Kim was flying last night, we had a lot of fun and some very nice runs. She always works better if she’s wound up by watching other dogs work, and hopefully now she’s moving up the levels there will be more exciting dogs for her to watch before she runs. That’s probably a very un-PC agility comment to make but I don’t care!

Pull-thrus. Did lots of pull-thrus, something we always need to work on. Sometimes they’re brilliant, sometimes they’re really not. We had a few arguments on the top wonky-line of 4 about coming through one of the gaps but we got there in the end, and she did the rest well. When it flows, pull-thrus are easy and we can do them, but when it doesn’t flow, Kim has a tendency to dig in her heels and argue. I’m always tempted to let her win the arguements because secretly I agree that it is stupid and her way is better. Can’t tell her that though, she’d never let me get away with it.

Seesaw. Over the years I have spent so much time on the seesaw with Kim, and none of it seems to have worked. She just finds the seesaw scary, probably from starting out on a really lightly weighted “homemade” one when I had no idea there were actually agility competitions and so on. At one point earlier this year we went back to basics and held the end for her and lowered it slowly, which actually made everything worse, so we stopped that pretty quickly. I think what we have now is as good as it’s going to get, which is a shame. On the other hand, having played with positioning and approaches for the past few weeks I know where I need to be to ensure she hits the contact and I know that I can be in that place every time as no matter where I run to or stand, it doesn’t make a difference to her speed.

MollieBaldEars is back amongst us! She had a lovely time at the vets, she get’s spoilt rotten with cuddles whilst she’s there. Her ears are now all clean and shiny and sadly hairless, so she looks hilariously bad.

Possibly as a result of being laughed at so much, she went missing (presumably escaped and roamed wild around the neighbourhood) for an hour and a half this afternoon, which means I’m now exhausted as I spent almost all that time walking every possible route I could think of that she might have taken.

On to more well-behaved dogs. Kim worked surprisingly well at training! I set a course that was purposefully full of pull-thrus and flick-flacks because that’s where we have our weaknesses, and once I’d finally got into the right place she actually did it nicely.

She seems to have got over her seesaw freak-out too, which is good. She’s never going to be superfast on the seesaw, she’s not brave enough to run right to the end and because she’s so light, it takes a while for the seesaw to drop. I have worked out how to ensure she hits her contact though, which is good to know.

Speaking of seesaws, you would never think Dylan had been so afraid of it at the beginning of this year. He loves it now, can’t get him off the damn thing! We had a few crazy skidding-to-the-end moments but he settled down after that and worked it with slightly more sense (ie. not trying to kill himself) but not much. He also nailed every weave entry, and then he had a run around with Emma right at the end which was adorable. Emma has a very different handling style to me and doesn’t use left/right commands as religiously as I do, so he got a bit confused, but it was obvious he was trying really hard to get it right. He has “good dog” written all over him!

Training was … “interesting” this week.

Dylan was totally over the top, completely overexcited and silly. Broke all his waits, pushing all his contacts, just pushing in general on everything that was asked. It sounds really odd when I try and describe it to people as really, he doesn’t sound like he was doing anything out of the ordinary for a collie. But he was not my normal dog!

Anyway, he ended up nipping my friend’s dog which was awful, I’m so furious with myself for not realising how wound up he was and putting him away until he’d calmed down. Thankfully the other dog is fine, just a bit bruised, but Dylan got a proper telling off and although he was apologetic and calmed down, was still pushy and bolshy when I ran him at the end of the session.

Considering how well he’s been working over the past couple of weeks, it’s frustrating to have something new crop up now. Especially because he nailed all his weave entries, all his contacts (although he was pushing all evening) and worked over the equipment fine.

*insert angry face here*

‘Owlers have withdrawn from Newark in 2 weeks for various reasons, which I’m a bit sad about because it means Kim won’t have a chance to run “properly” indoors this winter season. Kim loves running indoors, perferably in the loudest, most echo-ing hall with the hardest surface, and she always throws up her fastest singles times in those circumstances. Having said that, most of our dogs (like most “normal” flyball dogs over here in the UK) don’t really like running on rubber matting and it’s hard on our veteran gang, so it’s probably for the best. Our next flyball will be at Doncaster, which is run on turf and the ring is in such a huge arena it always feels to be outdoors. The cars and caravans parked indoors don’t help! And then in the new year we’ll have Rotherham in the marquee, which is pretty fab and does feel like an indoor tournament as Kim proved by running her little socks off at the last one. (As soon as we start talking about pulling her back next season and swapping teams so she can ease into retirement next year, she blows off to run sub-5s times all day over 13″ jumps and looks comfortable in Div 1 company. I can see she’s not going down without a fight — that’s my girl!)

November is looking pretty dull now though! I have EMDAC on the 29th but that’s a whole 4 weeks away. For some reason, every year I have a mental blank when it comes to November and I just never enter anything, and every year I’m bored stupid every weekend! Luckily we still have training every week for agility and flyball so hopefully that will keep me entertained, and I’m going to try and get some of the weaves at home again so I can really sort Dylan’s weave entries out. I’m really wishing I’d entered Newton Heath though, Kim could have had her first Grade 4 classes — just 2 runs but both Graded, and Dylan would have had 3 Graded runs. But I thought 4 weeks in a row (Newark, NH, EMDAC, Wyre/Donny) would have been a bit much so I skipped it. Remind me not to do that again!

Huge congrats to Vicki with Diesel for qualifying for Crufts today, and he’s still only 6 months old!

After all the long discussions with various people on how to improve Dylan’s creepy Aframe contact, it seems that we’ve finally made some progress. As I said before, he’s had a break from working on the Aframe and so we came back this week and really attacked it. There was a big improvement! No creeping on the down plank, just a check in his stride half way down so he could get the 2o2o, which I’m very happy about. He also started jumping the apex towards the end of the session which is great, we’re finally getting towards the Aframe performance I want.

Weave entries were worse though! His weaves are great generally and once he’s in, he weaves right to the end regardless of where I’m stood. But he is skipping the entry … think weaves are going to be my focus for next week!

I’m trying to maintain some perspective for EMDAC and remind myself that it’s still a month away and not to expect too much, but I’m feeling pretty excited about running the boy. Dylan’s sister Kai also made her competitive debut this past weekend at NAWS, from what I hear she had a very positive experience all round, so I think Nat is probably feeling the same at the moment! The November EMDAC also marks Kim’s first Novice classes and I’m not really sure what will happen there. I have been trying to work on the weaknesses we have with more difficult courses but as the classes are Novice Plus (Combined Novice, Graduate and Masters), even if we do go clear I’m not really expecting anything.

Team Trios: Personal Ads

The Team Trios Qualifying dates for 2009 haven’t been released yet, but working off the assumption that they’ll be similar to last year …

Kim (Novice Medium) and Bailey (Introductory Medium) are looking for a Primary Medium team-mate for the Team Trios 2009! [SORTED]

Dylan (Introductory Maxi) is also looking for some teammates! He’s had top-10 placings already in Introductory and has a lot more to come speedwise, but we have no consistency so no promises on him gaining many points.

If you’re interested, leave me a comment here or email me at kayanem@gmail.com

(BAA Team Trios Rules & Regs).