Monthly Archives: November 2009

Shopping Spree (?)

Posted on by

It’s not really a spree. It was quite well planned, really.

BooksFrom top to bottom:
The Girl Who Played with Fire (Stieg Larsson)
The Men Who Stared at Goats (Jon Ronson)
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Stief Larsson)
La’s Orchestra Saves the World (Alexander McCall Smith)
The Complete Notes (Bill Bryson)
The Angel’s Game (Carlos Ruiz Zafon)

I didn’t buy these. I stole them I had vouchers! There is a policy at work by which people can nominate other people for vouchers, if they think you’ve done a good job on something. Providing the section manager approves, of course! I was so surprised to get mine, but very chuffed! I still don’t know who nominated me (it’s an anonymous system) but I decided to spoil myself and asked for HMV/Waterstones.

I didn’t have chance to spend my vouchers until this weekend, by which point I’d already spoilt myself again, with this.

My Clio!

Meet the car that I can’t drive yet! I still have a provisional license, but when I heard about this car I could not pass up the opportunity. It’s the exact kind of car I would be looking for in 6 months time; small, decent engine, MOT’d, taxed, and cheap. Cheap because the back seats have been removed and a big custom-built dog cage has been put in … now, who would want that?!

I just couldn’t pass up on that kind of opportunity, so mum is going to use it on a day-to-day basis until I pass my test. If you see someone with L-plates in a silver Clio driving towards the M62 in the early hours of Saturday morning, that’ll be me.

Finally, my missing back-pay also came through this month, which covered the above puchase and meant I could still buy the one thing I’ve been hankering after.

Pentax K-x (case, 2x filters, SD card, eneloops batteries, 55-300mm lens)

I am head-over-heels already. Kim is too, because whenever I pick it up she strolls over and positions herself, ready for her photoshoot. As far as she’s concerned, this is her Christmas present, and she should therefore be the subject of all shots. How can I disagree? I’ve used it for all of 15 minutes this evening and I can’t wait to get out and take some shots in daylight. I might just sleep with it next to my pillow (something I can’t do with my car, sadly!)

Incidentally, the Clio and the Pentax were both exactly the same price, and so are equally the two most expensive things I have ever bought in my life. That’s a thought that is kind of terrifying …

Issues

Posted on by

... happy Dylan! Dylan has issues. The following is guesswork, and my opinion might have changed tomorrow. I don’t know. This upsets me a lot, because Dylan is normally such a soft-hearted dog, and this isn’t the dog I know.

We walk our dogs twice a day on the same patch of woodland, which leads onto the golf course where we change our route regularly. But this 400m has to be the same as it’s the nearest of 3 access points. Dylan appears to have cultivated the view that this is part of our property, as far as I can tell – it seems to be the most likely explanation for his attitude. On the other hand, it started on a small scale after Mollie was badly bitten last summer by a pair of other dogs (they ganged up and attacked her, basically).

Anyway, problem specifics. Dylan runs towards other dogs, bouncing on the spot and barking his head off. It’s what I usually consider warning/defensive behaviour ie. back off NOW, this is MY patch — it’s what I’d expect to see the dogs doing if a strange dog ran into our garden or up our drive towards the house. Alarm barking, even? If the other dog turns around and gives him whatfor, Dyl will turn tail and run in the opposite direction, but this doesn’t happen very often. The only thing that makes me think otherwise is that it seems to be a fear-based thing (?); when I do manage to distract Dyl with toys or treats, he’s clearly very worried, constantly checking where the other dog is etc.

He is worse on the lead than off, but I can’t risk him off-lead. It only happens in this section of the woods, and with “strange” dogs; if it’s a dog he is friendly with he’s perfectly happy to greet them.

Kim does not react to this behaviour at all, either because it’s beneath her or she just doesn’t care (or maybe doesn’t find the other dog’s worth worrying about?). Mollie will back Dylan up with woo-woo barking, but there doesn’t seem to be much effort on her part. I’ve tried walking him alone (without the girls) and it doesn’t affect his behaviour.

I spent ages working on this, working on getting him to meet and greet calmly and nicely, or coming to me if he was worried. Distractions kind of worked, but not all that well. I thought we were getting somewhere, but apparently not, and I’m starting to run out of ideas. I’m going to try avoiding this area for the time being, and using a different entrance to the golf course. It will only be 50% of the time though, for various reasons, one of which being that the other feasible entrance is right next to the stream, which floods to about a ft deep after heavy rain.

Ideas, anyone?

Stocksbridge Flyball (November)

Posted on by

Love the Sheffield tournaments, they’re a friendly bunch.

Kim and Mollie were both in the same team, and they were storming all day. Mollie’s haircut apparently made a difference, she was particularly crazy! Kim was running anchor and she gets hilariously competitive. You’ve not seen a competitive dog until you’ve seen Kim coming over the line in front, looking across to the other lane to check she’s won, and then making as much noise as possible with a ball in her mouth whilst eyeballing the competition on the way back to me. I think we came 3rd in the end.

Unfortunately Mollie and Kim are in a bit of a scratch team at the moment. They both run around 5-5.2s, which are respectable times considering they’re 9 and 10 respectively (yes, Kim’s nearly 9, but I’ll save that for another day!). However, at the moment they’re running with 2 dogs who run around 6s, because we don’t have enough 5s dogs to make up a team of their own. We still have some good racing, but it’s a bit frustrating to be running 22s times all day when we’re used to running steady 20s times. Two seconds isn’t a lot but it does make a difference between 10 points and 25 points, especially when both girls are going for their Milestone awards.

Not really a rant, just a gentle whinge, since I love my teammates and I know how hard this team picking business is.

Dylan’s team also ran well, we haven’t all settled into our roles yet and a couple of still inexperienced dogs and handlers who haven’t run with some of the more experienced dogs/handlers before caused a few problems. I think we lost pretty much every race, but we really shouldn’t have done since the dogs all ran well. Dylan felt to be struggling a bit, but I think Wilmslow probably took it out of him a bit. Physically he’s more than able to do 2 mix days, but it’s still a bit much for his little boy-brain to handle. Had a fab 5-leg race with Newton Heath (in their first Open tournament!), who brought in their fantastic little Working Lab (I think?) height dog who we just couldn’t touch. She is amazing! Definitely one to watch.

Another double day in 2 weeks with Wyre/Doncaster; I think I’m allowed to say it’s tradition now to have my last two shows of the year crammed into one weekend! We haven’t actually got confirmation of entry to Donny yet, so I have my fingers crossed for that one. Guess we’ll just have to see what happens!

Wilmslow Agility

Posted on by

For the first time at a competition, I had my crazy little man with me!

Combined 3-5 Agility was a lovely course, challenging enough but flowed really nicely. I was a bit worried about Dylan because he’s only ever done one show at Myerscough before, when he found the whole atmosphere very stressful. This weekend it was super crowded, as always, and we were in Ring 2 for two of our runs, so right in the hub of the traffic. I apparently shouldn’t have worried, because Dylan just took it in his stride, got very excited in the queue and was raring to go.

Just a shame about the handler! I pulled off way too early for the tunnel entry, and pulled Dyl with me to the wrong end. So that was the big E, and I’m more than a bit annoyed with myself as I think we’d have been comfortably collecting a rosette. Oh well!

Grade 3 Jumping (Part 1) was another nice course, fairly straightforward and we watched loads of clears whilst we were queuing. Dyl smoked the first half but then lost momentum after the cloth tunnel into nowhere. Still finished 10th and there was plenty of room for improvement, so that was pretty good.

Grade 3 Agility (Part 1) was back in Ring 2, a more challenging course with just with a slightly awkward bit off the dogwalk which I couldn’t figure out. I walked it with Jeremy and Mel, then again with Candy, and then finally with Leah, and eventually cobbled together some kind of plan, so thanks guys! We ran a decent clear, and finished 4th, yay! That’s our best ever Grade 3 placing, I’m so chuffed with him. There were places we could have made up time – the two wraps at the start were very wide, and I had to hold his dogwalk contact to get into position for the awkward section, which I didn’t handle all that well. I also confused the poor boy in the final seesaw-jump combi, he wasn’t sure whether to go straight or just peg it. Of course, I’m talking of fractions of seconds for all these “mistakes”, but if there’s one thing I know, it’s that there is no room for tiny errors for Dylan and I. We have to be perfect to have a chance of getting into the top-3 in these classes.

The really good thing though, the thing that makes me most happy about this whole weekend? Contacts. His Aframe was smooth, his seesaw was good. Do you know how many times I’ve watched Dylan’s dogwalk on the video? One hundred million times, and every time I want to dance. It’s not perfect, and it can be better, but it makes me so happy to see that the work we put in is paying off. That dogwalk right there is beautiful and confident and it will only get better.