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.

This is my traditional end-of-year show now, I think! We’ve done it since 2004, it was the first show that Kim properly behaved at and I felt relaxed and we just had fun. The year after, we came 4th in the Starters Agility Challenge, her best ever placing as a Large Dog. The year after that, 2006, she was re-measured Medium; a very very good day. 2007 we did one of the best runs we’ve ever done, but got E’d … oops! Nothing special happened last year, but that’s hardly a reason to break with tradition!

Kim

This was Kim’s first show since the BAA Finals in August, and was really just a test to see if she wanted to do any agility or not. She’s been really enjoying training, and I know she likes it at Myerscough, so I thought we’d give it a go and see how she got on.

Her first class was Combined 3-5 Jumping, a tricky course but nothing that should have been particularly challenging for Kim. The ring next door was the Large 4-5 Jumping, and they had a run of jump-jump-tunnel going next to the barrier fencing that seperated it from our ring. This is important later!

Kim did a beautiful wait start, negotiated the first three obstacles speedily and happily, and then turned around and raced alongside the dog in the next ring, barking her head off furiously. Cue complete shock from handler! I was mortified; she’s never done this in her life before, but thankfully it didn’t affect the other dog’s run and Kim came back once I’d called her, although she wasn’t at all apologetic. Maybe this makes her one of those out-of-control dogs that the Kennel Club want to get rid of?!

She then raced around the rest of the course but proceeded to go and say hi to the judge, look blankly at the weaves, argue with me about 8 or 9 weaves, and then race off to finish. She looked like a complete baby dog at her first show, not a 9-year-old Grade 5 dog. Result = 15 faults and 16 time faults. I’ll just go and hide my head in shame …

It was safe to say she was cheerful though. She got E’d in the 3-5 Agility, due to handler error, and then went clear in the Olympia Qualifier, which was too fast a course for us to get placed on (even Julie’s speed demon Charlie only came 10th, which should indicate just how fast it was!)

Dylan

Combined 3-5 Agility (Part 1) was a fairly straightforward course, a few angled jumps that caused a few problems, and a pull in on a 3-sided box that really threw a lot of people. I elected to take Dylan right and through the “empty” side of the box, which was the longer route but not as risky. It paid off because we came 11th, very pleased to say it was 3-5! His dogwalk wasn’t as good as it had been at Wilmslow, and I held the contact, so we lost time there. He was also very wide on what should have been the wrap-turn, my fault but something to work on.

Graded 3-5 Agility was over the same course as Kim had run, so I knew which mistakes not to make again! Dylan self-released his Aframe contact, and his dogwalk was a little creepy, but he had no problems with the weave entry, unlike almost every other dog I saw run. Anyway, we were clear, but I didn’t think we had any chance of being placed. There were 189 Grade 3 dogs, which made it one of the biggest Grade 3 classes I think we’ve ever run in, and on past form that was just too competitive for Dylan.

Scurried off to run the 1-3 Jumping at this point, it required a wait start which Dylan promptly broke and left me flailing behind him. Somehow scraped through anyway but I knew it just wasn’t going to go well from then on, and it didn’t! Dyl decided he’d never seen 9 weaves before in his life and we needed 3 attempts to get it right, very frustrating as we do 9 weaves in training fairly regularly, and he’s always flown through without a problem. We obviously need to work some more on that!

Dylan was done for the day at this point, and Kim had just run her last class, when there was a tannoy annoucement calling Dylan and I for a run-off in the Graded 3-5 Agility. Since I still had Kim, I sent my lovely mother to let the ring now I was on my way, switched dogs and ran back in, trying to remember the course! I lost the coin toss, but the other person elected to go 2nd which is what I would have chosen anyway. I pushed it, we knocked a second off our original time, but sadly that Aframe self-release came back to haunt us, and Dylan missed his contact. The other person then took it steady and went clear, and won the run off … for 2nd place.

Dylan came 3rd.

For the first time at a competition, I had my crazy little man with me!

Combined 3-5 Agility was a lovely course, challenging enough but flowed really nicely. I was a bit worried about Dylan because he’s only ever done one show at Myerscough before, when he found the whole atmosphere very stressful. This weekend it was super crowded, as always, and we were in Ring 2 for two of our runs, so right in the hub of the traffic. I apparently shouldn’t have worried, because Dylan just took it in his stride, got very excited in the queue and was raring to go.

Just a shame about the handler! I pulled off way too early for the tunnel entry, and pulled Dyl with me to the wrong end. So that was the big E, and I’m more than a bit annoyed with myself as I think we’d have been comfortably collecting a rosette. Oh well!

Grade 3 Jumping (Part 1) was another nice course, fairly straightforward and we watched loads of clears whilst we were queuing. Dyl smoked the first half but then lost momentum after the cloth tunnel into nowhere. Still finished 10th and there was plenty of room for improvement, so that was pretty good.

Grade 3 Agility (Part 1) was back in Ring 2, a more challenging course with just with a slightly awkward bit off the dogwalk which I couldn’t figure out. I walked it with Jeremy and Mel, then again with Candy, and then finally with Leah, and eventually cobbled together some kind of plan, so thanks guys! We ran a decent clear, and finished 4th, yay! That’s our best ever Grade 3 placing, I’m so chuffed with him. There were places we could have made up time – the two wraps at the start were very wide, and I had to hold his dogwalk contact to get into position for the awkward section, which I didn’t handle all that well. I also confused the poor boy in the final seesaw-jump combi, he wasn’t sure whether to go straight or just peg it. Of course, I’m talking of fractions of seconds for all these “mistakes”, but if there’s one thing I know, it’s that there is no room for tiny errors for Dylan and I. We have to be perfect to have a chance of getting into the top-3 in these classes.

The really good thing though, the thing that makes me most happy about this whole weekend? Contacts. His Aframe was smooth, his seesaw was good. Do you know how many times I’ve watched Dylan’s dogwalk on the video? One hundred million times, and every time I want to dance. It’s not perfect, and it can be better, but it makes me so happy to see that the work we put in is paying off. That dogwalk right there is beautiful and confident and it will only get better.