12/52

Posted on March 28, 2010 by Leanne

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Theme was URBAN.

This wall is a bit of a cheat, since it’s in the middle of the Yorkshire countryside. I have no idea why it’s there or what it could possibly have been used for, and nobody I’ve ever asked has been able to give me a reason either. There’s half of an archway in the middle (you can see the edge just above Mol) which I assume was a door, but it would have been a door to nowhere as there is a 16ft high bank behind the wall, on which are built some old houses and grow some even older trees. Either way, it’s urban enough for me, and I love how this worked out.

I’m not sure Mol is an urbanite, but I know that wherever she might find herself, she’s happy. It did take me nerves of steel to take this shot though, since we were about 60ft from a marginally busy road and I had to crouch about 40ft away to get the shot. Thankfully Mollie was way more interested in looking in the other direction and thinking about eating the bees that are just resurfacing with the spring weather. (and I’m confident I could have tackled her, although I’m thankful it didn’t come to that. Not sure how the camera would have fared!)

Rotherdrax (and Points)

Posted on March 28, 2010 by Leanne

I’ve never been to the Drax venue before, for various reasons, so it was nice to get a visit in before we stay there in May. It’s tiny! But very flyball-y, everything squashes in nicely and there is a clubhouse with a proper bar and proper drinks and proper food, all the important things.

I thought Dylan ran well, he felt reasonably quick and enthusiastic. His box turn is going very wide, he’s not snapping around fast enough so I know we have room for improvement there, but he was matching (if not beating) the dogs he was running against on the flat. The dogs we have in the team are all good dogs, they all run roughly the same kind of times and we can mix/match easily with changeovers. But it was very low, we all know there are 0.2s here and there we can knock off but we haven’t done enough training on those things. I know I also daren’t push my changeovers at all, I got a light in the morning and got a lot of flak and so I held back later in the day when I know I shouldn’t have. I also know I’m not the only person on the team who was doing that!

Kim and Mollie ran as well as ever, I was really undecided about whether to run Kim as she looked lame after getting out of the car initially, but she was happy in herself and the more she moved, the smoother her gaits were. I spoke to the vet on Monday morning and he offered some reassurance, and said that without the lump her paw probably felt a little bit weird, especially since it had been there for such a long time. So I’ll give her a bit longer before really panicking.

I really enjoyed running my dogs, and it was lovely to catch up with various people, but I can’t do long days! We didn’t finish racing until 7ish, and then rushed through presentations to leave at 8. Fingers crossed all other tournaments for the rest of the year run smoothly and to time!

The flyballers have exploded everywhere with their opinion on points, and I’m pretty amused reading them. I love points, I think it’s really nice to have these records of the time, energy and dedication your dog has put in. Of course my dog’s don’t care, but if we’re going to use that argument, we might as well not bother with seed-times, divisions, tournaments or rosettes either. I know a lot of people are arguing that only fast dogs are rewarded with awards, but that’s up to you, surely? Kim’s Silver Award will always mean more to me than Dylan’s, because I know how hard we had to work to reach it. Dylan’s will be easy, he’ll probably get his by the end of the year. When your Bulldog get’s his FD, be proud of it and stop comparing him to the Whippet on your top team who has just got his eleventy-billionth point.

When you get down to basics, flyball is about speed. It’s a race, fastest team wins. If you choose to own dogs who are not conformationally able to run all that fast, that’s your choice, and you’ll have to accept that you are unlikely to get as many points as one that is, just like you’ll have to accept that you aren’t going to be running in Div 1 at the Champs.

Agility at Hare’n'Hounds next weekend, everything crossed for good weather!

Smile

Posted on March 23, 2010 by Leanne

This is the kind of picture I want printed on canvas and then maybe hung on a giant banner in the middle of a city. How can you not look at my lovely smiling Kim and feel warm in your heart?

Digley

Posted on March 22, 2010 by Leanne

We had a lovely walk around Digley Resevoir on Sunday, couldn’t believe it was March, I was walking in my t-shirt!

The dogs ambled (and sprinted, and swum!) their way around, they’ve been so many times they know the path just as well as me. This is another resevoir my parents used to take us walking around as children, and all of it is filled with those wonderful childhood memories; there’s a section involved very steep stepping stone stairs, only for about 60m but when the stair is as tall as your leg, it becomes traumatic pretty quick. It becomes even more traumatic when your sister slams your fingers in an iron gate and chops three fingernails off in the middle of nowhere, and has never yet apologised … I’m not bitter, no, why do you ask?

Kim really enjoyed herself, it’s her first real run since she had the paw injury. It’s been healing well, but it’s not yet perfect and I daren’t risk letting her play in the res itself, so she had a minor tantrum whilst Mollie and Dylan went swimming. I got back in her good books by letting her pose for a while in various spots. It’s hard to be angry when you’re this beautiful.

She even matches the landscape!

Not many photos of Dylan, sadly, because he spent most of the walk with his head in a bush, or herding the 300 other people who thought it would be a nice day to walk around Digley. He was very well behaved though, and only did the stiff-legged barking thing at one dog. He has impeccable manners with on-lead dogs (ie. ignores them completely), even the disruptive and out-of-control ones who lunge at him. He looked mildly concerned about a few of the off-lead dogs, but checked in with me and then continued. He was also flattened by two extremely exuberant Boxers (possibly Boxer/Staffie crosses?!), but didn’t bother a bit. So … interesting. Still thinking about this one, will get back to it at a later date.

(I actually remembered for this blog post that you are, sometimes, allowed to edit photos using this magical program called Photoshop! I’ve been so focussed on the 52 Weeks project that I keep forgetting it’s ok to edit the rest of the shots.)

Another section of the Kirklees Way walked … or so I thought, until I went and looked it up and realised it’s just kind of the same section as the last section we walked. Walking is apparently harder than I thought.

Training

Posted on March 20, 2010 by Leanne

I’m struggling a bit with training at the moment, so I’m actually kind of glad flyball training was rained off this morning.

Dyl and I had a bad training session on Tuesday, I guess like everyone we have our off-weeks. I had some things I wanted to focus on, but Dyl just lazed around and despite my efforts he was a bit distracted all evening, not “working” the courses although he did everything I asked.

I actually feel like we need to get on some training days and get some fresh input, but it’s just not possible at the moment as I can’t ask my parents to give me lifts all the time, especially when we have so few free weekends.

We’re at Rotherham flyball next week, and I haven’t done any flyball training for three weeks. I don’t really care! I love running my dogs in flyball, but I find team training (changeovers!) to be really dull. I know a lot of people find judging changes to be really difficult, but I just don’t find it that hard! One session before a tournament usually means I’ve got my eye in, although I do find that a lot of dogs run faster in competition anyway so you still have to be able to adjust. I’d rather work on boxwork or improving the actual individual run of the dog (either to the box or away), but we don’t seem to have much time for it at the moment.

Entered the Northern Festival of Agility at Redcar, one of my favourite venues, and I’m envisaging rain all week but I really don’t mind. I don’t think anyone I know is going, and I’m kind of looking forward to spending the time by myself, just me and Dyl, some agility and the beach. Sounds perfect!