Monthly Archives: August 2009

Dashin Dogs

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Dashin Dogs = lovely show, amazing organisation, showground is basic and the ground isn’t great but the judges set some fab courses and the rosettes and trophies are stunning (I got to peek at Katie and Jet‘s hoard).

Kim

Such an up and down weekend. Saturday was a write-off; messy 5f runs with little drive, stopping on the dogwalk etc. We finished with a clear in the G5-7 Jumping, and it was slooooow, but we came 3rd anyway.

Sunday started with a flash of my old girl, racing and running something like she used to in the G3-5 Agility. Unfortunately she has an idiot for a handler who pushed her past the tunnel entry, getting 5f in the process. Kim would have won the Grade 5 and been 3rd in the Grade 6 if she had been clear, but as it was she came 3rd.

A boring boring slow run in the G3-5 Jumping, just knocking off a consistent clear but again she came 3rd. Neither of us really loved it; it was a mildly cheerful jog around the park, not a sprint for the finishing post. We had fun, but there was something missing.

Her last run was slow and clear, a steady gentle lope in the C4-5 Jumping. I think she was 8th in the end, the first time she’s ever been out of the placings with a clear round.

That final run and the eventual confirmed result reaffirmed my decision to retire her, and High Peak is becoming ever more “official” in my mind. She’ll pop out occasionally for a blast, maybe 1 run a day, but I won’t keep asking her to do this when she doesn’t want to. She still has the same enthusiasm for flyball and physically is fine as far as we know, and my heart is just saying that her heart isn’t in this anymore. She’s doing it for me, and that’s not Kim. She should only do things for herself.

Dylan

The boy. Where do we even start?!

The classes were huge, so I can forgive him a little bit. It averaged out at around 210 dogs in the Grade 3 classes, sometimes a little bit less but sometimes a little bit more. But damn, he was switched off on Saturday. He drifted around the Graded 3-4 to go clear, but there are no words for how little drive he showed. Somehow he came 13th, and I can only assume no-one else went clear, but he still wasn’t far off the winner and if he’d been running as he can, we’d have walked into the top-5.

Same again in the agility, boring slow clear, 17th.

He finally stepped up in the Jumping classes on Sunday, and set off like a tank in the Graded 1-3. He was distracted mid-way around and we lost our pace slightly, but he still felt fast and fun and forward. This was actually the most disheartening run of the weekend for me; I thought we’d had a good run but we were still 3s off 1st and way off the placings (they placed to 25th).

I rushed the Grade 3 Jumping (P1) and this was the smallest class of the weekend. Again he set off like a bomb, but maintained it throughout … shame we took 2 extra obstacles in the wrong direction, oops!

I know he’s not running as fast as he does in training, and so I know there is still work to do. I came home and reminded myself that this is not going to be easy, the competition is too fierce and there is no room for mistakes like there is with Kim.

I don’t think I’m being unrealistic to think that maybe, one day, we can escape Grade 3. Maybe half the class will be unable to attend due to a freak cattle incident on the motorway at Dog Vegas this weekend!

British Flyball Championships 2009

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Sunset over Holt Farm This was our first time at the “new look” BFA Championships, but we couldn’t have picked a better weekend; gorgeous weather, fantastic racing and maybe just a little bit of luck on our side, as we’d drawn in the top half of the seedings for all our divisions.


Friday

The girls were up. We knew they had a strong team; the four solid old ladies (or honourary old ladies) in Kim, Mollie, Bailey and Buffy, with ever-reliable Sam on hand to support his harem of girls. We also had Stripe, who has been up and down in the past year but has been looking stronger, fitter and more focused in every training session recently, promising a return to form but weren’t quite sure if it would show. We were expecting to have to fight for the win though, and we had trained accordingly — all the handlers had worked very, very hard to make sure that the dogs were as fit and healthy as possible — and we worked endlessly on changeovers and stamina at training. We all know each other inside out, and we all know the dogs (which ones take a while to warm up, who tires quickly, who can lunge on the pass) so we can adjust for changeovers, weird runbacks, which habits to watch for. And so it was easy.

Emma and Mollie at Friday presentationsMollie was running lead, and she just revelled in the atmosphere, soaked it all up and ran a 4.8s in the first leg. Kim and Bailey were throwing out their consistent 5s times, with perfect box turns every time, and Buffy was just her ever-ready, ever-consistent self. Stripe was back to his old self and Sam was single striding for the occasion. Our gang just stepped up and obliterated the opposition. We won every race in three leg straight wins. We got just one light all day (an early change from yours truly!) but since the other team also had a light, Kim pulled an old trick out of the bag and did a turn-around on the 5ft line and so we still finished the race in time to get a point. (Thank you Flloyd, all those years ago, for teaching us that one!)

Night Owlers, aka Mollie, Bailey, Buffy, Sam, Stripe and Kim, are Division 24 Champions 2009.

Bailey, Stripe, Kim, Mollie and Sam (Missing One Beardie)

Saturday

We had very high hopes for Hawk Owlers. We’d drawn as top seed, and our five baby dogs were all ready to show what they were made of. None of the dogs had done their best last year; Dylan and Buddy didn’t go at all, Lucy wasn’t with Owlers, Skye had barely trained and Chip was still unpredictable.

It started so well, when we ran our first sub-20s time as a team with a 19.98 against Grasshoppers. We had room to spare with changeovers, the dogs were just warming up, and it looked so promising. We won the next one, but then lost the last race in the morning with changeover lights.

Pressure was on! We knew if we won both afternoon races we could still win; nobody else had won all their races either, and we had the second fastest time which would put us 1st in a three-way tie. (The fastest time set by Grasshoppers was a break-out and wouldn’t count, so we technically had the fastest). We came back in the afternoon and won the first race, but there was some tension in the team.

The last race against Golden Valley should have been a walkover. We’d run 2s faster than them in the morning session, and they hadn’t won a race all day. But we folded under the pressure; a few bad decisions and a few bad calls came back to haunt us, and we’d lost in straight legs and that left us 3rd in Division 18.

It was ours to win and we blew it. Unfortunately the whole Owlers camp focused on that, including me, when really we should have been looking at the positives; we smashed our seed time by nearly half a second, Dylan and Skye ran like true professionals, despite having been competing in Open tournaments for less than 12months. And Buddy, our lovable chocolate Lab, was a complete revelation. I’m sure Michelle wouldn’t mind me saying that at the beginning of the summer season, nobody would have guessed he could run in a sub-20 team and make it look as easy as he did.

Sunday

Thankfully we’re a generally cheerful bunch, so we bounced right back on Sunday to watch the Barney Owlers kicking ass in Division 7. Mum was on the line, I was scribing, and Norah, Floss, Jet and George were just fantastic all day, I was very privileged to get the front row seat (and to keep circling the big W as they won leg after leg!)

The guys also ran 18.25, well under their seed time and much faster than they thought they could go.

Barney Owlers, aka Norah, Floss, Jet and George, are Division 7 Champions 2009.

Jet, George and Floss (Missing One Beardie)

We also won the Feelwell Trophy, which is given to the primary team with the highest percentage of wins.

Catch Up

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A weekend at home! I’ve never been so happy not to be doing anything at all. Kim’s had a bath after rolling in something really unpleasant this morning which meant I had a tan, white and green dog, and Mollie is baking outside. She seems to be enjoying herself though, so I’ll leave her to it. Dylan is hopefully following people around in case they throw something for him, which is very unlikely but he has unfounded optimism about these things. So I thought I’d get an update in.

Both Kim and Dylan are working their socks off in agility training sessions, which is excellent! Kim has the Dog Vegas Final in a couple of weeks, and Dylan has qualified for both the Intro Finals at BAA, and both of them have qualified in their Team Trios (Kim with Bailey and Pippa, Dylan with Inca and Lottie). Loads of practise on contacts with both dogs, must be faster, and also on pull-thrus (something I always neglect to train). We’ve done lots of work on odd-weaves as well recently as they seem to be coming back into fashion, we’ve bumped into them a couple of times at competitions. Thankfully both dogs are now pretty solid on that!

The British Flyball Championships start on Friday, and we have three teams going, so we’re also doing a lot of training there! Kim and Mollie both look great; Mollie is back running lead dog after her fantastic performance at Scarborough (the old lady ran 5.2′s over 13″ all day, up Mt.Everest) and Kim is pinning down the team as anchor. It’s not her best position and I would like to see her coming back faster, but we just haven’t had time to train for that specifically recently, and I know she’ll pick up in competition anyway. Their team is in Division 24, running on Friday.

Dylan’s team is running Saturday in Division 18, and he’s running either as third dog or anchor, which suits him very well. We are having a rather tragic problem called “Dylan has forgotten everything we’ve ever taught him about a swimmer’s turn” though, which is driving me crazy. He’s turning reasonably well; three paws on the box as an average. But the lazier he gets, the wider the turn becomes, as he pushes off on the flat which forces him to the side, rather than on the angled box which pushes him right back down the run. Of course, he picks the worst possible time to start messing about! Slight improvement made in the past week but not half as much as I’d like. After the Champs we aren’t flyballing again until Redcar (sadly!) but it will hopefully give us time to sort this little issue out.

Fingers crossed everything in the next three weeks pans out as planned!

JDA Agility

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Sunset over Lincolnshire Showground, JDA Agility Show 2009Lincoln Showground is always such a gorgeous venue! I have never camped in rain like it on Saturday, the thunderstorm was right overhead but when it passed the sunset was stunning and Sunday was such a nice day.

Kim

Every time I start talking seriously about retiring Kim, not just toying with the idea, she comes along and tells me that she can run and she loves to run and she won’t just do it occasionally. She had an absolute ball this weekend, she was bouncing onto the line in every class and giving me plenty of sass.

She is still not running full out. In almost every class she is taking the first 12 obstacles on cruise control, before hitting number 12/13 and suddenly kicking into gear — she still managed to get placed (4th and 5th in the two Combined 3-5 Agility’s) with those kind of runs against some very good dogs. The only course where she did run at reasonable Kim-speed was the final agility (Graded 3-5) where she came 3rd, 2s off the winner and I had pulled her off the tunnel entry so we had a spin before picking up the line again.

I’ll stand by what I said though – just the shows she’s been entered in.

Dylan

My boy stepped up again this weekend. I was very, very proud of him; we didn’t win any classes or do anything extraordinarily fast, but he proved to some people that he could be the dog I always thought he could.

He started off with a lovely run in the Combined 1-3 Agility P1, but I didn’t push his contacts (ie. I didn’t “hold” them, but I asked for a fraction of a stop before release) and we had an enormously wide turn which put us out of the placings. His dogwalk was a huge improvement, as was his Aframe.

And then it all went a bit downhill for the rest of Saturday! It was pouring down with rain in the Grade 3 Jumping, and he slipped heavily on to his hip after the second jump. We carried on but he slipped again and nearly crashed through the tyre (thank god it was a soft tyre!) and then as I was pulling up to stop him, he slipped again and landed on his nose. We retired from that round, but it through us both off the rest of the day. Dylan was ultra-cautious in the next 2 runs and we finished well out of the placings.

Dylan making himself at home on some of the products for sale :)Thankfully Sunday was bright and chirpy! As was Dylan, because he set off with a cracking run in the Grade 3 Agility. I knew going in that there were nearly 170 dogs in the class, but my goal was for a top-10 place, so I pushed all his contacts and we got within touching distance; 12th, 0.04 off the dog who had won the agility the previous day, and 2s off the winner. There were moments where we could have made up time, but probably not 2s worth. Maybe if we work harder on his speeding up his dogwalk, and try and improve my timing.

We then went and made what I thought was a complete hash of the Combined 1-3 Jumping P1; Dyl broke his wait, stuck his head through the timer beams, and then set off and it all went a bit wrong from there! He was reasonably quick but I realised half way around that my shoelace was undone and so daren’t run, and so we made a complete mess of the top bit but we finished clear. Extremely surprised when we then came 8th!

Still wanted the top-10 in agility though, so we pushed again in the Combined 1-3 Agility P2 (140+ dogs), and finally got our 8th. I can only think of one place where we could have tightened up, but it would have maybe made up 0.5s, if that. His dogwalk was passably good for once, his Aframe was lovely, as was his seesaw.

The Grade 3 Jumping was a complete write-off; I hadn’t walked the course, completely misjudged everything, and at one point shouted the jump number at Dylan instead of “left”. Poor boy, I must be such a disappointment to him.

Huge congrats to Helen and Lucy for going Grade 4, it’s so well deserved, especially after all her injuries last year.

Congrats to my super friends who made the whole weekend fun; Emma and Bailey for 2nd in Grade 4 at their first show at that level (and for nearly winning the Combined, it was such an awesome run!), and to Katie and Jet for their fab placings, especially the 10th and 11th in the Combined 1-3 Agility classes (with wiiiiiiiiiide Jumbo Jet turns – make sure she wins next time so we can have sparkley cake!) Jetly also came 3rd in the Jumping and encountered a wishing well for the first time in the Agility, which was both hilarious and super-cute. Just walls and brush fences to conquer now!

Also to Mel and Spike, Jeremy and Rosie, Abi and Cody (will you let someone else win please?!) and Solo the speed demon, Sylvia and Molly (who had an announcement over the tannoy to celebrate Molly’s first ever non-faulted contact — it’s only been 5 years!), Liz and Percy and supercute Jas, and to the Bonwillan Beagle crew who brought home 5 trophies and just showed everyone what kickass dogs Beagles can be (I would happily take Rasha home with me!). Pretty sure I’ve forgetten at least 6 people, but it was a fab show!