Home Farm Flyball

Posted on June 30, 2008 by Leanne

Alpha Dogz ran a fab tournament this weekend at Home Farm. Five divisions in 1 ring and they were still finished with presentations at 6:30! So organised and the rosettes were lovely, and they did special keyrings for the dogs in Starters which were fantastic.

Dylan was so naughty in his Starters team, I could have lynched him but he’s too adorable and happy. He ran up and down but that’s never been a problem for us, but that dreaded slammer’s turn was back!

I thought we nailed it after last week at Doncaster where he was 100% all day, but this weekend he was awful. We did forget his cone but he did some perfect turns around a water bottle before he ran, but then as soon as we took it away he was rubbish again. I was resigning myself to another three months in Starters with him!

He was down as emergency 5th dog for our depleted Barking team on Sunday, but we weren’t expecting him to run. We had always planned for him to go in with the team and do some warm-up runs, because it was his first time without netting in the arena and although we never really thought he’d have a problem, you can never be 100% sure. Jane brought the spare cone and we gave him a couple of runs in the 2mins warm up on every race, and he was doing his lovely turns again, and then he toodled off outside to wait whilst the pro team of Mollie, Kim, Stripe and Lolly raced their socks off. We knew before we ran that we didn’t really have a chance as our seed time had been set with Barney’s dogs Floss and Jet, so we were at least 0.5-1 second off the pace. We actually came 3rd in the end and did beat some teams, which was a nice surprise!

Anyway, we were losing to Cheshire Set by quite a way (they were running 19.60′s, I think the best we did was 20.71!) so Jane decided to put Dylan in to save Mollie. She loves running lead dog but false starts do take their toll eventually! So Dylan made his Divisional debut … after Mollie had a strop and slipped her harness and caused a bit of chaos. She knows when she’s getting pulled and she’s never happy about it! Mum took over running Kim, and off we went.

Well he ran up and down and did a textbook turn and I was so proud! He got a couple of runs against Cheshire and Dog Friendly’s who we really didn’t have a chance of beating. But Dyl’s turn was absolutely perfect on every run, I was so proud of my boy. Katie did an awesome job boxloading for him! The splits showed he ran a 5.1 but I still feel like he’s got some to give, that competitive spirit hasn’t kicked in yet and he’s not running anywhere near flat out. The 13″ jumps suited him well though, he looked a lot better over them than the 10/12″ he’s been running in Starters.

It only rained heavily once, but naturally it was right before the second half of our division. All our dogs can run in mud (Mollie and Lolly actually seem to prefer it!) but Kim drops about a ¼ second off her normal pace. She runs best indoors, and if we’re outdoors it’s ideally on sun-baked rock hard ground. Not enough to make a huge difference to our times, but enough to make her splits look slow and make me sad because as soon as she seems to be slowing down I just start thinking it’s her age, which leads me to think she’s getting old and then I get sad. She’s not old, she’s only 7, and she can still kick ass. It’s not age, it’s the weather, I have to remember that! Kim doesn’t do rain, she can’t bear getting all wet and ruining her good looks.

Finally, I did not get a light all day with Kim or Dylan. I don’t want to brag about my changeovers (except I totally do, because I am really good at changeovers!) because to balance it out I really sucked at going first, I need some serious training. My starts were way off! Mum got a 0.00 with Mollie and Andrea got 2 or 3 with Norah, which actually just goes to show how hard it was on this set of lights. Andrea normally gets at least a quarter of her starts dead on, and even when she doesn’t she’s rarely over 0.1 off. Mum isn’t too shabby either, particularly as Mollie doesn’t always run lead so it takes her a couple of goes to get her eye in. But I wasn’t even close — I think 0.1?? was my closest, but more like 0.2+. Shameful!

A British Agility Record Book Program … thing.

Posted on June 27, 2008 by Leanne

I was up very late last night, and for whatever unknown reason I thought how good it would be to have a British version of the Agility Record Book program. It would work out your Agility Warrant points and your BAA League Table points (and probably your UKA titling points as well) and would be a wonderful computerised way of keeping track of your dog’s progression.

And then I read that the advanced Agility Record Book program had originally started as a MS Excel Spreadsheet, and my sleep-deprived brain thought “ah! I can work with Excel! It will merely be a matter of throwing together some If Statements and VLookup tables and we’ll be off! How hard can it be?!”

Remind me never to say that again.

Still, 14 hours later and I have a working prototype running. It currently calculates BAA League Table Points and Agility Warrant points (including different points for the different BAA levels and different AW points for agility/jumping classes) depending on clear round places. UKA might take me longer because I don’t really know how their system works, but that’s project for next week. And then I’ll try and add some kind of Calender, although I don’t really need that because there’s the online Agility Organiser which is far better than anything I could come up with!

Although I originally intended this to be for personal use (I’m a geek, I like to keep track!) would anyone be interested in downloading a more polished version? If so, what other stuff would you like available?

Currently the format is pretty simple, and only works for one dog:
Sheet 1 = Dog Information (Call name, registered name, breed, DOB, registration number(s), grade/level)
Sheet 2 = Show Records
Sheet 3 (Locked) = Points Tables

Obviously it would be good to have it work for more than one dog, and I have got the foundations of that in there but I haven’t quite worked out which is the best way to do it yet.

Flyball Harness Review

Posted on June 26, 2008 by Leanne

Our dogs always wear harnesses for flyball, and we’ve gone through a variety of styles before finding ones that suit both us and the dogs!

This isn’t so much of a review as a explanation of how and why we chose the different harnesses for our different dogs, and what the advantages and disadvantages are of each style. I’ve also listed where we buy them from.

Lupine Harnesses

Kim and Dylan both wear Lupine harnesses for flyball.

Kim is sporting the 3/4″ New Wave and Dylan has the 1″ Bling Bonz, both Adjustable Harnesses rather than the Step-In style.

I love these harnesses! They’re great for flyball as when the dog pulls, the pressure goes across the shoulders and not across the neck or the chest. They’re also easy to hold, which is important! I like the Puppia harnesses but don’t have them as they’re too hard to keep hold when your dog is revved up and racing (plus they come in small sizes, no chance of fitting Dyl!). Having said that the Lupine webbing material isn’t very forgiving on your skin when you’ve got cold and wet hands, but of course it’s always sunny and bright in the UK so that’s never a problem. (In all seriousness, this is one of my only criticisms, but I wear fingerless gloves when I run the dogs in the cold so the material doesn’t get chance to bite).

$Detail of Kim\'s Lupine flyball harness$

The material does stretch a little so you may find you have to readjust the straps after a couple of training sessions, but we’ve never had the buckles break or heard of them breaking.

Lupine leads, collars and harnesses also come with a lifetime guarentee even if chewed, which means we’ve had about 6 replacements without question from Dylan’s escapades as a puppy. They do discontinue slow-selling or old patterns however, which means that although you can have a very unique set it’s hard to get a replacement or matching collar/lead! They’re also easy to clean, we just stick them in the washer when they get dirty without a problem.

We tend to order direct from http://www.lupinepet.com/ as the postage isn’t much more than from the British retailer Collarways, but there is a wider choice of patterns and sizes. You can also get the Lupine range from eBay, sometimes cheaper, but it’s very hit-and-miss as to which patterns and sizes are available.

Fleece Harnesses

Mollie wears a fleece-lined harness, and as you can see she’s very pleased with it.

My mum chose this for Mollie as it is much kinder on her hands. Unlike Kim and Dylan, Mollie doesn’t pull forward at a constant pressure, she likes to vary things by going backwards, twisting and bouncing on the spot and lunging forward to try and break your grip. With the webbing on the Lupine harnesses or similar, that means you usually have to let go because your fingers are being sawn off!

The webbing distributes the pressure across the same areas as the Lupine however, and you should note that the actual fleece on the edges doesn’t take the pressure itself, it’s the webbing inner that does. Therefore if you’re looking for a broader strap, don’t always presume fleece is the way to go.

Again, easy to wash and comes in a variety of pretty colours!

The fleece harnesses come to us direct from stalls at flyball competitions, so I can’t personally recommend a suitable online shop. http://www.dog-games.co.uk/newshop/Harnesses+-+Fleece+Lined/ is recommended by the ever-trustworthy guys on Ruffdogs, and eBay have a variety available too.

Note: Harnesses are designed to allow and encourage dogs to pull; the original design of a harness was intended for sled-dogs, tracking dogs, and now flyball dogs. If your dog pulls even a little on the lead, trying a harness will only amplify the problem. We only use harnesses on our dogs during flyball training and competition.

Agility Training

Posted on June 25, 2008 by Leanne

None of us really wanted to be at training last night, but equally we wanted some distraction. We left the contacts and just did some simple jumping courses instead. I ran Dylan with the new dogs as it does him good to go back to basics and boost his confidence. We definitely did that as he really enjoyed himself and ran nicely, although we both need to work on our timing and response to FC’s at tunnel exits. We also worked on weave entries for a while, which is something we always need to practise.

Kim and co. worked on the W-sequence from Nancy Gyes‘ Alphabet Drills, which went down well. Kim made some very uncharacteristic errors early on, messing up her weave entries and popping the last two weaves, but we finally got back in gear and she worked nicely towards the end. She’s skipping training next week as she has Otley at the weekend and I’ve always found she works better in competition if we miss training the week before. Dylan isn’t entered but he’ll probably be getting measured there (as if he needs measuring!), providing his KC registration comes back in time.

We’ve finally lawned the garden, and the dogs love it. Here is Dylan playing with his football, which has miraculously survived for over a month since we found it floating downstream. It does look a bit worse for wear!

Doncaster Flyball (Cantley Park)

Posted on June 23, 2008 by Leanne

It’s really hard to write about how the dogs did this weekend and focus on their positive points and make a record for myself of how they did. Julie was helping/captaining one of our teams (I can’t remember which team it was) and within minutes of leaving the ring was rushed to Doncaster A&E. Although I won’t go into details, she’s seriously ill and could do with all the best thoughts and wishes you can send her. If you would like a send a card or pass on a message, please let Katie know via the Ruffdogs forum.

Obviously our whole team was devastated, and as news from hospital was relayed back to us it became a very hard decision to continue racing. But as we sat and discussed it, we all thought Julie would have been thoroughly unimpressed with us if we’d pulled out, so we chose to let our teams remain in the tournament.

Mollie and Kim were both a touch slower than normal, but they both ran well all day, both in Marsh Owlers. Mollie was clocking around 5-5.1 and Kim about 4.9, but neither felt as fast as they had done at Newark. Claire commented that Lolly was no where near her normal manic and speedy self either, particularly in the morning. Our team did well overall though, we came 3rd in the end and ruined our Marsh seed time by running a 20.80! Kim was also involved in a tussle with old LeadLegs Stripe, who had decided not to have lead legs anymore and actually ran the fastest singles times of the whole team. It’s the first time he’s been really enthused at a tournament and hasn’t really learnt how to channel that energy, so he decided to take his excitement out on my little Kim. Well, Kim doesn’t stand for that kind of nonsense from these young whippersnappers so she put him right back in his place, despite the fact he’s three times her size — I actually didn’t know whether to be more worried about Stripe than Kim! Luckily neither of them were injured and were fine and happy with each other for the rest of the day as they normally are. Unfortunately with all the excitement and hype that we expect our dogs to deal with in flyball, these things sometimes happen.

Dylan was brilliant, I am so proud! I’ve always said I thought he was going to be a lead dog like his dad and after training on Wednesday that’s where we decided to put him. He was super-focussed as soon as we lined up, did some wicked turns and then some not-so-good ones, but he was always driving in from his left and snapping around so the foundation is definitely there. We came 3rd in the end but we battled hard for it! Starters is run “best of 3 run 3″ and if it had gone to 5 legs in each of our final races I think we could have won it.

There’s a chance he may be stepping in to a proper team next week as one of the Owlers dogs is due in season and if she does come in, Dylan will be taking her place. I don’t think he’ll get his FD first time out as Kim did because he’s subbing for one of the slower teams, but it will be a great experience for him. And if he’s not running with them he’ll be taking up his place as lead in the Little Owlers starters team again so fingers crossed we get a good result.