17 Weeks

By Leanne | December 23, 2011 - 11:54 am | Dylan, Kim, Rio, Training

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.

Early Mornings in November

By Leanne | November 21, 2011 - 9:00 am | Dylan, Kim, Mollie, Photos, Walk

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I think the big dogs are enjoying their Rio-free walks. They get to enjoy them for a while longer yet, as even when she’s allowed out, she’ll be heading out on much shorter walks until she’s grown a bit more. Kim or Mollie will chaperone one younger dog each, depending on the day and the time and how cold it is. Kim doesn’t like to go so far in the cold. She had to wear one of her snoods this weekend!

The fog came down for the whole day after our lovely morning stroll though. A little creepy, we were glad to be heading home by the end of it.

Hare’n'Hounds October Halloween

By Leanne | November 13, 2011 - 4:20 pm | Agility, Dylan, Kim

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Kim had a great run first thing in the Combined 1-7 Jumping, a course with just jumps (no tunnels/weaves), so it was a pure speed kind of course. She finished 7th, I think 4/5s off the winners but she was the top Grade 6 by 8 seconds or something ridiculous. That was fun, but frustrating, as I ended up pulling her from the only Graded class of the day as I thought her jumping looked off mid-way through.

I’m not going to keep her going just for the sake of one more win, but it really would be nice for her to reach Grade 7 before she retires. She is skipping the next few months as I don’t trust the weather to stay nice enough for her, but Kim has always preferred running indoors so we’ll see if we can fit in a few more shows before the summer season starts up again.

Dylan had a hesitant run in his first class, an ok run in his second, and then was just beautiful in his last three. His jumping was super, really smooth and no silly stuttering around. We only got one clear, in the G5-7 Jumping, which was in the same ring as Kim’s earlier C1-7, so no tunnels/weaves and a fairly fast, open course. We were well out of the placings but it was a nice run with a moment where I got lost, and we were only 2s off the pace. I’m pretty pleased with that, Dylan and I are at our weakest on these kind of just-jumping fast courses, and this was our first Grade 6 show.

We had a horrible flyoff on the seesaw in the first run of the day, which I was really very surprised about – Dylan does not do flyoffs! I missed walking the course because I was too lazy to get out of the car, and we were running a really nice clear until the second to last obstacle (seesaw). Of course, Kim was in that ring later and she also flew it, so I’m tempted to blame the equipment. I did see a lot of other dogs do the same, clearly surprisingly themselves for the most part.

We had a super tough 6-7 Agility for our first proper G6 class too, a short spaced jump-seesaw line where you had to pull off the seesaw to hit a 120 degree weave entry to double back on yourself (I will try and get a course plan up). We avoided the seesaw and got the entry, but we messed up later on. It did remind me that running G6 with Dylan is actually going to be fun, he has all the training to do these harder courses and I love the handling challenges.

Rocket Relay Seminar #2

By Leanne | October 24, 2011 - 3:48 pm | Diva, Dylan, Flyball, Kim

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Thoroughly enjoyed this second seminar. Team Fever (http://www.flyballfever.com/) did another awesome job organising, and Kelly and Aaron from Rocket Relay were as good as they were last time they visited the UK in March.

Lots of new things to work on, and a lot of new insights for me personally. I know a lot more about BAT training for behaviour than I did at the start of the summer, and it was interesting to see how much of this training is linked to that idea of considering thresholds, and teaching the dog a better behaviour rather than just managing the problem.

Having been at both seminars helping, it was interesting to see how many people had progressed and how many people hadn’t. Personally, I have worked really hard to get Dylan switched to a tug. He is now at the stage where he will switch 100% of the time and is actually spitting the ball on occasion now we’ve reached that point. A lot of other people have obviously worked on the same thing as there was much less ball obsession this time around. Progress!

It was also really satisfying to see Emma run Diva in her private lesson. I’ve been boxloading for Diva in training to keep things consistent for her and so I volunteered to boxload again at the seminar, and so I got a front row seat. Emma held off starting most of Diva’s training until after the first seminar, and has worked really hard with her. It paid off because she was fantastic in her lesson, just little tweaks for Emma. I can’t wait to see her debut next year, I think she’s going to surprise a lot of people. Watch this space!

Not so good for Dylan over at Drax though, due to a team member pulling out the night before (grr), Dyl ended up in an NFC team with 2 dogs from Rotherham, plus Roi and George from our own team. My mum was handling and made the very wise decision to pull him out completely after the first race as despite racing perfectly, he was getting uncomfortable and stressed about the situation. This is such a good example of how much inconsistency and change can upset a dog; our intention was to change one thing about Dylan’s normal flyball situation by running him with a new handler (bearing in mind the intended handler was my mum, who lives in the same house and runs him at training regularly, but has never done so in competition without unfortunate consequences). Instead he ended up with a new handler, a new boxloader, a new box, and 2 new dogs on the team (plus he doesn’t particularly like Drax as a venue anyway). It was far too much change for him and I am so glad mum spotted it and pulled him out.

Of course, on the other hand is Kim. She is way more experienced and it showed. She was totally unphased and so completely kicked ass despite running with a handler she had never met before, on a new box with a new boxloader. (Um, thanks Beth for stepping in and running a strange dog!)