Category Archives: Flyball

Pre-Drax Flyball Training

  By Leanne | March 17, 2012 - 6:16 pm | Flyball, Health
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Mollie came back from her walk on Thursday looking a little bit lame, nothing drastically unusual as Mollie has no body awareness or respect for things like walls, trees, solid banks of earth, so she does occasionally come back a little stiff from her walks. Unfortunately, one recall and one run at flyball training this morning proved that it’s not a little stiffness and is looking like a muscle injury. Being the panic-stricken pessimist that I am when it comes to injuries, I immediately assume it’s a horrific injury like a cruciate or iliopsoas tear, because I have been waiting for one of those two to happen for years and it’s my worst nightmare.

Vet check Monday, anyway.

Dylan looked wonderful. I can’t stop talking about his adjustment because it’s been so noticeable; even little things like how much tighter he is off the box. We assumed he was going wide as he was slipping into old habits, but apparently not. He was so much more relaxed at training anyway as he was running with dogs he trusts (and had someone he knows well on the box!), bar a re-introduction to Biba. Dylan has known Biba since they were puppies, they’ve grown up together. But he hasn’t run in the same team as her for 6 months and hasn’t seen her since last December. First run, Biba into Dylan, Dylan bails 2 hurdles out with his “oh hell no, Beardies!” expression on. I was so unsurprised. (He has a special expression for Beardies. They’re so unpredictable and weird).

Once he realised who it was, he was happier, and he was even happier still when we put Buddy in as a buffer between Biba and Dyl. It also makes me happy too when people listen to me, as I have been adamant that this season, Dylan needs to run with the same dogs as he is getting too stressed about switching between teams. It may not be easy to spot, especially if you don’t know Dyl, but I am running him, holding his harness and on the other end of the tug, and I know my dog. No stress for Dylan unless unavoidable, please.

Kim got to play a little too, racing Norah, and so she was happy as well. And Rio got to do a few flat recalls off the box! She’s actually pushing off the box now which is great, and right now she’s a crazy little speedster as well. Hopefully we’ll keep all the enthusiasm and speed as she grows up!

Muddy Puppies

  By Leanne | February 19, 2012 - 2:21 pm | Bailey, Dylan, Flyball
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Hate this time of year, our flyball training field isn’t bad for draining but there is only so much time for water to go away! The mud is awful, lots of bathed dogs and very short sessions.

Dylan hasn’t flyballed since the beginning of December, so we were a little out of practice. Got some boxwork warmups done before running at least. He’s running without a height dog in our next tournament at Drax, which is just one of those things we can’t do much about at the moment as my height dog (Kim!) is retired, and the other two are being used by the other two teams. One of those things, eh. We are in a different team again, but here I can run Dylan anchor for the most part, and he’s running with dogs who have impeccable temperaments and that we are both utterly comfortable with. Unfortunately I only have two more training sessions to get my changeovers perfect despite the competition being at the end of March, but I think Dylan will feel confident about running with these dogs.

I’m also running Bailey at Drax so we had a practise, not that it’s hard to run Bailey – a small, noisy, terrier-esque bitch with strong opinions, I wonder why it’s easy?! – and as I’m changing into Mollie I think we’ll be ok.

It was nice to be at flyball and actually running a dog again!

Flyball Training

  By Leanne | February 4, 2012 - 9:02 pm | Flyball, Mollie, Rio
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First of the new year, finally! It was good to be back. Not that I had a dog to run; too cold for Kim’s old bones and as Dylan has 3 weeks of agility competitions in a row I didn’t want to risk overworking him in a flyball session.

Rio had fun, she met Chip and Bertie the giant Lurchers again, plus Bobbi the tiny hairy JRT, the Labradors, the Beardies, and all the other mishmash of crossbreeds. She’s also really happy to meet and greet people when they’re in a group, but if we meet an individual she is way more cautious. Lots of cuddles with people dressed in all kind of weird ways (it was very cold this morning), and also with a group of 10-12 young teenagers who appeared to watch mid session. They were fairly rowdy, smoking, loud, etc and she was friendly and happy.

Mollie had loads of fun but she was so tired at the end of the session, but a careful warm up and cool down mean she isn’t stiff this evening.

Rio Flyball Training (Target)

  By Leanne | February 3, 2012 - 10:00 am | Flyball, Rio, Training
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I promised this video a few months ago, and only just got around to converting it. Rio is 14 weeks in this video (I think!) and this was our third target session. The whole session consisted of maybe 2-3 minutes with long breaks, so 3 mins of actual training over 15-20mins.

Just because a few people were asking, this is a breakdown of what you can see us doing:

0:00 – 0:18: Paw touches to the target on the floor, and then paw touches with the target held in different positions and places. Double-paw touches gets double treats. I was rewarding almost any paw interaction with the target. We did this for maybe 20s, and it was really just a recap of previous sessions.

0:18 – 0:24: Getting more specific. Double paw touches have to be on the target. This got the most cuts from the video as it wasn’t very exciting and was recapping the second session.

0:25 – 0:48: Double paw touches with the reward being given for turning back. Rio’s inclination is to turn right, hence why I have switched sides on the video. This was our first session on this step, and you can see a couple of times she dithers between focussing on the target and the food in my hand behind her. I stopped being quite so specific about the paw touches but increased criteria again on the next session.

Rio is now 5 months and is turning off the target which is taped to the wall. She only offers with her front paws as there is no momentum, although she will boxturn off bankings and doors when she’s excited anyway (not encouraged!). My position is almost exactly the same as in the final part of this video, only I am stood up and rewarding with the other hand (shoulder movement helps snap her off the target). We train maybe once every 10 days or so at the moment, and do 5-6 reps only. Chute work will begin soon!

Gap Farm December

  By Leanne | December 12, 2011 - 8:23 pm | Dylan, Flyball, Rio
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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.