Lincoln

Posted on September 29, 2008 by Leanne

I really love this show, it’s a great venue and a very relaxed atmosphere. I blame our lack of success on a number of things: 1) we had no Wine Gums on the journey down, and as everyone knows we have to have Wine Gums otherwise everything goes pear-shaped. 2) we saw no Eddie Stobart trucks on the way down, and ever since Michelle Ainsworth related this peice of good-luck making for Daisy (Crazy Daisy Moses) it’s become vital for Kim going to KC shows as well. Finally, 3) Bailey hasn’t won out yet! Over the long course of her career, Kim has always waited for Bailey to win out first. As for Dylan … well, I never expected him to have a successful weekend anyway!

Kim

Brenda’s 1-3 Jumping course was first for Kim, and perfectly set! The kind of course that means E’s and 5′s are handler errors rather than dog errors, which is good for Grade 1-3. Anyway, Kim set off like a little rocket and got the zoomies at jump 5, so we got an refusal. How can I be mad when my 7 yr old dog gets a refusal because she’s too happy? That kind of set the tone for the whole weekend, actually, but I have no complaints! She came 7th in the end with 5f.

The Grade 3 Agility was an interesting course but nothing Kim couldn’t do. The 9-10-11 was a tightly spaced flickflack, probably a foot of space between the wings. I got into completely the wrong place and indicated Kim to do a push-out, which she did beautifully through the smallest gap in the world, and then came over the back of 11. Oops! She flew around the rest of the course though and nailed all her contacts.

Final class on Saturday was the Graded 1-3 course. I walked it and I knew Kim would love it, and she did. She bounced all her jump combinations and really made all the jumping look easy, but she was a smidge tired and hot and so paused at the top of the down ramp of her dogwalk, and her seesaw was hesitant and it lost us too much time. We came 3rd in the end and got those last 4 points (plus a few!) to make up her Agility Warrant Bronze, which was my aim for Saturday anyway. So, once I’ve sent off her Record Book, she’ll be Return of the Kim AW(B). I think she finished in about 30.–s, not too far off the winners.

Sunday was a lot like Saturday. Started off with a lovely Grade 1-3 Agility, really nice course that looked very simple but was actually very deceptive, the jump angles caught a lot of dogs out. I haven’t done a very good job getting that across on the course plan! (Speaking of the course plan, I annotated it for someone and forgot to save the original, so apologies for all the squiggles and notes). Kim had a cracking start and I had a panicked moment where I did a very risky blind cross to the dogwalk and had my back to her for what felt like ages, but it paid off. Unfortunately I then made the same mistake I always make and checked she was getting her dogwalk contact, and then turned to look for the next obstacle and pulled her in front of me. We got a big fat R and I was gutted looking at the times; Vicki and Pippa very deservedly won with a time of 25.308, and Kim’s time was 29.0– and I know we could have made up at least 3 seconds without that refusal. As ever I have to keep reminding myself not to think of the What If runs.

Kim’s final Grade 3 Agility had the was the one course all weekend I didn’t like. Too many pull-thrus that just weren’t necessary to make the course difficult, and the dogwalk entry was potentially very awkward especially for the “baby” dogs in the class who didn’t have the experience or the confidence to pick it up. We got a big E on that one but Kim was laughing at me and just having such a good time as I let her fly around the rest and she just had fun with it, which is all I want from her.

Last class was a big, open and fast Grade 1-3 Jumping course. This was probably the only course I was actually disappointed with because I thought it was perfect for Kim, but we were left waiting on the line for too long (the dog and handler before us made a total hash of it and then tried to fix it and just made it worse and just took ages) and we just lost our focus. She went clear but she was running in a safe middle gear, not too slow but not stretching or pushing for any kind of speed. I think she finished 5th in the end, beaten (amongst others) by Vicki and Pippa, and Sarah and Willow-Beagle, both of whom are Grade 4 now anyway.

Really chuffed with Kim this weekend, she was happy and naughty and running fast. It’s so much fun running with her when she’s like this, she laughs at me a lot and pounces on her lead when she comes over the last jump which is always a sign she’s happy. She’s not as fast as she used to be (last year she would have blitzed that first agility course in about 24-5s, although we would have missed all the contacts!) but as long as she’s still willing to try, I’m still willing to let her run.

Dylan

Lanky boy did not have a weekend to remember. Negatives? He argued with me about weave entries in every class (apparently the second pole is where you go in, not the first), he crept on his contacts, he made up new ways to tackle the tyre, he was incredibly lazy in one class, he was barking in the queue and ignored me a lot. Positives? Well, everyone who saw him (including some people I didn’t know) said he’s got bags of potential and everything wrong was fixable. He didn’t break his wait all weekend, he didn’t pop out of his weaves once we’d got in them, he had no problems with the difficulty of the courses. He wasn’t afraid of seesaws and did them perfectly, and the interesting tyre interpretations got fixed.

Basically it confirmed everything I already knew we had to work on. I am not going to enter him in any more KC shows though until we have a least some of these issues fixed, as it’s just a waste of money and time. He’s doing the Introductory classes at EMDAC over the winter which will boost his confidence and hopefully get him a little more focussed as I can run him with a toy, and we’ll assess again in a couple of months.

There was one class where he did show some of his true colours, the very last class he did, which was an interesting Grade 3 Jumping class and probably the most difficult course Dylan had all weekend. He got E’d at the weaves as we had to have several attempts at the entry but he did the rest nicely, responsive and fast and turning neatly. Proved to me I wasn’t wrong to think he could have done this weekend anyway, but I’m still going to stop entering him until I know we’re sorted. To be honest, he’ll probably just skip Wyre in December since I don’t do many KC indoors anyway.

Big congrats to everyone who was placed this weekend, especially those with top-3 placings:
Alice & Sammy (Jammy Sammy)
Liz & Percy (Danissica Boy of Cha Cha)
Vicki & Pippa (Ruffs Kyria Kalli AW(S) Beg EX)
Emma & Bailey (Bailey’s Bouncing Back)
Iain and Sarah & the Bonwillan Beagles
Helen & Lucy (Jakovall Silent Noon)

For those of you reading via the http://www.undermybed.co.uk/ url and not GoogleReader, you might have noticed updates all weekend on how the dogs were doing via Twitter. (It’s on the sidebar). Feedback wanted — did anyone actually read it?

Hydrotherapy

Posted on September 25, 2008 by Leanne

It’s been nearly 2 years since Mollie and Dylan last went to hydrotherapy. Mollie loves swimming more than she loves tennis balls, which is saying a lot! But Dylan hasn’t been since he was 8 months old and although he loved it then I wasn’t sure what he’d be like this time … well, no worries there! I’ve never seen him so excited, Mollie was barking her head off and Dylan was trembling before we let them go in.

They had a good session anyway. They spent about 15mins just playing and diving in and swimming about, and then Dylan spent just under 10mins swimming against the jets and Mollie did a little bit less because she’d worn herself out by that point.

Hopefully it’s going to be a monthly thing for them over the winter season as it’s fab for keeping them both toned up and happy. Kim doesn’t do swimming and I’m not sure she’d forgive me if I took her so this is a special collie thing for Mol and Dylan.

Sutton Fields Flyball

Posted on September 22, 2008 by Leanne

Mollie and Dylan ran on Saturday with the Night Owlers in Division 8. We’ve got quite a nice little Nights team shaping up there! We ran 20.98, won our division and Dylan got his 200 points, I’m so pleased! He ran in nearly every leg and was a little pro. Some of his turns in the afternoon were a little dodgy, but I think that’s my fault for messing up in the practise time and both freaking Katie out by sending him just as she was putting the ball in (sorry Katie! I was thinking I’d just send him around without a ball) and then not doing a full run with the cone. Jane was stopwatch-ing the dogs in Nights to get some competitive singles times, and Dylan surprisingly threw out consistent sub-5s times … bit of a shock there! He was running well but he’s not even touching full speed yet, I don’t think he’s clocked on to racing yet.

Mollie is always awesome, and she was the smallest dog in the team this weekend but she still ran her paws off over 14″ (full-height) hurdles. Jane clocked her at a few 5s times over the big jumps, so she proved she’s still got it! However, after we’d finished racing, she unfortunately got so excited and so silly late in the afternoon she made herself sick, which meant she wasn’t up for the return journey on Sunday. I really think it was just a mix over-excitement, over-heating and dehydration. She never knows when to call it a day!

Kim was a mishmashed Barneys team on Sunday, on a declared time of 19.60 and in Division 3. We ended up running 19.46 as our fastest time although I’m positive we could have gone faster, we were all playing safe with changeovers, but since our breakout time was 19.10 we didn’t want to risk it! Kim had some cracking runs, I think she likes running with Jet! She was over 13″ though and it does wear her out, but we won the division anyway.

Dylan came back with us on Sunday and we threw him in Singles and Pairs, just to see what he could do. His best Singles time was 4.81 and his Pairs with Chip clocked 9.88. Chip came 2nd in the Starters singles with a 4.50 and both he and Dylan ran over 14″, none of this 7″ lark, so not too shabby for the babies! But of course Jet and Kim couldn’t have their baby brothers beating them so they ran the very last Pairs race of the day in a bid to beat Chip and Dylan and win the Multibreed Pairs title … but they only succeeded on one count! They ran a 9.81 which put them 2nd for the Multibreed, but Kim won it last year (with Poppy) and Jet won it on Saturday (with Miko), so we weren’t too disappointed.

We have to try and make it back next year anyway as ‘Owlers won the Lucy Locket trophy for the highest percentage of wins over the weekend. Next year we’ll be defending titles everywhere!

[Edited to Add: Our lovely team captain Jane named Dylan as the 'Owlers Dog of the Day for this tournament, very proud of my little man!]

Timing Notes

Posted on September 16, 2008 by Leanne

So I wasted an hour today doing this. It might be productive, who knows?!

My handy reference guide says as a rule, to be competitive at Grade 6/7 you need these kind of times for the obstacles:
Aframe: 1.3s
Dogwalk: 2.5
Seesaw: 1.2s
Weaves: 2.7s
Although I’m not entirely sure how that has been worked out, or where I got this reference guide from. Sounds about right anyway, dogwalk is probably a bit faster than that. Obviously my guys won’t be doing those kind of times but it’s interesting for comparison!

Dylan

Brutally honest times taken from the moment of first contact with the obstacle to the moment the front paw(s) hit the ground. Don’t have enough 12 weave footage for reasonable average, but for the others the average is …

Aframe: 2.36 (2.53 1.53 2.13 2.20 3.40)
Dogwalk: 5.15 (4.34 5.13 4.26 6.87)
Seesaw: 3.52 (2.62 1.26 3.67 6.53)

Um … yeah, we have some serious work to do! In my defence, most of these times are taken from earlier in the summer when Dylan was still having seesaw and dogwalk issues, and of course we’re still working through the creepy Aframe thing. I’d have really liked to have got his dogwalk in the TFO at Yorkshire Bouncers because that felt fast and without issue.

Kim

Times taken from the moment of first contact with the obstacle to the last moment of contact, and in the weaves from the moment of turning into the first pole to the kick out of the last. Average is …

Aframe: 1.38 (1.10 1.19 1.43 1.69 1.40 1.47)
Dogwalk: 3.09 (3.20mc 2.71 4.19 2.76 2.62)
Seesaw: 2.73 (4.21 1.93 2.07mc)
12 Weaves: 4.05 (3.46 3.74 5.07 3.93 4.06 4.20 3.93)

MC = Missed Contact. Kim’s Aframe has really slowed down, last year it was averaging 0.9s, so that’s something to work on! Pretty happy with her dogwalk though, and her seesaw always needs work but it has always depended on what mood she is in. Nice surprise is the weave times, I’ve always thought Kim has pretty slow weaves but those times are not too shabby.

It’s interesting watching her contact performance this season compared to last. She’s not attacking it quite as much as she used to, and she’s hitting everything a lot lower than she used to. Kim only just used to get the up contact but now she’s hitting it on the second slat easily every time, which is … different?! Not sure why that is but then again she has only trained on contact equipment 10-15 times this year, so it’s reasonable to assume that’s had an effect on her performance.

Washout

Posted on September 15, 2008 by Leanne

Home Farm was the flyball that never was. We got a call about 5 minutes before we loaded the dogs up to set off, saying it had been cancelled due to unexpected heavy rain overnight. We weren’t the only people in the same situation; I know a lot of other agility shows and flyball comps were also cancelled. Didn’t make it any less disappointing, although I know that Alpha Dogz made the most sensible decision. There was no way we could risk running the dogs on such dangerous and wet ground, and it wouldn’t have done the handlers much good either!

So Dylan still hasn’t made his Open tournament debut! I’m beginning to think it will never happen, he was first due to go into a team at Doncaster in June, but there wasn’t room for him on the teams that ended up running so he happily went back into Starters for the day. The same applied to Home Farm a week later, and although he did technically get to run in a few Open races the day after, they were all N/T races so don’t really count. Then York and the Summer Champs were skipped because of Kennel Cough, he missed Drax because I dragged him off to do some agility (!) and now Home Farm has been cancelled.

So, Sutton Fields next weekend? Sutton is traditionally a good show for me, Kim and I ran our first sub-20 time there way back when in 2004, and we’ve always had good racing since. Kim also won the ABC Pairs with Poppy in 2007. Hopefully Dylan will be able to race his little paws off next week! I really want him to get his FD first time out but frankly, at the moment I’ll just be happy if he gets to go and run and nothing disasterous occurs between now and then. We shall see!