Monthly Archives: May 2010

Puppy Kim

  By Leanne | May 16, 2010 - 12:01 pm | Kim, Photos
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This is Kim at 7 weeks old, the day she came home.

Puppy Kim

She was tiny and squishy and had a fat little belly and a butterfly nose.

It’s a photo of a photo because this was back in the day, when you had to take your film out of your camera and take it to a shop and have it processed and half the photos came out rubbish and you couldn’t do anything about it.

I wish I could get a good photo of the photos when she was 6 months old. It’s like she’s walking on stilts. Photos too cute not to be shared with the world, they’re too cute!

Honley Woods

  By Leanne | May 14, 2010 - 1:05 pm | Dylan, Kim, Mollie, Photos
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I shouldn’t have even bothered taking my camera; the lighting was awful! Overcast skies + twilight = not good for photos of moving dogs.

Still, look at Mollie’s smiley face!

Smile

Dylan is getting really irritating on walks, I keep wanting to smack him round the head! He is generally pretty independent when we’re out and about, not so much as the girls’ but happy to go off and do his own thing. But as soon as I take off the lens cap, he’s right there in front of me. Almost touching.

Ever played that “not touching” game when you’re a kid? That’s what it’s like.

Kim

You can’t tell, but in all these photos, he’s about 2 inches away from the lens, giving me the Eye. Incidentally, this is why I’m never getting another Border Collie. They drive you insane, like they are.

LopeKim is thoroughly enjoying being out and about again, she’s off-lead 95% of the time at the moment. We’re slowly starting to put some real muscle back onto her, but it’s taking time. I’d like to do some hydrotherapy with her but the pool we used to go to isn’t available at the moment, and she hates swimming. Maybe I can throw her in the sea at Redcar?

We set off on Sunday morning for Hare’n'Hounds, Dylan and I are competing all week and the girls are coming up for Waldridge Fell. Kim is running with Cat, which should be fun!

Late Post: Flyball

  By Leanne | May 11, 2010 - 12:13 pm | Dylan, Flyball, Kim, Mollie, Training
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The gang did well at flyball this week. Kim did 6 runbacks, just over 12″, to ease her gently back into things. She’s back on non-lead walks, except for the first 15minutes where everyone goes absolutely loopy and they chase each other around at top speed. Kim has to be restrained to avoid that, and is not happy about it.

Mollie got a really great session down, she worked over 14″ for most of the session, dropping to 12″ at the end. Fingers crossed she gets lots of lead slots over the next few tournaments, she runs so well in front and I think she’s fit enough to handle it at the moment.

Dylan’s box needs work. It’s something like a three footed turn at the moment, which I am not happy about. Not only that, but because he isn’t getting his back end around tightly enough, he’s pushing off from way too low down which is pushing him wide off the turn. When he gets it right, he flips around neatly and it makes a noticable difference to his speed (of course!). He actually ran much better in training than he did at Drax last week, nowhere near as wide from the box and had one or two really nice turns.

On the other hand, he is looking super fit and fast over 14″, which is excellent since we don’t have a height dog right now!

Unfortunately we don’t have any tournaments for a while, we’re missing the next two because of Redcar (Northern Festival of Agility). Still, that gives us plenty of time to work on Dylan’s box turn!

Hoards of Killer Bees

  By Leanne | May 5, 2010 - 3:11 pm | Dylan, Kim, Mollie, Photos
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Dylan in the heatherIt seemed like a good idea at the time. However. Walking through waist high banks of heather in spring? BEES. Bees everywhere. I got all of four pictures in the heather, before the hoards of angry bees began circling my head and we fled.

So we spent a lot of time at the river, avoiding the bees.

Splash

SoftThere were very few complaints, except perhaps by Kim. Kim spent the whole walk on lead, as she’s still supposed to be taking it easy after her chiro treatment at the weekend. We only argued two or three hundred times, it’s ok. She was not happy with the bees either, but I’m actually glad she was on the lead as she does try and eat them. Bees are not so down with that.

Mol

The dogs were actually very well behaved; there is a lot of livestock at the edges of the valley, but all well protected by walls and solid gates, and we avoided almost all of it. Dylan did spend a while desperately trying to herd chickens through a fence (chickens are the only think he will actually try to herd anyway. Anything bigger than a chicken in worrying). We also avoided unexpected horses, even Mollie! Mollie doesn’t do livestock, she barks too much, but she just trotted alongside the horses for a while and then came back.*

*I should probably mention that the horses didn’t care, the riders didn’t care, and I didn’t let her do this. But Mollie apparently has some horse sense … who knew?!

Drax

  By Leanne | May 3, 2010 - 9:29 pm | Bailey, Dylan, Flyball, Kim, Mollie, Photos
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My first Drax. Events have always conspired against us in previous years, and we’ve never made it. Well, we kind of made it via Rotherdrax, but I’m not sure that counts!

I warned everyone Kim wasn’t at all fit for solid racing, but due to one of the bottom team dogs coming into season, we had to reshuffle slightly and so Kim ended up running as a equal part of a 5 dog team (on a declared time, no less!) We got very very close to breakout; I think our breakout time was 21.10, and we ran a 21.13, with a few under 21 but with lights, thankfully! Kim was absolutely exhausted by the end of the day, I felt pretty bad about running her but unfortunately Bailey came out lame on the second to last race of the day, so we didn’t really have any option. We came 3rd, I think.

17/52

Mollie was dropped down to the bottom team and promptly ran 5.1s singles times as lead dog for them, so it was probably a good job she wasn’t in Kim’s team after all! We’d definitely have broken out if she’d been running with us, eek! Even more impressively, she ran consistent 5.1′s all day and although she was over 9″, she should only get fitter and faster from this point. I’d hope that she’ll continue running 5.1s for the rest of the season with Bails over 11″, and that’s just a bit good for a dog who will be eleven in June!

Dylan’s team was down to four dogs due to the reshuffle, but they were a strong four, all young but experienced and they ran together all last summer (although not over the winter) so we slotted back together easily. I really trust all the dogs and handlers on the team, so it was nice being able just to think about getting the best out of Dyl for once! Speaking of, Dylan ran really well, especially in the afternoon. He’s very comfortable over 13″ and he really likes running third as he can get hyper-focussed and noisy at Lucy (who runs lead) and then has time to re-focus for his own run.

We ran easy 20s times all day, which was a good start to the season, especially as this group should improve – but it does depend on who we have at the next tournament! (My feeling has always been that this team should run with four dogs rather than mix/match with five, but it’s always up to the team captain in the end!) It was good to see that we were running the same kind of times at the end of the day as at the start, which just proves how fit the dogs are. I think we were 3rd in the Division, but I was frozen to death and went home before the presentations.