Monthly Archives: September 2008

A Moment from the Archives

  By Leanne | September 12, 2008 - 12:55 pm | Dylan
3 Comments

“Puppy arrives tomorrow, and he still doesn’t have a name.
‘Flynn’ sounds too much like Kim, and ‘Olli’ sounds too much like Mollie.
My sister has a very loud and active campaign for ‘Theo’ going, and my mum says ‘Indi’ is too girly.”

June 2006

As you can see, Dylan was 5th on the name list. After Flynn, Olli, Theo and Indi (after Indiana Jones, obviously! Dylan has always had ambitions to be an archaeologist, or maybe a geologist. He has a thing with dug-up rocks). Ok, so maybe Theo was never really an option, but Dylan wasn’t either until he got home.

What would you have picked?

Lazy Days

  By Leanne | September 11, 2008 - 1:31 pm | Agility, Dylan, Kim, Mollie, Training
3 Comments

Bit of a photo post today, since I haven’t really got much to say. A few shots from over the summer that I never got around to posting, and a few more recent ones.

Dylan doesn’t normally have bad training sessions, so Tuesday was quite unusual for him. He was working in a group with Kim which doesn’t really happen very often and I think it was just a bit too much for his little collie brain. He was breaking his waits and skipping poles in the weaves, so I had to get my strict-handler hat on. I know Dylan understands waits and understands weaves, he’s just pushing his luck. We got the wait problem sorted pretty easily, he was a bit twitchy but I’m not too fussed about that, it shows he’s listening and keen and he stayed put so it wasn’t a problem. Weaves, arg! At Yorkshire Bouncers we were having a problem hitting the weave entry, which he was fine with at the BAA Finals. So we worked a lot on that and he was nailing all of them, regardless of where I was stood or what I was doing. But we have lazy-arse Dylan back, who skips the middle 3-4 poles because it’s easier and faster. He got a reminder about that and once we finally had 12 weaves sorted and perfect, we called it a day.

Kim had fun rolling in the grass and floozing with Ted, the Keeshond, rather than paying much attention to the agility, but she’s forgiven because she got a 2nd at the weekend and clearly knows what she’s up to.

We’re due at Home Farm this weekend. It seems like ages since our last flyball tournament (coincidentally at Home Farm) probably because it was ages. Kim is up with the big guns in Barneys since they’re missing the black speed demons Jet and George, and Mollie and Dylan are both in Barking. Mollie and Dylan haven’t ever actually run in a team together so we’ll have to see how that goes! Mollie is likely to be running lead and Dylan as anchor though so they shouldn’t get into too much trouble. That’s providing it isn’t rained off, of course …

Agility Training/BAA Promotion

  By Leanne | September 10, 2008 - 1:28 pm | Agility, Dylan, Kim
2 Comments

The BAA Promotion requirements have changed slightly and Dylan is no longer up for automatic promotion, so he can stay in Introductory for another year! This is very good news, especially considering how naughty he was at training yesterday. We have a lot of work to do before he’s going to be ready for Primary courses and competition.

I am filling in Kim’s application for Promotion from Primary Agility to Novice though. It’s quite hard as I’ve not done this before and I have to detail why I’m requesting promotion. My reasons are currently thus: Kim has always preferred more challenging courses and I think she’ll get that at Novice. And I’m really not just saying that because I prefer more challenging courses; watch Kim on a Helter Skelter or a repetitive style course and she gets slower as we go along and starts questionning where we should be going. I don’t think there is any benefit to her staying in Primary Agility. I’ve also briefly explained why we don’t have as many agility points as we should have for promotion. There are a couple of reasons; partially because we missed a lot of shows this year due to flyball, or because they were too far away. We also missed some shows due to the dreaded Kennel Cough! And then Kim had her back injury from February to May, which is really reflected in the results we got during that time. She threw up a few good jumping places but nothing from agility.

Very pleased Dylan is staying down though. Especially as he’s now Grade 3, thankfully we’ll have the BAA shows to work on building his confidence and his speed up in Intro.

Yorkshire Bouncers

  By Leanne | September 7, 2008 - 12:59 pm | Agility, Courses, Dylan, Kim
6 Comments

YB is always a small, friendly and local show; lots of flyballers present, which helps!

Kim

Kim had her last set of Primary classes today. We had a really good day, she was a lot more motivated and enthused than she had been for the rest of the summer season, noisy and tugging and listening. She dived for her lead at the end of every class too, which was just fantastic! (Not in a training sense, it’s incredibly annoying, but I also love to see her happy and wanting to play after a run). Her Primary Jumping was a nice course and she ran it well, even though I had a bit of mad improvisation in the middle when I realised I was in the wrong place to do my planned front cross for the weaves and had to throw in a blind cross instead. I’m getting way more confident about using blind crosses, they do work fantastically if you get it right. Anyway, Kim came 7th, and top Medium, which was nice!

Primary Agility was another nice course, although the ring was pretty boggy underfoot and it included quite a nasty Aframe call-off. Didn’t think we’d get past that bit! Kim was a bit too crazy for her agility and it was fairly messy, quite a few wide turns, a pause on the downramp of the dogwalk and a bit too slow on the seesaw, but she still came 2nd! We were just beaten by another Medium, Sally, who is a lovely little dog and she has really come on the past few months so really chuffed for her and her handler.

I love running Time Fault and Out, and Kim seems to enjoy it too. We got a pretty poor score this time though, we only did 11 obstacles before Kim missed the dogwalk contact! We actually ended up completing the rest of the course as it was the fastest way to the last jump, Kim kicked into crazy-fast once she’d heard the whistle. She did an awesome seesaw as a result! TFO is a lot of fun to run and watch, it’s my favourite Games class.

Finished up running straight away to do Primary Helter Skelter, which I don’t like doing with Kim — she needs a break in between, we never get as good a run immediately after running elsewhere. Which is a shame, because it was a Helter Skelter course I thought she’d really go for, big open spaces and plenty of work-away opportunities. She actually had a pretty good run, not flat out but she enjoyed it and apparently she came 4th! We left before the Games results came out because I didn’t think we’d got anything, so really chuffed. [ETA: Bit of a shocking result all around! The winner was miles in front of everyone else, but Kim beat some fast dogs and was only 2s off super-fast Charlie dog!]

Dylan

Introductory Agility was first for Dylan, a straightforward course but I wasn’t too sure about the seesaw immediately after the Aframe. I hadn’t really clocked that it was a lot like a Power and Speed section though, and Power and Speed is Dylan’s favourite so he was super happy with it! He had a nice run, not on full burners but it was the first run of the morning. Held all his contacts and he didn’t find the dogwalk as scary as normal. Somehow we came 10th in that, very pleased with him. Emma and Bailey put in a cracking round, Bailey did the Aframe in 3 strides and flew the apex which was hilarious but she has such gorgeous running contacts she nailed the contact anyway! They came 2nd which was fantastic, so pleased for both of them.

Natalie‘s Intro Jumping course was pitched towards the bottom end of Introductory but it’s still nice to have a blast around. I set Dylan up but he broke his wait; I was really annoyed at myself for not going back and requiring a wait from him, but then again I know if I had, he would have got worried and stressed and even though he might have gone clear, it would have been a overly-cautious clear as he doesn’t like getting things wrong. Not sure what I’m going to do about that, but it’s something to think about, anyway. Because he broke his wait I was in the wrong place so we had a messy start, and then I lost all spacial awareness and ended up layering in the central pipe tunnel whilst Dylan ran the top line … and by layering, I mean “nearly falling over”. But he overcame the bad handling and finished up nicely and came – wait for it! – 10th. The winner finished in 15.64 and Dylan finished in 18.76 so not too bad.

I don’t think we should talk about Dylan’s TFO round but it we had one huge positive so I will! We completed 3 obstacles successfully and then Dylan forgot what weaves are. He was nailing his weaves at the BAA Finals so not sure why we’ve regressed here. Anyway, whistled on the weaves but Dylan had set off for the tunnel by then. I moved off and called him to bring him through the obstacles to get to the last jump but the boy was having none of it. He flew up the dogwalk, absolutely no hesitation and then nailed his 2o2o at the end before thinking about actually looking for me. I have to admit I was trying not to laugh at this point, especially when the judge said something about Dylan having a great dogwalk. So apparently the thing with the dogwalk is for me to be 20ft to the left and telling him to do something else, then it’s not scary at all and actually it’s a lot of fun.

Dylan finished with his last ever Intro jumping class, Helter Skelter, with a bit of an awkward weave entry so I stopped Dylan before it and made him come right in to heel before letting him try, and he nailed all 6 before flying the rest of the course. I think he really hit into something near to top gear on the Helter Skelter, I was really pleased with him. Apparently he came 11th so well chuffed! We’ll have to see how far off the winner he was, considering his weave issue. [ETA: The winner was well in front with 21.49, and Dylan finished in 29.13, but we wasted 5/6s at the weaves which would have put him in the top-5. Not too shabby!]

On a very serious note, I’m beginning to think Dylan is either cursed or has a fetish. So far in his limited career, he’s had 4 10ths, 3 11ths and a 9th. He was clearly aiming to be 10th with the 11ths and the 9th, which would have made 8 10th places (out of as many clears, basically!). Are we doomed to get 10th places forever!?

I’m not really complaining, I’m just happy we get placed at all. What is weird is that looking at Kim’s results from last year, you’ll note she got a 7th in Introductory Jumping and a 2nd in Power and Speed (agility) at Yorkshire Bouncers, and a 3rd in Helter Skelter (4th this year). I think Kim likes this show!

Camera Issues, Training Dylan

  By Leanne | September 3, 2008 - 8:14 pm | Dylan, Training
4 Comments

I really wanted to put some photos on the blog this week, but my camera has decided to stop working. For whatever reason it won’t charge or connect to the computer (which I suppose means it could be an issue with the cable?), and as it won’t charge it also won’t switch on. It’s only a couple of months old so I’m a bit miffed to say the least.

I’ve restarted my attempts to try and teach Dylan sad-face. I stopped because I needed to figure out a new method to teach him with, the one I used for Kim wasn’t working. Now we’re progressing quite well, although sometimes the frustration comes through on his part and I just end up having to sit through a complete disaster of flailing paws as he tries to do every trick he knows in one go. Which is hilarious but sadly not quite what I’m looking for.

He’s going to be better at it than Kim though, he can curve his paw around his nose better than she can.

I was going to say I’m looking forward to Yorkshire Bouncers this weekend, although I’m not sure I should say things like that any more because it seems to invoke some kind of curse which means we either do terribly or don’t get to go at all. In which case, I’m not looking forward to it at all.