I’ve been trawling about trying to find something to blog about — everywhere is quiet at the moment! No major controversies about (that I can find!) so I did think about starting one, but that seemed like an awful lot of work. I was going to blog about “Barbie Collies” following Inca’s Reserve Best of Breed win, which is a controversial topic (Barbie Collies, not the RBOB), but is also seriously confusing and seems more American than British. Anyway, I can solve it easily, because I know a dog from pure show lines who is the most work-y collie in existence. I have to admit that she doesn’t herd because she’s a flyball dog, but her owner has been offered a considerable amount of money by farmers and working stock breeders for her, untrained, because they think she has so much potential. Most of them can’t actually believe she’s a proper show dog, but there you go.

So instead, my two new favourite blogs.

Three Woofs & A Woo
Just Another Dog Blog

In the meantime, we are getting bored over here. Kim has already tried to leave home by attempting to go down a badger sett, but she’s a bit bigger than she thinks she is and couldn’t fit. She did get very dirty and needed a bath though. Dylan took a different approach and decided that if he smelt really really bad, we’d have to give him away. He also got very dirty, and had his second bath this week. Third, if you count hydro as a bath. Mollie is happy sleeping on her trampoline and letting her ear hair grow back, but she has already notched up one escape attempt this month.

So, if anyone has any trick suggestions, please let me know! Dylan and Kim can do

• Sit
• Down
• Stay
• Wait
• Stand
• Paw (left and right)
• Beg
• Crawl
• Rollover
• Twist Left/Right
• Back up
• Leg weave (stationary and moving, and it’s really hard not to stand on them)
• Dead
• Sad Face
• Retrieve various articles, including newspapers/”post” left in another room
• Bow

Dylan can also cover himself with a blanket and do “flat”, and Kim can do “kill it” which means she shakes whatever she’s holding madly or (if she has nothing in her mouth), attacks the nearest thing to her. Without actually harming them, she knows to be gentle.

Any suggestions? Indoor games are hard with three dogs, they all get too competitive and noisy, so we have to make do with tricks.

Kim was flying last night, we had a lot of fun and some very nice runs. She always works better if she’s wound up by watching other dogs work, and hopefully now she’s moving up the levels there will be more exciting dogs for her to watch before she runs. That’s probably a very un-PC agility comment to make but I don’t care!

Pull-thrus. Did lots of pull-thrus, something we always need to work on. Sometimes they’re brilliant, sometimes they’re really not. We had a few arguments on the top wonky-line of 4 about coming through one of the gaps but we got there in the end, and she did the rest well. When it flows, pull-thrus are easy and we can do them, but when it doesn’t flow, Kim has a tendency to dig in her heels and argue. I’m always tempted to let her win the arguements because secretly I agree that it is stupid and her way is better. Can’t tell her that though, she’d never let me get away with it.

Seesaw. Over the years I have spent so much time on the seesaw with Kim, and none of it seems to have worked. She just finds the seesaw scary, probably from starting out on a really lightly weighted “homemade” one when I had no idea there were actually agility competitions and so on. At one point earlier this year we went back to basics and held the end for her and lowered it slowly, which actually made everything worse, so we stopped that pretty quickly. I think what we have now is as good as it’s going to get, which is a shame. On the other hand, having played with positioning and approaches for the past few weeks I know where I need to be to ensure she hits the contact and I know that I can be in that place every time as no matter where I run to or stand, it doesn’t make a difference to her speed.

Lovely day for a walk. Dylan thought so too!

The girls kind of always wander off for a while when we start on a walk. Or at least, they do until I produce their most favourite toy ever, Snake!
I gave it Dylan originally, but when you get a Mollie running towards you, the self-preservation instinct kicks in and you throw it and back away quickly.

Kim’s not really allowed the toy so much, especially in the woods, but as she’s smarter and quicker to turn than the collies, sometimes she gets hold of it. And then she gets her snarkface on and bristles angrily when they approach. Dylan no longer tries to approach, he takes the herding option.

Eventually we reach the wide open plains of the golf course, and all the dogs ask “are you going to throw the damn toy or not?!” Some dogs, like Kim, ask it more than once.

You know Dylan and Mollie were totally going to mob me if I didn’t throw it.

As previously mentioned, Kim can break harder and turn tighter than Mollie or Dylan, so she can usually beat them to the toy, apart from when Mollie uses brute force to batter other dogs to the ground. Sometimes, however, she misses.

Dylan can carry the toy by sticking it to his tongue.

• Dylan simply cannot flyball in ankle deep mud. He doesn’t go anywhere and falls over a lot.
• Mollie firmly believes that Jet drops her ball, even though Jet doesn’t.
• Jet cannot understand why Mollie is following her.
• You can’t throw balls past Dylan’s head on the runback and expect him to keep facing forwards.
• Kim remains sparkly white and clean despite flyballing in ankle deep mud.
• Mollie does not.
• Bailey likes to make Emma walk backwards and forward in the mud (possibly in the hope she will fall over) by dancing around everyone when she’s supposed to be in the car.
• When Dylan is facing the wrong way, you cannot let him go and expect a good changeover like you can with Kim.
• Bailey is fairly easy to pin to the floor, but it’s really hard to make her stand back up again.
• The whole of Dylan’s team are useless in ankle deep mud, except for Skye, who runs faster.
• There is a possibility Skye told the rest of her team to make her look good.
• Mollie is adorably fluffy after a bath.
• Our shower is more powerful when spraying cold water only, and changing from warm water to cold whilst Dylan is in the bath will make him leap 4 foot in the air and land on the other side of the bathroom, whipping you with his dirty fur as he passes.
• I must return my postal vote this weekend, because we would all like to see the height dogs catch a break.

I am so excited to see that the BFA is sending out postal votes to see if members are happy and willing to change the current ruling to fall in with the rule change NAFA made earlier in the summer regarding the height that smallest dog in the team runs at. Currently it’s 4″ below the withers, but NAFA changed it to 5″ below after an overwhelming 94% vote for the motion. As NAFA is the largest and foremost flyball association in the world, other countries normally try to keep abreast of their decisions and follow suit accordingly (if it sits well with their members) so that flyball is kept to a general world standard. (Very unlike agility!)

If this goes ahead my lovely little Kim would run 12″ and Mollie would run 13″, (and Bailey would run 11″). It sounds ridiculous to argue that 1 inch can make a difference, but I know that when Kim or Mollie have run with smaller height dogs, they’ve both stayed fresher and less prone to aches and stiffness on the evening or following day. It’s that little bit less effort that means they can run for longer and with less stress to joints and legs.

If this rule does go ahead, it would mean a huge difference for our older girls. We’ve currently been cutting back on the number of runs per day that they both do unless they’re running with height dogs. Mollie really feels it after running at 14″ all day, and although Kim doesn’t struggle, she almost always runs as our 13″ height dog and it is naturally a lot harder for her to be running that kind of height when other, taller dogs are running it too.

The only dog this won’t affect is Dylan, because he loves 14″ jumps and hates anything below 12″, but I’m sure he won’t complain too much.

It will also mean that teams in this country will be running faster times. No advantages or disadvantages in my opinion, because the change will affect every team, not just one or two. Yes, our team will be running at 12″ instead of 13″, but your team might be running at 11″ instead of 12″, or 13″ instead of 14″. The only teams who don’t directly benefit are the teams who have no smaller dogs, but in that case, there’s no change — and if your dogs are that tall, like Dylan, they’re probably better jumping 14″ anyway.

Also lovely for the sub-20 teams, but I’m mainly thinking about the slower teams that run around 23/24 seconds. There are some incredibly consistent dogs running on those teams who have been competing for years, running around 5.5s, but they just miss out on the sub-22s cut off for 25pts per team run. Should one of their dogs become a height dog from this vote, they’ll be running that little bit faster and will get their rewards by earning those awards that they really deserve. Yes, there is an argument that dogs don’t care about points and awards (I know mine don’t!) but it still means an awful lot to get those certificates.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE, if you’re a BFA member, send back your postal vote and vote! (Even if you vote no, please vote anyway, although I think you should all be voting yes-yes-yes please!)