Hare’n'Hounds January 2012

Posted on January 31, 2012 by Leanne

My main goal for this show was to try and keep Dylan relaxed. Partially successful, he wasn’t stressed but his jumping was shocking (stutter striding, tucked jumping) and his contacts were lacking in confidence (although he did the seesaw without an issue, so apparently that has passed?!)

Nice course first thing in the G5-7 Agility, some complex sections and lots of handling options which I liked. Interesting to see that the Aframe had a double back to a tunnel and the Dogwalk was followed by a sharp right turn with a dummy jump ahead, which effectively caught out all the running contact dogs. I’m assuming that was by design of the judge, although it might have just been a coincidence! Dylan went clear, I held his contacts but we were still painfully slow, about 10s off the winners.

The Redmills was fairly straightforward, but Julie Buchanan was judging and she always includes a brush fence and a wall. I said before I ran that I thought Dylan might bail on the wall, particularly if he looked to be hesitant on the brush, and he did bail out the side. I can only assume that his reluctance to jump walls and brushes is linked to his degenerating jumping style in general, because he never flinched at them when he was younger. G5-7 Jumping was in the same ring at the end of the day, similar kind of course. We went clear but a little scrappy, Dyl took the wall with only a hesitation rather than a refusal though. No idea how far off our time was, I imagine miles, but didn’t wait for results. I did borrow part of the course plan for training though, there’s lots to be done with it!

G6-7 was one of the easiest 6-7 courses I’ve ever run, really simple. We technically went clear but Dylan broke his stop on his second contact and then did his backtrack look where he realises he probably shouldn’t have done that. We wouldn’t have been fast enough for the placings anyway, although I was pleased with my handling of the seesaw to Aframe section, I tried to be a bit braver with my choices and work Dylan from a distance to get into position and it worked.

BC Jumping went all to pot when Dylan skipped out on the 3rd jump. I’m pretty sure he was aiming for the long jump and realised he was locked on to the wrong thing at the last minute. Oops.

Rio had a good day, she tired herself out playing with Pogo and meeting people and dogs. She was quite motion-sensitive in the exercise area, any dogs racing around or chasing thrown toys was just too tempting to chase. Having said that, she was really great about recalling off those dogs, but I didn’t want to spend the entire time calling her back. No fun for anyone! She wasn’t at all bothered about watching the agility however, which was interesting. We sat right next to the ring and she was far more interested in politely mugging people for food. I was really happy with her behaviour all day though, she was great with all the other dogs, and although reserved with strangers, she was happy to meet and greet. She does get pushy with those people she recognises though, she’s spent the day with Cat twice and now feels that’s enough of an introduction to sit on her knee and steal things out of her pockets. I’m not too concerned about her being reserved with strangers, it is in the breed standard and so trying to turn her into Miss Socialite is going against her natural instinct and inclination. I’m quite happy to have her just be nice to anyone trying to say hello without attempting to lick their face off.

Since I finally have Flexitrack back I’m trying to make more of an effort to post course plans again. They are from memory so don’t expect total accuracy, especially with spacings. It’s just a rough guide to jog my memory in the future!

52 Weeks 2012 Dylan

Posted on January 7, 2012 by Leanne

20 Weeks

Posted on January 7, 2012 by Leanne

20 weeks?! How did that happen? Rio continues to be fun and chirpy and naughty and noisy. She’s about 16-17″ tall and 13.30kg. Her puppy fluff is slowly mutating into sleek adult fur, which basically means she has a darker stripe down her back about 4″ in width.

She’s still not very comfortable with children but there is only so much I can do about that as I don’t meet children very often!

She is getting better at being left alone. I decided we were pandering a little too much to her whims; we had been letting her out of her crate whenever she asked to go outside to toilet, but I figured we needed to start getting her to hold it as I had a feeling she was using the asking-to-go-out as an excuse just to get out her crate. Two minor tantrums, no accidents and suddenly she can hold it all night and can stay in her crate for 2-3hours whilst I go out. Amazing!

Dylan and I got back to agility training this week after the Christmas break. I needed an easy week back to see where I was at (not very fit/dying after 10mins springs to mind) but I also wanted to experiment with working on Dylan’s jumping when I wasn’t moving. I’ve read recently about ETS dogs who improve when there is a lack of handler motion so they can focus on jumping only, rather than getting distracted by running handlers. Dylan doesn’t have ETS but it seemed like it might be good to try, and it did help. It’s not a naturally comfortable handling style for me (Kim always always wants me to race her) and there are times when I need to run to get into position, but on more complex sequences I need to look at reducing my forward motion.

17 Weeks

Posted on December 23, 2011 by Leanne

Nearly 18 weeks, really.

Not so many tricks these past 2 weeks, mostly house manners and walk manners and visiting manners. I finally knuckled down and started working properly on REA, I’ve been a bit wary as I haven’t shaped it before and I was struggling to mark the right things. Thought about it without Rio, and then attempted to put the plan into action. It took us four sessions to get a rear foot target on the box, but they were short sessions (30s – 5mins) over the course of the day. She was getting slightly frustrated by the third session, but I think that was partly because she had an idea of what I was clicking for but she couldn’t figure out how to get her legs to do that on purpose.

I do love me that girl attitude though, Kim and Rio get pissy and start huffing under their breath and frowning at me, but they keep pushing and pushing until they get what they want. Dylan just goes into repeat-cycle of offering everything he already knows. It’s such a slooooow process for him to problem solve.

Sit, paw, both-paws, down, dead, left, go-round are all on command, and so is “go to bed”. She knows Ready and Go, recall is pretty awesome, Leave-it is also pretty good.

Getting lots of exposure to new things as the Christmas stuff has gone up, routine has been disrupted a lot this week as people are coming and going a lot more than usual with shopping etc. Different visitors, parcels delivered, later nights. All going fine.

She has grown some serious legs this week too. She’s still hovering at around 16″, lots of growing left to do yet though.

Gap Farm December

Posted on December 12, 2011 by Leanne

Rio’s first visit to a flyball competition!

That is the most important thing that happened all day, of course. Dylan ran very well, not as well as he could have done simply because he was running with unfamiliar dogs, and so was I. Our changeovers were not consistent! He ran steady 4.8s over 11″. I have to admit this was a bit disappointing as I feel like he has been running his heart out at training, and I definitely did not have that feeling from him at Gap Farm. On the other hand, his boxturn was reasonably good, he was running into the first hurdle without flinching on his changes, and he swapped for his tuggy 95% of the time (he’s 100% at training but it tends to drop in competition; like any retrain, it doesn’t always hold up under a competitive atmosphere!).

Both the older girls stayed at home in the warm, and I sadly did not get to pick up Kim’s Ice Blue Moon as apparently they weren’t posted or something. Hmph.

I was really impressed with my crazy puppy. She took the atmosphere, the noise, the hundreds of dogs and people, the Christmas costumes/tinsel/hats into her stride. She was polite with every dog she met, and we ticked lots of boxes, meeting hairy dogs (Bearded Collies), big scary looking dogs (Dobermans), tall pointy aloof dogs (Madeleine the Saluki), noisy small dogs (JRTs), some lovely lovely Staffies (Roxy and a big brindle gentleman), plus all the collies/crossbreeds/others. She played with Lolly, who is the least likely puppy lover ever, and she also played with Diva. She and Diva are going to be a pair of troublemakers, it’s clear already! Almost all the dogs she met were polite but disinterested, barring a few over-friendly Spaniels who she said hi to and then walked away from, and grumpy Ella, who gave her very clear “go away” signals which she obeyed. Very pleased with those responses.

She met all the people without any bother, not demanding attention but happy to go say hi if they asked her to. Not bothered about the hats/costumes/reflective jackets etc etc, which I was very pleased about. She made me laugh by noticeably favouring the people who had fed her, but she does recognise Emma and Claire now anyway. Also wasn’t bothered by the people carrying boxes or other weird items, or prams/wheeled objects.

I wasn’t sure whether to let her offlead or not, but we hit the enclosed exercise area with Roxy, George, and Lolly and it was empty apart from one other dog on the other side of the arena. I’d already done some recall-rewards with her there earlier, so I let her off for a mooch around. She was very well behaved, explored confidently but knew her limits, played with Lolly and did a few mad laps, and then came back when called. I like puppies to have plenty of freedom as early as possible, otherwise being off-lead becomes a massive adrenelin rush and all the training falls out of the window. So far this is working, let’s hope it holds up!

She freaked out a bit at the very loud and static-y tannoy, but it kept making me jump as well so I don’t blame her. She also wasn’t very happy about the unpredicable 7yr old girl doing weird things, but I know we need a bit more socialisation with children. I don’t know anyone with dog-friendly kids, so that needs thinking about.

She also didn’t much care for the flyball, which is fine by me! She was relaxed and maybe a bit bored when we sat watching the rings, not interested in the noise or the action at all. She is a tugging fiend however, she stole or tried to steal every passing tuggy so I bought her one of her own and she turned into a fierce little tuggy monster. There is no doubting her tug drive, it overrides even tasty food.

Everyone we met mistook her for a Collie, I lost count.