This wasn’t the photo I thought I’d end up using. It wasn’t the photo I thought I’d end up taking. I really wanted something of Mollie looking thoughtful or intelligent, which is no easy task because she doesn’t look thoughtful or intelligent very often. I took hundreds of photos all week, but it turned out the perfect Mollie shot was just waiting for Sunday.
This tournament was a bit of a upside/downside; our dogs all ran really well, but it was almost embarrassing how unfit they are!
Kim and Mollie’s team went from running 20.86 in their third leg race (um, seeded on 21.60, sorry about that Division 6!) to barely getting under 22s in their afternoon races. Same dogs, same handlers, tighter changeovers, but we had some enormously tired dogs running! We finished 3rd overall, but it was a close-run thing.
Mollie came up a little lame after the last race, but thankfully we have some walking pharmacies in the team and so she had an anti-inflammatory and has come back as good as new. She has a tendency to get a little bit stiff in the cold/damp anyway, and she doesn’t slow down like a normal dog would if she’s feeling pained (so it’s very difficult to notice!). She’s right as rain and sound today, so doesn’t appear to be a “real” injury.
Dylan has somehow put on weight since last week’s Gap Farm because he had to squeeze into his harness this time around. He showed a lack of fitness too; he ran well all day, threw in some nice box turns, but he just didn’t feel as fast as he normally is. However, flyball-crazy-fever has set in with my little man. He has gone from standing quietly waiting for his turn to run, to lunging, barking and nearly pulling me over when the first dog goes. He’s obviously been talking to Jet! Thankfully he drops his head and focusses when the second dog goes, but this is why I dread having to run him second. Fingers crossed we can stay as third or anchor for the moment!
Canine Fitness Regime starts this week; we have nearly 8 weeks before the next tournament. I expect them all to be at least 0.5s quicker at Rotherham in March!
It feels like this week has just flown by. I’ve been out every evening from Monday to Thursday, at work all day, and pre-occupied making decisions about other people’s dogs. I’ve been neglecting the dogs I do have, and I felt very guilty about it, so we had a fun hour playing some clicker games this evening, which we don’t do nearly as often as we used to.
Kim worked on her “fetch the cauldron” trick. Kim is a little witch, so she needs a cauldron! We made huge progress on this today, she went from being a little bit hesitant to being totally confident and throwing the cauldron across the room at me. Not quite what I was aiming for! We chilled that down a bit, and she’s fetching it nicely. The only problem I’m having is that the handle is very thin plastic, and it’s a bit sharp on her gums, so she’d prefer to pick it up by the rim. I’ll try and fleece-line the handle for next time, so she has something to grip.
Dylan worked on putting toys in the cauldron. He too would prefer to throw it across the room at me, but we made a tiny bit of progress. Dylan’s fetch wasn’t very strong a couple of months ago, but we’ve been working on it and he will now bring things right to my lap, which is good! Getting them in the bucket is a bit more difficult, but we had a better hit rate towards the end.
I love watching both dogs getting annoyed when they’re working with the clicker. I know that’s a naughty thing to say! But it makes the pay-off for both of us so much more rewarding. Kim is always frowning when she’s figuring something out, you can see the cogs whirring away, but she goes all sparkley when she figures something out, all excited and happy and barking at me in her smiley voice. She likes it complicated, she wants something to puzzle over. Dylan, on the other hand, is always impatient and huffy when he’s doing something new, he makes lots of noise and complains a lot. I always have to break it right down for Dyl, he gets too annoyed about complicated things. He reacts differently when he eventually gets it right too, by just relaxing and offering it again and again. I don’t think the tension (pressure?) he feels when he’s working on something is entirely negative, he doesn’t shut down or give any stress signals. He just finds it frustrating!
Looking forward to tomorrow, flyballing at Doncaster, and then my month of agility which I’m very excited about! I have four shows, and am running three dogs, although thankfully not all at the same competition! I have Dylan and Katie’s lovely Jet at Waldridge Fell, and then Dylan and my lovely Kim at Newton Heath. Should be fun!
The All-New Singing-Dancing Matting: Was good. It’s like yoga matting, kind of. Very grippy, no slipping, very nice. My only complaint was that I’m not sure it works all that well on sand/equestrian surface. It was very “dead”; there was plenty of give but there was very little bounce back. It didn’t seem to affect the larger dogs, but the smaller dogs (especially the height dogs (?)) seemed to be throwing lower times than I normally expect. I’m looking specifically at Kim and Bailey, who seemed to be about 0.5s off their usual times. None of our dogs are as fit as they normally are, but they all ran with enthusiasm, so perhaps it was just a case of height dogs struggling over (their) full height.
It didn’t look to be running any faster times than normal. I think our teams met their seed times or possibly slightly exceeded them, but we were running a slightly different lineup to normal. I’ll be interested to see what everyone else thought!
Anyway, the girls ran well as they always do; Mollie was really raring to go, she ran brilliantly all day. Eagle Owlers (Mollie and Kim’s team) won their division, although they was some close racing to do it! I think the girls quite like running with lovely Chippins, and he looked so settled and enthused running with them.
Dylan was quite excited about the whole thing, he loves running with dogs he knows and he was running with old friends in Lucy, Bailey, Buddy and Stripe. I really enjoy running Dylan with these four, they’re all fairly evenly matched on singles times, we all gel together well as a team and because we’ve all been flyballing for years, we can switch the order around as necessary and still maintain tight changes. Perfect! We were on for the win until we lost the plot against Hinkley, we all got a light in one leg or another and so we knew we had to beat Wilmslow in the last race of the day. We got our act together and we ran as well as we could, but Wilmslow just had faster dogs in and beat us by a well-deserved nose. So 2nd place for the Nights, oh well!
Doncaster next week, just checked the lists and it looks like we have whole different set of dogs, so we’ll have some different line-ups and who knows what will happen!
I take back what I said.
It is pretty clear to me that as a rule, Dylan jumps with his hind legs tucked under him. I’m not sure this has gotten any worse since he’s started competing, and I’m not sure it’s a physical limitation or injury.
I spent a lot of time after posting yesterday hunting out old videos of Dylan, from when he was just learning. I wanted to cry. His jumping is beautiful; long, clean, fully extended with no tucking. He flexes and shapes his turns.
Alright, I’ll admit that it’s not perfect on every single jump. He shows a distinct predisposition for tucking his jumps. But that doesn’t necessarily explain why he jumps the way he does now either; is it the remnant of a physical injury (or a current one)? Is it just his predisposition became his ‘style’ because he wasn’t taught any other way?
I guess this is where the experience comes in. Kim is a brilliant jumping dog, but has hit and miss contacts and slow weaves. I worked very hard to make sure Dylan has solid, fast contacts (ok, the fast is still a work in progress!) and solid, fast weaves. He does! But I didn’t even think about his jumping technique, I just assumed that as he got accustomed to the height and movement, he would develop a suitable jumping technique, as Kim did. In fact, assume is too strong a word; it never crossed my mind at all.
I also made assumptions based on Dylan being a Border Collie/WSD and what everyone had told me about Border Collies/WSDs. I don’t know if everyone was lying, or whether Dyl is just an unusual collie, but he is not a risky, hard-headed dog who needs a strong handler. He is soft, cautious and needs a sympathetic handler, but I didn’t realise that at first. I guess that’s partially based on my expectations of Border Collies, as well.
If only it would just stop snowing and let me go and do some training!
