Monthly Archives: September 2011

Tell Me Thursday

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1. What movie do you love but are too embarrassed to admit you love it?
I don’t think I have one! I love lots of films and I’m never embarrassed to admit it. Looking at my current collection I think the most embarrassing one there is probably Notting Hill, but that’s only because it’s kind of lonely amongst all the bad early 90′s action movies and Pixar films. It has Sliding Doors for company.

2. Ann wants to know: How far do you drive/travel to attend trials, clinics, lessons? How far is too far?
I am so lucky. Our agility training arena is only 10minutes from my house. Flyball is a little further, around 40mins, but nothing strenuous. I won’t travel further than 2hrs for training, but to be honest, there are a variety of excellent trainers within that distance. Bonus points for UK travel!

3. What is your theme song (circa Ally McBeal)?
I don’t have one! Music is background noise, it’s fun but I don’t really listen to things over and over. I listen to Podcasts more than I listen to music.

4. Laura S wants to know: If you had to choose a new dog activity, one that you had never done before, what would you choose?
I would love to try herding. I would also really love to train obedience, and do canix, and perhaps dabble in a bit of ringcraft. In fact, I’d pretty much love to try anything. I like working with my dogs, we’ll give anything a shot. I just don’t have enough time to fit everything in, so right now it’s agility and flyball.

5. What would your dog choose (or scribe, if you’re Pippin)?
Mollie would pick flyball, every single time. I think Kim would choose something competitive, probably lure coursing or similar, where she can actually race against another dog and then rub it in their face when she wins. Dylan would play frisbee dogs, all day every day.

Kim’s Ice Blue Moon

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The points have gone up from Kim’s last flyball competitions and she officially has her Ice Blue Moon award.

I always wanted her to get this, and now she has, I feel comfortable saying Kim is going to be retiring from competitive flyball this winter.

She is fit, she is happy, and she still loves to flyball. She’s also 11 in December and I can see how tired she is at the end of a day, how much it takes out of her. Tiny little things that I’m sure most other people couldn’t possibly have noticed; her hind muscles tremble when she’s tired. She slipped badly at training last week, turned on the box and faceplanted immediately as her legs went from under her. She drinks out of the water bowl that’s been dribbled in.

I won’t let her do flyball until she’s injured and is forced to retire. I won’t let her run on painkillers and I won’t let her run as the height dog, as she has done for the whole of her life. I won’t let her run for the sake of one more competition, or one more Champs, or the next award. I won’t let her be one of those dogs who are crippled and tripping over the jumps when they can’t see or hear but “oh, s/he still loves it!”. Kim does still love it, and I am going to miss running her more than anything, but this is the right decision.

Her Ice Blue Moon seems as good a point as any to say, this is it.

Kim will continue training, and to be honest, she will probably make a few guest appearances next summer, as emergency reserve on the team sheet. She’s actually running at Drax whilst I’m at the seminar, teaching our Junior handler the ropes in her first competition. I’ve been hinting for a while that this retirement was looming, and have mentioned it outright in a few conversations, but I thought I’d better make an official post on the reasons, just to stall some of the questions on why.

Dylan will still be competing, as will Mollie – her retirement isn’t my decision anyway! – and hopefully Future!Pup will be around next summer too.

Neglecting the Blog

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I haven’t posted in forever, oops! Partly because my External Hard Drive died (after 2 months, I hate you Seagate), so I’ve spent lots of time trying to recover all my photos and so on from all over the internet. Partly because we haven’t really done anything new or interesting! I have a training day coming up on October 8th, plus the Rocket Relay seminar mid-Oct, but my next show isn’t until right at the end of the month. Mid-September, very boring.

Training has been running as normal, Dylan’s jumping is still an issue. Some weeks he is very forward and jumping beautifully, and then last week we had lots of unexpected strides. I do feel like his method has changed, and instead of several little strides, he runs forward and if anything, is taking off too close to the jump now. We actually had 2 poles down in one exercise last week, first time ever!

I can’t decide whether this is a positive change or a negative one; it could be that the gridwork we have been doing is paying off and that this is a step in the right direction, or that I’ve confused him completely and he now can’t decide on a take-off-point at all.

I have to admit I feel a little lost at times, everyone I speak to has a different opinion and none of my reading seems to throw up anything like what he’s doing. I don’t want to keep swapping and changing what we do in an attempt to “fix” things, so I think we’ll stick with what we’re doing for a little bit longer and see if we make any progress.

Tell Me Thursday

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1. If you’re not at the 2011 Sheepdog finals this weekend what are you planning to do?
I intend to go flyball training on Saturday morning, and run a Contact Workshop on Sunday morning. Because getting up early, whoo!

2. One item you NEVER walk onto the trial field (any trial field, or training class will suffice) without?
My dog. There really isn’t anything else that I always have.

3. Katy wants to know if you have a pre-run ritual that you observe?
Yes, although it depends on the dog. Each dog has their own warm-up (mental and physical) before they run, but even trying to think how to explain it is too tiring. It also changes depending on where we are and how much time we have before we’re due on the line.

4. How old were you when you had your first real kiss?
How personal for my dog blog! 14.

5. Bonnie wants to know what you do for yard mud control during the winter?
This question makes some assumptions about my life that can only be called incorrect. I don’t have a yard. I have a garden! And I don’t do gardening. Sometimes it’s muddy, sometimes it’s not. It’s not big enough for me to care because it’s not big enough for anything other than Dylan and Mollie playing football.

Sutton Fields

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Lovely day at Sutton Fields. I love this venue, I am going to continue my pestering of the team and hope we get to go again next May.

Two mix teams as we had several dogs on holiday (how inconvenient!), although Dyl’s team was actually the same as usual but with a fifth dog change.

Dylan and Mollie ran brilliantly, the team ran a new seed time of 20.16 and finished … last. Well, 5th. We can’t have everything. The 20.16 was on a break out and yet we managed to lose nearly every leg all day, oops. Really do feel like this team is gelling now, the dogs are getting comfortable running together and we’re pushing down the seed time even though ditzy Biba still isn’t running as consistently as she can. Unfortunately we now have the winter break and by next summer who knows what the team will be!

Kim’s team was made up of three top team dogs and then Kim and Bailey from the third team. We were on a DF time but I always thought we’d be pushing for break-out and we did, but nearly everyone in the division was. Lovely fast ground at Sutton! We ran a fantastic 19.40 with Norah, Roi, Kim and Bailey over 11″, and both height dogs were running over 5s. With Jet in there and a fast height dog this team would easily be running 17s times, so we’ll have to see what winter brings!

We finished 1st but it was tough racing, especially against Fylde in the last race where we were a leg down and had a dead heat before pulling it back. Super stuff!

I have all my fingers crossed that Kim has picked up the final points for her Ice Blue Moon at this venue as well, for various reasons, but we’ll see what happens when the points go up.