Scarborough

Posted on July 27, 2009 by Leanne

Nice venue, shame they put the rings on the hill!

Kim was bumped up to Hawk as one of the other dogs went lame. She loved it, she looked great and kept going all day, I was very proud of her! She brought the jumps down to 12″ too which meant Skye clocked a few 4.7′s and a 4.65, so although Kim is a smidge slower than Lucy, the height advantage meant we made it up with Skye and Dylan.

Dylan also ran well, he is much more focussed these days and much more into his flyball. The only problem we have is that he’s getting lazy with his box; because he isn’t getting his hind end around onto the box, he’s pushing off sideways and that’s making him turn very wide. Must get strict in training now, that bum must come around and I want both back feet on the box. I feel like that will get him tighter on the turn of itself, but we’ll throw in some netting to force him tighter anyway.

The gang got a new seed time anyway, in a fairly comfortable manner. I think there’s more to come from this team, although whether the same dogs will be in there I don’t know!

Mollie ran her socks off, she clocked some great times running over 13″; 5.3′s and 5.2′s consistently, what a superstar! She does so love running lead dog, she always clocks her best time in that position. Unfortunately we have to balance age with speed; it’s hard work for a 10yr old stumpy to do all the false starts and re-runs required of a lead dog! Her team came last, but she was the only one of the original planned team left, so not too shabby.

I was so, so tired this past weekend. I loved running the dogs, we had a blast and our teams were fab. I even loved boxloading for Ghost/Barneys, who just looked so good, looked just like a perfect team should, all working together seamlessly and knowing where and when everyone and every dog was going to be. Lovely.

But.

I feel like we’re in a situation that I so wanted to avoid when I left the old club; I wanted to be selfish for once, and not be coerced into helping or giving up my time when I didn’t want to. I know the Owlers do not do this, and I always offer to help, but for the past couple of months we’ve been going to both days of a flyball tournament even though our dogs only run on one of the days. I think we’re going to have to put the breaks on that because I can’t cope, I get tired and grumpy and I have no time to do anything. The same goes for the EMDAC shows – we volunteered at the beginning of the year to help out with CleverDogs, but we’ve actually ended up running it, which is not what I thought I was signing up for. I won’t be doing that again next year.

I’m looking forward to JDA this weekend because all I’m doing is running my dogs, which is what I wanted competitions to be. Just me and dog. Good stuff.

EMDAC July

Posted on July 20, 2009 by Leanne

Rain. Next year we must all pray to the agility gods well in advance, and ask that if rain is required, let it be light and drift over the showground quickly. Because this year, it rained relentlessly, heavily, and wetly for 2 days before giving us all false hope with 12 hours of sunshine. And then it rained again.

Mollie

Maybe there should also be a prayer to the agility gods saying “Deliver us from Mollies”. It would be apt. She is so much fun to run, although in the class where she ran away for 40s before she even did the first jump and then barked at me the whole way around and launched off all the agility equipment in a very dangerous and reckless manner, I may have argued otherwise.

She did get one clear round though, and came 14th. Sometimes, she can be a clever girl.

Kim

My little girl was not so happy with me this weekend. She didn’t really want to play agility so much, apart from the occasional mad sprint. In her final run of the weekend, she walked in ahead of me, plonked herself in front of the first jump and gave me a look that clearly said “let’s just get this over with, shall we?” and that was the end of that.

It makes me sad, because I know sometimes she really loves this game and wants to play and can win classes with it. But equally, sometimes she doesn’t want to play anymore, and the balance feels like it’s tipped to the “not” right now, and so I’m not going to keep entering her in the hope that we’ll have one good run. Finals Weekend will be her BAA retirement party; their Veterans classes offer nothing we don’t already have in Novice, except lower jump heights, and jump height isn’t the problem here.

She will continue to do the KC shows, but I will be increasingly selective about what classes we enter, especially if she does win out of Grade 5.

Although Kim didn’t want to play, Dylan suddenly did.

Dylan

The boy did good.

Final haul is:

1st Introductory Jumping (the required second win for Primary Jumping)
1st Introductory Power and Speed (one win of the 2 required for Primary Agility)
2nd Introductory Jumping
2nd Introductory Agility
3rd Introductory Jumping
3rd Introductory Agility
4th Introductory Steeplechase
5th Introductory Jumping
7th Introductory Helter Skelter
8th Introductory Steeplechase
9th Introductory Agility
19th Introductory Snakes and Ladders (should have been an E anyway, but held contacts)

He stepped up a gear, finally. He stepped up several gears. He’s still not quite running at top speed, but it’s much, much better than it has been. His dogwalk was above average, his contacts were solid, his waits went out of the window, but I suppose we can’t have everything!

Of course, this does give us our promotion wins for Jumping, and if it had been earlier in the season, I would have moved Dylan up to Primary. The placings this weekend prove that he is ready to move on from Introductory classes. But – there’s always a but! – our next show is Finals Weekend, and he is currently qualified for both Introductory Finals. If I move him up, he doesn’t qualify for any Finals, and we would get automatic promotion to Novice at the end of the season, which I would quite like to avoid! Thankfully we only have 1 Agility win so I at least don’t have that one on my conscience, and I held all his contacts in all the other Agility classes after that win to make sure we didn’t get close.

Kim does have the last laugh, as always. She won me boxes of beautiful silver photo frames, which I treasure, use and display proudly on my shelves. Dylan has won me boxes of horrible mugs which I will look at sadly, cannot bring myself to display, and will never, ever use.

Katie and I ran Jet in Duo Pairs and came 7th, which was quite respectable! I then ruined that respectability when I ran Jet and Dylan in Brace Pairs, and got 60 faults (2 refusals and an E), especially as Katie ran Poppy and Mollie and only got 55 faults. Neither of us ran in the Circular Knockout and then promptly wished we’d entered Jet and Kim as they both would have loved it.

Major congrats to everyone else who had fab placings this weekend.

Rotherham

Posted on July 16, 2009 by Leanne

So crazy; 4 teams on Saturday and 1 team on Sunday. Naturally, due to the laws of nature demanding that I never sleep, Dylan was on Saturday and the girls were both on Sunday.

Dylan’s team ran really well, we just had four dogs (Lucy, Dylan, Skye, and Brooke) and we thought we were going to be hugely outclassed as bottom seeds, but it actually turned out to be a bit too easy. We only took one race to 5 legs (which we unfortunately lost on a light!), the rest were straight 3-leg victories, which put us 2nd.

The girls both ran really well, they’re both very happy to be running with little 11″ height dog Bailey. It was a very closely seeded decision but this is one of our Champs prep tournaments, so we didn’t go to win but to practice changeovers and working as a faultless team. Which worked very well, our team looks fantastic, but I find it incredibly frustrating not to play to win and I ended up having a bit of a moan on the way home, sorry to drivers and passengers! The Barking Owlers team came 4th in the end.

Off to the 4-day EMDAC today! I’m currently most excited about running Kim in Pawsability classes tomorrow, as I opted out of Novice Plus and decided to let her run some dead-easy baby classes where I can take a toy in with me. I’m also pretty excited about Duo Pairs (One dog, two handlers!) and Brace Pairs (Two dogs, one handler!) with the gang, we tried running Mollie in Duo’s last year and much hilarity ensued. Let’s just hope the weather holds! (And good luck to Katie, I hope Jet gets her wins to move up!)

Dogs Unleashed

Posted on July 8, 2009 by Leanne

A much quieter show than I had anticipated, although there did seem to be more people there on Sunday. My sources tell me that it is planned to become an annual event, and so perhaps next year there will be more people around (word of mouth?) and it might feel like the big show I expected.

No photos as my camera is back with Kodak (DON’T get me started!) and no videos either.

Saturday

Flyball went well, if a bit hectic! We had all three of our dogs running in 2 teams in the same Division, so I was all over the place with where I needed to be. Thankfully I have understanding team-mates, and as I only got 1 light for an early change all weekend I think I did rather well! (Incidentally, it was Dylan into Skye and practising those switch-backs must have worked, because I asked him to turn around and re-run as he crossed the line and he did, even switching balls at the box. We won that leg as the other team had a light too!)

Dyl’s team came 3rd, Kim and Mollie didn’t get anything but they both ran incredibly well all day. I wasn’t expecting Kim to be able to keep going as she has lost some fitness and it was very warm, but she raced consistently and perfectly all day. We really thought Mollie would suffer under the heat, but she didn’t slow over the day so we were really chuffed with both of them. It can’t get much hotter than it did this weekend, and they both coped brilliantly.

Sunday

Kim was in Novice Plus classes all day (Combined Novice, Graduate and Masters), so I wasn’t expecting much. The courses were all quite reasonable actually, except for the Wicked Weaves were I got to obstacle 13 and then went and scratched her from the class. I saw some great runs around the course later by some good dogs and handlers, but it was way beyond my handling skills, and I wasn’t willing to risk Kim being demotivated.

Anyway, she broke her wait in the Jumping and I had a small but calm argument with her about that, and made her wait again 2 jumps in until I was where I had wanted to be. Then she did a lovely round, but got E’d right at the end, oops! I made a hash of Novice Plus Agility, and I’m a bit gutted about my panic as Kim would have been 5th otherwise. Novice Plus Jumping was a very twisty kind of course, but I had a feeling that if I got it right, it would flow and guess what? It did! We went clear but weren’t super fast, the end of a long day and we were both hot and tired.

Dylan … arg, where do I start? How can we go from being brilliant to being utterly discordant and shambolic in one afternoon?

The brilliant, to begin with. Introductory Wicked Weaves, and a fairly straightforward course (2 sets of 6 weaves to be completed three times on simple entries, so not particularly wicked!) Dylan broke his wait a fraction early, but I may have cued him unintentionally, I’m not quite sure. We had a cracking run anyway and finished 2nd, half a second behind the winner but as Dylan turned from 8-9 like a coasting 747 (my fault, should have handled it from the top) I’m pretty happy with that! Actually, I really am pleased he didn’t win it, as that would have given us our 2 wins to move up to Primary Jumping, and since he’s currently on course to qualify for the Intro Finals I’d rather stay where we are!

We also had a decent run in the Agility, his Aframe and Seesaw were lovely and fast – he overshot the Aframe slightly but he did stop and wait and I don’t want to discourage the speed at this point. Dogwalk was reasonable, he’s not slamming on the breaks anymore and he looks much more confident, but there just isn’t much drive. It’s better than it was. Anyway, the second to last jump was severely offset on minimum spacing, and I was just too late with my cue and we got E’d. Intro Jumping was a lovely course, but Dylan got slightly (!) distracted by some people who were watching in the top corner, and went for a bit of a detour before remembering he was actually doing agility and had to concentrate. He finished really nicely though, driving through the last 6 obstacles beautifully. He only finished 2s behind super-fast Jetly too, despite the detour!

And then the appallingly shambolic. Circular Jumping, and I’d put Dylan back twice for creeping on the line before we’d even started. As I gave him the ok, I turned to look and he ran straight under the first jump – because he had crept so far forward I think he’d forgotten there even was a jump 2″ in front of his nose. I took him back again, and he then refused to jump the first jump … eventually got him over it and at that point I should have left the ring. I have no idea why I thought it would be a good idea to carry on, maybe the heat was finally getting to me! He drifted over the course, paused for a look around, listened but completely lacked motivation or any kind of momentum.

So, of course, instead of coming away thinking about the three relatively good runs we had, I’m obsessively combing over the final terrible one. I know he lost focus and motivation because I used an angry voice when he broke his wait for the 3rd time, but I forget how soft he is. He has been running like a confident, driven dog, and I treated him like I would have treated Mollie, when I should know that he’s a complete wimp. On the other hand, I do feel like Dyl is taking advantage because he knows there is no retribution when he misbehaves. I could remove him from the ring when he breaks his wait, but I have a dog who is just beginning to get his head into this game, finally starting to step up a gear or two and really love what he’s doing. I really do not want to lose that … but then again, I suppose if he really does love it, removing him from the ring really is the best option.

Oh well.

Major congrats to:

Vicki and Pippa for their Primary Jumping win
Katie and Jet for their Intro Agility 1st, Intro Jumping 1st, and 2nd in Intro Circular Jumping … cakes on Tuesday!
Emma and Bailey for their 7th in Intro Wicked Weaves
Sarah and Floss for their 3rd in Veteran Agility
Jane and George, and Helen and Chip, for their clear rounds, both incredibly well deserved!

Rotherham next weekend, and then the four-day EMDAC. Busy weekends ahead!

EMDAC June

Posted on July 1, 2009 by Leanne

One of those weekends that suddenly turn out to be surprisingly good!

Kim

Kim is not allowed to be overshadowed this weekend, because she was phenomenal. A lot of people asked me whether she was running or not when we arrived, and I said yes, but it was purely to get her back into the routine. And then she arrived at the ring and just refused to conform to expectations.

She started steady, with a smooth clear in the Helter Skelter, faster than she’s run recently but just cruising. Something must have felt good though, because she kicked up a couple of gears after that!

We came 3rd in the Novice Agility, and then 6th in the Novice Steeplechase on Sunday. Sixth doesn’t sound overwhelming, but it was my absolute favourite run of the weekend, because mid-way around Kim suddenly kicked up again into something like her old Kim-gear … something I haven’t seen her do for a very long time.

I made a hash of handling the other Novice Agility, I think I’ve been running slow-Kim a bit too long and she took full advantage. We made a mess of both Jumping classes too, a fat E in one and a 5f refusal in the other (she was hot, tired and bored by then).

Dylan

We started in the same drill as normal, ie. steady, reliable clears. Not what I want! I wasn’t sure whether to be annoyed or pleased that Dylan got argumentative as the day went on; he ignored a few cues in the Jumping and Helter Skelter classes, and even paused to look at me at one point before continuing in the opposite direction. I want him to be confident in the ring, but I would also like him to listen! We came 6th in the Snakes and Ladders anyway, which was a bit of compensation (especially as I took him the long way around).

The Introductory Agility was a straightforward course, and I pushed Dylan and although I didn’t get much offered in return, we did a reasonably good clear and I was hopeful about placings. We came 4th in the end, which I was pleased with, but it wasn’t the result I was chasing (I’m allowed to admit that now!) so I wasn’t overjoyed. I said I wanted to improve on that result for Sunday; I wanted to be in the top-3, although I thought we’d have our strongest chance in Agility. As it turned out …

I have always said that Power and Speed is Dylan’s forte, and he did a really solid contact work-out in the class on Sunday morning, with a nice Aframe and Dogwalk in particular. The speed section was very straightforward and he clipped around in 9.74s, not too shabby!

It does almost look like he’s stuttering around this (doesn’t help that I got the video format wrong!), but the spacings were too big to bounce, and not big enough for him to stretch into. I thought when I walked it that it was ideally spaced for a Medium dog, and a Medium did win it in the end. Dylan did manage a 2nd though, so I can’t complain too much. (He was a very good boy!)

Introductory Agility was a really basic course; the dogwalk had been removed from the ring as it was judged unsafe after the first class (very sensible as it was bouncing around an awful lot!) but the seesaw wasn’t used either, and there were no weaves. The Aframe was included twice but I wasn’t thrilled about our chances. I had also seen 2 or 3 really storming clears by the time it came to Dyl’s run, so I chose to hold his contacts. We came 14th anyway, a few more points in the League.

Steeplechase was an effective write-off in my mind after a dog lunged through the fence at us and Dylan slammed on the breaks. A real shame as he’d been beginning to pick up speed, but we finished joint 7th so maybe it wasn’t as bad as I thought.

Dylan was wound right up to the top in the last Introductory Jumping class of the day. I had seen a couple of fast clears and didn’t think we had much chance, but he was actually running at something close to what we have at training, and turned sharply around the loop of two jumps, which I didn’t think he would do. My ever-reliable source (my lovely mother!) told me that Dylan had had quite a few comments from around the ring, so I was almost confident we were in the placings … the 1st was very welcome though! I am so pleased; to be completely honest, I was beginning to think that Dylan just wasn’t fast enough to get those top placings.

Of course, the camera packed up on Sunday morning so I don’t have any of the later afternoon runs, including the Jumping win. Grr.

Congratulations, of course, to various other people, most notably Malcolm and Sally, who came 3rd in the Novice Jumping, and to Sylvia and Molly who came 4th in the Novice Steeplechase. Go the Mediums! Also to Steve and Gromit for tallying up more points for the Novice Medium Dog of the Year, and to Jean and Emma for doing the same in the Micro category. Who knew you could get ever-reliable spaniels?! Vicki and Pippa also had a good weekend, as did Laura and Gorgeous Merlin, at their first show back after Laura’s maternity leave.