Monthly Archives: April 2009

Contacts and Expectations

Posted on by

Hmm, so I spent a lovely half hour watching back Dylan’s agility videos from the weekend. Creeping contacts = definitely my fault. I held his fast contacts for 2s+, but quick released his creepy contacts. I know why I’m doing this, and it’s because I keep thinking it will speed him up. And I know it doesn’t. If he creeps, HOLD THE CONTACT. If he’s fast, quick release. How many times do I need to tell myself?!

Anyway, I practised by varying the time I held his contacts at training, and also did some experiments based on my positioning. He wasn’t perfect this week as he wasn’t coming down as fast as I would have liked, but a huge improvement from the weekend performance. He also works faster if I’m next to him or behind him – the further in front I get, the more he creeps (anticipating the release, I think?). He also doesn’t like me leaving his toy at the bottom of the contact. Dylan finds this confusing and kind of offensive, he glares at me in a very angry fashion and refuses to touch the toy even when he’s released.

We also did a dog swap, and I ran Bailey whilst Emma ran Dylan. Really just a bit of fun, but also to see whether it was specifically me who was causing Dylan’s creeping on the contacts (apparently not, he does it with everyone, so at least I know it’s a generalised issue). Bailey is so fab to run, she’s such a little bomb! She’s so much smaller than Kim though so it’s very weird, and she turns much tighter to the wings so I was a bit out on some of my timing!

I have, of course, spent the last couple of days catching up on all the blog posts and Ruffdogs news from the weekend. It’s amazing how much you guys get up to in two days! This post at brisbeethewhite really struck a chord with me; it’s so well written and eloquent! It touches on the way that I feel about my own dogs, and perhaps about why I wasn’t as excited about some of Dylan’s placings as I might otherwise have been. I want my dogs to do well, but not in terms of 1sts and moving up grades, or flyball points and awards — I just want them to reach the potential that I know they have. This, basically:

I want to go and do the best we can and have a great time.

If we – both me and the dogs – fail on any of those counts (going, having fun and being the best we can be), then I worry about why and no matter how many trophies and rosettes we bring home, I want to be better next time. Even if that means a handful of E’s rather than a handful of ribbons.

I have my camera back, for those who might be interested to know, but it’s going back to the shop again this week. After the switching on/off problem, they fitted a new lens, but now I can’t zoom in on anything without the camera switching off. Much as I love my camera, it’s been more trouble than it’s worth.

EMDAC April

Posted on by

Kim

First time in a long time where we haven’t come home with any rosettes from EMDAC. It was just such a disappointing weekend; Kim was incredibly slow. She was responsive and listening, but she had no power or speed in her runs, and a few times she came to a dead stop in front of obstacles that under normal circumstances she would never have refused. On the other hand, I don’t feel like this is a mental problem. She wants to run; I know Kim when she doesn’t want to run, and this wasn’t it.

So I have to assume it’s a physical problem. Ergo, expensive vet and chiro trips are on the very imminent horizon.

Placings were irrelevant, but she came 10th with her two clear rounds, in both cases about 5/6s off the winners. Considering her speed this weekend, and comparing that with her normal speed, I feel like she would have been comfortably challenging for the placings if she’d been running like her normal self.

Dylan

For all that Kim had a terrible weekend, Dylan had a really good one. I feel a little bad because I was so worried about Kim that I could only get marginally enthused about Dyl’s placings; that and I didn’t think he was necessarily running his best on some of the runs where he got placed.

Introductory Agility (Saturday) was first, a nice course with a twist which caught out a lot more dogs and handlers than I thought it would. I held all Dylan’s contacts, which were nice for a change! His dogwalk was a bit slow, but the Aframe was nice and fast, just what we like to see! The results came as more than a bit of a surprise as he placed 5th out of 128.

Intro Snakes and Ladders was a write-off. Technically clear but we ended up doing quite a few of the Snakes, so well out of the placings. Annoyingly, Dylan’s Aframe was really creepy again. I have no idea why it suddenly got so much worse between the first class and the second, but it did, and I can only assume I did something which slowed him up.

Helter Skelter was a really nice course, a proper Helter Skelter with two big loops and then a little loop. Absolutely hundreds of clears, including Dylan, who wasn’t really powering but cruised around comfortably. Somehow we came a very surprising 2nd, I was a bit shocked to say the least!

Introductory Jumping (Saturday) was dead straightforward, but it was the last run of the day and I’d kind of lost the will to live by then. Dylan had a fairly decent run and came 7th.

Introductory Jumping on Sunday was another lovely course, but with some very tight corners on minimum distances, so not exactly suited to Dylan’s long stride. We also ran very early, about 10mins into the start of the class, and it was still pretty damp underfoot. Dylan ended up doing two proper faceplants as he tried to turn on landing, I think it was just a bit slippy for him. We came 13th in the end, which wasn’t too shabby considering he fell over twice.

Introductory Up and Under was fairly simple, plenty of room for my lanky boy! He started off a little lazy but picked up well for the end, and somehow came 4th to effectively finish the weekend for us.

His last two classes were Introductory Agility and Introductory Double Take Agility. Intro Agility was another write-off as he barged past me to re-take the Aframe, so a big fat E there. In the Double Take we were technically clear, and Dylan actually set off at full speed which was a first! Absolutely gunned down the first line of 5 jumps and then slammed on the brakes and crept over the dogwalk and aframe on both counts, really pretty shocking performance. More work is needed to maintain the speed and lose the creeping.

Bit sad to finish on such a low point because Dylan worked really hard for the most part. He didn’t run full-out in all his runs all weekend, but he showed some flashes of potential and if we sort his contacts out, we’re going to be well up there.

Major congrats to Sylvia and Molly who clocked up some fab Novice Jumping placings, to Bob and Lottie for bringing home some excellent Trio points with loads of top-3 placings, and to Emma and Bailey for finally getting it together and having a fab Double Take Agility run!

Spring

Posted on by

It’s starting to feel like spring has really sprung around here.

The weather is lovely, and everything is turning green again. The dogs spend all day in the garden, which apparently is much harder work than spending all day in the kitchen. And also more exciting; Dylan was the most annoying dog ever yesterday.

And the bee-holes are back! That’s as sure a sign of spring as anything. The bee-holes, for those who don’t know, are little piles of dirt a couple of cms high with a perfect hole in the middle. They’re made when the bees climb out of wherever they’ve been hiding all winter; I assume when the soil reaches a certain temperature or something. There aren’t that many right now but they’re appearing between the tree roots and the hard packed soil next to and on the paths. I haven’t actually seen any bees emerging yet, they clearly all get up earlier than I do, but I have seen lots of bees out doing the rounds.

We’re starting to work on getting the dogs fitter for the summer season too, as we’ve been a bit lax over the past couple of months. Kim is carrying a bit of extra weight that I’d like her to lose, and Dylan’s recovery time after a hard walk is pretty appalling really. Both the girls have usually come in and fallen asleep by the time he’s starting to stop panting, although I suppose he does do more running than they do.

Lots of hill reps anyway, and now it’s lighter we can extend their walks to loop around the edge of the res. Hopefully that will improve their general stamina, endurance and fitness, and we’ll probably do some sprints to make sure they’re keeping those acceleration muscles trim.

Off to EMDAC this weekend, the forecast isn’t so good but fingers crossed. I’m really hoping Kim will be feeling her crazy a little more, and I’m actually pretty excited about running Dylan. There are some interesting games classes that I haven’t done before, and Kim is in her first proper Novice classes so I’m looking forward to having courses that we can actually do again!