Category Archives: Reviews

2010 Review: Kim

  By Leanne | December 29, 2010 - 8:10 pm | Kim, Reviews
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My Kim.

My one, lonely, goal for 2010:

  • Kim to get her 20,000pts (Ice Blue Moon Award) in BFA Flyball

I was perfectly aware that wouldn’t happen! We’re making good progress though, Kim has got her FD-Gold this year (15,000pts) and is currently just under 16,000pts, with the points updates only just having reached the Champs in August. I think she’ll probably level off somewhere around 17,000 for 2010, which means we should reach her FD-Blue sometime next year.

Kim and I have had kind of a strange, backward, wonderful year. I took a few new approaches to her agility, mainly throwing out her startline wait, and she fell back in love with the idea of agility and running like a crazy dog again. She won a Grade 5 Jumping class in July, and then in August won another two jumping classes and two agility classes as well, which threw us straight into Grade 6, just where I didn’t want to be! So of course, at her first Grade 6 show, she promptly won her first agility class and got her first win towards Grade 7. She also picked up around 200 AW points this year, which is somewhat surprising!

She’s very much semi-retired from agility, and only gets to run when everything meets my specifications of “nice Kim classes”, which involves a pre-entry check of good venue with good footing, good classes (no C6-7s thanks!), and then an on-the-day check of suitable weather conditions and smooth, flowing courses which will not nag or make her sad. It works for us, and I am so thankful for every single run we do.

Contrary to the normal passage of time, Kim (and Mollie) has gotten faster with age in flyball. Kim was running steady 4.8-5s times over the summer over 9″, and is currently cruising at around 5s over 12″. She has run in every team, in every position, with every old and new dog we have. She doesn’t care, she just wants to flyball.

Her heart murmur has faded, and this year (touching wood for the final few days), she has had no injuries or incidents. Kim is fit, healthy, noisy, wicked, and still dictating terms to everyone. I couldn’t ask for more!

I know some people think goal setting is something unfair on a dog, but I like to have a goal. I like to sit with Kim and say here is this thing, that doesn’t mean anything to you and doesn’t really mean anything much to me either, but it’s a measure of time and patience and love, which should mean something.

Rolling on, for 2011, just one goal.

  • Kim to get her 20,000pts (Ice Blue Moon Award) in BFA Flyball

How to Make Homemade Jump Bumps

  By Leanne | October 18, 2010 - 2:38 pm | Reviews
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Having watched Susan Salo’s Foundation Jumping video, and various other videos, and read several more books, I decided we needed some Jump Bumps (also known as Stride Regulators) for our puppy class at agility.

I ideally wanted 8 Jump Bumps, four at 4″ and four at 8″. CleanRun sells them for $39.80 and $79.80 [1], plus $416.43 shipping. That’s £335.17 ($536.03), which is a little out of my price range.

After doing some online searching, and some helpful family friends, it came to my attention that I could buy Half-Pipe Guttering, which meets roughly the same standards as the Official Jump Bumps. It’s rounded, which means that a) it won’t roll, and b) puppies can slip off it if they misjudge their stride.

So, I went and priced up at B&Q, Homebase, Screwfix and Wickes, because these are my local DIY stores*. The cheapest I could find was at Wickes, and so I purchased three 2m lengths of Guttering [2]. Once I got home, I cut each length in half to get six Jump Bumps.

Stride Regulators or Jump Bumps, Stage One

My Jump Bumps at 1m long and 10cm wide (or 3.2ft long and 4″ wide). I would have liked 1.5m length but I couldn’t fit the 4m lengths into the car and I didn’t want to waste the 2m. I would also have liked some 8″ widths, but nowhere in the known universe sells 8″ width guttering. Houses just aren’t that big.

Since we train our puppies in an indoor arena (floodlit brown sand), I really wanted my Jump Bumps to be white rather than Gray, Brown or Black, which are the colours sold. Cue leftover Matt Emulsion Paint [3], and a bright and cold October afternoon.

Stride Regulators or Jump Bumps, Stage Two - One Coat of PaintStride Regulators/Jump Bumps, Stage Three - Two Coats of Paint

It took three coats with a small paint roller to get the Jump Bumps properly white. Because the paint is Matt, it’s added a little bit of grip to the Jump Bumps, but I don’t anticipate any puppies being able to stand on these without slipping off.

Stride Regulators or Jump Bumps, Completed

So there are my Jump Bumps! They look pretty good, even if I do say so myself, and they cost me £13.17, which is a saving of £322.

*Local as in … about 40mins away. I probably should include petrol costs in this.

[1] http://www.cleanrun.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=product.display&Product_ID=1842&ParentCat=635
[2] http://www.wickes.co.uk/Roundline-Gutter-Length-2m/invt/431856
[3] B&Q Value Matt Paint This is the paint we used. Note it’s Interior Paint! I’m fully expecting the paint to scratch and damage with use, but it will be easy and cheap to touch up.

Crufts 2010

  By Leanne | March 16, 2010 - 5:42 pm | Photos, Reviews
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I don’t even know where to start! I’d always said I’d love to do the whole four days and it was definitely worth it, but I’m not sure I could do it again for at least another 5 years!

Skye looking pleased with herself after the winGot up very early for the trip down on Thursday morning. Andrea and Buffy (Bethlyntee Rhythm and Blues at MoBuff) were in the Bearded Collie Veteran Bitch class, and I hitched a lift down with them – thanks Andrea! Over in the Border Collie rings, Sarah and Skye (Melneg Golden Embers) were also showing, in Graduate Bitch, and Vicki and Inca (Locheil Miss Independent at Ruffs) were in Post-Graduate Bitch, and Vicki also had Diesel (Bryning Don’t Stop Me Now at Ruffs) in the Yearling Dog (and GC Dog). So we spent a while in Hall 1! We had a mixed set of results, with some very good ones; Skye won her class, to the very emotional response of all, and Vicki and Diesel came 4th in GC Dog. I love seeing working dogs getting placed, it restores my faith in breed judging!

Skye (Melneg Golden Embers) in the Best Bitch judging

We stayed in a mildly weird B&B in Solihull, but then again I’m not sure I’ve ever stayed in a B&B that wasn’t mildly weird. We found a cheerful and cheap pub down the road to eat at, which was actually pretty delicious, and it all worked out really well! We only stayed for the Group Judging on Thursday night, and then left before the end on Friday and Saturday.

Just so no-one thinks that I neglected the breed showing, we’d promised ourselves that if we ever went for four days, we’d watch some of the breed showing from beginning to end (ie. from the Puppy classes through to Best of Breed). Since we chose to do this on Friday, we limited it to the Hound Group, and then picked the Ibizan Hounds from the selection as they only had a small entry and we liked the look of them. We did go and visit them on Discover Dogs as well, so we knew what we were looking for!

Ibizan Hound

Final day was Gundog day, and it was soo busy! We bumped into even more people we knew, notably a few more flyball dogs in the breed ring with Kerry and Kia (Raycris New Trix) in the Large Munsterlander Post-Graduate Bitch, where they came 3rd. Again, I love seeing working dogs getting placed in the show ring! Makes me very happy. We also managed to squeeze in 10minutes in the Obedience arena, watched a lovely black Labrador representing the USA in the World Cup, and then squeezed back out again and collapsed somewhere. (As an aside, I was really really thrilled to see the gorgeous Amberslade Aussie take the Obedience Dog CC, what a stunner!)

I think we managed to do everything. I’m not really sure how I normally do all of this in a day! We only had a quick wander around Discover Dogs, had a quick look-in at the YKC and Good Citizen’s ring, and only just managed to catch some of the Obedience. We did get to spend time watching the agility and flyball though, and we just spent time comparing and shopping as much as we liked, which was nice!

Generally though, I just managed to spend a small fortune over the four days; picked up some vetbed, some toys for the dogs, a few other bits and peices like the Yumove supplement that Katie has been raving about for months! (More on the Yumove later, I think; suffice to say the guys on the Lintbells stall really knew their stuff). Also spent rather a lot on treats, so the dogs will be well fed for the next 6 months! I know they like the Fish4Dogs stuff, so they got quite a lot of that, and we also spent a while chatting to the FarmFood guys; they sponsor the Doncaster flyball team, and so we see their stall at flyball shows quite often. The Cows Ears went down well yesterday, anyway!

Seperate posts on Flyball at Crufts and Agility at Crufts coming up …

CRUFTS 2010 GALLERY

Gap Farm Flyball

  By Leanne | January 17, 2010 - 4:03 pm | Dylan, Flyball, Kim, Mollie, Reviews
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The All-New Singing-Dancing Matting: Was good. It’s like yoga matting, kind of. Very grippy, no slipping, very nice. My only complaint was that I’m not sure it works all that well on sand/equestrian surface. It was very “dead”; there was plenty of give but there was very little bounce back. It didn’t seem to affect the larger dogs, but the smaller dogs (especially the height dogs (?)) seemed to be throwing lower times than I normally expect. I’m looking specifically at Kim and Bailey, who seemed to be about 0.5s off their usual times. None of our dogs are as fit as they normally are, but they all ran with enthusiasm, so perhaps it was just a case of height dogs struggling over (their) full height.

It didn’t look to be running any faster times than normal. I think our teams met their seed times or possibly slightly exceeded them, but we were running a slightly different lineup to normal. I’ll be interested to see what everyone else thought!

Anyway, the girls ran well as they always do; Mollie was really raring to go, she ran brilliantly all day. Eagle Owlers (Mollie and Kim’s team) won their division, although they was some close racing to do it! I think the girls quite like running with lovely Chippins, and he looked so settled and enthused running with them.

Dylan was quite excited about the whole thing, he loves running with dogs he knows and he was running with old friends in Lucy, Bailey, Buddy and Stripe. I really enjoy running Dylan with these four, they’re all fairly evenly matched on singles times, we all gel together well as a team and because we’ve all been flyballing for years, we can switch the order around as necessary and still maintain tight changes. Perfect! We were on for the win until we lost the plot against Hinkley, we all got a light in one leg or another and so we knew we had to beat Wilmslow in the last race of the day. We got our act together and we ran as well as we could, but Wilmslow just had faster dogs in and beat us by a well-deserved nose. So 2nd place for the Nights, oh well!

Doncaster next week, just checked the lists and it looks like we have whole different set of dogs, so we’ll have some different line-ups and who knows what will happen!

Dylan’s 2009 Review

  By Leanne | December 28, 2009 - 5:54 pm | Dylan, Reviews
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Our 2009 goals, which I thought were way optimistic at the time.

  • Dylan to win out of Grade 3 (on points or wins)
  • Dylan to win out of Introductory (Jumping and Agility)
  • Dylan to gain his 3000 points (Flyball Dog Graduate) award
  • Dylan to gain at least 100 Agility Warrant points

Turns out it wasn’t as hard as all that. Dyl breezed into Primary with points and wins to prove it, breezed past his FDG some time midway through the summer season. We like to keep ourselves on our toes on a few counts; we got the last handful of points to take us over 100 AW points at Wyre.

This year, Dylan and I’s partnership started with Kim. Everything starts with Kim, in the end. There’s no way Kim could have objectively considered the options and presented her conclusions to me, like a human would do, but I do wonder if some part of her didn’t just know. Because the same weekend that Kim said she was done with this, Dylan said “hey, I can do what she does”. Dyl had been getting better placings and had won a couple of classes already, but I still wasn’t taking him as a serious competitor, and yet that weekend that Kim walked away, he won more than Kim had ever won at a single competition. So maybe Kim was trying to say that I had this other dog who was just waiting for his chance and needed the opportunity to prove himself, and the only way she could get me to listen was to walk away. Maybe Kim is less selfish than I think she is, or maybe she just viewed this as an opportunity to spend more time at home sleeping.

Whatever ways, it worked. Agility is so exciting right now with Dylan, we’ve been picking up the pace and smoothing over the problems, and it feels like we’re just on the brink of being a really great team.

Flyball has been a bit of a mixed bag. Dylan has occasionally wavered, but he is much more enthusiastic and noisy about racing now. His box turn is getting more consistent; probably around 75% at his worst competitions. Still work to do, but better!

For 2010, then.

  • Dylan to win out of Primary Agility and Jumping
  • Dylan to win out of Grade 3
  • Dylan to get his 10,000pts (Silver Award) in BFA flyball

  • Dylan to get his Agility Warrant (Silver) award
  • Dylan to get his BAD-Bronze (5 BAA class wins)

Maybe crazy. I think we can achieve the first two, in some way or another. Theoretically Dylan could already be out of Grade 3, since he has the points, but I’d like a few more top-5 places to confirm he’s ready to move up. The BAD-Bronze is touchable, almost; we have 4 wins, just 1 more to go. Both the Silver AW and FD seem wildly out of reach, but we need something out of reach to aim for. We’ll see what happens!