Monthly Archives: September 2010

Redcar Flyball

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The girls ran well, we broke our seed time again and clocked a 20.15 in the afternoon. Mollie was slightly off her normal form, I think Saturday took her edge away. She gets so excited and then exhausts herself by getting all wound up and silly when she’s not running. She and Kim still ran line-to-line 4.9-5.1s all day. I am especially pleased with Kim, she ran all day as she was the height dog and she clocked a 4.99 in the afternoon. No idea what she’s up to, getting faster at her age! It was really good racing though, and we finished 3rd in the Division.

Dylan’s team also finished 3rd. Dylan was not running at his best. He was running with the top-team dogs again as they were missing two of the usual dogs from that team, and he wasn’t happy. As soon as I tried to do a proper change into Norah, Dylan started stuttering into the first jump, slamming on the breaks. My assumption is that this was to avoid Norah, because on wide changes he wasn’t stuttering. I’m getting a little bit frustrated with his stuttering into the first hurdle – it’s something that has only developed this summer and it varies depending on the competition.

What made this more frustrating was that Dylan’s box was lovely! He had a few mishaps after our new boxloader dropped a ball as he was approaching the box, which confused him no end, but by the next race he was back to neat, tight turns. It’s probably the best boxwork I’ve seen him doing all summer, but instead of improving his times, he was slower due to the run-in. He clocked 5.1s consistently all day (including changeovers, not line to line), which isn’t good enough. He clocked a 4.81 in singles the day after his first ever competition, and that is the standard I have been holding him to ever since.

Windswept on the Stray

Luckily we went to the beach afterwards. Despite the windswept grey sky and the wild grey sea, Redcar is always worth the trip because of the Stray.

Wild Grey Sea at Redcar

Quiet Weeks

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My computer unexpectedly died late last week, and it doesn’t look like we can get it looked at until the end of the month. I’m hoping that we’ll at least be able to recover the hundreds of photos and videos I had on the hard drive of the dogs, but I’m feeling a little disheartened by the idea that it’s all lost. At the moment, it just means that my time on a computer is limited to maybe 20-30minutes a day at best. It’s a struggle!

Kim

As a result, the dogs and I have been alternatively lounging around or going for impulsive walks to the local parks. We’re so bored we considered taking up Geocaching, although the fact we don’t have any kind of GPS device scuppered that plan.

The weather too, is scuppering all plans. It’s gone very autumnal this week, which of course means endless downpours. It’s been raining for a week and already I’m looking forward, rather desperately, to next summer. Dylan and I are forced to practise our heelwork inside, which means it’s taken a bit of a backseat. We can only walk around 10ft before having to make a sharp left or right, and then it starts looking more like very small heelwork circles, which I don’t think is doing either of us any good. I’m having problems with it anyway, as I decided to start using the clicker, which turned out to be a complete disaster. It’s too specific – I can end up clicking him for for head position, hind position, left or right paw off the floor, moving, and if I get my timing wrong, general bouncing and enthusiasm. That’s too many things in one click, and I can’t simplify any more than I have. So we’re using verbal markers, and it seems to be working.

Mollie Face

We’re flyballing at Redcar this weekend, in rather unexpectedly mixed teams, but there is always a beach to console us if it all goes wrong. This is probably my favourite venue in the country (although I wish it had better showers!) but I have a feeling this weekend is going to be very damp. Unless we all freeze to death, as the weatherman is happily anticipating — but then, he’s been wrong all summer, so I’m not inclined to start believing him now.

Bouncing out of Grade 4 at Ribble

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Ribble was such a nice show! So relaxed and lovely courses from the judges, just really nice. Obviously a bit of a busy weekend nationally, I know people who were at Easington, Bromsgrove and somewhere in Wales?! Thankfully we were indoors, unlike all those other people, and a good job too because it rained all day.

BORED NOW

Dylan was just … amazing. I’ve never had a show where he ran better than he does in training. Most of his runs were fast, smooth, driven and beautiful, and even the one that wasn’t was mostly positive.

Graded 1-4 Agility was first thing, running a little late because the judge got stuck in traffic! The rings were quite small so the spacing was really tight in all the courses, but it was a fairly straightforward course with a kick at the end to catch everyone out! I think most of the clears were Grade 4 dogs, some of the baby dogs did get caught by the tight spacings. Dylan’s run was just magic. I had one heartstopping fraction of a second when I thought I’d lost him after the Aframe, but it was only a tiny second. The rest of the run was absolutely paw perfect. Superfast contacts, lovely extended jumping, tight turns, total fabness! I had no idea if we’d placed, especially since Emma was ring-partying and had seen at least two really fast runs (and I’d seen a few as well). Results came out and he was 1st in the Grade 4, and had the fastest time of the class as well. So straight up to Grade 5!

The Helter Skelter was our only off-run, Dylan ran it very neatly and smoothly but it was a bit boring, until the end when he successfully bounce a corner and we were both so surprised (me at him attempting it, he at it being easy!) we got E’d. There was a big “ooooh” from the spectators which at least made me laugh, but I don’t think we’d have been placed anyway, one of the Darleyfalls set a really fast time to win.

The Graded 4-5 Agility was a tricky course, very tightly spaced but definitely worth a shot. We had a brief argument at the weaves (Dylan wanted to do the dogwalk) and then kind of lost it, I got too far in front. Finished up with a really lovely dogwalk, and Dylan stopped on the end in a lovely stretchy 2o2o. He then bounced off and because I hadn’t moved, so he spun around before doing the last jump. I couldn’t stop laughing at this point as Dylan just doesn’t do stuff like that, definitely doesn’t do impatient mad collie spins.

His last jumping run was lovely, really open course but with a tunnel call-off that caught a lot of dogs. Dylan and I had a great run, fast and smooth and fab, but I saw a really fast sable collie run that I knew was Grade 4, and I really thought that dog would win it. Typically last class of the day, and so we waited for the results … Dylan did pull it off, and came 1st (by a nose!).

Are you sure these are mine?

I really wish I’d entered Kim at this show as she would have loved the Medium courses, but huge well dones to Emma and Bails for their great results in the Combined 5-7 classes, Bailey was just pipped by a Grade 7 dog for the winning spot(s!).

I’m still slightly shellshocked, Dylan will get one more show at Grade 4 and then it’s straight up to Grade 5 at Hare’n'Hounds at the end of October. I don’t think we’re quite ready! If Dylan ran like he did this weekend all the time, I’d be very happy to be moving up, but it could all go downhill again at Lune. Lune is a training show now anyway, and hopefully Dylan will be running like a superstar again.

Bakewell Flyball

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Back at Bakewell; for a showground I hadn’t visited before this year, I seem to have spent a lot of time there this summer! It was lovely this weekend, masses and masses of empty space for the exercise area.

We had a bit of a disaster leading up to the tournament when two dogs came down with Kennel Cough, so we had to withdraw one team and remix the others rather drastically. Because it was so last minute, some people weren’t able to switch days as well, so we really did have a very odd mix of teams!

Dylan was running with his usual teammates Bailey and Buddy, and then Jet and George from the top team. Like all the teams, we struggled a bit in the morning to hit the times we were expecting; the grass was very long and damp in the arena and the dogs just couldn’t get their footing. We also didn’t have a lead dog for this team, so Buddy and Dylan shared duties. Dylan actually did reasonably well, but he looks up at me rather than forward towards the lane, so our starts were a bit off at times. Thankfully we won’t have to do it again! Either way, we won the division and just had great racing all day, lots of fun.

Kim and Mollie were on Sunday, with a complete mixed bag of dogs. Kim was running as height dog and as anchor, as we had three dogs who all prefer to run lead dog. The team actually ran really well, but we made a few too many mistakes and lost three of six races (in a 7-team division). We were the only team to beat the fastest team in the division, which was fantastic racing and pushed us to our best time of 20.90s.

End of the summer season means we’re reassessing all our teams and trying to get singles times on all of the dogs; Dylan was hovering just under 5s all weekend, but I’m fairly confident in saying he usually runs a bit quicker than that. He didn’t appreciate the ground and he also wasn’t happy having a strange boxloader, it makes a big difference to his turn. Kim was just over 5s, and ran that all day, despite being over her full height and in a 7-team div. Mollie varied between 4.8s – 5.2s, even over 12″ and not running lead, where we know she runs faster. Somehow our oldest dog is also the fastest?!