The theme at Ruffdogs52Weeks this week was Black & White Outdoors.
I took hundreds of shots but as soon as I saw this one on the screen I knew I’d got my shot. I was actually hoping to get a landscape pic, but no such luck! Mollie really didn’t help me out this week, she’s sulking a bit at the moment (probably due to lack of flyball) and she didn’t want to pose or have any photos taken at all. She tried to persuade at least three random families to adopt her whilst out on the walk, but she eventually cheered up after bullying Dylan for a while, and let me snap some pics of her.
Lovely show, but South Durham always put on a good competition. No weaves in any of the classes though, but apparently they couldn’t peg them down. Some of the rings were a bit … oddly shaped, but I don’t really mind that. Anyone with a bit of imagination can put up an interesting course in any space, and I like interesting courses! Some judges were brilliant at this, others not so much.
Graded 1-3 Jumping, and I knew this was not going to be Dyl’s course. Very tight spacing for Dyl, and lots of boring pinwheels/boxes for me. We did a reasonable run, a bit hairy in places poles-wise but tidy turns. I was pleased to see that Dyl was clearly wanting to stretch out and have a blast around, but as soon as he picked up any speed he was braking again to get the strides in. I find it hard to handle when I’m just stood pointing too, so that probably didn’t help. We finished up 8th in the Grade 3, so not so bad in the end.
Walked both the agility courses at the same time, and would have loved to run the G1-3 first, but the Combined 1-4 was running much faster and with Dylan having a lower running order, we had to go for that first.
Five faults, oops! My fault, I early-released and he blew right over that contact. I should know better! I took my foot off the gas then and we made the pinwheel look a bit untidy, and I wasn’t clear enough with Dyl on the run to the last jump about where we were going, so he hesitated for a moment. Fractions of seconds, but if we’d gone clear we’d have placed 6th out of the 220+ dogs, so I’m quite pleased with that. Must practise pinwheels though (even if they are boring!), and look at that terrible jumping action … arg! This was his worst run in terms of fluidity of movement, by a noticable margin.
Graded 1-3 Agility was a superfast course, the only potential problem was a pull-thru at 9-10. Dyl shot off like a rocket, actually showed some of that lovely training speed! Carried that through for a nice Aframe and a really perfect seesaw, but I steadied him up a little bit too much for the pull-thru* and then made a right hash of the ending so we lost too much time there. Surprisingly came 5th regardless, which was a genuine shock!
Final run was Combined 1-7 Jumping (Part 1), and both splits had 157 dogs. I was very jealous of the Part 2 lot as they had a fab course, lots of long stretchy sections and a real flow. Part 1 was a bit more technical, lots of tight turns and those boxes and pinwheels again … Dyl actually ran this with the most enthusiasm and extension he’d had all day, but naturally I was all over the place! I was concentrating too much on remembering where I was going and not tripping over things, which meant I was late on almost all my cues. Poor Dylbert! We had a couple of late hesitations which put us waaaay out of the running, although we were never even in it to begin with as it was 1-7. We got a nice 22nd though, or so Vicki tells me (thanks!).
Congrats to all the usual gang; Julie & Charlie/Gertie/Winnie, Leah & Stan/Doris, Vicki & Diesel/Pippa, Candy & Freddie, Katie & Jet, Orienne & Woody/Murphy, Paul & Farley, all the Wakefield crew, and probably at least six people I’ve forgotten! This was a pretty sizable indoor show but I still couldn’t escape talking to at least 20 people I knew everytime I went for a stroll. Good stuff!
*Expect in-depth analysis of one small half-checked stride in the coming days. I’m becoming an obsessive …
Dyl was fantastic in training this week. I’d be dancing if I knew he was going to run like that in competition, because it really was brilliant! Super smooth, super fast, and just smoked everything. We played weaves and jumping, and left the contacts alone for another week. I know I’m going to regret that (we really need to do some dogwalk training especially) but there’s only so much we can focus on in 45mins.
I did some weave games, since he popped those last two poles at the weekend, but I couldn’t get him to break out. He was also nailing his offside entries, even at 90-120, which was pretty awesome to watch. I’ve been quietly niggling at that one for a while, and I love it when the work pays off. By the end of the night I was sending him to 90 angles from around 20ft away, which was fun and meant I could be lazy.
We had some straightforward jumping sequences, and we also had a slice grid set up (which is now my new favourite exercise. It’s so much fun watching the dogs figure it out!). We worked the slice grid first, since I know this is something we have a problem with anyway. Dyl jumped it initially as he tends to in competition; cautious, tucked, collected strides. He got more and more confident every time, until the 5th time around when he blazed through, just as confident as Kim if not quite as smooth. He’s not fully extending over the angle yet but he was clearly figuring out what needed to go where and adjusting to it.
Same story with everything. Lots of lovely extended jumping, twisting into his wraps and actually moving with complete confidence and pace, and the more we did the smoother and more fluent Dyl’s jumping got. I can see a couple of lingering issues even when he’s moving and jumping as well as he is, and I think that’s probably the genuine source of his problems. He misjudges takeoff points occasionally, but because he’s rolling he just throws a massive jump in and stretches to clear it. I am currently theorising that in competition, because he’s not moving as fast, he doesn’t have the momentum to throw those big jumps in and save himself, so he instead he slams on the brakes, throws another stride in and then pops over. That would account for his over-collection on the ground and his compacted appearance when he’s jumping. I like this theory, it feels about right, but I have no idea how to improve it. More work needed, I think …
I could not get this shot to turn out how I wanted, so I’m not all that happy with this as a photo, but I do love Mol’s expression. It’s the only time you’ll see her looking vaguely guilty!
This is such a long drive. Thankfully it’s worth it, because I love the proper Northern shows. Everyone is so friendly!
I had a borrowed dog for this show in Katie’s Jet. Jet is a complete maniac and I haven’t run her competitively since her first KC show at South Durham, since when she’s become 100x more crazy fast. I said back then that running 2 dogs was hard, but it’s actually been a real struggle for me just to run one dog in the past couple of months. The wait between runs just drags on and on!
The Graded 3-4 Agility was an … interesting course? I really liked it, but I might have been a bit more hesitant if I’d been running a genuine baby dog G3 in there.
Jet set off like a rocket, and did one of the best dogwalks I’ve ever seen her do. Katie will be very proud to know that all the training paid off! She ran right to the end, no creeping, but unfortunately I was so overwhelmed by this I was thinking about the wonderful dogwalk and not where we were going. So Jet didn’t turn for the jumps, and turned for the Aframe. Oops! We carried on and did the Aframe again properly, and then again at the end. You can never have too many Aframes, apparently!
Dylan did some lovely lovely contacts in this run, and I couldn’t have asked for more in that respect! He also nailed the turns and generally made it all look pretty easy. Just one thing letting us down, and that was his jumping. More on that at a later date, but suffice to say we came 4th, just less than 2s off the winner. Time that I feel we could easily have made up with fluent jumping! I can’t complain too much though, a 4th is still a 4th and we’re fast approaching his Agility Warrant now so any placing is a bonus.
1-3 Jumping was a bit of a lost cause. I didn’t like the course, too many pinwheels, so I didn’t really walk it properly and then made the same mistake with both dogs, oops! They both popped the last 2 poles on the weaves, and Jet missed the weave entry because I tried to handle her like Dylan … which I already know doesn’t work!
Thankfully I do learn from my mistakes occasionally, and I handled the Graded 3-4 Jumping completely differently for each dog. Made my life more difficult, but I just couldn’t see how I could get Jet around without poles if I handled her like I would have Dyl or Kim. It almost went to plan as well! Jet did a cracking run, but I panicked at the turn from 14-15 and didn’t cue the turn smoothly enough, so Jet slowed right down, and then she jumped completely the wrong way over 16 and we lost loads of time there. I think that was the only real example of miscommunication all day; both my dogs would have read my cues as a rear cross, but Jet isn’t used to running with me (and me with her!) so she didn’t understand what I was signalling.
Dyl’s plan went … to plan, really! Again, just a shame about the jumping. He finished 9th (24.190), and Jet was 13th (24.934). Winning time was 21.215, but second was 23.534, so not a bad finish for either dog.
Huge congratulations to Cat and Gypsy for going Grade 3 – who says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks?! – and to Tracy and Mac for winning out of Grade 1. Can’t keep the Aussies down … also to Julie and the gang for their lovely pink rosettes, and to Paul and Farley, who has no faith in his dog and didn’t even check to see if he was placed in his last class. (He was, sandwiched between Dyl and Jetly in 11th!)
