Tag Archives: aframe

Hare’n'Hounds Valentines

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I seem to remember saying back in November that I wouldn’t run three dogs again. Well, I did, and it was better – either because I was prepared for the chaos, or because everything just ran more smoothly!

Kim ran her G4-7 Agility first, had a lovely run on an interesting course, and won it. I can’t believe I get to type this, but Kim is now halfway to Grade 7! She has both her agility wins, and she’s enjoying these occasional competitions so much.

Dylan’s G5-7 Agility was a really nice course, but we got called on the dogwalk contact. I’m not sure if he missed it or not, I can’t tell on the video, but he was running a little slow and steady and for some reason, very creepy on the seesaw. Hmm …

Jet ran a beautiful clear on the handler-challenging Redmills C1-7 Jumping, and finished 18th. Which … well, it was a fast course and she was only 2s off the winner, so that’s a good result. She was also the top Grade 3 dog by a long way! We went straight from that ring to the G1-4 Jumping and made a complete shambles of the course, which was a little bit frustrating! It was a very difficult course for 1-4, but nothing we couldn’t handle … or so I thought. The most annoying thing was that Jet popped the last 2 poles of the 12 weaves again. We must work on this!

Kim’s C1-7 Jumping was the same as Jet’s, and she ran a nice clear but we had a silly dithering moment where I was just a stride lazy and it nearly caught us out. Think Kim ended up 6th or 7th, out of the placings either way but she enjoyed the run, a nice stretchy course for her.

Jet’s 2nd in the Graded 1-3 Agility was extremely unexpected! It was a nice course, suitably challenging, but had two aframes and a seesaw rather than the traditional dogwalk-aframe-seesaw. Jet’s Aframe is not her strongest peice of equipment, and she did too acceptable but creepy Aframes and I thought that would keep us well out of the placings. Apparently not!

Dylan had three jumping classes in a row, starting with his half of the Redmills Jumping. It was a lovely big, open course, and Dylan actually opened up and ran it really well. We got E’d, but it was a good run. I was happy! We then went into the G5-7 Jumping. We got E’d multiple times, but I made personal progress by practising what I preach and pretending nothing had happened and that whatever we did was what I meant to do. It worked for Dylan, his confidence was visibly up! We went straight into the BC Jumping and ran clear, he finished 19th.

Kim’s C5-7 Agility was the same as Dylan’s earlier course, and we had a slightly on-the-edge run but managed to get around clear anyway, and finished 4th. Not too shabby! Her C5-7 Jumping was the same as Dylan’s again, and we made pretty much the same mistakes. Clearly I learn nothing from my mistakes.

Dylan’s G4-5 Agility was quite a tough course for 4/5, but ran much better than it walked. I got to watch most of this class run, and wow, the standard of 4/5 dogs was through the roof! Dylan had a decent clear and finished 5th, just out of the placings, but I intentionally took him the long way around the pull-thru so I’m quite pleased with that.

Long time off from agility now, not back until April! I did want to try and enter some in March but it all got a bit expensive with the seminar and Crufts!

Training with a Plan

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I actually had a plan for training this week. I know that every trainer I admire advocates having a training plan in advance, and that going and messing around on the equipment doesn’t actually achieve anything. I know this, and yet a lot of the time, I like just messing about running silly courses. (I suspect this is one of the many reasons Dylan and I aren’t running in Championship classes).

I will admit that my plan was not terribly complex. It was called “AFRAME CONTACTS”, and had no further details.

Still, we worked our Aframe contacts! I even took the clicker, partially because Dylan is my demo dog for the new handlers next week when I talk about contact training, and I had a massive panic attack thinking that maybe everything had fallen out of Dylan’s head and he wouldn’t remember clicker contacts, since we haven’t done it in a while. I still can’t promise that won’t happen (it keeps me up at night, I swear), but he was excellent this week. He really does have a beautiful stop position, I’m very proud of him.

So, we worked on reinforcing contact position, and then proofing contact position. Dylan does have a tendency to release himself if I keep running waaay past him, but this is really a little niggley thing since I don’t think I’ve ever run a course which required me to run 50ft beyond the Aframe whilst Dylan stayed in position.

We then worked on release to obstacles, because we’ve had some tough releases recently where the next obstacle is not the most obvious one. This is obviously more about me than about Dylan; Dyl always looks for the next obstacle whilst in position – which is adorable, he goes all collie stare on things – but I’m not always as clear as I should be with my cues. I know I should be letting him know almost pre-Aframe where the line is going to go, but I have a habit of relying on his stop and then redirecting him from there, which is inefficient. I should know this from running Kim, where I don’t get that handler advantage on the contacts, and it does save us time. Because she will run at an angle to come off the side of the Aframe (providing I give her the correct information!), she’s taking the quickest line. I should really be giving Dyl the same information, but the stop makes me lazy.

My plan for next week will depend on what happens at Hare’n'Hounds this weekend, assuming we can get there through the snowdrifts!

Appreciation

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I left the dogs at home for a long weekend in London, and I didn’t miss them at all. I had a fab time doing touristy things and catching up with friends, and appreciated the time away from the dogs. And then I came home, and was grateful for the joyous greeting I got from Kim and Dylan. Dylan definitely missed me. Mollie didn’t really care. Kim did care, but only because she goes back to priviledged status when I’m here.

Watching Dylan run agility that day was a little weird; because I hadn’t seen him or any other agility dogs for a while, I suddenly found myself appreciating his build and his athleticism. I suddenly realised that he would be the kind of dog I’d pick out when watching a class, which I’d never thought before. I love watching long striding, responsive, strong dogs, and Dylan is maturing into that kind of dog.

My appreciation for his skills went downhill when he decided that he wasn’t going to do his 2o2o on the Aframe for the whole evening. I got one beautiful, fast, controlled Aframe with a smooth and perfect 2o2o, and then Dylan decided he’d continue doing beautiful, fast, controlled Aframes … but without the 2o2o. He’d just stop with all four paws on the floor.

I struggle with what to do when this happens. I can’t afford to lose the 2o2o, but equally I can’t afford to lose the speed that we’ve got now. Something to think about, as always.

Training Days

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Tough day for fatman Dylan today! Flyball training in the morning and then an agility training afternoon over in York. Ideally I would have skipped flyball, but we have Drax coming up and I really want him fit and ready. We’re making an effort to do more two lane training at the moment, and it’s making Dylan work really hard. He has a habit of lazing around in training when on a single lane, so running him against the faster dogs pulls him on and makes him put some effort in. He was stretching like mad against Jet; he was going 110% and she was cruising at 80%, and she still beat him by a nose. Poor lad, no wonder he has an inferiority complex, he’s constantly getting his ass kicked by girls.

So he had a hard flyball session, and then I whisked him off to agility! I’d booked onto a training day with Dawn and Katie Long, since loads of people have recommended Dawn to me recently and when the opportunity came up I was about ready to snap Julie’s hand off! I had a great time and it was well worth it, so I can safely say I’ll be furthering the recommendations.

We did a lot of work on contacts, which was great for me and Dylan. Particularly for me! I’ve always been fairly confident in Dylan’s understanding of the 2o2o position, but I’ve never dared to truly test it. Well, I got put on the spot, and Dylan was brilliant, so I’m very very pleased. He drove to the end regardless of where I was, and only looked around for me once he’d stopped. His Aframe was especially good; I raced him to the start of the Aframe, and then stopped completely before the up-ramp and let Dylan complete by himself. He nailed it every time, and only peered around once to check where I was (and he left a toe on the bottom … cheating slightly!) Spent plenty of time getting him to really drive over the dogwalk, and some new techniques for getting him more confident on the seesaw, so very positive.

We also spent some time working on weave entries and truly independent weaves, which again was great for me and Dylan, because he was awesome! More about my handling than anything, and Dylan was pretty exhausted by this part of the session, but he’s always willing to try.

I didn’t learn anything which is going to fundamentally change the way I handle or train. But I’m viewing that a positive thing. Means we’re doing something right!

Timing Notes

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It’s been a long while since I’ve looked at Dylan’s obstacle times. A whole year, in fact!

As always, brutally honest times taken from the moment of first contact with the obstacle to the moment the front paw(s) hit the ground. Averages in bold, all times taken from competition runs within the last three months only.

Dogwalk: 2.87 [3.39] (2.87, 3.00, 2.60, 2.46, 3.00, 2.96, 3.20)
Aframe: 1.53 [2.36] (1.60, 1.67, 1.60, 1.34mc, 1.46)
Seesaw: 1.73 [1.95] (1.80, 1.91, 1.54, 1.86, 1.53)

Averages from the last time I took them are in square brackets (that’s Jan 09, apart from the Aframe, which is from Sept 08), and the improvement is fairly noticable. The actual improvement though is in the consistency of the times; a year ago we had variations of up to 4s between times. That Aframe in particular is getting nailed, these days, although contact reliability has slipped from 100% to 90%, hence that little “mc” mark. Seesaw times are looking good, could be a little better but nothing I’m overly worried about right now.

That 2.46 in the Dogwalk times is making me very happy. I would estimate that Dyl runs 2.20 in training, and that 2.46 suggest we’re finally, slowly, making the transition to the ring. On the other hand, we still have plenty of 3s runs in there, so we have a lot of work to do yet! The average is better than it was, but still nowhere near where I would like it to be. We need consistent 2.4s to be anywhere like competitive enough for a G3 win.

No 12 weaves times because we haven’t done 12 weaves very often recently! Possibly because indoor shows sometimes can’t peg them, but judges just don’t seem to be including the weaves all that often anyway at the moment.