Run & Training

Posted on March 31, 2011 by Leanne

I have discovered a slight flaw in my well-considered fitness and conditioning plan, in that Kim is too smart for her own good. She now refuses to run for the first toy now, and will only run for the second, meaning Mollie is doing twice as much work. I probably should have seen that one coming, to be fair! Dylan has tried this a couple of times as well, but Dyl is easier to outwit, usually by pretending to have three toys, one toy, throwing it in different directions, etc, whereas Kim doesn’t fall for those kind of mean tricks. Mollie is clueless and still runs after every toy every time.

Kim hasn’t been agility training for 5-6 weeks, partially because we’ve redistributed people at agility training and now there isn’t as much time for me to run 2-3 dogs in the session. As I just have Dyl there at the moment (I haven’t trained with Jet for months now, but that’s the disadvantage of borrowing a dog!) I can concentrate solely on him, but because we only get limited chances to use the equipment, I have to be more focussed with what we do. Less impulsiveness on my part, more planned training.

Because we have more dogs in the session now, it’s also given me a chance to work on keeping Dylan relaxed whilst the other dogs work. Lots learnt in the past few weeks about stress and adrenalin levels, and I’ve tried to spend more time observing what the dogs are actually doing and then acting to encourage them to be calmer. I can’t eliminate stress completely but I do want the dogs to respond in a way that tells me they’re in control of the situation and handling the stress in a positive way. I’ve adjusted the way I handle a couple of things with Dylan and so far so good. It’s been quieter anyway!

I’m just torn at the moment on Dylan’s waits in the ring at Hare’n’Hounds this weekend; at training, I have a strict break-and-you’re-out policy, where we walk (cheerfully) away from the equipment if he breaks his wait. He has 98% solid waits at training, but no wait at all at competitions. I know that I need to follow through with this at shows, and consistently, and I also know that as I want to stay in n G5 for a while yet it makes perfect sense to do this now (at this show especially because I have Kim and Jet so I still get a chance to run some courses). I know that Dylan only does this because of my poor training. But it’s still very hard to do it, because I just tend to counter it with the “well I manage with Kim” argument in my head. Which is a stupid argument! I’ll see if I can be brave enough to walk away this weekend.

Summer

Posted on March 24, 2011 by Leanne

My pledge to try and blog more often is currently not really working out. I do have the very good excuse, like the rest of the country, that there has been the warm, hazy hint of summer around and we’ve been basking in what might be the only sun we see all year. We seem to have bypassed spring completely, and gone straight from minus temperatures to coasting in the high teens.

The fitness training is working well so far. We’re four sessions in and I wasn’t really expecting to see a difference yet, but the older girls especially are showing signs of real improvement. Kim is looking especially good, she’s running faster and also recovering faster. The next step will be to add another session after a second 5-minute break, but with the unseasonably warm weather it seems better to wait until it cools down again. We can’t avoid it in summer but at least they have had chance to acclimatise by then!

Fitness and Conditioning

Posted on March 17, 2011 by Leanne

There was a brief discussion at the seminar regarding conditioning and fitness, although it wasn’t a feature. It did get me thinking though! One of the points emphasised is that flyball practice shouldn’t be fitness training, it should be purely about training the dogs to flyball. I’m not sure I entirely agree with that; I do think dogs should be fit and should be conditioned for flyball, but because of how we run in the UK, plenty of our dogs do need to have “jump fitness” as well, and you can only really get that through training over jumps. Because we change the heights of our hurdles throughout the day’s racing (Mol can go from running 9” to her full height of 13” from one leg to the next), our dogs have to be able to power into the jumps as well as run over them (ideal world would be flat running over everything because they would be conditioned to a fixed height). Having said all that, it was mentioned at the seminar that Rocket Relay have weekly training sessions on power jumping, and we tend to incorporate that into our usual training, so I suppose it’s swings and roundabouts really.

Getting back on topic, our dogs get a lot of exercise, but I was really left thinking about how I judge their levels of fitness, their recovery rates, and what we do to keep them conditioned when they aren’t training as often. We have always done a lot of hill reps with our dogs in winter, mainly because we live in the Pennines and it’s harder to find flat ground than it is hilly ground. This works for our dogs, although Mollie tends to see it as an opportunity to just bulldoze Kim and Dylan, and occasionally me and my mother as well (no excuse for age or sight as she’s always done it). But it’s quite hard to judge their recovery times from this as we do it mid-way through an hours walk, and they do 5-6 reps and that’s it.

So, Tuesdays and Thursdays is now controlled chuck-it day. Dylan gets to skip Tuesdays (as you can imagine, he’s thrilled about that!) as he has agility training on Tuesday, and Kim sometimes gets to skip if she’s training too. Thursday is Dylan and one of the girls, depending on who did what Tuesday. (Three dogs is hard to balance, I should definitely get another one). We walk the 800m up onto the nearest green, by which point the dogs are nicely walmed up and ready to roll. One toy gets thrown in one direction. Once that toy has been retrieved by one of the dogs and they’re both on their way back, the matching toy gets thrown in the other direction. I use two cage rugby balls for this, identical in size, otherwise we get fratching* over which toy is better. Both dogs run both ways, because most dogs will drop the toy they’ve got if you throw another one. I’ve been doing it this way so the dogs get a better run, instead of running 50m out and back, they run 50m then 100m the other way, then 50m back. Better! (I say I throw it 50m, that’s a very optimistic estimate and ignores the fact that one in three times, I throw it in a tree or something.)

We do 5 of these throws then have a 3-5 minute break, then another 5. That’s it so far because apparently my dogs are incredibly out of shape and can only manage this many before collapsing in a heap, but eventually they’ll do another 5 as well after another 5 minute break.

This is definitely a one or two dog game only; it wouldn’t be practical for me to take all three dogs. Apart from the potential collisions and accidents that would likely occur from three dogs all heading for the same toy (which is why I normally avoid chuck-it games like the plague), it would get too uncontrolled. The obvious example is that Kim is a firm believer in her own self-importance, so she’ll hang back and let the collies race to the toy, which means she gets less work done. Likewise, Dylan tends to go into herding mode and will do 4 times the amount of running everyone else does, which makes it very hard to measure his fitness.

*my computer informs me that this isn’t a word, which is a lie. It is a word, although it might only be a British or possibly even Yorkshire word. It means something like snipe or bicker. I wouldn’t usually bother explaining but the computer is fairly adamant.

Honley Woods

Posted on May 14, 2010 by Leanne

I shouldn’t have even bothered taking my camera; the lighting was awful! Overcast skies + twilight = not good for photos of moving dogs.

Still, look at Mollie’s smiley face!

Dylan is getting really irritating on walks, I keep wanting to smack him round the head! He is generally pretty independent when we’re out and about, not so much as the girls’ but happy to go off and do his own thing. But as soon as I take off the lens cap, he’s right there in front of me. Almost touching.

Ever played that “not touching” game when you’re a kid? That’s what it’s like.

You can’t tell, but in all these photos, he’s about 2 inches away from the lens, giving me the Eye. Incidentally, this is why I’m never getting another Border Collie. They drive you insane, like they are.

Kim is thoroughly enjoying being out and about again, she’s off-lead 95% of the time at the moment. We’re slowly starting to put some real muscle back onto her, but it’s taking time. I’d like to do some hydrotherapy with her but the pool we used to go to isn’t available at the moment, and she hates swimming. Maybe I can throw her in the sea at Redcar?

We set off on Sunday morning for Hare’n'Hounds, Dylan and I are competing all week and the girls are coming up for Waldridge Fell. Kim is running with Cat, which should be fun!

Doncaster Flyball

Posted on January 24, 2010 by Leanne

This tournament was a bit of a upside/downside; our dogs all ran really well, but it was almost embarrassing how unfit they are!

Kim and Mollie’s team went from running 20.86 in their third leg race (um, seeded on 21.60, sorry about that Division 6!) to barely getting under 22s in their afternoon races. Same dogs, same handlers, tighter changeovers, but we had some enormously tired dogs running! We finished 3rd overall, but it was a close-run thing.

Mollie came up a little lame after the last race, but thankfully we have some walking pharmacies in the team and so she had an anti-inflammatory and has come back as good as new. She has a tendency to get a little bit stiff in the cold/damp anyway, and she doesn’t slow down like a normal dog would if she’s feeling pained (so it’s very difficult to notice!). She’s right as rain and sound today, so doesn’t appear to be a “real” injury.

Dylan has somehow put on weight since last week’s Gap Farm because he had to squeeze into his harness this time around. He showed a lack of fitness too; he ran well all day, threw in some nice box turns, but he just didn’t feel as fast as he normally is. However, flyball-crazy-fever has set in with my little man. He has gone from standing quietly waiting for his turn to run, to lunging, barking and nearly pulling me over when the first dog goes. He’s obviously been talking to Jet! Thankfully he drops his head and focusses when the second dog goes, but this is why I dread having to run him second. Fingers crossed we can stay as third or anchor for the moment!

Canine Fitness Regime starts this week; we have nearly 8 weeks before the next tournament. I expect them all to be at least 0.5s quicker at Rotherham in March!