I did this in September after reviewing my summer season videos, and since I actually managed to remember to take my camera to training (plus a few clips from EMDAC in November/January) I now have a new set of data. How exciting!

Well, not really. Dylan’s dogwalk in particular was really improving but has slowed down again since the accident in December, and for some reason he wasn’t too happy with the seesaw this week either. No Aframe as we didn’t get it out in training and it’s not worth working out an average from the 2 times I have from EMDAC.

Dylan

Dogwalk: 3.39 [5.15] (4.13, 3.40, 3.27, 3.26, 3.33, 3.00)
Seesaw: 1.95 [3.52] (2.13, 1.73, 1.97, 2.00)
12 Weaves: 2.58 [n/a] (2.34, 2.46, 2.25, 3.13, 2.73)

Previous average times in [square brackets]. He’s improved by over a second on each of the previous average times I took, and we need to improve by another second or so to be seriously competitive. I feel like we were considerably faster a month ago, so if we can get back to that and apply it in competition, I think we might be ok.

Weaves could do with a smidge of improvement, but that’s more to do with me being a perfectionist. The times are fine, but I think Dylan could be powering into the entries a little more than he is.

Kim

Dogwalk:3.05 [3.09] (4.13, 3.01, 2.67, 2.40)
Seesaw: 2.48 [2.73] (2.40, 3.07, 2.60, 2.00mc, 2.33)

Her seesaw, surprisingly (!) also seems to have marginally improved, but I have done a lot of experimenting with where I’m stood etc to see what works best.

VIDEO: Kim’s Dogwalk

I want to keep track of this over the next couple of months and see if we can improve again. I’m not sure how much difference this will make in competition for Kim, especially as consistency rather than speed has always been our problem. I’m fairly confident it will make a difference for Dylan’s results, but I’ve known for ages that we need to speed up his contact performance to make any impact.

EMDAC (50th Show)

By Leanne | January 11, 2009 - 2:54 pm | Agility, Courses, Dylan, Kim, Videos

8 Comments

This was EMDAC’s 50th show, and it ran as smoothly as most of their shows do. Three rings, started just after 8:30 and finished just before 5pm (although we didn’t leave until 5:30 for reasons I will explain later!). Each ring had 5/6 classes totalling around 360 runs, with the largest class size at 130 (Introductory Jumping) and the lowest at 21 (Veterans Agility/Clockwork Tunnels).

Kim

The courses were much nicer than in November, but it did seem to be the day of the obstacle call-offs, which Kim has never been much good at. We spent a lot of time when she was younger trying to get her to pick up the next obstacle, so call-offs go against her natural instinct.

First run was N+ Clockwork Tunnels, and we weren’t really focussed. Kim doesn’t really do tunnels and she gets bored with this class, and then I timed a rear cross badly and pulled her off the tunnel entry. We got E’d as she went over the last jump before she should have … trying to tell me something, I wonder?!

Novice Plus Agility was an ok course, but generally awkward. I couldn’t find a way of handling it to make it flow, but we were doing ok until Jump 9, when I didn’t give Kim a clear enough command and she jumped it the wrong way. I stopped and pulled her around to carry on, thinking we’d been E’d, but then was too far behind to handle the next part of the course so she refused the jump. Which the judge marked as a refusal. I stopped handling again to look at the judge, totally confused, so we got another refusal, and then Kim went back up the Aframe in a fit of impatience at my ignoring her. Another E.

Novice Plus Jumping was a really nice course, set on the easier side and something I felt pretty optimistic about. I held up the whole class by gambling on Dylan’s queue moving faster than the Mini/Medium N+’s, which it didn’t, so Kim was literally stripped off (coat, snood and lead) and thrown in. Thankfully she works best that way! The course really needed a wait start, which Kim doesn’t have, so we made a hash of the box and lost loads of time. But we did go clear! We came 13th overall, 4th Medium, but I’m quite pleased with that as we did make a mess of things and we are still up against the Graduate and Masters dogs. So I know that Kim does have the speed still to do well in Novice, it’s just getting my handling right (as always!).

We waited 3 hours for Time Fault and Out but I love TFO and so refused to leave. Kim got a nice course but again, lots of obstacle call-offs. I said the winner would do 34 obstacles after walking the course, and that I thought Kim could do around 30 before the time ran out. Kim actually did 26 but we had a couple of total standstills when she thought about arguing with me (in front of the Aframe after 3, wide turn after 13 when the finish beckoned, in front of the back of 2 after 14) and the winner did 34. We finished 13th in that one too, 2nd Medium but I think the top Novice Medium, which was good!

Dylan

Dylan was a good dog yesterday. We’re working much better as a team, we just need to continue upping his confidence and motivation. He is getting faster, although he either sets off fast and slows up, or sets of slowly and speeds up as he gets more confident. Still, he did me proud!

Introductory Jumping was a lovely course, pitched perfectly. Dylan set off up the first straight at a moderate speed, but picked up the pace around the top. We had a really wide turn from 6 to 7 which eventually cost us, but I layered the box (handled from the top) which worked really well and he flew down the last straight. The only thing I could fault was the wide turn and I know he could have bounced after the stretch instead of checking his speed, which probably cost us fractions of a second but that was all it needed. I did see a couple of smaller dogs attempt the bounce and have the pole down, but I think Dylan would have made it. Anyway, he finished in 19.90 and in 3rd (all heights). The dog in second finished in 19.19, and only the top 3 dogs finished under 20s.

I thought that the Introductory Agility (see above) was a bit on the tough side, especially the approach to the Aframe and the Dogwalk. Dylan came off jump 11 and straight to the dogwalk, which I had kind of expected him to, but I couldn’t get in front to block it. So a big E there, but our only E of the day so I can’t complain. His weave entry and weaves in general were really fab, and he didn’t freak out at the dogwalk too much, so quite a positive run.

Introductory Clockwork Tunnels was fairly straightfoward, a bit too tightly spaced to suit Dylan but we had a very neat clear. He set off really well and bounced the start line of jumps, but he wasn’t able to maintain his speed and get the corners. Still a nice run though, and we came 6th and the times were very tight for the top-20 or so dogs.

VIDEO: Dylan Introductory Clockwork Tunnels

Introductory TFO last! Considering that Dylan’s last TFO didn’t go so well, I was hoping to beat his last score. The course was nice, and we knew from the inclusion of the dogwalk that the top dogs should be scoring around 20 obstacles. We queued for quite a while and saw around 10-15 dogs reach 19 or 20, but nobody really managing to get any further than that.

Dylan had a really good run. He was slightly hesitant on the dogwalk and crept into his contact on the Aframe. I early released his Aframe and it worked well, which was nice to see as I haven’t done it in competition before. His weaves were fantastic, and we eventually got whistled off for time. This is where it went a bit wrong! Dylan carried on and did the Aframe again and then skipped the last jump when he spotted his lead, so I had to bring him around again. I knew we’d wasted loads of time getting to the end but I was still optimistic as Dylan’s count was 22 and I hadn’t seen many dogs make it that far.

Results went up and Dylan was in 2nd, with a time of 32.10s. This is where I did my Good Deed for the day. The course time was 40s and Dylan was whistled off for time, so there was no way his time could be 32.10, and I was a good person and dutifully informed the EMDAC crew. They checked the ticket and it was in fact 52.10, and Dylan moved down to 3rd. But of course, the person who was down as 3rd on the results had taken the 3rd rosette and gone, and I said I didn’t want to take the 2nd, so they found me a spare 3rd rosette and let me take that. Anyway, that took a while to sort out as someone else was also there, insisting that their obstacle score was wrong (it wasn’t, I saw them run and they didn’t hear the whistle intially and so carried on when they shouldn’t have).

Well done to everyone else who was there! Despite the classes being bigger than last time, it seemed to be a much quieter day. I’m pretty sure some people bailed out due to the weather, as it was absolutely freezing (literally!) all day. I’ve never been so cold at agility! We missed Julie, Leah and Candy and their assorted crew, but made up for it by chatting to Vicki all day. I got loads of cuddles from various dogs too, Roscoe, Molly and Charm all mugged me and Inca is too cute to resist. Pippa was more interesting at barking at everyone but she gave me a cuddle too, eventually!

Training Thoughts (Again)

By Leanne | January 8, 2009 - 2:46 pm | Agility, Dylan, Kim

2 Comments

Dylan and I are going on a training day in a week or so, which I’m quite looking forward to. It was a tough choice over whether to take Kim or Dylan, but the session is for Grades 1-4 and I don’t think Kim will hugely benefit from that. We’re both comfortable tackling the courses and sequences that you find at Grade 4 or below, and I think we’d benefit more from a G4+ type session. Plus Kim is just Kim, we’re not going to make huge improvements now.

Of course, the other reason was that Dylan had his dogwalk fall and hadn’t been back on one when I signed up. I was very worried that if he was still underconfident or anxious about the dogwalk, going to a training day with multiple dogwalk options would only over-face him and make him worse. I know that Dylan does better if he has time to come to his own conclusions, at a slow pace, so I really wanted to avoid that. As it happens, I braved -3 temperatures and hellish ice roads to get to training this week to see if Dylan would do the dogwalk, and he did. He’s actually better now than he was before, much more confident and drivey into his FP. I’ve always maintained that a break can be the best option to overcome a problem, and it looks like it’s worked again. We’ll see how he does at EMDAC this Saturday but I was very pleased with him.

Speaking of, EMDAC this Saturday! I’m really looking forward to getting in the ring again, especially as one of the classes is TFO which is my favourite Games class. I know I say that a lot, but I really do love it! Dylan has only done TFO once before and we got a dismal score of 3 (!), but Kim’s highest score is 23 or 24, I think.

Bit gutted though as we haven’t got in at Doncaster flyball in 2 weeks time. I’m missing my flyball fix to do agility this weekend and next, and I was looking forward to hitting the turf at Donny again with the hounds. We’re definitely in at Rotherham though on the 8th, with 5 teams (!), and I’ve heard a rumour that we might have some long-absent dogs and handlers back in the gang too.