Sunny Afternoons

Posted on May 31, 2009 by Leanne

The dogs and I have spent the weekend lounging about in the garden and having a lovely sunbathing time. This is our only free weekend until mid-September, as we’ve had a bit of a mix about with some flyball dates that have cancelled my free weekend in July. Providing nothing is cancelled, we’ve got a busy couple of months, alternating between agility and flyball (sometimes in the same weekend!).

Flyball training was fun this weekend, if a little bit warm! The dogs will have to compete in temperatures like this though if the summer goes as promised, so it’s better to get them acclimatised now. Mollie ran surprisingly well, she didn’t lose too much speed as the morning went on. Kim did slow up for her second session, but I wasn’t willing to push her. Her placements in the teams this summer will basically depend on the weather. She’s in demand as a height dog at the moment, especially for some of our older dogs *cough*Mollie*cough*, which will also affect where she runs.

Dylan ran very well! He was in a bit of a funny mood, being particularly cheeky and excitable. He’s running with Barney’s next weekend (on a declared time, thankfully!), but we clocked our time easily at training with no racing involved. That’s promising at least, although who knows what will happen on the day! I think he likes running with his girlfriend Jet, even if he does annoy George.

Website news: I am working on retrieving the UMB layout, and reinstating Katie’s blog at http://www.jetpops.co.uk/ (I’m not actually quite sure why it’s not working, but I am hoping to fix that soon!) Hopefully the site(s) will be back online soon!

Contact Self-Reminders

Posted on May 29, 2009 by Leanne

This post is a self-reminder. For all that I love playing with my dogs, I need to analyse what we do and what I want for me to ever get there.

Although there will be some variation from handler to handler, I think there is a fairly standard formula for “perfect contacts” (actually, for perfect anything — weaves, jumping, tunnels, startline, etc) Whatever method you train for, you want your contacts (or weaves, tunnels, etc) to be:

+ FAST
+ CONTROLLED**
+ CONSISTENT

Obviously there is an underlying theme of “do the obstacle correctly”, but I’m assuming that’s a given.

Kim’s contacts
- INCONSISTENT!
- Poor early training means she sometimes stops/creeps the dogwalk plank (and leaps) or just runs and jumps
- Seesaw is extremely unpredictable
+ fast fast fast
- lack of control

Dylan’s contacts
- No speed: is slow, creeps the downplank, and underconfident on dogwalk
+ Consistent consistent! Has never being marked for missing a contact in competition.
+ control

I have achieved FAST contacts with Kim, but am missing the other 2 points. In attempting to avoid that with my next dog, I have trained Dylan to be CONTROLLED and CONSISTENT, but have somehow missed out on the FAST bit.

Future!Puppy will have FAST, CONTROLLED and CONSISTENT contacts. (Remind me, 4 years from now, that I said that. And nobody panic, as future!puppy is in the faraway future.)

** Control does not necessarily mean stop contacts, or whatever. It just means that the dog isn’t going to lose all self-control (or the handler lose all handling control!) when the dog performs the obstacle. It’s no good having a fast dog who consistently leaps from the top of the Aframe — control is also needed.

52 Weeks – Week Twelve

Posted on May 26, 2009 by Leanne

Mollie’s photo taken by my mum, Maxine.

Kim’s photo taken by Vicki at giruff.com

Nottingham

Posted on May 25, 2009 by Leanne

I haven’t been to Nottingham for years; last time we competed there, Kim was a large dog. Way back when! The show is still really well-organised and it’s a lovely atmosphere, but the ground is awful to run on (pitted and rough, worse in some rings than others) and there is absolutely no shade offered anywhere. Which this weekend was a big thing!

Kim was sloooooow on Saturday. She got 2 unplaced clears, in her Grade 5 Jumping and Combined 4-5 Jumping. The agility was a write off as she went straight up the Aframe.

We absolutely fried on Sunday. Saturday was warm, but Sunday was hot. Even when Kim ran her first run at 8:45am it was baking hot. Despite liberal applications of suntan lotion I am a nice pink colour (not the look I was going for!) and by lunchtime I was ready to find a shady spot and never move again.

Lovely course for the Combined 4-5 Agility, but Kim was not feeling the start and came to a dead stop before the second jump. Incredibly lucky not to get a refusal; she glared at me for a while and then decided she’d play, and she flew around the rest of the course. Still not going Kim-speed, especially through the weaves, but generally a nicer run than we’ve had for a while. Really pleased to see her extending over her jumps! Somehow finished 4th, which was a bit of a shock considering we’d wasted so much time and the class was a fair sized 4/5.

Graded 5-7 was an “interesting” course. Actually, Kim would have loved it had she been cool and fit, but she was hot and un-fit, so it didn’t go quite to plan. She got time faults for pausing on the dogwalk and debating whether to go back and say hi to the person sat ringside (4.851 time faults, which is important later!) but she ran the course well and did all the pull-thrus and flick-flacks with a fair amount of speed. She’s getting much more confident about turning again. She also finished with a flying run down the last line, and looked excellent in her movement. I was happy!

Anyway, it turned out that only 4 dogs out of all the Grade 5 and 6′s got under the course time. Personally I think that considering the heat, the judge should have perhaps extended the time by 4/5s, but as she didn’t, there were loads of dogs with time faults. Kim came 2nd in the end because she was the fastest of the time fault dogs (and incidentally would have been 4th if she’d been a Grade 6).

Clear in the Jumping but oh-so-slow, but it had been a very long day and a very hot day and frankly, I didn’t put much effort in either.

We camped offsite at Oakhill, which is why it looks so flat and calm (photo taken very early on Sunday morning!) The rest of the photos in this post were also taken at the campsite on Saturday evening.

As for Dylan … I don’t know what I’m going to do with him! He’s turning into a consistent clear round dog, but he’s not touching any of his speed and he’s playing everything safe. He’s going for slow and cautious and getting it right, over being fast and reckless and getting it wrong. I always handle him as though he’s going to run as he does at training, which is confident and fast and reckless. Inevitably, he doesn’t run like that.

There were flashes of my usual happy lad. He did some lines or sequences with drive and confidence and really worked the courses. He finished up one of the Grade 3 Jumping courses with a flying final drive, and finished 12th. If he’d run like that the whole way around, he’d have been in the top-5. He set off like a bomb in the Vegas Qualifier, gave me a beautiful seesaw and then one of the best Aframe’s I’ve seen him do recently, but then slammed on the brakes for the final 5 obstacles. Some courses he was generally terrible (Combined 1-7 Helter Skelter springs to mind, although he was only 5s off the winner’s time), others he was reasonably ok (Pedigree Pairs).

He came home with a 12th and a 13th in his two Jumping classes, and a 12th in the Grade 3 Agility. I feel like I maybe should be pleased with that (?) and if he’d been genuinely running as well as I know he can, I would have been. But he wasn’t and I’m not. Hmph!

Congratulations to Emma and Bailey who finally got it all together and won the Combined 1-3 Agility by a decent margin and are now Grade 4, and then finished it up with a 2nd in Grade 3 Agility. To Katie and Jet for their 6th in Grade 1 Agility, and for being set to win the Grade 1 Jumping until Katie went unrehearsed (but now you know she can do it!) To Natalie and Kai for their 6th in the Grade 3 Jumping (P2) and 12th in the Combined 3-5 Vegas Qualifier. To Abi and Solo for their 6th in the Vegas Qualifier, and best wishes and hugs to Cody who popped his kneecap out after hitting a (wooden) pole on Saturday. To Helen and Lucy who won the Combined 1-2 Agility by miles and are absolutely definitely in Grade 3 now. To Julie and Gertie who got another 1st and are absolutely definitely Grade 4 now (and she’s only started KC competing at Easter!). Finally, congrats to Paul and Farley for bringing home some more rosettes from Grade 2.

Dylan at EMDAC & Waldridge Fell

Posted on May 22, 2009 by Leanne

So, what did Dylan do at EMDAC and Waldridge Fell? My little man was not exactly on fire this weekend. I’ll admit I was probably partly to blame for that, as I was so focussed on Kim that I just kind of assumed Dyl would be ok and would give me his all regardless. I should know by now that he doesn’t work like that!

His first run was Introductory Jumping, which was an interesting course; looked a little tricky when we all walked it, lots of mumbling and grumbling, but then it ran really well and there were loads of clears. Unfortunately the agility gods were not smiling on us! After having perfect conditions all morning – bright, breezy, good footing – it began to absolutely bucket it down as we were 2 dogs from the line. The downpour was accompanied by huge gusts of wind that I struggled to run in, so I can’t imagine it did Dylan any good either. Anyway, we finished and 2 dogs later the rain had stopped again. It always seems a bit dodgy to lay blame with the weather, but we did go clear and it was a good run! Dylan came 6^th in the end, just a second off the winner, but I do think we could have shaved some time off that if we’d have run in decent conditions.

He did some beautiful contacts in Introductory Snakes and Ladders, exactly what I always want! Fast, driving, fast … I’d made the decision before I ran that I was going to hold all his contacts, and I did, and he came 6^th. From the look of the times, if I’d done stop-go contacts he actually would have been placed at least in the top-3, but of course I didn’t! I chose instead to do stop-go contacts in his Intro Agility class, which was a big mistake as his contacts were creeping again. Finished 4^th in that one, but I wasn’t that thrilled with the run.

Made a hash of Helter Skelter as I left him to take a jump and he swung around it instead, should have supported it more. Can’t have 4/4 clears!

Waldridge Fell … not a great competition for the pup and I. Dylan was really off the ball – but possibly because I was? – and kind of floated around his courses, not really driving or focussed. There were moments of potential; we were both getting our act together for the final jumping class of the day, Graded 3-5 Jumping, until I lost the plot slightly and forgot where I was going, and then got too far in front of him and made him miss the weave entry. I know he does this if I pull too far ahead, but I did it anyway.

See video below for Grade 3-5 Jumping. You can also click here to view his Pairs run with Cat and Gypsy (first thing in the morning, both of us half-asleep, sorry Cat!)

In 1-3 Agility he was kind of ditzy, and I had just run over the course (different equipment order, obviously!) with Kim so I did forget to cue him for a tight turn. Oops … held all those contacts, and interestingly his dogwalk looked better than usual. Not great, but better! Dylan’s little sister Kai (Kai in Flyte) was winning the class until very close to the end, so congratulations to Natalie for her eventual 2^nd! 3-5 Agility was a surprisingly straightforward course, but again handler error; I blocked the jump I wanted him to do and he very rightly went around it. Held contacts again, they were reasonable but not brilliant. 1-3 Jumping was an ok run, he nailed his weaves and did pick up a fair turn of speed around the second half of the course, but didn’t set off in a particularly focussed manner. Surprisingly the winner was 29.??s and Dylan was 31.87s, so not as far off the pace as he felt to be. (Well out of the placings though, as there were a lot of clear rounds!)

Sooo, things to work on. Contacts contacts contacts, always contacts! No problems with him sticking on them, he can’t be persuaded to break them regardless of what I do, so we might experiment a little with that this weekend at Nottingham. I’m beginning to suspect that he’s Turns also need a lot of work, he’s still turning very wide around 270’s and I’d like him taking the inner line around a star/pinwheel rather than jumping nearer the outside wing, which is what we have at the moment.

I do feel like Dylan and I have kind of hit a block in our training, and we’re just not progressing at th moment. I know I said a while ago I was going to look at booking some training days etc, which I will do eventually, but I’m also going to see if I can go and train with Natalie, Orienne and the rest of the Atomic Dog group for a few sessions over the next couple of months, as well as hitting some other contacts for advice. We’ll see if that makes a difference or not!