve defending. Feel free to read UKA for BAA instead, it’s equally applicable).

Reflections on Course Design

Posted on April 24, 2008 by Leanne

Having a couple of days to reflect on this weekends EMDAC has left me more upbeat than I was before. Kim really did run very well on Sunday and the courses really weren’t her style. I didn’t really appreciate it on the day but the Primary courses were really considerably easier than the Introductory ones. Dylan’s courses were all lovely, running in smooth lines with a couple of changes of hand, options for the handlers to consider and run it differently if need be. The Primary courses were straight up-and-down runs, very little to make you think or make your dog think.

I always want smooth, flowing courses with both my dogs, and I don’t think a hard course can’t be flowing. I’ve done some courses that looked horrible ‘on paper’, but flowed perfectly when Kim and I were on course and I really enjoyed them. Equally, I’ve done some courses that have been a nightmare, not in terms of difficulty but they just didn’t run smoothly. There was a case of this at the weekend, where I walked the course and could not get the ending to flow nicely. I walked it about 30 different ways and it just didn’t work! I went to queue still unsure of how I could get it to flow, and I just couldn’t. I think I saw one dog do it nicely, but everybody else was either falling over their dogs, or tripping over wings, or their dogs were running into wings, in some cases! Technically – ie., looking at the technical aspects of the course and assessing the level – it looked like a Primary course. But it didn’t work!

I don’t have the patience or the attention span to be a judge (and I sincerely admire those people who do!) but I love setting courses, I love designing them. I can appreciate a well-thought out course, and I know it’s not just about the layout of some numbers. A good course designer should think about the order of the obstacles (stretch into weaves? Dogwalk-jump-tunnel?), the angle of equipment, and the distance between obstacles, as well as where the judge will stand and what routes the dogs and handlers might take. I saw some brilliant examples of this at the weekend, by the way, often by judges that I didn’t expect. Equally, I saw some courses that pretty much ignored all of the above, or only really considered one or two points. And some just felt lazy – a judge who maybe had just thrown something together at the last minute.

Anyway, I am happily anticipating that at Shrewsbury there will be some thoughtful judges (perhaps who are strangely blind when it comes to dogwalk/seesaw contacts) who will provide flowing courses that make Kim and I think without being overwhelmingly tricky. This is probably being too optimistic, but we live in hope.

EMDAC April 08

Posted on April 21, 2008 by Leanne

Arg, what a horrible weekend. It’s weekends like this that make me want to walk away and not bother any more!

Kim

Saturday didn’t start well, Kim was very flat in her Clockwork Tunnels and it basically got worse from there! We didn’t get a decent clear round until the last run of the day in Helen Norton’s lovely Primary Jumping class, but I knew we weren’t going to get placed as it was too open and fast for Kim. She also decided to throw in a few spins because I wasn’t keeping up with her! She ended up 18th, which I was quite disappointed with to begin with. I later found out that Lucy, who is usually top-3 if she has a good run, did a blistering clear and only managed 14th. Didn’t feel so bad after that!

That kind of set the standard for the classes though on Sunday. All the Primary courses were big, open, fast-flowing courses, lots of straight lines and big turns. Not great for my whippety Medium! Kim gains her times on sharper corners and fiddley bits, but we had none of it. My intention for Sunday was just to get her running and responsive again, which we did achieve. Her first class was agility – without an Aframe! – and I knew she wasn’t going to be quick enough even if we went clear. She doesn’t have a fast see-saw and she doesn’t have quick enough weave times, so I chose to go out and let her blast it, see what time she could get. I didn’t try to stop her on the contacts and she blew her dogwalk by miles, and we finished about 6 seconds off the winner. To be fair to Kim, she did come to a complete standstill at one point, for which we were given a very harsh refusal (several people commented on it later and said how mean it was!) but she would still have been 2-3 seconds off the winning time. Perhaps if there had been an Aframe we might have had more chance, but no such luck.

We had the same problem in the rest of her classes – too open and too fast for Kim. Her jumping run was very rough, and although her Helter Skelter was smooth, she checked her stride and turned too wide on the smaller circle, which left us nearly 5 seconds off pace. Even if she hadn’t checked or turned tighter we still wouldn’t have been in the places.

Pretty disappointing overall. The standard was very high in Primary this weekend and Kim just wasn’t quick enough over the style of courses that were on. We barely picked up any League Table points either.

Dylan

Dylan had tougher courses than Kim all weekend! Not beyond his capability and not too difficult for Introductory, and they all flowed nicely. Some tight spacings for my lanky boy but he showed he’s been paying attention and actually bounced a couple of sections!

Amazingly Dylan was also the one who brought home some rosettes this weekend. I was amazed! Especially considering how the weekend started, when I had to pull him out half way through his Agility run because he was so freaked out by the dogwalk. I also decided not to run Power and Speed with him, as I thought the spacings were a bit tight for him and I wanted to get his confidence back up. I know from training that he shuts down easily if he thinks he’s done something wrong, his self-confidence can be a bit lacking. For the Intro Jumping (Part 1) I tried to get him a bit more wound up, and we actually got around clear! It was a bit slow and he was still quite uneasy, but I was partying our way out of the ring. At which point the ring manager appeared and told me that sadly the timer hadn’t stopped so he’d have to run again for time. I’ve never had this happen before when running Kim so I had to get it all explained to me. So off we went again! We did slightly better the second time but Dylan was still being ultra-cautious with his jumping and he didn’t feel to be going anything like his normal speed. Still, we went clear again so another big party! Amazingly we came 16th in this class, just 4 seconds off the winner and 2 seconds off a dog (Rada the Wiemie, for those that know her!) who I know to be fantastically quick and who has won several classes already this year.

Clockwork Tunnels I thought was a tough course for Dylan, mainly because the end was very tightly spaced. He ran the first 8 obstacles at super-speed, which I was thrilled about, but then we both got a little confused because I couldn’t remember the course and he wanted to go back in the tunnel he’d just been through. Still, clear round! And then (deja vu!) the ring manager appeared. The timer hadn’t started. Two different timers on two different rings! So we ran again, and again the first 8 obstacles were brilliant. But this was Dylan’s 5th run of the day and he was one tired boy, and he slowed right down for the final couple of jumps. We still managed to finish 17th, and if he’d have been in Part 2 (same course) he’d have been 5th. The boy has potential!

Sunday was equally successful in terms of clear rounds – we went clear in the agility (with held contacts) and clear in the Jumping again (finishing 19th, I think, but with a couple of “refusals” which don’t get marked in Intro classes). Our absolute best run of the weekend was in the Intro Helter Skelter, where we were E’d after the second jump but Dylan was full of confidence and really enjoyed the course. It was the first time I felt like he was really up for it and motivated, but he still wasn’t going anything like as fast as he works at training.

Dylan and I also spent a bit of time in the practise ring and I was really pleased with him. He loves his contacts with a passion! Every time I took my eye off him for a second he was standing in his 2o/2o on one of the obstacles, doing his cheeky grin and waiting for his ball. We also worked on 12 weaves with wooden poles, and he’s really powering through them. Powering a bit too much actually! He’s popping the last 1-4 poles occasionally, I think mainly because he hasn’t worked out how to keep up his speed without tripping up (or so my observant Emma tells me!).

Generally pleased with Dylan though, he’s showing a lot of potential!

Got to say well done to Vicki with Pippa and Inca, who picked up loads of places all weekend, and to Laura with GorgeousMerlin and her baby girl Minnie who had an amazing first show and pulled off a 5th, despite her tiny Micro legs, amongst a handful of other placings.