...to 'The Drakester'...3 years old today :)
Friday, 31 July 2009
Tuesday, 28 July 2009
Another rare weekend off (#2)
...ok, I guess that means they're becoming less rare?? lol Was home for the 2nd weekend in a row (now that is rare) and fortunately we got really good weather on Saturday so out came the lawnmower and the grass got cut...the dogs all had to help of course! (apart from Tammy who was determined to herd the lawnmower! lol)
So with the newly mown grass we set up to do some training in the afternoon and ended up with a full compliment of people and dogs. Squirrel decided to revert to true terrier behaviour and be a total idiot...I put her away. I have decided that she just doesn't take flyball at home very seriously! Radley was a little star and ran without wings, although she's still not demonstrating the speed I know she's capable of she was doing some lovely 4 footed turns off the box, just like daddy ;)
We did individual box work with everyone else apart from Dylan and Bailey, these two have very fast boxes despite their less than textbook techniques and I don't want to do anything that might slow them up and make them stop and think about what they're doing!
Teals' box work is coming on a treat with the angled slant board...
We're also using the slant board with Pip...plus me chasing her back off the box!! lol
I ran Lexie in behind Dylan and was really pleased with both of them, he carried his ball right out every time and she was absolutely flying, lets hope they both run as well at Eastham this weekend, fingers crossed we should have a full compliment of dogs this weekend...finally!! Really looking forward to it! :)
So with the newly mown grass we set up to do some training in the afternoon and ended up with a full compliment of people and dogs. Squirrel decided to revert to true terrier behaviour and be a total idiot...I put her away. I have decided that she just doesn't take flyball at home very seriously! Radley was a little star and ran without wings, although she's still not demonstrating the speed I know she's capable of she was doing some lovely 4 footed turns off the box, just like daddy ;)We did individual box work with everyone else apart from Dylan and Bailey, these two have very fast boxes despite their less than textbook techniques and I don't want to do anything that might slow them up and make them stop and think about what they're doing!
Teals' box work is coming on a treat with the angled slant board...
We're also using the slant board with Pip...plus me chasing her back off the box!! lol
I ran Lexie in behind Dylan and was really pleased with both of them, he carried his ball right out every time and she was absolutely flying, lets hope they both run as well at Eastham this weekend, fingers crossed we should have a full compliment of dogs this weekend...finally!! Really looking forward to it! :)
An unplanned new addition....
...will be arriving here later this month!
Meet Raezhaven Bryce at Bryning aka 'Travis', he's currently just 4 weeks old and a gorgeous little bundle of cocker cuddliness!
Travis is sired by Rupert, the dog I have just mated Maizy to and his mother is the lovely Fern. He is bred by Rachel and Phil Birt down at Raezhaven Gundogs in Dorset.
I wasn't actually looking for another cocker but when I saw this litter I totally fell in love with the two liver roan boys and when Rach offered me one I just couldn't resist! I really can't wait to bring him home and I can't thank Rach enough for this gorgeous little boy.
Meet Raezhaven Bryce at Bryning aka 'Travis', he's currently just 4 weeks old and a gorgeous little bundle of cocker cuddliness!
Travis is sired by Rupert, the dog I have just mated Maizy to and his mother is the lovely Fern. He is bred by Rachel and Phil Birt down at Raezhaven Gundogs in Dorset.
I wasn't actually looking for another cocker but when I saw this litter I totally fell in love with the two liver roan boys and when Rach offered me one I just couldn't resist! I really can't wait to bring him home and I can't thank Rach enough for this gorgeous little boy.
A rare weekend off (#1)
We weren't competing anywhere over the 18th/19th July so had a ‘quiet’ weekend at home which turned out not to be that quiet really, it was my nephew, Richard’s 21st so I spent most of the day Sat trying to find his birthday present as well as taking all the dogs down to the beach for a good run and visiting my gran who’s recently had a detached retina repaired so is having to spend long periods of the day lying still (anyone who knows my gran will know this is very hard for her!) and I still didn’t get half the jobs I wanted to do done! Where does the time go?
Sunday the weather was pretty miserable but since Drew was over for the weekend I had arranged to go training with his team over in Rotherham, we were late leaving not knowing what the weather was going to be like but after driving through horrendous downpours over the pennines we arrived to blue skies and sunshine. I just trained Drake, Mac and Squirrel. Drake did some runs with a cone in front of the box to encourage the 4 paw turn (which he does anyway) but it was more about him just having fun and keeping him happy to keep his enjoyment levels up. Mac ran really well (especially since we were using a flat fronted Canadian box that he’s never run on before), we were using him as a ‘stooge dog’ for one in the other lane that eyes and runs over. Mac is good at this job because he’s quite a big dog and not easily intimidated but is actually quite oblivious of what the dog in the other lane is doing…100% bombproof! He is however having some trouble with an infected dew claw on the foot he had the lump removed from; something that seems to have been caused by the dressing (there’s always something isn’t there?!). On top of this Gemma had taken Bailey for his stitches out on Monday, all looked fine but as he left the vets surgery the wound split open again! Straight back in and staples this time, it’s touch and go whether he’ll be running at Eastham now (wah!). Squirrel was fantastic, we ran her for the first time without netting or wings and she was great, totally focused and never ran out once…maybe she will make a flyball dog after all!!
Sunday the weather was pretty miserable but since Drew was over for the weekend I had arranged to go training with his team over in Rotherham, we were late leaving not knowing what the weather was going to be like but after driving through horrendous downpours over the pennines we arrived to blue skies and sunshine. I just trained Drake, Mac and Squirrel. Drake did some runs with a cone in front of the box to encourage the 4 paw turn (which he does anyway) but it was more about him just having fun and keeping him happy to keep his enjoyment levels up. Mac ran really well (especially since we were using a flat fronted Canadian box that he’s never run on before), we were using him as a ‘stooge dog’ for one in the other lane that eyes and runs over. Mac is good at this job because he’s quite a big dog and not easily intimidated but is actually quite oblivious of what the dog in the other lane is doing…100% bombproof! He is however having some trouble with an infected dew claw on the foot he had the lump removed from; something that seems to have been caused by the dressing (there’s always something isn’t there?!). On top of this Gemma had taken Bailey for his stitches out on Monday, all looked fine but as he left the vets surgery the wound split open again! Straight back in and staples this time, it’s touch and go whether he’ll be running at Eastham now (wah!). Squirrel was fantastic, we ran her for the first time without netting or wings and she was great, totally focused and never ran out once…maybe she will make a flyball dog after all!!
Wednesday, 15 July 2009
and now for something different...
So…in light of the fact I’ve taken no new pics/videos I’m going to share other peoples’ instead…. Here’s some of Max (Bryning Bright Star) competing over the last few weeks...he’s gone from G1 to G3 in the last month and is pictured with his rosettes and trophies from his first 6 months of competing. 
Max is from Ethan and Dazzle so is Sparks’ litter brother.
And here’s a funny short video of Ziggy, Bryning Unbelievable (Rico X Faith) trying to tame the sprinkler! lol
And HERE you can see how her litter brother Monkee is settling into his new home in Florida.
I promise I will get some new photos of Mouse and Maisie this weekend!
Max is from Ethan and Dazzle so is Sparks’ litter brother. And here’s a funny short video of Ziggy, Bryning Unbelievable (Rico X Faith) trying to tame the sprinkler! lol
And HERE you can see how her litter brother Monkee is settling into his new home in Florida.
I promise I will get some new photos of Mouse and Maisie this weekend!
Playing Catch up
Have been pretty rubbish at taking pics and updating the blog etc the past couple of weeks…just been very busy with one thing and the other…sorry!
Newark
What can I say…it was a hectic one! We headed off down to Dogs Unleashed at Newark Showground and had a brilliant weekend with glorious weather throughout. I also picked Maizy
up in Mansfield and took her down to Berkshire to be mated to the lovely Rupert (Silvertips Knight of Danalimatt) so fingers crossed we’ll have some lovely new cocker puppies early September.
Unfortunatley I’d had to leave Mac at home following his minor surgery. The growth on his digital pad turned out to be a Canine Viral Papilloma, something very unusual in a dog of his age (more commonly seen in puppies) and thankfully nothing to worry about. The wound has actually healed very well but the dressing caused some irritation to his dew claw so his recovery has taken a little longer than I’d hoped. Saturday we ran the Racers in Div 1 and got absolutely slaughtered. Without Mac we ran Faith who, for some completely unknown reason, was just on another planet!! Just no focus at all, watching the other lane, turning the wrong way off the box and just generally running like a slug…SO frustrating!! We came 5th out of 6 with a fastest time of 18.82…pants! lol
We also ran the Pawz in division 2 where we came bottom, just totally outclassed as we were missing Faith from that team and also ended up pulling Teal who had a badly a swollen back foot after suffering some sort of infection between her toes, ah well…one of those weekends!
I did take Drake over to have a go at the Scurry Bandits which turned out to be quite a tightly fought contest which he won!! He did the retrieve over the fences in a time of 12.87secs, 0.25sec faster than anyone else managed and the only dog to go under 13secs all weekend. Clever cocker. Everyone over there was so nice and friendly, we had some good banter and got a lovely prize too. Bailey also ran and came 3rd with a time of 13.19 proving that in cases like this, accuracy is just as important as straight line speed.
Sunday we had nothing to do so just had a nice day moseying round the rest of the show. Dylan went and won the scurry so it was a Demon Dogz clean sweep! I ran Bailey and Faith in a couple of agility classes NFC which went ok apart from Fi knocking a couple of poles, entirely my fault as I have a habit of bending down on turns which causes her to flatten over the jump and clip the pole…arghhh! She was much more focused at this than her flyball though! Bailey was dead keen and ran really well but was surprisingly controllable; I later discovered that he’d suffered a skin tear on his shoulder the previous day which ended up opening up into quite a large wound. Poor Bailey. It was off to the vets for him on Monday and 11 stitches to pull it all back together…he’s absolutely fine but no flyball for him for a couple of weeks.
We had a brilliant weekend nonetheless. It was nice to catch up with lots of people we don’t often see, good weather and great company and a really good laugh throughout…what flyball is all about!
Rotherham
This weekend started badly with me being stuck in work ‘til 6pm, then having to go home and sort the dogs and the caravan and get over to Rotherham. We made it for about 9.30pm and I had plenty of help setting up and getting sorted while Paul and Alison kindly cooked pizzas for tea! We had a full caravan for the duration of the evening and a good laugh…started the weekend as we meant to go on!
Saturday we were in first thing with the Racers in division 1…even more handicapped this time with an off form Mac and no Bailey! Mac ran a couple of races but I ended up pulling him and we ran Drake instead. We got whooped but we did manage to win one race against Mansfield Marnicks….beaten by a cocker…will they ever live down the shame?? Lol Was great to see our friends at Rotherham setting a new fastest seed time of 17.65 in this division and going on to win it…nice one guys! This team also included 2 ‘Brynings’ (Ollie and Charlie) which was really nice
We also ran starters with the help of Donna and Neela running 4th dog and everyone ran really really well! Squirrel ended up running start dog, she’s so focused now and was running in from 25ft with some cracking starts and consistent 5.5sec times…this is a VAST improvement! I had said she may never run in open comp as I wouldn’t consider running her in a team unless she started running 5.5 or below. She’s obviously determined to prove me wrong! Radley also ran really well and so too did Neela who was making her flyball debut. I think all new flyballers could do with watching Donna run a dog and take note on how it should be done…she’s SO enthusiastic!!
We put up the ‘party tent’ in the afternoon, one of Steve’s 10m gazebos he’d brought over, and set up chairs, tables and BBQ and decorated with pink balloons for the ’Demon Dogz’ 1st birthday party…exactly one year since we’d first competed. Gemma also came over after work so we were all together and Alison brought a huge pink French fancy birthday cake too. Unfortunately some people had to leave before the BBQ got underway with racing/presentation having finished later than expected but we had a lovely time with all our friends and Conrad and Jackie finally popped their camping cherry and stayed over…in a tent!! Lol Now we’re just trying to persuade Steve to bring the gazebo to every tournament! Lol
Sunday morning we were in first thing again with the Pawz, again this team struggled having lost Drake to the Racers and while Faith
was running better than she had last week she’s still not fully focused. We’ve now had to start doing with her what we do with Ethan and load the ball the opposite side depending on what lane she’s in so that she’s always turning towards the other lane. As it happens she seems to be able to do lovely four footed box turns either way! Lol It’s just a little confusing for the poor boxloader when first and last dogs keep swapping holes!
We had another good weekend anyway with good weather throughout (apart from the downpour over Saturday night). We have a couple of weekends off now before a full month of comps in August starting with Eastham. Time to catch up with jobs at home!
Newark
What can I say…it was a hectic one! We headed off down to Dogs Unleashed at Newark Showground and had a brilliant weekend with glorious weather throughout. I also picked Maizy
up in Mansfield and took her down to Berkshire to be mated to the lovely Rupert (Silvertips Knight of Danalimatt) so fingers crossed we’ll have some lovely new cocker puppies early September.
Unfortunatley I’d had to leave Mac at home following his minor surgery. The growth on his digital pad turned out to be a Canine Viral Papilloma, something very unusual in a dog of his age (more commonly seen in puppies) and thankfully nothing to worry about. The wound has actually healed very well but the dressing caused some irritation to his dew claw so his recovery has taken a little longer than I’d hoped. Saturday we ran the Racers in Div 1 and got absolutely slaughtered. Without Mac we ran Faith who, for some completely unknown reason, was just on another planet!! Just no focus at all, watching the other lane, turning the wrong way off the box and just generally running like a slug…SO frustrating!! We came 5th out of 6 with a fastest time of 18.82…pants! lol
We also ran the Pawz in division 2 where we came bottom, just totally outclassed as we were missing Faith from that team and also ended up pulling Teal who had a badly a swollen back foot after suffering some sort of infection between her toes, ah well…one of those weekends!
I did take Drake over to have a go at the Scurry Bandits which turned out to be quite a tightly fought contest which he won!! He did the retrieve over the fences in a time of 12.87secs, 0.25sec faster than anyone else managed and the only dog to go under 13secs all weekend. Clever cocker. Everyone over there was so nice and friendly, we had some good banter and got a lovely prize too. Bailey also ran and came 3rd with a time of 13.19 proving that in cases like this, accuracy is just as important as straight line speed.
Sunday we had nothing to do so just had a nice day moseying round the rest of the show. Dylan went and won the scurry so it was a Demon Dogz clean sweep! I ran Bailey and Faith in a couple of agility classes NFC which went ok apart from Fi knocking a couple of poles, entirely my fault as I have a habit of bending down on turns which causes her to flatten over the jump and clip the pole…arghhh! She was much more focused at this than her flyball though! Bailey was dead keen and ran really well but was surprisingly controllable; I later discovered that he’d suffered a skin tear on his shoulder the previous day which ended up opening up into quite a large wound. Poor Bailey. It was off to the vets for him on Monday and 11 stitches to pull it all back together…he’s absolutely fine but no flyball for him for a couple of weeks.
We had a brilliant weekend nonetheless. It was nice to catch up with lots of people we don’t often see, good weather and great company and a really good laugh throughout…what flyball is all about!
Rotherham
This weekend started badly with me being stuck in work ‘til 6pm, then having to go home and sort the dogs and the caravan and get over to Rotherham. We made it for about 9.30pm and I had plenty of help setting up and getting sorted while Paul and Alison kindly cooked pizzas for tea! We had a full caravan for the duration of the evening and a good laugh…started the weekend as we meant to go on!
Saturday we were in first thing with the Racers in division 1…even more handicapped this time with an off form Mac and no Bailey! Mac ran a couple of races but I ended up pulling him and we ran Drake instead. We got whooped but we did manage to win one race against Mansfield Marnicks….beaten by a cocker…will they ever live down the shame?? Lol Was great to see our friends at Rotherham setting a new fastest seed time of 17.65 in this division and going on to win it…nice one guys! This team also included 2 ‘Brynings’ (Ollie and Charlie) which was really nice
We also ran starters with the help of Donna and Neela running 4th dog and everyone ran really really well! Squirrel ended up running start dog, she’s so focused now and was running in from 25ft with some cracking starts and consistent 5.5sec times…this is a VAST improvement! I had said she may never run in open comp as I wouldn’t consider running her in a team unless she started running 5.5 or below. She’s obviously determined to prove me wrong! Radley also ran really well and so too did Neela who was making her flyball debut. I think all new flyballers could do with watching Donna run a dog and take note on how it should be done…she’s SO enthusiastic!!
We put up the ‘party tent’ in the afternoon, one of Steve’s 10m gazebos he’d brought over, and set up chairs, tables and BBQ and decorated with pink balloons for the ’Demon Dogz’ 1st birthday party…exactly one year since we’d first competed. Gemma also came over after work so we were all together and Alison brought a huge pink French fancy birthday cake too. Unfortunately some people had to leave before the BBQ got underway with racing/presentation having finished later than expected but we had a lovely time with all our friends and Conrad and Jackie finally popped their camping cherry and stayed over…in a tent!! Lol Now we’re just trying to persuade Steve to bring the gazebo to every tournament! Lol
Sunday morning we were in first thing again with the Pawz, again this team struggled having lost Drake to the Racers and while Faith
was running better than she had last week she’s still not fully focused. We’ve now had to start doing with her what we do with Ethan and load the ball the opposite side depending on what lane she’s in so that she’s always turning towards the other lane. As it happens she seems to be able to do lovely four footed box turns either way! Lol It’s just a little confusing for the poor boxloader when first and last dogs keep swapping holes!
We had another good weekend anyway with good weather throughout (apart from the downpour over Saturday night). We have a couple of weekends off now before a full month of comps in August starting with Eastham. Time to catch up with jobs at home!
Thursday, 2 July 2009
Bon Voyage Monkee...
Well, today’s the day that Monkee leaves us for his new home in Florida. We arrived at the airport at 1pm but the agent meeting me wasn’t going to be there ‘til 2.20pm so rather than have the dogs sitting in the van in the 32°c heat I decided to drive the few miles over to Ryecroft farm and take them for a walk. This is a flyball venue so I knew there were shaded footpaths under trees and a river for them to cool off in and it was the perfect opportunity for Monkee to stretch his legs and toilet before his flight. I just had Ethan, Spark and Dottie with me so I thought they’d enjoy a nice gentle stroll….hmmm…seems my dogs really don’t understand that concept and they proceeded to charge around the thick undergrowth in the woodland like complete idiots and I kept losing them! At least Monkee was well behaved despite Dottie and Spark trying to teach him all the best bad habits!
Remember those two beautiful clean dogs from the show on Sunday???
Didn’t last very long did it?! lol
‘Ok Monkee…pay attention…
….first you have to make sure you find the deepest dirtiest puddle and then make sure you tuck all your nice clean white bits into the water and get them all well covered….’
Thankfully he declined to join them in their mud wallowing! lol
We got back to the car and he just found shade under this tree and really didn’t want to come out to get back in the van…bless him
At least he’s been getting acclimatized over the past few days, sure it’s going to be much hotter out in Florida!
We met the agent at the cargo depot, folded the big purple fleece blanket that all the dogs have been sleeping on for the past week and placed it in his crate so he can take the smell of home on his journey with him, and saw him off…always feel a little pang of sadness as the roller shutter door goes down and I see them for the last time but I know he’s going to have a great life out in the ‘sunshine state’ with his new family.
Remember those two beautiful clean dogs from the show on Sunday???
Didn’t last very long did it?! lol
‘Ok Monkee…pay attention…
….first you have to make sure you find the deepest dirtiest puddle and then make sure you tuck all your nice clean white bits into the water and get them all well covered….’
Thankfully he declined to join them in their mud wallowing! lol
We got back to the car and he just found shade under this tree and really didn’t want to come out to get back in the van…bless him
At least he’s been getting acclimatized over the past few days, sure it’s going to be much hotter out in Florida!
We met the agent at the cargo depot, folded the big purple fleece blanket that all the dogs have been sleeping on for the past week and placed it in his crate so he can take the smell of home on his journey with him, and saw him off…always feel a little pang of sadness as the roller shutter door goes down and I see them for the last time but I know he’s going to have a great life out in the ‘sunshine state’ with his new family.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
