Monthly Archives: November 2008

EMDAC

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Remind me next time to wear at least 600 layers of clothing. It was -2 all day, and the fog never lifted.

Kim

Kim’s first Novice Plus classes! I knew we weren’t going to get anything as N+ is combined Novice, Graduate & Masters (like Combined 4-7 classes, basically) and there were some really good dogs there — including a Medium Ag.Ch., so hardly surprisingly we felt slightly out of our depth!

Actually, Kim looked really good, she was responsive and reasonably fast all day. She didn’t look out of place and I think if we’d got our act together we might have been in with a chance of some placings. Shame the courses were so hard, that kind of ruined the plans! First was Novice Plus Jumping, and even the Masters handlers were complaining. Kim just wanted to run and set the tone for the day by skipping two obstacles. She nailed the weave entry (I just left her to it) and did the pull-thru from 16 to 17 but then backjumped 16. I can’t say I was in the wrong place, but I had absolutely no idea how to handle 16-17-18 without backjumping somewhere, so I just made sure she finished happy.

Novice Plus Snakes and Ladders was actually quite a nice course, but I pushed Kim too far out and she clocked one of the tunnels, which pulled her off course and got us E’d. Novice+ Helter Skelter looked like a great course on paper but walking it we all realised it wasn’t going to be quite that easy! 13 – 15 was a huge run and the dogs were all a long way in front. Everybody wanted to handle 15-16 as a pull-thru but I know Kim has a stronger out command, and so we did that nicely, scrambled through the pull thru at 17-18 and then messed up the very last bit. Oops!

VIDEO: Handling the 13-17 section

I actually really enjoyed the Helter Skelter (and normally I hate them!) but there was quite an audience for the class, everyone wanted to see who could manage the last sequence. I think 4 did it — 2 Large, 1 Medium and 1 Small.

Finally, Novice Plus Agility. The original course was awful, I walked it two or three times and just gave up. I’d pretty much decided to ignore it and just run Kim around and let her have a nice blasty course to finish with when they changed it, thankfully! Kim ran this so well, and then I let her down because I forgot 14 was the top end of the tunnel and not the bottom. Oops again …

So, we finished up with 4 E’s out of 4 classes. We haven’t done that for a while!

Dylan

Dylan was obviously a dog with something to prove, especially since Kim and I were pants.

Introductory Agility was first and it was quite a nasty course, 2 pull-thrus and a right hand weave which caught out a lot of dogs. The dogwalk entry was horrible too, and Dylan nearly lost his balance and fell off. Good things? Well, we got the weave entry and none of the pull thrus were a problem. Bad things? Contacts were slooooowww and creepy, and we messed up the end and Dylan did a weird loop around the last jump before he took it. No refusals in Intro though, so we went clear! We actually finished 4th in the end, bit of a shock! If EMDAC had been running their usual all heights together classes he would have been 6th (there were two very fast Mini dogs).

Introductory Snakes and Ladders was a fairly straightforward course, with an Aframe shortcut and a Seesaw shortcut. Because of the creepy Aframe in the Agility I opted to go the long way around in the Snakes and Ladders, and then did the seesaw at the end. Nice clear, bit slow by Dylan’s standards but we came 3rd. Soooo pleased!

Intro Helter Skelter was a bit weird, quite tight spacings and lots of loopy circles which I know is the definition of a Helter Skelter but I don’t like them! Accidentally pulled Dylan off a jump and then took the next one, and finished up with a cracking run down the last straight line. Only E of the day though!

Introductory Jumping was last, lovely big and open course with lots of room for Dylan to get a shift on! I decided to really push him and see if he came around a bit, he’d done nicely in all the other classes but wasn’t touching on the speed I know he has. He’s a lazy arse and if he can get away with cruising along, he will do. Anyway, he really did take it up a gear although still wasn’t hitting his top speed and we had such a good run, until I forgot to pull him in for the last line and he had a huge loop to come around for the jump. Bit disappointed with myself for that, but oh well!

VIDEO: Introductory Jumping (Mistakes Included)

Technically clear but I didn’t wait for results, so I have no idea where he came.

Normally I love the EMDAC shows, but this time it was slightly disappointing. The venue was still great, there are a brilliant bunch of competitors there, and I really enjoy it. But … things I didn’t like: The courses were way too hard in almost every class. Because BAA works on a yearly progression for most dogs, the courses should be easier at the beginning of the year and get harder as the season goes on. I wish someone would explain this to the indoor judges! Some dogs were getting placed or even winning with 5/10 faults, and none of the classes were small.

New 19″ cut off for Mediums? Completely stupid. This makes me so irritated I can hardly see straight. There was a Whippet running Medium as a result. A Whippet. A Whippet that was nearly as tall as Dylan, but because it had low withers, was a Medium. A WHIPPET. Yes, there are heavy set dogs (like Labradors) who find it hard to jump Maxi height. But Bernese Mountain Dogs and St Bernards probably find it quite hard as well, and you wouldn’t argue that they should be Mediums in a competitive standard class. If you want a heavy set breed who isn’t suited to the rigours of agility, that is your choice as a pet owner, and as a competitor, you should choose to run in Pawsability or Anysize classes. Mollie is heavy set and stumpy-legged, and we long ago accepted that she found Maxi height hard and therefore entered her in Medium in Pawsability classes. We didn’t argue that the height for Medium’s should be raised to accomodate her!

Seperate awards for seperate heights did not work for me. The first thing I did with all the results was see where Dylan had come, and then how many Micro/Mini/Medium dogs beat him (or not). I was so pleased with his 4th, but there were 2 Mini dogs faster over the same course, so really he came 6th. (He really did come 3rd in the Snakes and Ladders though — which is still mindboggling to me, 3rd!!!!!)

Also, the rosettes were a bit cheap and Dylan didn’t get a trophy or anything for his 3rd which was a bit disappointing too.

Snarly Face Kim

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Just because some people have the mistaken impression that Kim is an angel.

This is a minor angry face, not the full blown I’m-going-to-kill-you angry-face. She’s not being all snarly at me, by the way. This was because Mollie tried to join in the Kim-Dylan bitey-face games, but Mollie really doesn’t know how to play so just ends up barking at them which annoys Kim, a lot.

Kim’s a whole lot of a bitch really. People are always surprised to find this out.

Naughty Girls

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Whilst I was at agility training yesterday Kim and Mollie had another fight. Not as serious as the last one, thankfully. Kim has a very small bite mark on her ear and is behaving as though her ears has been ripped off and shredded by that evil, evil, black dog who just attacked her for no reason. If this was Kim’s blog, there would be a three page essay on her victimisation. Thankfully it’s my blog, and I can tell you not to believe a word of it, because Kim started it and finished it, and she doesn’t even like vegetables.

That’s right, my dogs faught over a spring onion! Neither of them like onions!

I am taking quite a relaxed view to this, I’ll admit. Hostilities have not esculated in our household. My father was making tea and dropped something on the floor in front of Mollie, and Kim took a strong dislike to the idea that Mollie was getting fed scraps and she wasn’t. My parents persistently feed the dogs scraps when they’re making food on the counters, which is why the dogs were expecting scraps and which is exactly why the blame has gone squarely where it belongs. On my parents. It’s worth noting that I was making me and my sister some lunch the other day and I dropped something, but the dogs didn’t even get up out of their baskets to eat it until I called them.

Anyway, Mollie came up to join Dylan and did some agility later and Kim stayed at home, so I think punishment was fairly given. On the other hand, Dylan was off his head with the idea of doing agility with Mollie and was totally nutty all evening. But we eventually got some proper focus out of him and he was nailing his weave entries again, even though he was distracted and excited, so pretty chuffed with that. We started with some straightforward entries and then got progressively harder, and in the end he was working comfortably off 90degree angles and collecting for some minimum distance jump-weave combinations.

We’ll just have to see if it all comes together this weekend!

Trick Training: Fetch My Hat

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Well, we learnt a fun new trick today! It’s called “Fetch My Hat”, and means Kim (or Dylan, whoever is there first) takes off my woolley hat, either off my head or off someone else’s head, and gives it to me.

Dylan picked it up in about 10 minutes, but he’s quicker to offer new behaviours for the clicker and he’s always had a bit of a thing for hats anyway. Kim took a bit longer, we worked on it for 5 mins last night and she was super quick by the end, but she needs to feel it’s worth it. This morning she was a bit unsure, so we abandoned the clicker and the treats and just made it a game, which worked a lot better. She’ll happily sprint across a room and over furniture to steal people’s hats now.

I have to admit this is a hilariously fun game, especially when I ask family members to wear the hat. Dylan is super gentle about taking it off my head, but then he has to do a lap of honour before actually giving the hat back. Plus, he’s pretty dribbley, so my hat ends up kind of damp. Luckily I have many hats, so I can swap them about. Kim is not dribbley at all but she is impatient and doesn’t care how much hair she pulls out. She doesn’t mean to, and she’s very gentle around people’s face and ears, but whipping it off the top of your head when you’re sat down sometimes yanks out some hair. She doesn’t care, she just likes killing the hats.

We have to work on stopping the hat killing, actually, but apart from that the trick is polished. So, what to do next? We’ve been doing some prep work for “out of the washer and into the dryer” (our washer and dryer are right next to each other) but that’s not quite there yet. I’d like to teach them to limp, but I’m not quite sure how I’m going to do that yet so I’ll leave it a while, I have some ideas but they need fine tuning! I’d also like to teach “put your collar on” but Kim works with her paws, not her nose, so I’m not sure she’ll pick that up. Dylan probably could though … Hmm, we’ll see!

Controversy, Blogs, Tricks?

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I’ve been trawling about trying to find something to blog about — everywhere is quiet at the moment! No major controversies about (that I can find!) so I did think about starting one, but that seemed like an awful lot of work. I was going to blog about “Barbie Collies” following Inca’s Reserve Best of Breed win, which is a controversial topic (Barbie Collies, not the RBOB), but is also seriously confusing and seems more American than British. Anyway, I can solve it easily, because I know a dog from pure show lines who is the most work-y collie in existence. I have to admit that she doesn’t herd because she’s a flyball dog, but her owner has been offered a considerable amount of money by farmers and working stock breeders for her, untrained, because they think she has so much potential. Most of them can’t actually believe she’s a proper show dog, but there you go.

So instead, my two new favourite blogs.

Three Woofs & A Woo
Just Another Dog Blog

In the meantime, we are getting bored over here. Kim has already tried to leave home by attempting to go down a badger sett, but she’s a bit bigger than she thinks she is and couldn’t fit. She did get very dirty and needed a bath though. Dylan took a different approach and decided that if he smelt really really bad, we’d have to give him away. He also got very dirty, and had his second bath this week. Third, if you count hydro as a bath. Mollie is happy sleeping on her trampoline and letting her ear hair grow back, but she has already notched up one escape attempt this month.

So, if anyone has any trick suggestions, please let me know! Dylan and Kim can do

  • Sit
  • Down
  • Stay
  • Wait
  • Stand
  • Paw (left and right)
  • Beg
  • Crawl
  • Rollover
  • Twist Left/Right
  • Back up
  • Leg weave (stationary and moving, and it’s really hard not to stand on them)
  • Dead
  • Sad Face
  • Retrieve various articles, including newspapers/”post” left in another room
  • Bow
  • Shut the Door

Dylan can also cover himself with a blanket and do “flat”, and Kim can do “kill it” which means she shakes whatever she’s holding madly or (if she has nothing in her mouth), attacks the nearest thing to her. Without actually harming them, she knows to be gentle.

Any suggestions? Indoor games are hard with three dogs, they all get too competitive and noisy, so we have to make do with tricks.

[Edited to add: Thanks guys! I've actually found this fantastic list of tricks which has given me quite a few ideas ... !]