Monthly Archives: January 2009

Wave

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Dylan learnt “Wave” today, which is very cute. I haven’t done much on new tricks recently but this was really easy to shape as he already knows “paw”. Kim is a bit too exuberant and just throws all her paws at me in exasperation, I’m not quick enough to click her. Must practise that!

Really disappointed about flyball at Rotherham, which was scheduled for Feb 8th. The ground is waterlogged and won’t be cleared by next weekend so they’ve changed venues. I don’t like the venue at Newark Showground, and that seemed to be the opinion of the rest of the club too, so we’ve pulled our 5 teams out of the tournament. It has nothing to do with the switch from grass to rubber matting (in my case) although I know that is what swayed it for some people; I just really don’t like the concrete floors, lack of space, rubbish parking and long drive down.

To balance it out, Emma and I are off to Waldridge Fell the day before, and we’re meeting Cat up there, so that should be fun!

Tagged!

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Well, I was tagged by summerick, I’m not sure whether to thank her or not!

The instructions were …
Open a document or file folder
Click on the fifth folder and then the fifth photo
Post the photo and describe it
Then tag 5 other bloggers

Travelling

Dylan and Kim travelling in the car to Hunmanby Gap. I tried to take a photo of them sleeping as they looked so cute, but they both looked up at me when I moved the camera. Oops! They still look pretty cute though, don’t they?

I’m not sure who is left untagged, but here we go:

Katie – http://www.jetpops.co.uk/
Chelsea – http://livedogslove.wordpress.com/
Brenda – http://yettontop.blogspot.com/
Emma – http://bouncingbackbailey.blogspot.com/
Cat – http://themodernblog.wordpress.com/

Boxes & FlickFlacks

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Both Kim and Dylan were ridiculously excited to be at training this week. And I was a very good person and made myself do the 2 things I don’t really like doing, boxes and flickflacks (or snakes, serpentines, flapjacks, whatever you call them). I even set the box up with “Medium spacing”, ie. minimum spacing. I really dislike judges who assume because they’re judging Small or Medium dogs, everything should be tightly spaced. It’s fine to have some tightly spaced sections, as you would with a Large dog class, but doing 20 obstacles on minimum distance is awful for Kim, she has to bounce everything.

Dylan bounced his box everytime, he couldn’t work out how to fit a stride in without tripping over. Which is fine! We did have some problems because he wasn’t confident enough to bounce when I was stood inside the box, or he tried to bounce and just kind of bounced off in a random direction to avoid me. So, lesson learnt: must direct Dylan from outside the box, which is harder for me but easier for him. Kim hasn’t done any training with a box for ages and it showed … she used to be fab but it’s definitely something we need to work on.

Flick-flacks went better than expected, so I’m a little less worried about them now.

Finally, a plug for agilityOrganiser. It’s been a bit quiet lately but has been revived for the New Year. I love this site, I think it has so much potential. There is a map which shows how far competitions are away from you, and once you select a competition, all the information is given, including a list of which classes are available for your dogs. Saves scrolling through the Agilitynet list of schedules to find familiar postcodes, and opening up PDF files (I hate PDFs) to find classes.

Quiet Weeks

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It’s been a quiet week for the gang.

Kim had a vet check on Tuesday, for two very specific reasons. The good news is that her heart murmur hasn’t deteriorated at all, and our vet thinks the best thing for her is to continue doing agility and flyball as it will keep her heart healthier, although we should obviously moniter her as closely as possible, especially for coughing or signs of unexpected fatigue.

She also went in because a lump suddenly came up, just at the end of her ribcage and about an inch to the right of her spine. Again, good news, as it doesn’t appear to be dangerous. Due to the position it’s very unlikely to be a foriegn body, she has no other swelling anywhere else (lymphnodes), and it appeared overnight. It looks like it might be a bruise where fluid is being retained, which means it should settle by itself eventually, but that’s another thing to maintain.

Because Kim hates going to the vets, she got to go training by herself and have a session of Kim-specialness, which she seemed quite happy about! Dylan wasn’t so thrilled but he’ll get over it, he gets sessions by himself all the time. Kim worked really well, it seems like some of her consistency is coming back (or mine is, which is probably the reality). She’s not as fast as she used to be, and I do know I say this all the time, but we’re getting tighter turns and more consistent results, so maybe it will balance out on the Grade 4+ level courses we’re doing these days.

Training Day

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Dylan finds a stick.Dylan and I went on his first training day this weekend. I learnt a lot, Dylan focussed for almost the whole session, and we both got a lot out of what we did. Dyl was occasionally lacking in motivation but it was my fault, I was concentrating a bit too hard on what I was doing rather than on what he was doing. He also had a complete freak-out at the dogwalk and bailed midway up the up-plank, which he has never done before. I wish I knew what was going on in his head with the dogwalk, I can’t understand why this particular one was so much more terrifying than any other dogwalk he’s met before. The next dog did a very similar thing though, so there must have been some external factor rather than just Dylan being weird.

So thank you to Natalie for organising and Lee Windeatt for braving us Northern folk!

Think I will have to go on some more training days this year. Unfortunately all the advertised ones I’ve seen and would like for Dylan clash with agility or flyball shows that I’ve already committed to, so I’ll just have to keep an eye out and see if anything comes up.