Right now I’m too tired to write out a proper post on the British Flyball Championships, so this will have to do.
My collies are so cool.
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Monthly Archives: August 2011
Bathtime
Actually put in some effort today and bathed, brushed and trimmed Dylan.
We had one huge strop over nail clipping only. Result!
We also practised freestacking for our before and after shots. Slight improvement on the after shot, his front is positioned properly but his rear is too far under his body. Oops. His front angulation always looks worse than it is because of his markings. His shoulder layback on this photo doesn’t actually look too bad.
He’s now ready to go at the Champs!
32/52 Bling
Nantwich/Larden Green
Lovely venue, lovely hosts. Would go again, two thumbs up.
Dylan and Mollie both ran in the second team. Dyl has been dropped down to this team for several reasons, mainly because we have several injured or recovering-from-injury dogs who we have had to pull completely, or put into teams where they can be pulled as often or as little as they need to be. Dylan is also happier, because he can run anchor and change into a dog he is comfortable with. It made a real, noticable difference this weekend. Running over 9″ was a little bit hit-and-miss, Dyl hasn’t trained over this height so he was overjumping for most of the day and his boxwork was alternatively great or very very wide. Still, he clocked steady 4.7-4.8s and he should be faster than that for the Champs, which is good. Mollie ran great, as ever, and we won that division.
Kim’s team struggled, we won only one race and our times weren’t great. Much to work on there, I think. Kim’s splits averaged around 5.5s all day, which is reasonable. She is a 10.5yr old 12″ height dog running every leg, which ticks every excuse in the book for slow times.
Champs next time!
Dog Vegas
Kim first, because she’s special. She was awesome this weekend, she enjoyed every run, even if what she was enjoying was arguing with me. She was silly and noisy and flirted with all the boy dogs, especially Gilbert.
Unfortunately we were just outclassed. We ran some great clears but there were some equally fast, equally good G6 dogs there who just edged out the old lady and I. I sometimes think Kim plans it; she clearly loved running this weekend, was fast and fun and needs just one more win for G7, but failed to get it. She knows I’m on to retiring her when she reaches G7, the sneaky minx.
Dylan was not good. Kind of. His contacts, groundspeed, turns and weaves were great, but his jumping was dreadful. We had early takeoffs, late takeoffs, skipping strides, measuring, every bad trick in the book. Bar three, we also had the easiest 4/5-7 courses I’ve ever run this weekend. It was like being back in Grade 3! So we got a lot of clears and no places, sometimes 5s off the pace of the winners. Very frustrating, worrying and disappointing.
First difficult course was the hardest course I have ever run, first thing on Friday morning. Harder than some of the Champ courses I’ve seen, and it says something that Winnie won the G6 with time faults. Only 2 dogs (both G7′s) got under the course time, and only a handful of dogs got around the course at all.
Second difficult course was the G5-7 Vegas Money class on Sunday. It was a ground-covering course but with some traps and challenges in there as well, and we did an ok clear. And we came 1st. I am thrilled to bits, but I’m also a bit shocked! It was a nice run, nothing special, and it never even crossed my mind that we might have won it. I didn’t even check the results, didn’t go to presentations, nothing. We also picked up £9 as it was the Vegas class, so Dylan officially earnt more than I did in July.
Third difficult course was the hilariously difficult G4-7 Jumping, which we got another E on. Amazingly we did the very tricky section, and then promptly popped out of the 9 weaves (which we had no problem with in the other 400 classes they featured in). Oops! Lots of fun to run though, I’ll try and find a course plan from that one.
Glossing over the amazing win, which throws us into Grade 6 for the winter season (I have no more KC shows before October now!), Dylan’s jumping really was a cause for concern. Huge thanks to Vicki, Suzanne and Julie who were all happy to stand and listen to me worry, and for their various suggestions on the possible cause. Dyl is going to the vet next week for a check over, I want to be sure there is nothing physical causing him to jump weirdly. There are a couple of other things I’m going to check out which could indirectly be causing it as well.
