Tag Archives: flyball training

Flyball Training

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First of the new year, finally! It was good to be back. Not that I had a dog to run; too cold for Kim’s old bones and as Dylan has 3 weeks of agility competitions in a row I didn’t want to risk overworking him in a flyball session.

Rio had fun, she met Chip and Bertie the giant Lurchers again, plus Bobbi the tiny hairy JRT, the Labradors, the Beardies, and all the other mishmash of crossbreeds. She’s also really happy to meet and greet people when they’re in a group, but if we meet an individual she is way more cautious. Lots of cuddles with people dressed in all kind of weird ways (it was very cold this morning), and also with a group of 10-12 young teenagers who appeared to watch mid session. They were fairly rowdy, smoking, loud, etc and she was friendly and happy.

Mollie had loads of fun but she was so tired at the end of the session, but a careful warm up and cool down mean she isn’t stiff this evening.

Training x2

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Agility = good! Dyl’s seesaw is looking great after our confidence building sessions. I’ve lost the stop on the end but I don’t really care, Dylan isn’t brave enough to fly it and it’s faster. If we need it back later we can work on it, I’m sure. I also worked on 180 pull-thrus, because I hate training them.

I’ve also realised I have a tendency to choose exercises where the dog is on my right. I’m right handed so that’s not really a surprise, but I should try and plan exercises and courses for the left as it’s becoming a weakness.

Flyball = good! The girls were both a bit bonkers; Mollie did a few re-runs that she shouldn’t and Kim has apparently decided she should always run lead, as every time I turned around she’d lined herself up at 25ft, very pointedly ignoring the dogs behind her. Dyl actually looked good over 14″, he did run lead and his striding was excellent. We put a regulator in approaching the box to make him extend into his turn which worked really well, I’ve got to get back to doing that more regularly.

Long Summer

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Excellent flyball training this past weekend, all the dogs worked extremely hard. Dylan still isn’t comfortable running with Norah but she’s not in his team this weekend so I am hopeful that he’ll be relaxed and happy about being in the ring.

Our official complaint to the BFA regarding the incident at Swallownest has been upheld. I’m not comfortable blogging about it really, except to say I’m extremely grateful to everyone who supported us through the decision to log the complaint, and to the BFA Disciplinary Committee for their prompt and decisive action. Although I’m relieved, I’m also a bit sad that it came to this. The dog belongs to a team we have respected and enjoyed racing against for years, and have had a good relationship with in the past. I hope they are able to acknowledge that this wasn’t a personal attack or similar. I also hope that the dog is not as stressed and afraid in the future.

Time to move on.

We took the dogs to Digley for a swim on Sunday, it was too hot to walk and Mollie was exhausted following her hard training on Saturday. I was prepared for once and took an empty plastic bottle with me to throw for them (fill it 1/4 with water and it’s brilliant), so they got a really good workout but stayed cool. We even managed to persuade Kim to swim a couple of metres! She still flails around quite a lot but she’s not as panicked as she used to be.

It was far too hot on Monday to do anything, so we’ve had a quiet week. Agility training as usual (I’ll blog about that seperately!) and we’re planning a long walk this morning which includes going somewhere completely new, and meeting a tiny puppy!

Kim gets her photo on this post because she does not get to meet the puppy. Her tolerance for puppies is currently hovering at -47, with likelihood to drop to -368 on actually meeting a puppy.

Switch

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Flyball training last night went well, we do a bit less on Wednesdays and just focus on running the dogs together as a team.

We have Dylan and Kim in the same team this weekend again. Mum has been running Kim and I’ve been running Dyl up until now because Dylan wouldn’t run for anyone else. However, mum could not get her change into Jet last night so in a moment of frustration I grabbed Kim and handed over Dylan. Running Kim is as easy as breathing and we nailed our change into Jet, and mum was perfect on Dyl’s change into Kim, first time round.

So, we’re switching this weekend and we’ll see how it goes. Dylan has always run really well for mum and we’ve toyed with the idea before but never gone through with it in tournaments. If Dyl runs faster for mum then … well, I’ll be very annoyed but it’ll all be down to my wonderful training so I guess we’ll stick with it. Kim and I are always awesome.

Flyball Training, New Year New Games

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The guys were rocking flyball training today. We’d already arranged to do some Starter/Puppy training this morning, and Kim had long-since being volunteered as Stooge Dog, but our tournament tomorrow has unfortunately been cancelled. So the whole gang got to come and play!

The Starters did very well, we still have a lot of work to do (especially boxwork!) but they all did some excellent recall work, either on their own or against the Stooge Dog Kim.

I like our Stooge Dogs to be focussed on the game, experienced and unflappable, but not overexcited and hyper. Medium height dogs are best, especially for changover work, as large dogs can be intimidating to nervous Starter dogs, and small dogs aren’t “obvious” enough. Ideally, the Stooge Dog shouldn’t be slow either, but there’s no point putting in a super-fast dog initially against a Starter as it’s too tempting to run out of the lane to chase. The Stooge Dog is there to show the Starter that there will be an opponent, but not to be an idiot. Kim is a very good Stooge Dog!

Katie paired the rest of the dogs up and they each did some boxwork, some Chase Recalls, and some handler-chasing full-runs. I felt really happy with how Dylan worked, I think he really benefits from this kind of specific training. I had a feeling Kim would too, and she definitely did, I haven’t seen her run so fast in ages! She loves doing Chase Recalls, she’s a typical lurcher-type in that regard. We timed her last run and she clocked a 4.9 over 12″, which really is pretty good for a 10-yr-old who is way off her normal jump fitness. Very proud of my old lady!

Mollie is a special case, because she is such a lunatic it’s not safe to do “normal” boxwork with her, so we just spent a lot of time chasing her off the box and getting her stretching away. It seemed to be working, but I think it will take Mollie longer to benefit from this kind of training than it will Kim or Dylan.

We aren’t competing at flyball again until the end of February, so we have a good block now where we can really get training and focussed on really improving the dogs for summer.