Tag Archives: agility training

Winter Agility Season

  By Leanne | October 10, 2010 - 11:28 pm | Agility, Dylan, Kim, Mollie, Training
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I know I’m lucky to have good, competitive shows at KC and BAA within travelling distance all year round. It’s got better and better every year, and this year I’m actually getting to pick and choose which shows we go to! We’re at Hare’n'Hounds next time because I love their shows, they always have a good mix of classes and such a friendly atmosphere. Dylan’s first Grade 5 classes! Really just wanting to see how he does against the competition, and hoping he keeps up the confident attitude.

All those shows mean no break though! I do think a break from competition and training is good for the dogs, although Kim doesn’t do much these days anyway. She does 10 minutes of training for agility a week, and I skip training with her the week before a competition as well. It seems to work for her, although she hasn’t got many competitions booked this winter. One thing about having single-day competitions seems to be the tendency for organisers to offer one or two Open classes only for Mediums and Smalls. I suppose I should be grateful that there are any classes at all, since lots of shows just skip the Mediums altogether! I’ve entered her in the Hare’n'Hounds Christmas show at the end of November, because they have a Graded class and good splits so she won’t get consistently nagging courses.

Dylan will probably get a month off in February-March, but that’s only sketched out for the moment. The summer diary is still very vague so I don’t know what I want to skip.

Snuggley Warm

Mollie feels a little bit left out, naturally, with all this agility talk. Perfect winter warmer photo though, don’t you want to sneak onto the sofa and snuggle down with fluffy Mol, maybe watch a few films?

Appreciation

  By Leanne | July 9, 2010 - 8:00 am | Agility, Dylan, Kim, Mollie
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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

  By Leanne | March 20, 2010 - 4:57 pm | Training
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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!

Timing Notes

  By Leanne | February 3, 2010 - 10:26 am | Agility, Dylan
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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.

Getting a Kick

  By Leanne | January 27, 2010 - 9:05 pm | Agility, Dylan
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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!