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.

I’m struggling a bit with training at the moment, so I’m actually kind of glad flyball training was rained off this morning.

Dyl and I had a bad training session on Tuesday, I guess like everyone we have our off-weeks. I had some things I wanted to focus on, but Dyl just lazed around and despite my efforts he was a bit distracted all evening, not “working” the courses although he did everything I asked.

I actually feel like we need to get on some training days and get some fresh input, but it’s just not possible at the moment as I can’t ask my parents to give me lifts all the time, especially when we have so few free weekends.

We’re at Rotherham flyball next week, and I haven’t done any flyball training for three weeks. I don’t really care! I love running my dogs in flyball, but I find team training (changeovers!) to be really dull. I know a lot of people find judging changes to be really difficult, but I just don’t find it that hard! One session before a tournament usually means I’ve got my eye in, although I do find that a lot of dogs run faster in competition anyway so you still have to be able to adjust. I’d rather work on boxwork or improving the actual individual run of the dog (either to the box or away), but we don’t seem to have much time for it at the moment.

Entered the Northern Festival of Agility at Redcar, one of my favourite venues, and I’m envisaging rain all week but I really don’t mind. I don’t think anyone I know is going, and I’m kind of looking forward to spending the time by myself, just me and Dyl, some agility and the beach. Sounds perfect!

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.

There is nothing more exciting than planning and plotting and worrying, formulating a strict plan and 15minutes after finally taking the plunge and putting into action, seeing results.

Well, maybe it wasn’t quite so dramatic as that. I have been encouraging Dylan to stretch and extend into his jumping for months, but it does seem a little bit co-incidental that after 4 runs through a grid pattern he suddenly remember how to actually use his legs. It really was as dramatic as that.

First grid went well, although it didn’t go to plan. I had a grid on a 3-4-4-5-6 basis, and Dyl shortened fine for the first 3, and then bailed on the second two. First time I’ve ever seen Dylan bail on a jump of his own accord, and it made me very happy. It told me two things; one, Dyl did not know how to extend into the second two jumps, and two, he is confident enough to bail rather than smashing onwards in an effort to please.

He’d sorted it out the next three times, really working it nicely with a bounce action until the last one, where he threw in a small single stride between. (Though I do have to say that Kim also did this exercise, and she bounced every single section comfortably). I don’t think I had the final spacing quite right for Dyl, but I’ll adjust for that next time.

We then did some straightforward flick-flack sequences, and wheee, lovely extension! Dyl was twisting and working his lanky little self all over those jumps. He was better with more room from me, and oddly (?) with less movement from me. Flicking him away from me over obstacles seemed to produce his best jumping, although anything where I was practically motionless seemed to encourage better jumping. Which suggests the the problem is me! Options then …

• Dylan is paying too much attention to me (anticipating cues?) so the jumps are coming up too quickly for him to sort himself out – he can’t do two things at once.
• Dyl is trying to focus on the jumps but is getting distracted by me running. (Opposite of the above, but same results)
• I am confusing Dylan somehow – am I not being clear and consistent enough with my cues?

The only really obvious issue was one of the last sequences we did, which was a very widely spaced three jump right-angle pinwheel style thing. Dyl stuttered into the first jump, was tight into the second and then only really relaxed into the third. So much for my theory of corners being better! Whilst I wasn’t moving a whole lot on this section, I had to keep moving to be able to handle the turn to the weaves 2 jumps later. So theory above still holds up, sadly.

I got such a kick every time I saw his back pads flicking over those jumps. I hope we can continue to make progress on this, and get it fluent and consistent every time around. I’m almost looking forward to doing some more work on this!

There’s always something. Dylan’s weaves are good right now, his seesaw is fast and although his dogwalk and aframe still need more work, they’ve improved. But now … jumping.

This has been bothering me for a long time, actually, but I haven’t been quite sure where to start, or even whether it’s just me seeing things.

I have spent hours today watching back every video from the past 12months. It is pretty clear to me that as a rule, Dylan jumps with his hind legs tucked under him. I’m not sure this has gotten any worse since he’s started competing, and I’m not sure it’s a physical limitation or injury. He extends fully over long jumps and he also has no problems extending in flyball. However, I do think it’s gotten worse as Dylan’s enthusiasm has increased. From what I can see, Dylan just doesn’t understand how to run flat out and jump over large jumps.

This past weekend, it was very noticable that Dylan worked the pinwheel style bends better than he worked the straights. His jumping action was long and clean, he shaped his body around the turn and he took just one, long stride between each jump. As soon as he hit the straight again, he began to take short, chopped strides into jumps, and his jumping action was shorter and more tucked. See clip below!

First two jumps are nice; long clean jumping action with single stride in between the jumps, good take-off points and good landing. The whole thing looks smooth. I note I am handling from just in front, having done a front cross in the gap, and that there are no other options or obstacles which might distract or impede from Dylan’s path. Third jump approach starts off well, but then Dylan appears to shorten his stride (stutters into the jump) and doesn’t power into the turn. He’s clearly not flexing his body around the turn – perhaps he thinks he has to slow down to make the turn? I’m handling from some distance away, I don’t cue the turn all that well. He’s jumping into the wall.

Things like this make me think that the problem is with turning, and that we’re back to the previous issue of Dylan not knowing how to move his body whilst he’s jumping (or rather, I’ve taught it badly, and too late, which is also true).

Again, on the curve, we’ve got fairly decent jumping. It’s not as nice as the above and I don’t know why; I rear-crossed at the top when I should have maybe tried to race him for a front cross? The motion cues maybe aren’t as strong? Anyway, it’s the final straight that concerns me most, where Dylan drops his front end forward and collects his stride to put in two short, choppy strides. Is it because he couldn’t make the single extended stride? I’m not entirely sure I buy that. Is it because he’s running in to the fence? Thinks he’s finishing the course?

I also think Dylan is jumping off his front end rather than his back end, but I find it quite hard to tell. In the last clip in particular, his jumping appears to be focussed on getting his front end up and over, rather than really using his back end to power his whole body over. Or is it all just down to his naturally cautious personality? Either way, it means I am going to have to do some serious jump training, and to stop assuming that he’s as smart and athletic as Kim and can figure this out for himself. (Not to demean Dylan, he has skills that Kim has never had, like a willingness to learn and work, and a constant enthusiasm for agility!)