Monthly Archives: October 2010

Hare’n'Hounds Halloween

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I love that Hare’n'Hounds are theming all their winter shows, it’s fun and cute and apparently traumatising for Jet, but it’s such a nice touch for already awesome shows.

Jet had a very tough course for first thing in the morning with her Grade 3 Agility, lots of flick-flacks and pull-thrus in the smallest ring, and a tunnel-weave-Aframe into nowhere that I knew was going to be a bit of a problem for us. Jet (like Dylan) needs to be raced along her contacts to get the best out of her, and it just wasn’t possible to do so for the Aframe in this class. I lost her at jump 6 when she picked up the tunnel way too early, but she actually ran the class really well and I was very happy with her!

Dylan also had a very tough course first, his Graded 4-7 Jumping class. Although I knew this was going to be Dylan’s first Grade 5 show, but I hadn’t actually thought about the splits, and he had tough classes all day with the Grade 7 dogs. Dylan tried so hard in the Jumping, I lost him at the pull-thru before the weaves, but he really worked his socks off.

Jet was back in for her G3-4 Agility, which was a really beautiful course in the biggest ring, so very open and with lots of room to run. It was also the ring where the judge had a cloak on, and the scribe was wearing a Halloween bobble headband. Jet has issues with people wearing hats, but the first thing to freak her out was a Halloween poster on the wall. So I didn’t actually know if she was going to run, and I spent all my time reassuring her instead of the usual pre-run routine. Once we set off, she was absolutely fine, but I was all over the place with my handling, nearly collided with the judge* and then I didn’t get her weave command in early enough.

I then whisked Jet off to run her ABC Agility, which was in the same ring as the Grade 3 Agility and had a very similar course. Jet had a lovely run and our only clear of the day, although her contacts were too slow and that really pushed us out of the placings. She finished 7th overall, so not too shabby!

Jet had her nice ABC, and with hindsight, I should have entered Dylan in the Border Collie Jumping rather than the Open, but at least we drew Part 1 of the C1-7 Jumping which had by far the smoother course. Dylan had a slightly lazy run, wasn’t really stretching or driving on as well as he has been lately, but he went clear and actually finished 12th, and beat some Grade 6/7 dogs to do so. I think he was the 3rd Grade 5 dog, which was a very good result.

Jet had her final run in the Grade 3 Jumping, and flew around but just rolled a pole on one of the straights. Can’t complain because it was a really smooth, nice run, and I caused the pole. We really felt to be working more as a team by the end of the day, and I know Jet had fun because she tried to rag on my arm when we were done.

Dylan had his two agility classes to finish, and I was a bit concerned as he hadn’t really run as well as he could in the Jumping, and I want to keep hold of that madcap enthusiasm he’s been showing recently. Thankfully it call came flooding back in the C4-5 Agility, which was in the big ring and was a really wide open course, lots of space and room whilst being challenging enough for the dogs. Perfectly pitched! Dylan and I lost the plot immediately, obviously, when faced with a nice course. I don’t think we’ve ever made such a shambles of a run! Dylan had beautiful fast contacts, and I’ve genuinely never seen him power into his jumping as well. Shame we were all over the place! I finished up happy and so did Dylan, and I think the very stunning Flatcoat in front of us won the class.

Final run was Graded 5-7 Agility, and Dyl and I showed off our inexperience at this level. We went clear, but it was not at all pretty. Beautiful fast contacts though! Somehow we finished 4th regardless, which I’m happy with. Based on this weekend, I think Dylan could win out of Grade 5 this winter, but I think we would both be overfaced in Grade 6 at the moment, we aren’t ready to move up. The tight spacings and multiple potential obstacles meant Dylan spent a lot of time dithering between jumps, and I wasn’t clear enough or fast enough with my cues to get him where he needed to be.

*Not my fault! Judges should not assume everyone is going to handle the dogwalk from the same side! Because I was trying to avoid the judge, I couldn’t get to where I needed to be and Jet got 5R.

Mid Week Philosophies

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Feels like it’s been a slow week. Training went well on Tuesday, and I continued to try and make a bigger point of properly rewarding Dylan. This is such a basic thing, but because Dylan is always happy to continue after a quick toy-throw or verbal positive reinforcement, I get lazy.

Kim would not let me get away with that kind of lazy attitude. Kim is a very firm teacher, she will never let me get away with slacking in training. Dylan is a much more honest dog, and in that special Border Collie way, he continues to try long after Kim would have given up in disgust. Kim taught me to get my ass in gear, and then Dylan taught me that I shouldn’t be relying on my dog to tell me that.

Kim Watching

I also ran Jet this week, and we have so much to work on! Jet is very well trained, and I am an ok handler, but together we are not quite working as a team yet. Not only that, but her strengths and weaknesses are almost the complete opposite to Dyl. Jet is brilliant athlete, she is a beautiful confident jumper and can wrap wings so tightly when required. But her contacts aren’t as sticky as Dylan, she has a tendency to see what she can get away with and occasionally be a bit creepy, so I need to watch that. I also need to make sure she doesn’t lock on to a line, since it’s almost impossible to re-route her once she thinks she knows where she is going!

Either way, both dogs were wrapping some excellent 90 degree weave entries and exits. We definitely need to work on the contacts a little more though, as usual!

October Rotherdrax Flyball

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I am already regretting entering anything over the winter. I always forget about the cold, and the dark, and the cold.

Kim was running with the second team, Hawk, and after a small series of minor disasters our lovely 5-dog team was down to an equally-lovely but slightly unpredictable 4 dog team. Kim and Brooke are both 12″ height dogs, and both can get a little tired running all day, and our lead-lurcher Chip is a lurcher, and he gets a little bored of flyball sometimes. However, with one full height dog gone, everyone was in and we actually had a really great days racing! We finished 1st in Div 6.

Dylan was running with the first team, Barneys, and we had to switch the order around unexpectedly after our first warm-up. Dylan was reassigned on the front, which makes me pull all kind of squirmy faces. I’m not great on the lights, but I’m even worse with Dylan! Dylan has issues approaching the first hurdle, and has started stuttering into the jump quite badly. We worked out his stride pattern and eventually worked out that he must go from 35ft into a dog he trusts, otherwise he stutters. This does not work when we go lead, because Dyl needs to run from 37ft to hit the start at the right time! This completely wrecked his stride and even when we moved back to 35ft in the afternoon he was all over the place.

His box was noticably tighter in the afternoon, he tends to go very wide in the morning (I don’t know why … ) but he’s always run better in the afternoon anyway. So now the most frustrating thing with Dylan is that he’s running at around 5s or just under over 14″ with this stupid stuttering start. Hopefully next time Norah will be back and we won’t have to go lead again! We finished 1st in Div 4 anyway, which was a bit of a happy ending.

Mollie is very happy to be at Drax!

Mollie was in the third team, Marsh, and had a great time running lead over 9″ all day. She’s completely mental. We struggled a bit in this division as we were on a declared time, and couldn’t run our fastest four dogs as they would break out! I think the team finished 3rd overall, but it was excellent racing.

Kim got her Gold Award (15,000points). She’s the 431st dog to get this award in the history of the BFA, and the 85th Crossbreed to get it. She actually got the points for it way back in June, but the BFA are so far behind on uploading the points that the awards are just starting to get presented now. Typically, this is the time of year when people don’t want to stay for presentations, and really don’t want presentations to take long when they do stay! It was freezing cold yesterday, but we had a few other dogs getting big awards as well, plus our successful day rosette-wise. Traditionally Owlers give a little bag of goodies to the dogs and handlers getting their big awards, and Kim got a lovely “gold” toy that she promptly ragged in all the dirt, a gold trophy and some very smelly chicken treats. And I got a baby box of Celebrations, so everybody wins!

Actually, the two trophies Kim has from her Silver and now Gold awards are two of my favourite trophies, they get pride of place on the shelf. They represent how brilliant a flyball dog Kim is, even if she isn’t the fastest singles dog; they represent all the cold and the rain and the baking hot days, the grass, turf, mud, rubber matting. The sitting in the rain while the lights go haywire, again. Running in every position into every dog every single time. Never running off whils we set up campsite, mugging people for food, helping put the tents down again. Being incredibly noisy, silly and excited, but still doing every run perfect every time with 100% heart. The 15,000 points doesn’t necessarily mean that, but the trophies from our team do.

Full Circle

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After last week’s bad training session, we had a great time this week. We had a fun set up for courses that involved a tight boxwork section, which then opened out into a huge loop of weaves-tunnel-jump-long jump. Made for lots of running! Both Dylan and I really enjoyed it, and we got a lot out of it; there were some unexpected challenges on the courses we ran, where the handlers assumed certain sections would be difficult and they turned out to be easy, or vice-versa.

One of the toughest challenges was something the handlers all thought was fairly straightforward, a diagonal across a corner of the box. The dogs were approaching with a long run up from an angle, and we all assumed the dogs would carry on the line to take the diagonal. None of them did! They all straightened themselves up and carried on across the box, taking the jump opposite.

Sadly my ‘adopted dog’ Jetsy wasn’t feeling too good so I didn’t get to practise with her for our runs at Hare’n'Hounds in two weeks. Katie is busy at university and she’s decided that she’s not relaxed enough at shows to run Jet to their full partnership potential. I know this has been a tough decision for her, so I’m incredibly grateful to Katie for letting me borrow Jet over the winter season. Of course, I’m not sure I can do Jet justice, but we’re going to try and bring some rosettes home anyway. It also means I get two dogs to run, which I always love doing!