Tag Archives: kennel club

Kim has lost her Crazy

  By Leanne | May 5, 2008 - 1:56 pm | Agility, Courses, Kim
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We had a very disappointing weekend at Shrewsbury. Kim just wasn’t working and I’m actually pretty worried about her, she was very tired and quiet for the whole weekend. Anybody who knows Kim will attest to the fact that she’s a very noisy girl and likes to bark! But this weekend she was heading back to the car and sleeping solidly between runs, no barking at people walking past or dogs playing in the exercise area, which we backed on to.

Shrewsbury Combined Medium 1-3 Agility We did come home with a rosette in Combined 1-3 Agility, our first class in the weekend. It was a lovely course and normally the kind of thing that Kim would have loved, but she actually came to a complete standstill on the dogwalk and she was pretty slow. Our 4th was 8 seconds off the winning time — and we know the winner very well! Moss competes against us at EMDAC shows in Primary, and I’m pleased for him and his owner now they’ve won out. On the other hand, Kim and Moss normally run very close times to each other. The classes were competitive, notably with Amanda Hampson’s young Toller Shoredancer Sea Jade was running in our classes, and Gemma Hanekom’s Rajinka Smokescreen, both new dogs out with very good handlers, and Moss was brilliant all weekend (as usual!). I don’t think Kim would have been outclassed if she’d been on form though, some of the courses were perfect for her.

KC Medium Olympia Qualifer (Combined 1-7)Our other Combined 1-3 Agility was probably Kim’s best run of the weekend, which naturally I then got her E’d on! I timed a rear cross atrociously and pulled Kim onto a different jump, and I take all the blame! The only other agility class we did was the Olympia Qualifier, which was a really difficult course for Open but I actually quite liked it, I thought Kim could handle all the difficult sections. All the courses we’d had were quite straightforward and Kim and I tend to do better on things that are a bit more tricky. Unfortunately Kim still hadn’t found her crazy and although she set off better, the ground was very slippy and she skidded badly coming out of one turn which put an end to any hopes of a clear round. We actually had a pole down too, which is unheard of for Kim! (Natasha Wise won it with a cracking run, with Raeanne’s Flipping Heck, aka Dizzy).

(I have a feeling I’ve got this course a bit wrong from the Olympia Qualifier, all the numbers and obstacles are right but it doesn’t look quite like it did from the ground, if that makes sense!)

There was a chiropractor at the show and Kim went over for a check-up; her pelvis was out of alignment and she was a bit rough in her back end, so maybe she was just a bit uncomfortable this weekend. I can’t help feeling like there’s something more to it, she was so sleepy the whole time. To use an apt analogy, she was always working in 1st gear, occasionally getting up to 2nd, but never hitting her usual 4th gear. (5th gear is the Special Crazy, we don’t see that very often anyway!). I think we might just check her out at the vets this week, I want to make sure there is nothing physically wrong with her. It could just be she’s burnt out and fed up of agility, we have been competing a little more often in the past couple of months. I kind of hope that’s all it is!

Shrewsbury is always a nice show though. There were some fantastic courses too. Ring C on Sunday had some great Jumping courses that I would have loved to have a go at with Kim or Dylan in particular. And we stood watching the 6+7 Agility in Ring E for ages on Sunday, it was a really difficult course but looked lovely to run if you got it right! I can’t remember who judged it but there was a real set of spectators hanging around to watch, lots of applause for those who got it right and commiserations for those that got it wrong!

So, still Grade 2 and I won’t be entering Newton Heath, I want to see if giving Kim an agility break will make a difference. No Newton Heath will leave us with June free of agility competitions — a weird time to take a break, but hopefully it will leave Kim bright and chirpy again for the rest of the summer season, and maybe she’ll find her crazy again.

“Real Shows”

  By Leanne | April 26, 2008 - 1:26 pm | Agility
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There have been some comments on the Agility Form regarding the approach to independent and Kennel Club shows. I feel very strongly about this, and it annoys me no end when people refer to Kennel Club shows as the “real thing” and independent as “training” or “practise” shows.

I’m mainly referring to BAA or UKA shows here, which are seperate umbrella organisations for clubs to run shows under. A series of shows run by one club under their own rules may well be viewed as a training show, but in my opinion BAA/UKA offer a proper organisational system of competition which is perfectly equal to Kennel Club. The only difference is the size of the shows, and as long as the attitude exists that these shows aren’t “real shows”, people won’t enter them and they won’t get the same amount of entries.

What really annoys me is that this attitude infers that the achievements of my dog as somehow lesser than if she’d won at a Kennel Club show. I’m sorry, but winning a class of 180 dogs is a much bigger achievement than winning a class of 6 dogs. Winning Introductory Medium Dog of the Year for showing consistent high placings is a much bigger acheivement than the 4 or 5 classes won at Kennel Club where Kim was not at her best but there simply was no competition. When Kim came home having won her first Agility class of 160+ dogs, running at a high standard, several people said “great! Now you’ll have to do it at Kennel Club!” Those same people seemed to think it was a greater achievement for Kim to win her class of 16 dogs at Lincoln a few months later. They seemed to think it was better to have beaten three ancient Shelties, a dog that can’t weave and a runaway Poodle than to have beaten some of the top up-and-coming Large Border Collies who train with some of the top trainers in the country.

Can somebody please explain to me why this is? Somehow the idea that BAA shows are somehow worse than Kennel Club, that the standard is lower or that everyone just goes to train their dogs and not to actually be competitive or win anything. The standard of competition is higher at BAA shows for my dog. The amount of competition is greater. Some people do turn up to use the shows as training runs for their dogs, in preperation for the “real thing”, but personally, I would happily use a Kennel Club show as a warm-up for my dog’s upcoming BAA show. Not only that, but BAA are more innovative; they’re currently the only organisation to offer up-to-date League Tables and online results publishing.

Unless someone can offer me a valid explanation for this attitude of only Kennel Club is a real agility competition, please have a bit of respect for the achievements of me and my dog. We’ve worked hard for them, and just because they weren’t at Kennel Club doesn’t mean they’re somehow lesser. The Americans here are way beyond us, as they recognise all the organisations equally and don’t consider that titles or Q’s under certain banners might be somehow lesser than another.

(Incidently, this is mainly a defence of the BAA but frankly after their attitude towards certain people who pioneered those new innovations and were the foundation of many a show, I’m not sure they deserve defending. Feel free to read UKA for BAA instead, it’s equally applicable).

Doncaster Flyball Tournament & Wyre Agility

  By Leanne | December 3, 2007 - 9:29 pm | Agility, Courses, Dylan, Dylan's Blog, Flyball, Kim
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Wyre

I’m not sure I want to talk about Wyre! We had a nice day but for the first two runs I just didn’t get my head sorted. The courses were fair but erred on the easier side and we missed a weave entry on one (bit of a shock, we haven’t done that for years!) and then got E’d on the other, but I could see it coming when I walked the course. The final run is going to be one of those that haunts me for months; Lee Gibson set a tricky course for the Agility Club Starters Challenge, and after I walked it I came out feeling a bit worried about certain bits, so I had a chat with Brenda (Tenton) about it. She suggested I try layering one of the jumps, which I hadn’t even thought of and I’d never tried before, particularly because it was into a tunnel and Kim isn’t a big tunnel fan. Anyway, collected Kim and queued, and I was actually feeling pretty excited about it, for the first time all day! There was a horrible moment at the start when Kim stood up from her wait, but I decided just to go for it and see how far we could go.

Agility Club Starters Challenge Qualifier (Medium) Dec 2007

Agility Club Starters Challenge Qualifier (Medium) Dec 2007

Kim was absolutely paw-perfect, fast and responsive and I couldn’t have asked for more from her. Brenda’s layering suggestion worked perfectly, and we had no problems with any of the other pull-throughs and weave exit. The see-saw was a bit slow but it was right next to the ring barrier, and it was the fast Grade 6/7 dogs in the other ring so her attention slipped slightly, but no real complaints. I was ultra cautious with her dogwalk contact and she hit it perfectly, but my caution cost us everything – I turned sideways to make sure she hit it, and as I swung around for the final jump, Kim thought we were turning and took13 again. Heartbroken! It’s so rare for me to get such a switched-on run from Kim, and I know we would have wiped the floor and come home with not only a 1st, but a place in the Agility Club Starters Challenge Final, which would have been amazing. I was so thrilled that she’d been so good, but so annoyed with myself!

Doncaster

Doncaster was a seriously surprising day! We had all three dogs plus Jet (Katie was due to meet us there from Liverpool, having cadged a lift with a friend from Cheshire Set!) and although Kim wasn’t running, she was down on the Barking Owlers team sheet in case of emergency. After I’d wandered up to the main hall (and the famous turf lanes), Julie rushed over to ask whether I’d put Dylan (or Kim) into a scratch NFC (Not For Competition) team, as one of the other teams had dropped out of Division 5. Julie is our trainer and despite a few misgivings (this is Dylan, after all!) I said ok.

All the other dogs in our little NFC team were tiny 8″ dogs, so Dylan looked like a giant! I volunteered to run first on the principal that I had less to worry about with changeovers, our current weak point. Dylan was an absolute star though – he ran his socks off, and only ran out once on the way back when he fumbled the ball and then lost sight of me, which lead to momentary panic. I am so proud of him!

The only negative was that our team were using a narrow Canadian box rather than our Owlers boomerang-style, so Dylan had some issues with his box but Julie, Jo and Jane all stood in to help for him. Jane is now talking about putting him at Sheffield with one of the teams, which is equally terrifying and exciting! We’ll see how his boxwork goes over the next couple of weeks, and try and get some “real” changeovers in to see if he copes ok.

The rest of the guys had an ok day – some fantastic racing but not quite enough wins, with Barking coming last in Div 2, Barney’s 4th in Div 1 and Nights (the team I boxload for) pulling out all the stops for 3rd in Div 4 with a tough seed time.