Hi! I’m Dylan. My mum has been calling me 22″-at-the-withers-Dylan-arg today in a despairing voice, and this is why.

Here’s a picture of me. I can’t remember what I was looking at but it must have been interesting!

I was really sad and confused as my mum only took me across the road for a second, I didn’t even get time to chase any squirrels or find any golf balls! I did get chance to bark at my friend Alfie though, but I got shushed because people were still sleeping. Don’t know why, there’s so much to be doing!

I was a bit confused later too because my mum put me in the car without my big sisters, and I don’t get to go places without them very often. Kim was shouting all sorts of nasty things at everyone; she doesn’t like being left behind! Anyway, we set off and it took aggggggeeesss to get wherever we were going. I kept waking up and having a look out of the window but no, we weren’t there yet. I think mum and big-mum must have been driving in circles, I’m sure I saw the same tree three times. They were both looking a bit worried, and they were very quiet all the way there so I thought I’d better be too.

Eventually we arrived, and there was agility! My favourite thing, I got quite excited until Mum hurried off to find something called the “secretary’s tent” and she left me in the car, so I sat and waited patiently for her. She always comes back but I do worry sometimes in case she leaves me. She came back a bit later and looked a lot happier because apparently I was going to get measured. After a bit she took me to the secretary’s tent too and had another talk with the people there, and there was a lot of sad-sorry-voices going on over my head. Mum was very unhappy again when she left the tent, she told me I was a good boy though so that’s ok! Apparently I’m supposed to get measured before I can do agility at some shows, and she’d gone all the way to this long-away show so I could get measured. But even though there were some people who could have measured me, they didn’t have any equipment with them and so I couldn’t get measured and I had to come all the way home again.

While we were there we did get to go for a walk and I met my old friend Sammy the Spaniel, he’s loads of fun but he wasn’t allowed to play as he was supposed to be concentrating on the agility. Mum spent a lot of time talking to people who smelled a bit familiar, and it was really boring, I had to jump up at her a few times to remind her I was still there! So she let me play at dogwalks on the benches, I was really good and did my stops even though it wasn’t a proper dogwalk. Sammy was well impressed! Mum told me to have a good look around because I probably wouldn’t be going to any of the Scunthorpe or Dog Vegas shows next year because they don’t have good classes for Kim, so I was a good boy and explored everywhere I could.

Anyway, mum is really busy packing the car for our weekend away so I got a chance to sneak on and tell you what I did today, except I didn’t really get to do anything! Mum and big-mum spent a lot of time talking about how the show and the measurers had been very nice and their hands were bound by the rules, but it’s still silly that dogs as big as me have to get measured, because I’m so big I couldn’t be anything but big! That all sounded really confusing to me so I had to go to sleep again. When I woke up they were still talking about it, and mum is all worried again because I might not be able to do agility next week even though I’m entered in the classes. That would be sad, I love agility!

Mum says we’ll be back on Monday night so I won’t be away too long. That good because I love my Mollie and she’s not coming with us tomorrow, it’s just me and Kim for the weekend. I wonder where we’re going … ?

Mollie has clearly been having words with Dylan recently; he’s overcome his fear of the seesaw and flyball is suddenly exciting! He had a fantastic training session last night, he did some perfect swimmer’s turns off the box without any training aids at all.

We’re going to start introducing a command word now to remind him what he’s supposed to be doing and make sure he turns into the box. More hassle for the boxloader but that’s what they’re there for! At least he isn’t fussy about what ball he gets.

Dylan is definitely best running lead at the moment. I’m just really chuffed with his progress this week, the runs with the Starter team at Newark really seem to have done him some good and he’s a lot more focussed on the line. We also had a bit of speed from him which was nice! It looks like he’s going to turn out to be about as fast as Kim, probably a bit quicker over the big hurdles. I’ll be thrilled if he turns out to be half as consistent as Kim, as I always think it’s more valuable to have a consistent 4.8 second dog rather than a dog who can go up to half a second slower or faster depending on the race or the weather or the day! Having said all that he hasn’t really done any 2-lane training yet against faster dogs so we’ll have to see if they draw him on or not. He did seem to be chasing a little at Newark but it’s hard to tell if he can even see the dog in the other lane with three rows of netting between them!

The running orders are out for Doncaster next weekend and it looks like it should be fun — three rings of flyball!

Finally, we did the seesaw!

I was beginning to think we were never going to get there, but at training yesterday I decided just to go for it. Not my normal approach to things! I like to have the groundwork and be confident that we can achieve what we’re aiming for rather than just taking the plunge and potentially freaking myself and my dog out, but Dylan and I felt like we were working on the same wavelength for once so I just sent him over it before I could start overthinking!

He did it perfectly! Skidded into his 2o2o perfectly and held it before he got the ok to come and play tuggy. I’ve never been so proud!

Obviously with Dylan things are never as straightforward as they seem, because the third time we tried it he lost his balance a bit and kind of fell off the side just as it hit the ground, which meant he wasn’t braced for the bounceback and it caught him on the leg. We had a big play anyway, I need him to stay brave and confident on the seesaw. The next couple were a bit cautious and then we took a break to do some Aframe and jumping exercises, and then we did a few more before calling it a night. The last one was back to being nice, right to the end and riding it down, so I’m very pleased. We can actually run in some agility classes now!

We’re still having a problem with creepy contacts, I tried several of the solutions offered by people last night and none of them worked! Quick releases actually seemed to slow him down. I tried varying my position to the Aframe, increasing and decreasing the amount of noise I made, and winding him up for his approach. He nailed the contact every time but he’s very slow to hit the 2o2o and I don’t have that time to waste in competition, sadly! Emma spent some time watching him and came up with a possible solution for next week, so we’ll have to see if that works!

Well, after all my frustration with Dylan earlier this week, the bloody dog turns out to be a genius!

Ok, that might be a bit of an exaggeration. But it’s amazing how a good training session can turn everything around again. We finally got around to doing a bit more boxwork this week, and I can only say a big thank you to Vicky as her good advice seems to have worked. We haven’t touched the box for 10 days or so, but it was such a nice evening we decided to give it a go.

We started off doing some reps around the cone and he was doing fantastically, really powering off the box. I had my mum stand in as “boxloader” - no ball but she was setting the spring as though there was so we could check he was triggering it properly. Thrilled to bits with him! Julie and I were discussing last time about perhaps replacing his cone with a low jump in front of the box, as Murphy has, to encourage him to snap off it faster. I’d been giving this idea a lot of thought and really liked it, as I think it’s easier to phase out a jump than a cone and it would really be encouraging Dylan to do the turn independently.

So tonight we set up a jump in front of the box, loaded it up and gave it a shot! Dylan took to it like a pro! I’m so proud of him, he was snapping off it much faster and he was getting all four paws on the box still to push off. We’re still using the stiff Canadian box, which will only trigger with a really forceful bounce. Dylan has never really used the Canadian box until we brought it home 2 weeks ago and so I’m very pleased with the progress.

We finished by giving Mollie a couple of reps. As I may have mentioned, Mollie is a flyball fanatic, and she has the frothing-at-the-mouth to prove it. We left the aids in front of the box and she demolished them every single time, and then again when she went back to show my mum her ball. It’s always fun to run the Mol! As always, I wish we’d taught her from a pup as she has a wicked-fast turn when there isn’t a ball-loaded and she could easily knock .3/4 off her Singles times. Equally, I would have loved to have seen Mollie flyballing in her prime as a 3 year old — she runs 4.9 Singles times at 9 years old, with a terrible box turn — can you imagine the speed she could have turned on with young muscles and smooth joints in her legs!?

Don’t expect I’ll get chance to post again until after Shrewsbury, so wish us luck and I’ll write you a nice long boring report afterwards.

I really should be writing my essays right now, especially because I entered Shrewsbury this weekend knowing full-well that my essays would be due in next week. Just another 3500 words to go …

Dylan and I had a horrible training session yesterday. I was going to post about it in an attempt to try and work out what is going wrong, but I’ve been chatting to people and wrangling it out that way, and really I already know the problems. Dylan always takes the easy route. This is not like me or Kim at all, and so I’m used to working with a dog who will try something different or stretch herself to reach something if she (or I!) dares. Dylan never dares! He is happier drifting along with what he knows rather than doing something new and scary. It’s all about our mental outlook, and Dylan and I are thinking on different wavelengths right now. Despite all the frustration, I know Dylan and I will have a better relationship when I work out how to fix things.

Kim sulked because I didn’t take her training last night, which also left her enough energy to wake me up this morning. Normally she’s quite a lazy dog and will happily stay in bed until 8am or later. But today she squirmed over 5:50am and, once she knew I was awake, rolled on my head. She then fetched her toy and threw it at me, which was not appreciated but did make me laugh! She’s usually very elegant and dignified so it’s always funny to see her doing something puppy-like or silly. I’m looking forward to this weekend with her, we haven’t had a competition without Dylan for a couple of months and so I’ll be able to concentrate on her properly. I don’t know how people manage to run 3 or more dogs, I can barely make the switch between two! We also have Pairs with Bailey this weekend, which should be fun. Neither Emma or I are very serious about Pairs or Team events, we do them for a bit of fun and an extra run for the dogs.

Lastly, I’m sorry the website went down for 24 hours! I attempted to upgrade to Wordpress 2.5.1, and it (for whatever reason) didn’t work. I didn’t have chance to fix it immediately, which has played havoc with my web stats! For those odd people who are interested in this kind of thing, undermybed.co.uk has had over 1100 hits this month, and had about 200 click-outs from the links on this page, mainly through comments. So if you want some more visitors, comment with a link from your name to your website. Plus I love getting comments.