Bryning

Welcome to the world little parson piglets...

2012-01-23T11:45:00.003Z

Squirrel whelped her 3rd (and likely final) litter of puppies overnight and it occured to me that whelping a parson is something of an experience, quite different to that of border collies or cockers...firstly the bitch often gets very agitated and restless just before the first pup arrives and is quite noisy about the whole thing then when the first pup comes she continues in this highly agitated state...often picking the pup up and holding it in her mouth while going round and round in circles and rolling around, doing headstands etc! It’s quite alarming when you first see it and you’re sure she’s going to hurt the puppy but she doesn’t; I do find that I have to get quite firm to calm the bitch down and make her ‘get a grip’ (a metaphorical slap across the face for hysteria! lol) so she is firmly told to put the puppy down and lie down (I do feel bad about being so mean at a time they are obviously in pain and discomfort but it really is for her own good!); by the time the second pup arrives she starts to settle and then just quietly gets on with popping them out, this time we had all 6 delivered in around 3 hours :o) They are also very quiet puppies, I have all my pups born and reared in my bedroom for at least the first two weeks of their life and they very often keep me awake at night, just squeaking and gurgling as babies do but parson babies are lovely and quiet and remain so right throughout the raising in the house...they never get gobby and demanding when it’s dinner time or they want out to play...just sit nice a quietly watching and waiting...they seem so easy compared to the collies and cockers!

so here they are, first sight of the new babies...lovely big healthy puppies :o)

There are 2 boys and 4 girls this time, very much looking forward to seeing how they grow up and comparing them to the last litter.

Osmaston Polo Ground

2011-07-12T21:01:00.006+01:00

This is a new flyball venue located in the very picturesque Derbyshire village of Osmaston, a lovely scenic setting for a weekend of flyball courtesy of the Alpha Dogz. We were possibly a little ambitious when we entered 4 open teams and a starters team knowing that there would only be the four of us (Me, Alison, Gemma and Rach) plus a 5 year old child to keep an eye on too (lol) and especially since I had also committed to attending a BCCGB committee meeting on Saturday between the morning and afternoon racing (fortunately just 20 mins away in Willington) but things actually went surprisingly smoothly! We managed to run in five divisions with Gemma and I judging another division each, meaning we were involved in seven out of the nine divisions running over the weekend…whew! In spite of this we still managed to have a relaxed and enjoyable weekend which was certainly helped by the weather which was glorious sunshine throughout although possibly a little too hot for the dogs when racing.

Our racing started with starters first thing on Saturday morning and we had Spark , Fergus, Tarka, Flint and Spud as backup since I knew I wouldn’t be able to run Tarka and Flint at the same time so I alternated them but mostly ran Flint to be honest who was better than I expected and actually managed to run while the other lane was running and win us some legs. I’ll admit…he is better when the dog in the other lane is smaller/slower but…it’s progress at least! Somehow or other this team managed to come 2nd and we got lovely keyrings with pics of all the dogs on :o)

Next in we had the Demon Cubz, this is our newly formed 4th team which consisted of Pip, Fly, Squirrel, Ethan and Maisie. We had Eth and Maisie sharing since they both have to run last. This team started out well but things rapidly went downhill when Ethan went lame (obviously not ready to come back after his injury at Eastham :o( ) and then Maisie started repeatedly spitting her ball….argh!!! They ran a fastest time of 22.60 which is their new seed time but they are definitely capable of going sub 22 with a bit more practice I think.

Sunday started with the Pawz which this weekend was Spark (making his open debut), Jovi, Fynn, Lexie and Teal. This was another rather eventful division with a new combination of dogs where we learned a couple of things…(1) while Spark may be happy to run for someone else…this doesn’t apply when he’s running in on me running Jovi! (2) When my concentration is distracted from Jovi…her concentration is distracted from flyball! (3) Teal will actually run for someone other than me now! Jovi started running out on her way back from the box, something she hasn’t done since she very first started competing, so I actually ended up running Spark most of the day and…I have to say that he was actually brilliant! Soooo pleased with my little man! I don’t think they got that many points as we seemed to suffer with numerous lights/fumbles etc but they ran a fastest time of 21.31 and I was really pleased that Spark stayed happy and focused throughout…doing lovely tight changeovers and fumbling his ball a couple of times but coming back in over the jumps…clever merlie bum! I only wish I’d put some effort in to training him sooner! Making his open debut at 4 years old means he has some catching up to do! lol

We had decided to run the Racers NFC and run with the wings up to help Tarka re-gain her confidence in competition so that team was Mac’, Faith, Dottie and Tarka. I just feel that she needs the hype, excitement and consistency of running with experienced dogs in an open division to help her find her form again. She ran ok but didn’t have her normal speed but over the day we did discover that she has quite a build-up of scar tissue, over her right hip and left leg and I am wondering whether her sudden loss of speed/confidence is actually due to a physical issue more than anything else. Poor Tarka baby; not really sure what to do with her next??

A few of my favourite pics of this team, these were taken by David Flood of Fenland Firestorm, they were only competing Sunday and in the same division as the Pawz so David only got pics of the Racers and Demonz but they are fabulous photos as always, thanks David :o)

Faith...

Tarka...

Last up we had the Demonz running in Division 1 and we ran Aston, Bailey, Dylan and Travis. but this time Rachel ran Travis and I ran Aston. I do love running my boy but also missed running Travis too. They all ran ok, Dyl is still not hitting his top form and I don’t think Travis ran quite as well as he had at Eastham so we only managed an 18.41 but we did win the division!

A few of my favourite pics of this team...

Travis...

Aston...

We also took several pups…Charm, Gambit, Junior and Walter who got their first vaccines and microchips thanks to Tom and Walter then headed home to Stevenage with Kristian on the first leg of his journey to his new home in Russia via the World Dog Show in Paris…he’s such a happy and laid back little chap…he took his little adventure in his stride as I expected ;o)

Walter – Bryning B’Dazzled (Fynn x Dazzle) just chilling in the garden during his few days stay with the Allcorns :o)

All in all another very busy but enjoyable weekend, lots learned and lots still to work on.

Preiously...on ER...

2011-07-01T12:11:00.005+01:00

Ok, so in light of my appalling aptitude as a blogger of late I feel we need a brief recap on what has happened over the last couple of months else anything new won’t make a whole heap of sense! Kinda like the start of one of those ongoing TV dramas lol (cue dramatic intro music….)

Flyball
Several shows in the last couple of months, can’t remember what happened at them all now to be honest. My dogs in particular have suffered from my lack of time lately and are all a little ‘porky’ (by ‘porky’ I really mean FAT!) so aren’t running their best, with the exceptions of Aston, Mac, Maisie and Jovi who never seem to gain any weight no matter what their feeding/exercise regime (thankfully!). I also think this rapid weight gain is partly caused by the fact that I’ve started feeding them a lot more raw meat and bones, which they love but perhaps a bit too much!

The season has started slowly with a lot shuffling of dogs between the teams as we try to work out who is on form, who isn’t and which combinations are working best. We have also, in the last month, increased our number of open teams from three to four (eek!!) which is quite a lot of work for 8 people but we just have too many dogs to squeeze into 3 teams now (and lots of youngsters in training too).

Aston has been coming on brilliantly in training and has been running consistent 4.4’s in starters competitions (clever lad); he’s such a joy to handle…so motivated and focused, it’s very hard not to become complacent with a young dog like that and forget that he’s still a ‘baby’. He ran his first Open tournament at our very own show, Royal Umpire Caravan Park, Croston and was paw perfect bless him running consistent 4.2s/4.3s in our top team over 12” hurdles with Jovi as the height dog. We ran 18.24s which was 0.5sec faster than we have been running lately but Jovi didn’t run that well and actually came down with kennel cough after the show so I don’t think she was feeling 100%. Next time out (Eastham) we decided to try running Travis in the top team and the additional 1” off the hurdle heights (down to 11”) seemed to really suit Aston who ran 4.1s over this height all day helping us run a 17.95s despite Dylan being a little off form. At the moment we are running them Aston-Bailey-Dylan-Travis…this is because the team we’re running at the European Championships in Germany (sadly won’t include Aston as I never got him passported ) is a combined team with Cambridgeshire Canines which includes Merlyn who has to run start so Alison is currently perfecting her changeover into Bailey. Once we get back from Germany I anticipate that Dylan will go back start with Aston and Bailey following and then…whatever height dog we decide to run on the end ;o) Lots more to come from this team anyway.

There are a few photos of the dogs running at Eastham here

Tarka has taken somewhat of a backward step, after looking so promising in training I brought her out into open competition at Pontefract in May and it totally blew her mind and , as often happens with cockers, seriously dented her confidence . The last month or so have been slow confidence building exercises so we ran an NFC team in starters at our show, our planned Euros team which she really enjoyed and got very excited about. Our next show is at Osamston Polo Ground 2nd/3rd July where I am planning on running our second team (Demon Racers) NFC with the wings in to allow her to run and experience ‘proper’ racing without any pressure. From not doing any shows in July before we head to Germany we are now running at least one team every weekend for Tarkas’ benefit. Fingers crossed she gets the idea soon!

Spark has also really come on great guns since we started weekly training and I am so pleased with his progress. He’s been running starters most weekends and I’m so happy with every aspect of his training; his box is superb (he has done all his training and starters comps running on the chute), he is doing lovely tight changeovers in and out and has even been running start dog and maintaining his focus too. I think part of his progress is the fact he has been training and racing with Aston and they have a very healthy competitive relationship! Lol

I’ve also started training Flint who is doing surprisingly well. He does lovely fast runbacks for his tuggy and loves fetching his tennis ball too. He is gradually tightening up on the chute, this is going to be our second biggest challenge as there is a lot of him to turn! Our biggest challenge however is getting him to run while there’s another dog running…this is currently a work in progress.

We’ve started doing little bits of work with the babies… Jellybean is just doing a few runbacks each session. I’ve spaced the hurdles at 5ft intervals so that she learns to hurdle…as her little legs grow we will gradually move them further apart. At the moment she’s doing well and running back nicely for her tuggy…until she sees another dog…hmmmm…she is definitely a terrier! Preston is also doing restrained runbacks and is currently looking F-A-ST!! Need to make sure we get everything right with him as he’s looking very promising, I anticipate his issues will be dog chasing and ball dropping so we need to make sure those habits do not develop. Half of the battle with flyball training is anticipating the problems you might encounter with a particular dog and nipping them in the bud at the start.

Showing
EABCC isn’t even worth talking about so I won’t bother (lol), SKC was marginally better… Spark was a pillock (too busy thinking about nice girlies in season), Faith went nicely and was shortlisted as was Jovi but neither were placed, Viva was the most settled she’s ever been in the ring and went really well, she came 2nd in a really strong class so has now got her Crufts 2012 qualifier :o) Last show was Blackpool on the 26th June, I never seem to do well at our ‘home ground’ but, against my better judgment, was persuaded to enter under this particular judge…the Blackpool curse struck again as the judge was changed at the last minute (typical!) and as I expected…we came home with nothing. Viva was shortlisted (junior bitch), Spark and Faith were both binned (open dog and limit bitch) it was an absolute SCORCHER of a day with no shade in the rings and the judge has us moving around the big ring again and again, which under normal circumstances I would be quite happy about but it definitely took its’ toll on poor Spark who was just not a happy bunny at all bless him. I had headed taken him for a walk round to toilet just before he went in the ring and gone to fill up the water bottle at the same time, there was a large plastic paddling pool under the tap which he promptly attempted to climb in! I just managed to grab him at the last minute so he only immersed a single front leg but it was a bit of a mad panic to get it dried off and prepared again before hitting the ring. Poor Spark was most confused since I actively encourage him to get in the paddling pools at flyball to lie down and cool off between races lol I actually had a nice day nonetheless, just enjoying the banter around the ring with everyone :)

Faith at Blackpool

Viva at Blackpool

(photos by Wendy Lawless)

Puppies
We’ve had three litters born over the last couple of months, well I say three…what I really mean is two and a bit! Lexie whelped a single puppy at Easter; this was always going to be her last litter as she is 8 in October and I just really wanted something else from her so one puppy suits me just fine. Gambit (Bryning All the Right Moves) is now 10 weeks old and a really lovely boy. Lexie struggled to produce milk with just having the one pup so I hand reared him ‘til 4/5 weeks old. He came everywhere with me as a result so is a very happy and confident little chap indeed. He then actually ‘moved in’ with Dazzle’s 7 puppies by Fynn who are 12 days younger than him. These pups are now all spoken for apart from a single black/white boy who injured a right hind leg at 7 weeks old, after numerous examinations and x-rays it thankfully just turned out to be a bad sprain but he’s still here until I’m happy he’s completely sound. I have kept a blue merle bitch pup from this litter on breeding terms, hopefully she will prove to be as good a producer as her mum has been.

Bryning Dare to Dazzle (Fynn x Dazzle)

Mercy whelped a litter of TEN puppies, now 5 weeks old and beautiful. I must get some new photos of this lot. Eight bitches and two dogs, I have yet to find the perfect homes for all ten of them though.

And we have two new additions of late in the form of Charm who is a super blue/white Spark daughter bred by Pat Ward at Starside She is such a character, so bold and bright…I just love her!

Charm - Starside Sparkles at Bryning

And Boomer, a lovely red/white boy from the Nice of You to Combye kennel in the Netherlands. Boomer is currently being fostered by friends in Belgium and should arrive in the UK early next year. I will see him when we’re out at the European Championships in Germany later this month though…can’t wait!

Boomer - Nice of You to Comebye Boomerang Boy

Think that’s about it for now!

Facebook killed the blog-ster??

2011-04-28T15:02:00.007+01:00

Ok…well I do feel terribly guilty that my blog really has suffered a serious amount of neglect over the last few months and have concluded that there are several reasons for this being the case. Firstly, we don’t do as much over winter so I have far less to talk about other than the fairly trivial and mundane day to day stuff (although I actually quite enjoy reading about such things on other people’s blogs lol). Secondly, with the short days and dark mornings/evenings over winter I always just tend to feel as though I have less time to do anything which is obviously psychological since I physically have exactly the same number of hours in a day! lol Thirdly, and possibly the most significant factor is my increasing reliance on facebook to share and interact with friends and like minded people but I do appreciate that not everyone uses facebook or looks at it regularly so I will endeavour to keep the blog up to date over the summer and I will invariably have a lot more to say than is practical on facebook anyway! lol

For anyone wanting to catch the facebook news and updates, from myself and various ‘Bryning Owners’ that also contribute, you can just visit our Bryning Border Collies, Working Cockers and Parson Russell Terriers page and ‘Like’ it to get all the updates and photos included in your newsfeed.

So much has happened since my last posting that I hardly know where to begin in a brief roundup. Both flyball comp and breed show-wise we have done very little. LKA was our last breed show of 2010 and I only took Spark who ended the year in style with a first place in his first ever Open class beating some really super Show Champions; he was handled by Eric Broadhurst for the first time and didn’t go as well as he should have in the challenge but I was pleased with him nonetheless and he ended 2010 having attended just 7 shows and coming away with 5 class wins, a reserve ticket and ticket…not bad going!

Spark winning his class at LKA (photo by Cathy Saxon)

From a real high we were plunged into a real low with the sudden illness and death of Sue Large in early February, just 4 months after awarding Spark his first CC at SBCC and us having a real blast together at LKA in December. What a terrible shock and a real blow to her whole family but also the dog world at large; Sue was always happy to share her time and vast wealth of knowledge and experience with everyone and I had been touched by her generosity of spirit since I bought my first ‘show bred’ border collie, sired by Tetley (Wizaland Lucky Brew JW); Sue was always so helpful and encouraging to me as a complete novice, it was a really sad time for all who knew her.

So far this year we’ve only been to MBCC champ show where Spark was 3rd in Open dog and a couple of open breed shows where Spark and Faith both had class wins, Viva a couple of consistent places and Jovi came 2nd in a strong class at her first ever show; if I can get her to settle in the ring she should do ok (although that is quite a big ‘if’!).

Spark winning his class at NWBCC Open Show (photo by Sue Tranter)

Viva at NWBCC

And of course Crufts where I had just entered Dottie and Spark but Dottie didn’t hang onto her coat so only Spark went, he was unplaced for the first time ever (shock…horror! lol) but was beautifully behaved as always and returned to represent the breed on the Discover Dogs stand on Sunday too, along with Fynn.

Spark by his bench at Crufts 2011

We have EABCC and SKC champ shows coming up over the next few weeks so fingers crossed for some good results there. It’s quite frightening to add up the cost of show entries and diesel costs so I’m not sure how many shows we will get to this year to be honest. I thought long and hard and decided that, although qualified, I’m not going to take Spark to ‘Border Collie of the Year’ this year…it’s just too far and too costly for the sake of taking a single dog unfortunately.

In terms of flyball tournaments we had a couple of months off with no competing or training so we’re not entirely prepared for the season ahead and are going to have to just ‘suck it and see’ but that means there’s no pressure on either dogs or handlers. Travis made his Open debut and is running reliably but we still need to work on his box and his junior handler, Megan has a lot to learn too but is making good progress. I am still working on foundation stuff with Tarka, she is looking very promising and I want to make sure we get it right with her so no more starters competitions for her until I feel she’s ready to run in open, the chaos of starters is not conducive to cocker confidence building. Flint (the ENORMOUS whippet/saluki/greyhound thing I rescued last summer) has just started training and is doing surprisingly well…let’s hope it lasts! Again…baby steps with him, don’t want to waste that potential by pushing him too soon.

We have managed to secure a new permanent training ground thanks to my wonderful vets at Rowan Veterinary Centre; their brand new purpose built surgery sits on quite a large plot so we have mown a half acre (ish) area that we can use for training, there is a lovely (hmmmm) open water pit in the middle of the plot too which the dogs have decided makes an ideal ‘plunge pool’ for cooling off! lol

We did have some surprise success however on our first attempt at Crufts flyball with our YKC team which had been a last minute thought at the end of last year. We had qualified at the last qualifier of the year in October so went on the last day (Sunday) looking forward to our day out but with no expectations. To our surprise and delight the kids and dogs were brilliant and sailed through each knock out round without dropping a single race to win the final against Hinckley and be declared the 2011 Crufts Champions! Woo Hoo! Team consisted of Rachel with Spice (WSD) and Aiden with Lily (Labrador) from Cambridgeshire along with Daizy, Megan and Rachel who ran Bailey(WSD), Dylan (Bryning Truly Magic), Faith (Bryning True Believer) and Haze (Bryning Indian Summer)

The Demon K9’s - 2011 YKC Crufts Flyball Champions!

We have two new editions to the pack since the last blog update too. Jellybean is a rough coated Parson Russell bitch puppy that I kept from Squirrel’s Christmas litter, she’s just an adorable little rogue like her daddy!

And Preston is a young blue & white border collie pup from the Beesting ‘kennel’ in Wigan. There is quite a sad tale behind Preston joining us here as I had originally chosen and taken his litter brother Drift who was a really super puppy and such a funny character but was tragically killed in an accident at just 5 months old which was just devastating. Shortly after Drifts’ sudden death Jean and Jimmy very kindly offered Preston to me; since I already knew him and liked him a lot it seemed like the perfect opportunity to retain the new bloodlines I had wanted when looking to bring in a new pup in the first place. He is sufficiently different to Drift for me not to be constantly reminded of him or to be tempted to compare them and has settled in here really well becoming firm friends with Jellybean.

November...in a nutshell...

2010-11-29T17:03:00.007Z

Crikey moses, another month without a blog update and such a lot has happened in that time too!

Where do we start? Well the two pups (Flint the ‘lurcher’ and Aero ) are growing fast and have become best of friends already. Aero is very much like his father Mac in a lot of ways but his ear carriage isn’t one of them! Think we’re definitely going to have pricked ears on this young fella but at the moment they’re a little out of control! Although as you can see, he is in good company with this! lol

Beginning of November saw us heading up North to the Scottish Border Collie Club show; we usually go for the weekend each year doing the Working and Pastoral Breeds of Scotland show the day before and staying overnight somewhere but this year we could only do one day as I had no-one to look after the dogs at home. I had entered 8 dogs (!!) but since Paul had taken Jack (Bryning the Jean Genie) after I’d entered the show he was taking him so Gemma and I just had the two pups, Viva and Vogue in Minor Puppy Bitch, Faith in Limit, Dottie in Open and the 3 boys, Aston in Puppy (his last puppy class), Fynn in Yearling and Spark in Limit. It was going to be a busy day with the dog and bitch rings running simultaneously. We were a bit rushed with the girls in first as the judging started with bitches contrary to what the schedule had stated, they hadn’t travelled very well and needed cleaning up on arrival and Gemma was still out in the carpark getting the other dogs sorted when the class started so I had to grab my friend Pat to take Viva and I took Vogue…the class was HUGE and the ring was TINY so the class ended up being split into 3 groups. Had I known this in advance I would have handled each of my girls separately! As it happened they were both very naughty on the move and neither got placed. Having two in the same class is never a good idea and I had never intended to keep both these girls, just really struggled choosing between them! As fate would have it a friend of Pat’s had been watching and was really rather taken with Vogue and looking for another pup to campaign having recently lost his old girl so…problem solved; Vogue went home with Terry and I kept Viva. Their brothers, Jack and Gene, faired rather better with Paul and Pat in the Minor Puppy Dog class with a 3rd and 4th respectively. Next in was Aston in Puppy Dog, in hindsight I wished I’d put him in Junior as he has grown into a really big lad already and towered over the other puppies! He took a bit of time to settle on the move and the small ring isnt’ best suited to his long stride but if I just move out and don’t look at him he moves out much better, if I make eye contact he tends to crab round to keep looking at me! On the whole he went well and he’s certainly starting to relax a lot more in the ring; he came 3rd again (as he had at NWBCC) so I was pleased with that. If I can get some more weight and coat on him he should do well in the older classes but for the time being I think he needs some time out of the ring to mature. Next in was Fynn, he is such a fidget bum! He wasn’t placed and definitely needs some more ring practice but he did move out nicely when he was concentrating. Faith was unplaced in Limit Bitch, she was a very giddy kipper moving out with the others…she finds showing far too exciting! Spark went really nicely in Limit Dog and won his class which I was super pleased about. He won his class (Junior) the last time he was out under this judge so it was nice to see that she still thought highly of him now he’s a bit more grown up and in with the ‘big boys’. Dottie went beautifully (as always) in Open Bitch and placed 4th in very good company which was really nice too :o). All class judging and the bitch challenge completed and it was time for the dog challenge so Spark and I headed back into the ring with all the other class winners, some really nice dogs in the challenge line up and all a very similar type so I had a feeling it was going to be a close call, after a few more circuits of the ring and a closer examination of each exhibit I was absolutely over the moon when the judge called Spark out for the Challenge Certificate! What a fab end to our showing year which started out with his Reserve CC at Crufts back in March. We’ve just got LKA left on 12th December, I only have Spark entered although Vogue will be there with her new owner too :o)

That same weekend saw Sally and Digger (Bryning the Golden Ticket) competing in the KC Starters Cup Final at Discover Dogs which was taking place at Earls Court; a real nerve racker with busy bustling halls and big crowds. The pair managed to hold their nerves and a double clear in the jumping and agility saw them coming away with a very creditable 3rd place :o)

11th November, Armistice Day, saw Teal delivering her 2nd litter of puppies and a first for our young liver roan cocker boy Travis. 6 beautiful healthy puppies…2 blue roan and tan boys, a blue roan boy, a lemon roan boy, a lemon roan bitch and a blue roan bitch. I say ‘roan’ at the moment but I believe a few of them may well stay open marked; although this is the less common, recessive pattern in cockers, the open marked gene is present in both Teal and Travis’s lines and at the moment there isn’t a lot of roaning going on! There are pics and details of this litter HERE with updated photos to follow soon.

babies at 18 days old...

Last Saturday (20th) I took Tammy and Dottie to be scanned and both were confirmed in whelp, due the week running up to Christmas…should be fun! We also had several of the young flyball team dogs rabies vaccinated in preparation for travelling to the European Championships in Germany next year, including Travis, Tarka, Maisie, Pixie, and Tiger. Fingers crossed they all get positive titre test results in a couple of weeks time. We went down to the playing fields and did some training in the afternoon, I was particularly impressed with Fynn and Jovi who both seemed to have moved up a gear, more training required me thinks! On the Sunday we travelled over to Gap Farm near Doncaster for our last flyball comp of the year. Fergus (Bryning Virage) and Pixie (Bryning Russian Doll) were due to make their starters debuts having turned one earlier this month but it became apparent that Pixie wasn’t quite ready so we put her away until she is. Hopefully she will be ready for the starters comp at the end of January. We borrowed Eabha (Bryning Prime Time) from Rotherham and ran Travis, Tarka, Fergus, Eabha and Spark…with the exception of Travis an all Bryning bred team of dogs :o) I was pleased with the progress they all made, Spark managed to run with a new boxloader (he is funny about who is boxloading!) and Fergus made a very promising start, especially considering how little training he has done so far. I was also very pleased with both Jovi and Maisie who ran on the top team for the first time. This was only Maisie’s second ever open tournament and she was paw perfect bless her. Jo ran much better than she has been and even remembered how to run in the red lane, much to my relief as she also picked up her flyball dog certificate so there’s no going back into starters now! Several of the dogs, including Jovi, need to do some serious box work over winter though, far too many ball fumbles costing us races :o( I also picked up Squirrel’s flyball dog certificate and Pip finally picked up her Ice Blue Moon award :o) We went to look at a new indoor training venue earlier in the week, fingers crossed that turns out ok.

I think that’s about it for now!

That doesn't look much like a collie?!

2010-10-25T11:23:00.006+01:00

So, last weekend also saw us extend our ‘little’ canine family!
I have always fancied a scruffy little lurcher and set about looking for one early in 2009 but somehow ended up seeing and falling in love with Maisie, my scruffy little working beardie who is built rather like a lurcher under all that coat! I don’t regret having her for a moment because I love her to bits and she’s proving to be such a lovely little companion and flyball dog but 18 months later and not looking for another dog at all along came Flint! Just 13 weeks old and handed into rescue, he was needing a new home and was just so adorable I really couldn’t say no! The rescue were told he is a whippet – saluki cross but after chatting online to a very knowledgeable friend (who knows just about all there is to know about colour genetics in all the different breeds!) we concluded that he cannot be a first generation cross since he is blue which is a recessive colour not present in salukis (as far as anyone knows) so I am rather hoping he is more whippet and that we don’t have anything else bigger in there (such as greyhound or deerhound!) since I don’t have room in the van for anything huge but he does look like he's going to be quite a big dog! lol The best guess on his colouring his blue sable with brindle points, whatever it is, it is very unusual and attractive and I love his soft grey eyes so typical in blue coloured dogs.

So…for the time being little Flint is just enjoying being a puppy, he’s happy and outgoing, obedient and biddable and loves to play with all manner of toys so I’m kinda hoping he will take to flyball when he’s a little older. If he doesn’t I don’t mind…he can be a lazy lay around sofa dog…I already have a couple of those ;o)

There is some disagreement on whether he is technically a ‘lurcher’ since (we believe) he is all sighthound cross but I have found plenty of references to other such similar crosses and this is the term I’m going to use to refer to him as. All lurchers are crossbreeds of one kind or another so there is no definitive description or breed standard.

This weekend he came to Drax with us for his first flyball outing, I was really pleased with him, he took it all in his stride and wasn’t at all fazed by any of the noise or activity but enjoyed meeting lots of new dogs and people. We also picked up his fancy new whippet collar, made to measure for him by Helen Ford from 'Tessie Leads, Collars and Harnesses', it is perfect! Will get a photo of him wearing it at some point no doubt!

North West Border Collie

2010-10-25T10:59:00.005+01:00

So, following the flyball last Saturday we were up early Sunday morning to get the boys bathed for the show, I was just taking Aston, Ethan and Spark. Aston is really out of coat at the moment and looking a real lanky teenager but there’s no denying he has a nice outline and moves well so I decided to take him along anyway, he needs the ring practice! I don’t bring Ethan out much as he really doesn’t enjoy the showring but as this judge had liked him as a puppy I thought I might as well take him along.

I was also picking up Rachel and Pixie on the way. Pixie has never been to a show before but she has shaped up quite nicely and since this one was local I thought we might as well take her along and see how she did, I didn’t enter any more girls because, to be perfectly honest, I’ve shown under this judge before and knew what to expect. I was glad I hadn’t bothered…Pixie went quite well considering but didn’t get placed but the places throughout the classes largely went to the usual ‘pretty’ classically marked, up and tipped ears, black/whites that I expected….irrespective of much else. I was actually quite pleased with Pixie considering I don’t have much to do with her and she’s had no training and she did draw a lot of nice comments from other folk too.

Aston…hmmm…well, we seem to have taken a bit of a backward step in the confidence stakes and he was a bit tense being stacked but recovered quickly enough when the food came out and I talked to him to get him using his ears; he didn’t move very well though…well…he covered the ground fine…he has a very long easy stride but he was so focused on me that he kept trying to make eye contact on the move and as a result was crabbing round me…silly sod! He moved out and back better in the shortlist when I consciously didn’t look at him and avoided eye contact and was rewarded with a 3rd place out of the 9 entered and I was quite pleased with that considering. At least he has his 2011 Crufts qualifier now.

Ethan actually went quite well in Limit dog but this was a big strong class and although he made the shortlist he wasn’t placed. Here’s a lovely head shot that one of my puppy owners (Andy Milner) took of him though…cutie pie!

Spark was only entered in the colour class and this was (yet again) and good sized strong class with 7 entries…6 blue/whites and Spark! I do wonder why the breed clubs often specifiy ‘any other colour except black/white and tri’ as it actually seems to me that tricolour is relatively scarce these days compared to blue! Anyway, 3 of the blues were Viggo sons and another was actually a Spark son! :o) Spark won the class and his son came 3rd but I don’t actually think he moved out very well…not compared to his usual easy fluent movement. I don’t know whether this was the sandy riding school surface or being indoors (although he never usually bothers about such things) or whether there’s something just not quite right with him since his bad collision with Monty a few weeks back. I’m going to see whether Kathryn (chiropracter) will have a look at him this weekend.

Anyway, we had a nice day catching up with folk, Yvonne came over to watch with Flurrie (Spark x Mercy daughter) here she is with her daddy…

And here’s Spark and Pixie together…half brother and sister…

Next breed show is Scottish Border Collie Club on the 7th November. I usually make a weekend of it and do Working and Pastoral Breeds of Scotland the day before and stay overnight but my mum is away the previous week and doesn’t get home ‘til the Sunday so no-one to look after the doggies staying home :o(

We’re off over to Drax this Sunday for Rotherham Rockets flyball tournament which is going to be a rather busy one! Racing starts at 8am…10 divisions split over two rings, we’re running in 3 and I’m judging another…should be fun! I just need to figure out which dogs we’re running where since both Maisie and Squirrel are in season so won’t be running :o(

A very positive start!

2010-10-19T17:21:00.008+01:00

So the day finally arrived and we headed off down to Newark for the starters tournament as part of the Robin Hood Country Game Fair. It was a pretty early start as I had to go and pick Hannah and Charlie up first and it was still dark when we hit the road. Little
aisie had to stay home since she came in season straight after making her open debut at Doncaster…typical! I’m actually not complaining as this is her first season and at 18 months old I was starting to get a bit worried she was never going to have one! I took Jovi in her place, she is still technically a starter dog (not got her 200 points yet) and after last weeks performance at Doncaster she needed the practice! I also got a last minute request from Kristian from High Flyers to see whether we had any spares for their Intermediate team since Lola had also come in season and couldn’t run. Since Gemma was coming anyway and Fynn is also still technically eligible for starters (no points on yet); it seemed fitting that he should take his sisters place in ‘Highly Likely’ so that meant we had dogs in every division between us!

We were running two starter teams, one in each division and first up were ‘The Cock Ups’ which was a collaborative team between Demon Dogz, Cambridgeshire Canines and Ready2Fly that consisted entirely of cocker spaniels, 3 from my Rupert x Maizy litter – Charlie, Tarka and Tally, their half brother Travis and their Auntie Radley so something of a family affair! lol I wasn’t quite sure how this was going to pan out as all 5 dogs have shown a lot of promise but spaniels are notoriously unpredictable! For the 3 babies this was only their second outing but still the first time all 5 dogs had run together. We were very unlucky to lose the first race, entirely on ball fumbles (new box for most of the dogs)…the best out of 3 format didn’t allow for such mistakes, this cost the team first place but they did go on to win the other 5 races with relative ease and ran the fastest time of any starter team across both divisions of 19.93 and that was with wide changeovers too so I was pleased as punch with them all!

Too much to ask that they all look at the camera together! Lol

Here’s a video of all the ‘Brynings’ (so Travis is out)
Charlie (Bryning Brock) – Tally (Bryning Totally Trouble) – Radley (Bryning Truly Radley Deeply) and Tarka (Bryning Riverine)

And here’s all the siblings (so Radley out)
Travis (Raezhaven Bryce at Bryning) - Charlie (Bryning Brock) – Tally (Bryning Totally Trouble) and Tarka (Bryning Riverine)

The other team we ran, Demon K9s was also a collaboration of Demonz (Spark and Jovi) Cambs (Spencer) and Ready2Fly (Jessy) along with a Linnott dog too in the form of Beamer :o)
Gemma boxloaded for this team in the morning and Spark ran really well, running every leg in the morning, I was really pleased with all the distractions of a busy public show. This team ran really well together and remained unbeaten all day to romp home with 1st place although I had to pull Spark and run Jovi in the afternoon once Gemma had left (and he didn’t know the replacement boxloader…mummy’s boy!!)

I think Wendy (Beamers owner) got some video of this lot but I’m afraid I don’t have it yet.

Huge congratulations to the Alpha Dogz for organising the event, all in all a good day and well worth the early start and long drive but I got home just after 9pm and could hardly walk when I got out of the van…trapped sciatic nerve…agony!! I sorted the dogs and pretty much went straight to bed but had to be up at 6am to bath dogs for North West Border Collie Champ show the following day!

Yet again 8 weeks seems to have flown by...

2010-10-19T15:42:00.005+01:00

So, now 8 weeks old I FINALLY decided which Dazzle puppy is staying and it’s not the one I thought it would be from the beginning but I just can’t get past this little man’s ‘look at me’ attitude and bizarrely, I think he’s the one that looks the most like daddy!

So here he is… Aero aka Bryning Aero D’namic…

The others have also all been chosen, Blue and Yiria are both going abroad and their new owners were as keen and excited about this combination as I am so leapt at the chance of having one. Ripple has already left, he is staying in the UK and is destined for flyball and Revel has headed over to the Isle of Man to join a growing little band of Brynings out on the island where he will hopefully do a bit of everything at Ramsey Dog Training Club.

Blue – Bryning Blue Smartie

Yiria – Bryning Wispa’Inn Yiria

Ripple – Bryning Chocolate Ripple

Revel – Bryning Revels in Chocolate

It is a little bemusing that a couple of interested parties in the UK have been funny about the fact they are from a merle to merle mating, despite the fact they are not double merles and are therefore genetically the same as any other puppy born from a non merle mating (as I explained in a detailed posting on here when they were born) but you can only tell people the facts I guess and to be honest, I feel that these pups are far too good to be going to people that don’t fully understand or appreciate what they’re getting so there’s no way I’m going to try and convince someone otherwise. People looking to import a puppy are usually very keen and intelligent breed enthusiasts that are already very knowledgeable and are prepared to do their research and ask questions about things they don’t fully understand which is one of the reasons I always enjoy dealing with prospective puppy owners from overseas. I am so happy with all the homes these pups are going to and I wish their owners every success with what have been, and I'm sure will continue to be, a very special litter indeed :o)

Flyball Update (a bit long and boring...sorry!)

2010-10-19T15:32:00.003+01:00

Gawd…I really am sh*t at this blogging lark aren’t I?!! I just seem to be really struggling to find the time to sit down and update about things in a timely manner and by the time I do I’ve forgotten half of it (old age creeping in!)

So a (relatively) quick flyball update, I've read this back and it does sound like a fair old moan so sorry about that but sometimes you just gotta get these things off your chest ;o)

Norfolk Park
I don’t entirely remember what happened here apart from it being one of those ‘if only’ weekends. The Pawz ran on Saturday without me (but with Ethan and Dottie) and ran the fastest time of the division in the morning (20.45) but fell apart in the afternoon to end up 4th. We ran a slightly different line up as the Dyno Demonz replacing Lexie with Mac since she wasn’t 100% sound…not entirely sure that worked as that suddenly put the whole team over full height but they also ran the fastest time in a tight 7 team division (18.15) but managed to come 2nd (story of our lives lol). The Racers also struggled in a closely fought division 4 and came 3rd (19.55), all in all it wasn’t an overly successful weekend of racing but good company as usual made up for it.

Redcar
This weekend was going to be a challenge from the outset since there was only Gem, myself and Rach travelling up with ALL our team dogs, apart from the two we have on loan from Tyne (River and Nell) who were going to be there with Hazell of course but as the week wore on and my van still wasn’t back from the body shop (remember the ‘door falling off’ incident?) I started to get a little worried about how we were going to fit 3 people, 15 dogs and camping gear in my little courtesy Kangoo! As it happened the guys at Trident Body Shop saved the day and loaned us a Renault Trafic for the weekend…phew! It was a mad dash on Friday evening to get it all caged out with folding crates and get everything packed so we could get up to Redcar where, thankfully, Hazell had already put up a tent for us. We had a good weekend, it stayed mostly dry but OMG…it was bitterly cold! I don’t think I’ve ever been so cold in a tent and that was sharing a double airbed with Gem (who had forgotten hers!) with a sleeping bag and double duvet, it was freezing! I must confess, we did really struggle being so short of people and seemed to spend the whole team running to and from the ring. We got lots of help from our Tyne friends (including cooked breakfast both days!) and lots of other lovely flyballers too.

The Racers were just outclassed in Div 3 and came 5th despite running a respectable 19.38…this team was possibly the hardest to run because Hazell was running Nell in this team and Meg in the other ring at the same time and, despite assurances from the Tournament Organiser that the racing would wait for her, the divisional judge and head judge ignored this and insisted we run without her, forcing us to hastily draft in an Ethan runner in the form of Nigel who actually did a great job under the circumstances. Given there was only 3 divisions running in any ring over the day so we weren't pushed for time at all, I have to say I was very disappointed by how rude and unhelpful the head judge was with us when we explained the situation (a nonchalant shoulder shrug accompanying a most insincere "well that’s unfortunate"), really not needed at all and very unprofessional…if I thought it would achieve anything I would put in a complaint but with the way things currently stand within the BFA I’d be wasting my time and money
and yes…I am posting this on a public website but, contrary to current BFA committee beliefs, BFA members ARE allowed to have and express their own opinions, in common with every other citizen of the UK and are not there to be ‘shut up’ every time they question something :o( (I think I can hear the daggers being sharpened! lol)

The Pawz faired much better in Division 8 which they won with relative ease running a fastest time of 21.51 despite Pip having a funny ‘moment’ in one race where she just wouldn’t run and we had to rely on Fynn instead. She couldn’t take her eyes of the dog in the other lane and once at the box she was running out and trying to get as far away from it as she could even though it was taking no notice of her. I can only think this dog reminded her of the one that attacked her a couple of months back at Eastham and put a hole through her lip as it was also a black/white spaniel x collie, and that she was scared it was going to happen again, bless her! It’s very, VERY unlike Pip to run out or be nervous of anything and she ran fine in the next race but it just goes to show that such incidents can have lasting affects on the most confident and reliable of dogs so I wish people would be a bit more considerate about running dogs they know can be 'likely' :o(

I really don’t know what was wrong with the Demonz on Sunday but they ran really badly in div 1, 18.53 and 5th place…just not on form at all…ho hum! We also had a starter team entered on Sunday which included Travis and Maisie along with Spark and Tarka making their debuts joined by Mouse and Fly from Tyne. I didn’t run Spark much because it was another ‘handlers in both rings chaos’ kind of a division and I need to be calm and focused on him but he did run a couple of legs and did great…SO pleased with him :o) Tarka also surprised me by being really rather good! She absolutely knew what she was doing and wasn’t at all distracted by all the other dogs and people…she was chased up the lane by Maisie a couple of times (BAD beardie!) but got her ball on the re-send…good girlie. We had a nice early finish and got home in time for tea :o)

Doncaster
We headed over to the Northern Racing College at Doncaster for the first of the indoor winter shows, this is run on grass turf laid over a peat/sand sort of surface in a large indoor riding arena. We haven’t done this show for a couple of years, it’s quite a long way for us in winter and the days often start very early and finish really late. This day was no exception with an 8.30am start time but fortunately we didn’t need to be there ‘til 10am and Hazell kindly put our paperwork in for us (and no doubt did a better job than me at our last couple of shows where I’ve totally screwed up the team sheets…totally brain dead at that time of a morning! lol) There was just the 5 of us (and Hazell) so we relied very much on help from our friends at Tyne, Brigg and Roseberry especially since we had two teams running in division 3! With the way the seed times had panned out I ended up having to mix the teams up to try and ensure we would be running teams that would run around the seed times we were in on. The Dyno Demonz consisted of Dylan, Faith, River and Squirrel; Racers were Mac, Lexie, Dottie and Nell and Pawz were Pip, Fly, Jovi, Ethan and Maisie (who was making her open debut…exactly 18 months old on the day!). I was quite pleased that, despite getting nowhere near their seed times and the fact we had to run in and out the ring swapping one team for another, both teams ran consistently and achieved a 1st and 3rd place :o) The Pawz really struggled…Jovi had a total meltdown and couldn’t run in the red lane meaning we HAD to run Maisie….at the same time as Ethan…both of which have to run last…buggar! lol I ended up hiding behind the judges table with Maisie and then sending her from the side once Ethan was out. Not ideal for the little dogs debut but I was seriously impressed that she managed to come in at such a tight angle, so close to the line and find her way up to the box and back without running out. This is the first time she’s ever run without netting against another lane and the first time she’s ever run her own height (12”) so I was very pleased with her. We didn’t leave ‘til gone 8pm so it had been a 12 hour day for most people, with all the running in the middle and 2 hours of driving at either end it is rather knackering! I was soooooo tired when I got home and headed straight for the shower, the colour of the water running off my hair was black! Amazing how filthy you can get without even realizing it, I guess my dogs coats must all have been the same too!

This weekend we just have a starters competition over at Newark showground, god help us but we thought it would be *nice* to run all the cockers together so we have one team (The Cock Ups) consisting of Travis and Tarka running with her littermates Tally (Cambridgeshire) and Charlie (Ready2Fly) and Auntie Radley too. Maisie and Spark are running in a mixed team with Beamer (Linnotts), Jessy (Ready2Fly), Spencer (Cambidgeshire) with Jovi coming along as a spare (although I think she could do with the practice after last weekend’s performance!)

Flyball Update (a bit long and boring...sorry!)

2010-10-19T15:32:00.000+01:00

Gawd…I really am sh*t at this blogging lark aren’t I?!! I just seem to be really struggling to find the time to sit down and update about things in a timely manner and by the time I do I’ve forgotten half of it (old age creeping in!)

So a (relatively) quick flyball update

Norfolk ParkI don’t entirely remember what happened here apart from it being one of those ‘if only’ weekends. The Pawz ran on Saturday without me (but with Ethan and Dottie) and ran the fastest time of the division in the morning (20.45) but fell apart in the afternoon to end up 4th. We ran a slightly different line up as the Dyno Demonz replacing Lexie with Mac since she wasn’t 100% sound…not entirely sure that worked as that suddenly put the whole team over full height but they also ran the fastest time in a tight 7 team division (18.15) but managed to come 2nd (story of our lives lol). The Racers also struggled in a closely fought division 4 and came 3rd (19.55), all in all it wasn’t an overly successful weekend of racing but good company as usual made up for it.

RedcarThis weekend was going to be a challenge from the outset since there was only Gem, myself and Rach travelling up with ALL our team dogs, apart from the two we have on loan from Tyne (River and Nell) who were going to be there with Hazell of course but as the week wore on and my van still wasn’t back from the body shop (remember the ‘door falling off’ incident?) I started to get a little worried about how we were going to fit 3 people, 15 dogs and camping gear in my little courtesy Kangoo! As it happened the guys at Trident Body Shop saved the day and loaned us a Renault Trafic for the weekend…phew! It was a mad dash on Friday evening to get it all caged out with folding crates and get everything packed so we could get up to Redcar where, thankfully, Hazell had already put up a tent for us. We had a good weekend, it stayed mostly dry but OMG…it was bitterly cold! I don’t think I’ve ever been so cold in a tent and that was sharing a double airbed with Gem (who had forgotten hers!) with a sleeping bag and double duvet, it was freezing! I must confess, we did really struggle being so short of people and seemed to spend the whole team running to and from the ring. We got lots of help from our Tyne friends (including cooked breakfast both days!) and lots of other lovely flyballers too.

The Racers were just outclassed in Div 3 and came 5th despite running a respectable 19.38…this team was possibly the hardest to run because Hazell was running Nell in this team and Meg in the other ring at the same time and, despite assurances from the Tournament Organiser that the racing would wait for her, the divisional judge and head judge ignored this and insisted we run without her, forcing us to hastily draft in an Ethan runner in the form of Nigel who actually did a great job under the circumstances. I have to say I was very disappointed by how rude and arrogant the head judge was with us when we explained the situation (a nonchalant shoulder shrug followed by the most insincere uttering ‘oh well that’s unfortunate…start the racing’), really not needed at all and very unprofessional…if I thought it would achieve anything I would put in a complaint but with the way things currently stand within the BFA I’d be wasting my time and money (and yes….I am posting this on a public website but, contrary to current BFA committee beliefs, BFA members ARE allowed to have and express their own opinions, in common with every other citizen of the UK and are not there to be ‘shut up’ every time they question something)

The Pawz faired much better in Division 8 which they won with relative ease running a fastest time of 21.51 despite Pip having a funny ‘moment’ in one race where she just wouldn’t run and we had to rely on Fynn instead. She couldn’t take her eyes of the dog in the other lane and once at the box she was running out and trying to get as far away from it as she could even though it was taking no notice of her. I can only think this dog reminded her of the one that attacked her a couple of months back at Eastham and put a hole through her lip as it was also a black/white spaniel x collie, and that she was scared it was going to happen again, bless her! It’s very, VERY unlike Pip to run out or be nervous of anything and she ran fine in the next race but it just goes to show that such incidents can have lasting affects on the most confident and reliable of dogs :o(

I really don’t know what was wrong with the Demonz on Sunday but they ran really badly in div 1, 18.53 and 5th place…just not on form at all…ho hum! We also had a starter team entered on Sunday which included Travis and Maisie along with Spark and Tarka making their debuts joined by Mouse and Fly from Tyne. I didn’t run Spark much because it was another ‘handlers in both rings chaos’ kind of a division and I need to be calm and focused on him but he did run a couple of legs and did great…SO pleased with him :o) Tarka also surprised me by being really rather good! She absolutely knew what she was doing and wasn’t at all distracted by all the other dogs and people…she was chased up the lane by Maisie a couple of times (BAD beardie!) but got her ball on the re-send…good girlie. We had a nice early finish and got home in time for tea :o)

Doncaster
We headed over to the Northern Racing College at Doncaster for the first of the indoor winter shows, this is run on grass turf laid over a peat/sand sort of surface in a large indoor riding arena. We haven’t done this show for a couple of years, it’s quite a long way for us in winter and the days often start very early and finish really late. This day was no exception with an 8.30am start time but fortunately we didn’t need to be there ‘til 10am and Hazell kindly put our paperwork in for us (and no doubt did a better job than me at our last couple of shows where I’ve totally screwed up the team sheets…totally brain dead at that time of a morning! lol) There was just the 5 of us (and Hazell) so we relied very much on help from our friends at Tyne, Brigg and Roseberry especially since we had two teams running in division 3! With the way the seed times had panned out I ended up having to mix the teams up to try and ensure we would be running teams that would run around the seed times we were in on. The Dyno Demonz consisted of Dylan, Faith, River and Squirrel; Racers were Mac, Lexie, Dottie and Nell and Pawz were Pip, Fly, Jovi, Ethan and Maisie (who was making her open debut…exactly 18 months old on the day!). I was quite pleased that, despite getting nowhere near their seed times and the fact we had to run in and out the ring swapping one team for another, both teams ran consistently and achieved a 1st and 3rd place :o) The Pawz really struggled…Jovi had a total meltdown and couldn’t run in the red lane meaning we HAD to run Maisie….at the same time as Ethan…both of which have to run last…buggar! lol I ended up hiding behind the judges table with Maisie and then sending her from the side once Ethan was out. Not ideal for the little dogs debut but I was seriously impressed that she managed to come in at such a tight angle, so close to the line and find her way up to the box and back without running out. This is the first time she’s ever run without netting against another lane and the first time she’s ever run her own height (12”) so I was very pleased with her. We didn’t leave ‘til gone 8pm so it had been a 12 hour day for most people, with all the running in the middle and 2 hours of driving at either end it is rather knackering! I was soooooo tired when I got home and headed straight for the shower, the colour of the water running off my hair was black! Amazing how filthy you can get without even realizing it, I guess my dogs coats must all have been the same too!

This weekend we just have a starters competition over at Newark showground, god help us but we thought it would be *nice* to run all the cockers together so we have one team (The Cock Ups) consisting of Travis and Tarka running with her littermates Tally (Cambridgeshire) and Charlie (Ready2Fly) and Auntie Radley too. Maisie and Spark are running in a mixed team with Beamer (Linnotts), Jessy (Ready2Fly), Spencer (Cambidgeshire) with Jovi coming along as a spare (although I think she could do with the practice after last weekend’s performance!)

A slightly odd and eventful week

2010-10-06T14:28:00.006+01:00

My busy day off proved to be the start of a rather odd and eventful week since my mum was on holiday and on the Tuesday night I had headed off to bed and, unusually, I completely shut my bedroom door to stop the dogs from opening it during the night. Perhaps more unusually I hadn’t taken my laptop to bed with me since I was so tired and intended to go straight to sleep, nor my mobile phone. When I decided I needed a glass of water just before going to sleep and went to open the door I had a terrible shock…the handle had broken so I couldn’t get out! I tried for about an hour with various implements made out of coat hangers and the such like but to no avail so decided I would just go to sleep and look out for the postman in the morning and try to catch his attention. I woke early (not surprisingly) and sat by the window looking out for the postman. I should just point out here that we live in a totally detached farmhouse down a small private lane that we share only with a church and another farm.

view from my bedroom, church...

farm...

as you can see, not a great location when you want to catch someone's attention!

Someone drove past on a quad bike around 7.30am to feed the heifers at the top of the road but I had no hope of being heard above the engine. At about 10am the postman went past, he always goes to the farm first and stops at our gates on the way back to the main road where we have a post box, but….he never stopped, we had no post! I did contemplate climbing out of the window but it’s quite a long way down and I had visions of me falling and breaking something and lying there for hours instead! I was most concerned about what my boss was thinking about the fact I just hadn’t turned up for work! To cut a long story short (ish), my mum arrived back off holiday around 7pm and let me out so I had been trapped in the room for 20 hours with no way to contact anyone, no TV, nothing to drink and no toilet…as you can imagine…I was very glad to see her! Fortunately most of the dogs had been in the utility room with access in and out of the house, the few that were in the house had been camped outside my door, probably wondering why the hell I wasn’t coming to let them out and give them their breakfast! There was just a single pee on the landing, they had stayed clean that whole time…good doggies :o) Needless to say, I shan’t ever be closing a bedroom door again!

Saturday morning Spark and I headed over to Darlington Champ show by ourselves while some of the flyball team headed down to Norfolk Park for the tournament taking place over the weekend, taking Travis, Ethan and Dottie with them. Travis was joining the Water Orton Extreme team in starters and Ethan and Dottie were running in the Pawz. I was going to travel straight down from Newby Hall to camp overnight and run in the other two teams on the Sunday.

Well, in typical fashion things didn’t run quite according to plan. I decided to get up early and bath Spark on the morning of the show, judging started at 9.30am, we weren’t in until Limit Dog and the venue is less than 2 hours from us so I reckoned we needed to leave around 8.30am. Best laid plans and all that! Well, we left on time but as I got a couple of miles down the road I realised I’d forgotten to pick up any bait so quickly decided to stop at the village post office and buy something suitable rather than turn around (first mistake!), I bought a packet of cooked ham and as I came back to the van noticed an elderly man standing at the side of the road beckoning me so I went to see what he wanted. Apparently he was waiting for a bus which hadn’t turned up and wondered whether I might give him a lift into town…well, what could I do?! Of course I’d packed the van for both the show and flyball with all my camping gear too so had thrown a load of stuff on the front seats which I had to move into the back before I could get this chap in, I duly drove him into town (in the opposite direction to where I needed to go) and he was a really nice guy, he was 99…and a bit and I was really amazed by the fact he was still getting the bus into town to be honest! He was a little deaf but bright and chatty and extremely spritely for his years (getting in and out of my van is no easy task!). I did have to smile at the ‘and a bit’ and wondered at what age you started adding the ‘and a bit’ when people asked your age again like you did as a child, I remember proudly telling people ‘I’m 7 and 3 quarters’ but am not so keen on ‘33 and a half’ nowadays lol

The route from Preston to Thirsk along the A59 is a pleasant and scenic one, but not when you’re running very very late! I recalled that the entries at this show weren’t very big so the class sizes may be smaller then usual and therefore judging going a lot quicker. I was right! We arrived around 11am and I just grabbed all my bags and ran to the entrance to hand over my pass where Spark promptly did an enormous poo! The lady on the gate kindly offered to hold him while I picked it up then we dashed to the benching area where I grabbed the first border collie person I saw and asked ‘what class is she on?’ to be told ‘Limit has just gone in’…panic! Drop all my bags and run to the ring and guess what? The bloody ham was on the dashboard in the van so no bait!! I can’t say he showed himself off to his best but he certainly didn’t go badly…we didn’t get placed but having watched the rest of the judging I’m not that surprised. It would be unfair to comment any further on the quality of the judging since others obviously placed well and I was pleased for them but I shan’t be entering any dogs under that judge again. Since I only had one dog with me (very unusual) I had entered him in the Any Variety Open Stakes class too, we’ve never entered a stakes class before but thought we’d give it a go. My friend Jackie had also entered with her Cruise son Drift, his mother is also the litter sister to my Mercy, he’s a lovely dog that has done a lot of winning and has a ticket. So we headed over the Any Variety ring and as we were waiting to go in a couple walked past with a rough collie and the lady pointed at Spark and turned to her husband and said ‘oh John, look at the lovely merling on that AUSSIE’…I think my face must have said it all because she seemed to instantly realise she’d made a faux pas when she caught my eye and I seethed ‘he’s a border collie’, she was very apologetic and made some feeble excuse about nor being used to seeing them with so much bone or coat but the fact is, she just looked at his colour and assumed. I started to worry slightly that the judge might do the same and glance him over and think ‘what a terrible looking Aussie’ lol Anyway, we headed into the ring first with Jackie and Drift behind us and joined by an assortment of Malamutes, huskies, Aussies, Rough Collies, Old English, Boxers etc I was really pleased with the way Spark went in this class (now I had stolen some sausage from Audrey!), he moved really nicely and was attentive and keen in the free stand. Drift also went really well so I wasn’t at all surprised when the judge picked him out first but kinda expected Spark wouldn’t get placed too but she picked him out 2nd so the border collies did a clean sweep…woo hoo! We also actually won money for this class, £10 to pay for that night’s takeaway anyway, clever Spark :o) All in all the border collies had a great showing at Darlington, winning Pastoral Group 1, Veteran Group 1, RCC stakes, AV Open Dog and AV Open Bitch and all that from a relatively small overall entry of 139 dogs. We had a nice day out anyway.

A few pics of friends dogs, none of Spark since I was on my own so had no-one to operate the camera while we were in the ring...sorry!
The aforementioned Drift, Locheil Stand and Deliver at Sandmont, he is a half brother to my Kitten and a nephew of Mercy

Jazz, Locheil Black Label at Sandmont, a half brother to my Ethan on his mothers' side and Dazzle, Dottie and Eabha through their father Bond

Diva, Borderbrook I'm the Diva, she is also a half sister to Kitten and Drift, pretty girl :o)

I’ll do a flyball update in another post but my eventful week was rounded off when on the Monday morning I was driving to work and the side door fell off my van as I was going round a roundabout!
oh dear!

This may sound a little random but I badly damaged this door a number of years ago while we were camping on Anglesey so I'm suprised it's survived this long to be honest! A week in the body shop and a big bill later and I got it back, good as new and sparkly clean too (for the first time in a long time! lol)

Busy but constructive day off

2010-10-06T10:08:00.000+01:00

Oh dear, falling behind already again! Well we have slipped from summer into autumn over the last month but still quite busy with various things. I did promise to do a short update on my busy day off after Lochaber show but now realise that I don’t actually have a great deal to say, probably because it was it was over a fortnight ago now and I’ve forgotten half of it! lol

Well, anyway…I took the opportunity to have Travis and Jovi hip scored and eye tested. Sadly my usual fabulous hip scoring vet (Mark Lingard at Moy Farm, Out Rawcliffe) is very poorly and unable to work. He is such a lovely man as well as a great vet, so this was very sad and upsetting news. So, Tom to the rescue again (poor Tom must be sick of the sight of me!) and a trip down to Nantwhich Verterinary Group or a 10am appointment. I know many people will wonder why I don’t use my regular vets for hip scoring but I like the fact that both Tom and Mark will do the dogs under sedation while I wait and will offer a pretty good idea of what the score back from the BVA is likely to be. This was particularly important for me with Travis due to Teal’s impending season and the fact I wanted to mate her (to him obviously) this time. Fortunately both sets of hips looked good and I expect some good scored back from the BVA in a few weeks. I had just enough time to get home, have some lunch and sort the pups out etc before we headed off to our appointment with Stuart Ellis at Riverbank Vets for eye testing; fortunately they are in Preston just a 10 min or so drive from us. Both dogs were having the standard eye test and gonioscopy too so we had to arrive 20 mins or so early to have the anaesthetic eye drops in before the testing; Jovi was a bit dramatic about the drops so I was a little worried about her gonio test but she sat quietly and was well behaved throughout as was Travis although I have to say, I think the lingering effect of the mornings sedative may have helped! lol Both passed with no problems so two more boxes ticked and we were ‘good to go’ for the mating. Very excited about the prospect of more Teal babies, her first litter are just about to turn 3 so we’ve waited a while for this next instalment! With both parents being roans we will only have roan puppies…blue roan, blue roan and tan and lemon roan puppies expected in November…can’t wait! I must get some new photos of Trav for his webpage now he’s a big grown up handsome boy.

Lochaber Open Show

2010-09-17T12:43:00.009+01:00

So this weekend saw my first breed judging appointment up at Lochaber and District Open Show in Fort William, I don’t need much of an excuse to visit that part of the world, I am totally in love with the Scottish Highlands but this was a perfectly good one anyway, I just wish I’d been able to spend a bit more time up there to enjoy the beautiful landscape. It was a bit like a mystery tour since I decided to just follow the SatNav and discover which route it was going to take me as we went along. I would normally travel up via Glasgow and the A82 up past Loch Lomond and through the Trossachs and Glencoe which is a stunning drive. Instead the SatNav decided to take me up to Perth then West along the A9 to Dalwhinnie before dropping back down to Lochaber via Laggan, more beautiful scenery to make a long drive much more enjoyable...

Ardverikie - on the banks of Loch Laggan, was used as the ficticious Glenbogle house in the TV drama Monarch of the Glen

Laggan Dam on the River Spean, to the south west of Loch Laggan

I didn’t arrive ‘til about 8pm having stopped at Strathmashie Forest on the way and taken the 7 dogs I had with me for a run up the forest to blow away the cobwebs after that 5 hour drive! We had another lovely forest walk early Sunday morning before the show too so I didn’t feel so bad about having taken them all that way.

I was sharing the judging with Stuart Platt (Caldonbeck) so just had 4 bitch classes - puppy, yearling, post grad and open and was pleased to receive a respectable entry of 23 and some really lovely quality bitches , I ended up having to really nit pick for the places but I was pleased as punch when the bitch winner went best of breed (under the referee) and then Pastoral Group 3 and my puppy went best pup in breed and reserve best pup in show. Both beautiful girls I would have happily taken home (think someone might have noticed though lol)

Full results were…
Lochaber and District Canine Society Open Show – 12th September 2010
Puppy Dog (1)

1 - McCallum's Borderbrook The Dauphin

Yearling Dog (3,1)

1 - MacDonald's Locheil Once in a Blue Moon
2 - Kempton's Borderbrook Show Me

Post Graduate Dog (3)

1 - Jones' Sianworth Firecracker
2 - Heggie's Dalond Blaze of Glory
3 - MacDonald's Bordertime Hot Chocolate

Open Dog (8,3)

1 - Turner and Alexander's Kaeleon Showstopper at Locheil - BD
2 - Gray's Locheil Joint Venture
3 - Kempton's Locheil Manhatten at Borderbrook (AI)
4 - Gray's Rosara Dream Boat

Puppy Bitch (4,2)

1 - MacDonald's Locheil Just Cruisin – BP RBPIS
2 - Kempton's Borderbrook I'm The Diva

Yearling Bitch (5,1)

1 - Donald's Locheil Violets are Blue
2 - Jones' Starside Gold Dust Over Sianworth
3 - Kempton's Borderbrook I'm The Diva
4 - Downie's Dalond Blue Bayou

Post Graduate Bitch (7,3)

1 - Hagan's Tribboch Thistle Do Me
2 - McCallum's Tribboch Truly Scrumptious
3 - Conacher's Locheil Chic Flick
4 - Downie's Dalond Blue Bayou

Open Bitch (7,2)

1 - Turner and Alexander's Locheil Funny Face - BB BOB PG3
2 - Jones' Sianworth Mystic Dream JW
3 - Kempton's Borderbrook Atomic Kitten
4 - Donald's Locheil Luck of the Irish

The hospitality was excellent and after the judging we sat and had a good old natter with some of the other judges and stewards over lunch before I embarked on the long drive home around 2.30pm I stopped and took my dogs for another run up Strathmashie Forest at Laggan on the way home so they had a good stretch of their legs first and happened across an impromptu hitchhiker at Dalwhinnie, some poor chap who had missed his train and since he was headed back to Oxenholme (just outside Lancaster) I agreed to drop him at Penrith train station so he could catch a train there instead so he got home at a decent time and I had some company for a few hours of the journey at least. I stopped at Sizergh (near Kendal) on the way home to pop in for a cup of tea and a natter with my mum and gran who were there in the caravan for the week (seemed rude not to since I was passing!) so we were pretty late home but young Rachel had done a great job minding all the dogs at home and they were all pleased to see us back. I was very glad to have Monday off work, despite it being a pretty hectic one but I’ll post more about that later.

Dogs enjoying one of their forest runs…

Esther, who appears to be rather enjoying her holiday in the caravan...

Catching up with some training

2010-09-16T13:10:00.002+01:00

So, we’ve had a couple of weekends off from flyball competition and it’s been quite nice to do other things for a change. Admittedly we did train twice last week (we managed to find sufficient breaks in the awful weather we’ve been having!) but that in itself made quite a refreshing change! I’m pleased with the progress the youngsters are making. We probably made the most progress with Travis and Maisie, both of whom are already running well in starters but had areas we needed to work on so we did lots of chute training and made some real improvements in their respective box turns as well as running them both over higher hurdles (11” which I think will be Travis’s height once he’s measured…I expect Maisie will be 12”) and without any training wings and both did really great…so proud of them :o) Perhaps the biggest achievment with these two is that we managed to get them passing tightly with each other, this has been quite a challenge as you might expect with two playful, similarly aged pups that have been brought up and live in the same household together! I think this gives in insight into the change in mentality over the last few weeks, they are taking the whole game much more seriously and are much more focused. All being well Maisie will make her open debut next month and Travis in the new year.

Tarka is now 12 months old and is set to make her starters debut at Redcar in a couple of weeks. Unfortunately I can’t run her this weekend at Norfolk Park as starters is on Saturday only and I’m over at Darlington Champ show that day so she and Maisie will miss out competing :o( Travis will hopefully run in someone else’s starter team with Megan. I did nothing with her on our Sunday training session as she had total ‘spanner’ head on and wouldn’t concentrate at all so on Thursday evening I got her out before anyone else arrived and got her focused on fetching her ball and then did a few runbacks with her. By the time everyone else arrived she was fine and knew exactly what she was doing so we ran her onto the training chute for the first time and she was really good, taking the ball nicely and hurdling well in both directions…good girlie. She’s going very high up the chute at the moment but I think she’ll learn to adjust herself the more she does, we’ll see! The plan at the moment is to run an all cocker team at the starters event at Newark next month, the three littermates…Tarka, Tally and Charlie along with their half brother Travis…god help us! lol

Pixie and Fergus are both also making good progress but we are having an issue with Pixie ‘stalking’ the ball so we’re going to have to do some seperate exercises away from training to try and overcome that. Aston is currently resting from a shoulder injury but should be able to start training in a few weeks, he is certainly very keen, we will just need to manage his very strong ‘eye’ I think. He is an incredibly clever dog and reminds me very much of half sister Faith (only he has a much softer nature…she’s hard as nails..possibly just the difference between boys and girls?) and while he may have Lexie’s tendency to ‘bizzy-ness’ (everything at 100 mph) he is also very smart and figures things out to his advantage very quickly which I have learnt to my cost while he’s been on ‘house rest’! He has learned how to open every door in the house so just happily lets himself in/out of wherever he does/doesn’t want to be, along with anyone else that happens to be on either side of said door! He has also learned how to open the stairgate and has dug a huge hole in the one corner of the garden where this could lead to escape! This has resulted in quite a bit of destructive behaviour we didn’t have from him as a little puppy (he’s now 10 months old) which includes chewing my laptop charger up into a zillion pieces and eating a huge hole out of the seat of my jeans as well as merrily leading everyone else through his escape tunnel so they can galavant around the orchard and storage yard out the back…all in all…he’s been quite hard work of late! I've entered him in a couple of shows next month but he really is bald as a coot at the moment and looking very 'raw' so may not make it into the ring again just yet...we'll see!

Drax - August Bank Holiday

2010-09-10T16:28:00.004+01:00

So the last of our 5 legger August flyball marathon was the bank holiday weekend over at Drax. Not the most picturesque of venues to spend a bank holiday weekend admittedly (in the shadow of the power station cooling towers!) but a good venue nonetheless, it boasts a good sized nice club house that do really good food and drink and excellent shower facilities too, priorities for any weekend away flyballing! I also took my two Spark-Mercy pups, Viva and Vogue for their first camping trip since they’d come as a litter at 5 weeks old, they were very well behaved (apart from barking at every passer by!)

Our NEW team gazebo in the shadow of the cooling towers…lovely!

The troublesome twins!

I travelled over after work on Friday and had the luxury of having a tent all set up ready for me on my arrival (thanks Hazell!) so could just feed my dogs and get on with the important job of socialising! It ended up being a rather late one to bed (about 5am) and up a couple of hours later to get sorted for the days racing, fortunately we were off the first two divisions so that gave us just enough time to fully wake up! This team wasn’t the usual line up since Faith (the fastest dog on the team) was in season and stayed home so we brought Pip up from the Pawz to replace her. Paul continued running Mac start dog while Alison took over running Pip, Hazell kindly ran Dottie (and this is a very kind act…she’s hard work to run as she likes to nip her handler to psyche herself up!) and I ran Teal last dog. This combination actually worked quite well, Pip loves running behind her daddy (both human and canine in this case! lol) and Alison totally nailed the changeover into Mac, Dottie ran a bit better than she has done of late but Teal was really off form…she’s carrying too much weight at the moment and just wasn’t really that up for it. They ran a fastest time of 19.71 to come 4th in Division 5, about what I would have expected with Pip in place of Faith, we probably could have won this division with the regular line up, oh well.

Saturday we had a nice early night (lol) ready for a busy day ahead Sunday. Sunday began at 8.30am with the starter team, Demon Cubz, which comprised Maisie, Travis, Spud and Radley. Radley has been struggling for focus and confidence recently so we decided to pop her back into starters this weekend to see whether that would help; unfortunately they hadn’t arrived for the first race so we lost it but the other 3 were running well and when Radley did join us she was too which I was really pleased about. I don’t quite know what has happened to Radley but this seems to have started when she had a litter of pups earlier in the year. It seems to have really affected her confidence which is the opposite to what I found with Teal when she had her first litter and came back raring and brimming with confidence but I wonder if this is because I didn’t keep a Teal puppy (well not one that continued to live with us anyway) whereas Radley now has her daughter Truly to think about, which is possibly more important for her as she is also now no longer an ‘only dog’. She ran well all day though and they came 3rd :o)

Radley and Truly

We were straight into division 11 with the Pawz and boy did we struggle with this team! When moving Pip up into the Racers I hadn’t considered that we were also moving our only experienced start dog from this team. We started out running Fynn start, followed by Fly, Ethan and Squirrel who I was having to tuck in on the line so Ethan wouldn’t run out (seems a waste of a perfectly good terrier who will run in and change from 30ft but hey ho!); this worked fine until Fynn started doing his ‘stopping to take in the view’ routine (damn dog!) and Gemma asked to run him last. We tried running fly first…she bolted straight across to the other lane, we lost the leg on interference…she has WAY too much eye and is NOT cut out for start dog! The only way we could do this was to run Ethan start dog (yes…Ethan…eternal ‘arse-ender’ going start!) with Squirrel tucked in behind followed by Fly and then Fynn which worked ok for a couple of legs until Fly went in early against Squirrel causing her to run out…poor little Squirrel, as soon as a dog goes in early on her it knocks her confidence and she will keep running out she was going to have to go last…which meant Ethan was going to have to go 3rd and since Fly couldn’t go start she was going to have to go 2nd so….Fynn ended up back start in the same order we’d started on. We did actually run our two best times, morning and afternoon with this line up , we came last with a fastest time of 22.30…not actually that bad considered we’d submitted 22.20 and lost the fastest dog (Pip ) to the second team…work in progress me thinks! Lol

We than had a division off before heading back into the ring for Division 2 with the Demonz…Dylan, Bailey, Lexie and River. I can’t quite put my finger on why but we struggled with this team managing 3rd place with only an 18.13 (a little disappointing after the 17.85 we ran at the Champs). We have a two week break before running again so hopefully the dogs will come back refreshed.

Monday we had two multibreed teams running, our usual line up in the first team, Diverse Demonz…Dylan, Ruaraidh (collie x kelpie from Dolphins), Leo (standard Poodle from supernovas) and Teal. Teal seemed to be a little better than Saturday but still not back on full form and Leo was nursing a knee injury so we struggled to get anywhere near our previous 17.84 but we ran well and consistently, this is a really good little team. It came down to the last race…us (no. 1 seed) Vs Doncaster (no. 2 seed) and they had run faster than us so we knew it was going to be incredibly tight. It was and came down to the 5th leg but we’d pushed them enough and they got a light…phew! We’d won all our races and the Division again…excellent!

The 2nd team, Demon Medley was a hastily thrown together combination due to no Bailey, injury of our crossbreed and losing the other standard poodle (he’d run for his own team since the last time he’d run for us making him ineligible to run again)…Faith would have been next choice BC but of course she was in season so we had Saffy (gorgeous lurcher), River, Radley, Squirrel and Echo (border terrier from Doncaster). I was hoping Radley would be full of beans after her successful run out in starters the previous day but alas she wasn’t and refused to run…very frustrating. Echo was steady but seemed to struggle on our Belgian box, the hole settings are quite high for a little dog, especially if they’ve not been taught to jump on/off so are just reaching up to take the ball. River and Saffy were fab, Riv ran start dog and they both but in some excellent times, Squirrel also ran reliably as last dog but we were seriously outclassed in that division, especially as we were running two little height dogs, and came last by a long way! Had I known which dogs we would end up running I would have submitted a much slower time.

I also judged division 2 which saw some really good close racing and it was lovely to see Echo (Bryning Superstella, Quillan – Lexie daughter and Rivers sister) running so well with Doghouse Odd’s n Sod’s, she was hitting 4.1’s all day…she’s really come on this season and is proving to be a cracking little flyball dog. All in all it was a good day.

The only slightly disappointing aspect was the Multibreed trophy which was to be awarded to the ‘best’ multibreed team over the two tournaments. This was calculated on total number of races won. Well…we were unbeaten at both tournaments, winning division 1 on both occasions and running a fastest time of 17.84 but another team were also unbeaten over both comps winning a division 4 and 3 with a fastest time of 19.78 (running on a seed time of 21.61). The organizers had no idea what to do about a tie because… ‘it’s never happened before’…well surely it was always a distinct possibility! Now as far as I’m concerned common sense would dictate that the fastest team should be the winners? This is a competitive sport after all and the whole point is to run 4 dogs as fast as you can but no, the options were to share the trophy (6 months each) or some ludicrous system of which team’s average time was closest to their seed time. Now, it’s worth pointing out that the other team had actually run a fastest time 1.8 seconds faster than their seed time and had (obviously) anihalated the opposition in their division (hardly in the spirit of competition) but occasionally throwing in a slower dog when they were two legs up and could afford to lose a leg (knowing they wouldn’t struggle to win the next one) so yes…their ‘average’ time probably wasn’t that far off their seed time but a more accurate measure of consistency is in the variance between their fastest and slowest times (some nearly 4 seconds!). While we were running a four dog team in division 1 where seed time is completely irrelevant, hence there being no break out times…you’re already running against the fastest opposition possible so there’s no way you can ‘cheat’ the seed time system to pitch yourself in a less competitive division and we didn’t even run the fastest time of that division, we raced damn hard to get our 5 race wins that day. To be honest, by this point I really couldn’t be bothered and had to go and judge division two so told them to just give it to the other team, after all, what did we want it for? The fact we were even having this conversation meant it clearly didn’t mean anything anyway so had just become a pointless piece of wood and metal! If it gives others satisfaction to achieve meaningless things so easily then let them have their easily attained pleasures. I am increasingly disappointed by the number of flyballers this appears to apply to :o(

Anyway, this got me on to thinking about another discussion we’d had the previous weekend about rosettes…I can’t stand the fact that rosettes are awarded to 4th place…in a 6 team division this is so stupid, that’s rosettes to 66%!! The system in agility is so much better, rosettes to 10%, sometimes possibly 15% but the elite competitors anyway, makes them mean something, something to strive for and a real sense of achievement when you win one! For a long time now I’ve just handed mine back at flyball, I only keep firsts or those that are special in some other way, like my dogs first comp or a tournament we’ve never been to before etc. I never keep a 4th though! It was the same thing with the change in the points system to offer higher points rewards to slower teams. What is so wrong about rewarding the best? It’s nice getting the awards but to be honest they are becoming worth less and less in my opinion. This is supposed to be a competitive sport, the aim is to run as fast as you can, as with all sports… some teams/dogs will be faster than others but they should be rewarded for being so! In my opinion a new tier of points should be brought in for teams running under 18 seconds so the very fastest dogs get the highest rewards (as it should be!). Ok, that’s my rant over... lol

A (hard) lesson in colour genetics

2010-08-26T13:44:00.010+01:00

So…last weekend I’m out with the dogs and Dazzle’s coat looks an absolute disgrace, all this rain we’ve been having isn’t great for a dog with a huge coat that acts like a sponge! So I decided a good bath and groom was in order when we got home. She’s always like a little barrel, like her mother before her she is prone to weight gain, despite me cutting her food back, which is not helped by her great thick coat either. Well, I got her in the bath and soaked her and…what’s this?? OMG…Dazzle is in whelp...panic!! I looked back at when she was in season…around the time my grandad died, so the week she must have been mated was the week of the funeral when we had a whole load of family staying in the house and everything was a bit of a blur!! I just had no idea who the sire was, since I had no inkling that she’d been mated at all it really could have been anyone and no matter which way I looked at it, none of the options were particularly favourable but Spark was probably ‘worst case scenario’ being her son and a merle too :o(

Now normally when I have a bitch due to whelp it’s been a long awaited event that results in lots of excited anticipation. This last week I have to say has been one of nervous dread, waiting to see what arrived. So…she whelped Monday night and when the first pup was born…a chocolate merle…I briefly thought they might be cocker crosses (sired by Travis) but they were the size and shape of normal collie pups with neat little triangle ears, another choc merle and then the third one…an almost all white choc merle…a double merle…and I knew for sure then that the puppies were Mac’s, he is the only dog I have here that carries chocolate and he is obviously also a merle; probably second worst case scenario :o(

We finished up with 3 ‘normal’ (heterozygous Mm) choc merle boys and a ‘normal’ blue merle boy as well as a choc/white boy along with the ‘double’ (homozygous MM) choc merle. I spoke with my vet and we agreed that the kindest option was to have the white pup humanely put to sleep. The risk of deafness, blindness, lack of eyes etc was just too great to justify rearing this poor baby and there was no hesitation from my vet that this was the most sensible course of action, as sad as it seems now I’m sure we made the right decision but that doesn't actually make it any the less tough.

the unexpected arrivals...

I am totally unsure how I feel about this litter now…they certainly weren’t planned or expected and their arrival is tinged by sadness, guilt and regret but the five remaining pups are beautiful so I can’t help but smile when I look at them and I’m also quietly excited at the prospect of Mac babies; something I had resigned myself would never happen again so this is an unexpected surprise, it’s all so very bitter/sweet and I feel guilty again about being a little bit excited. The irony is that when I took all my dogs for gonioscopy testing last year, I had planned to mate Dottie to Mac so I could keep a puppy. When Mac failed the gonio test my hopes were dashed and I was desperately disappointed. I asked Stuart (opthamologist) whether it would be possible to use him again at all and he pulled his face but suggested that if I really MUST use him again it should be to a bitch with completely perfect eye structure and drainage angles, such as Dazzle (who he claimed has the best drainage angles he’s ever seen) which I obviously pointed out was never going to happen since they were both merles! I did contemplate having Mac castrated at the time but decided against it because I didn’t want to upset the hierarchy in my pack; all my boys get along so well with Mac being the ‘top dog’ amongst them and because he’s not really one for bothering when we have girls in season I’ve never found him being entire a problem (huh!).

So, here I am, well read and experienced in breeding and colour genetics and a staunch advocate against merle to merle matings, in the situation I never imagined I would find myself in, it just goes to show…you never quite know what’s around the corner in this game!

So I’m just going to share a few facts about merle to merle matings and double merles as I'm sure some people reading this will have questions.

Merle is a dominant gene and as such a dog only needs one copy of the gene to exhibit the coat pattern. So the vast majority of merles are heterozygous for merle Mm (that means they have two different genes on that allele…one for merle M and one not for merle m). When you mate a merle to a solid coloured dog the merle should (statictically) pass on the merle gene to 50% of the offspring and the non merle gene to the other 50%, so half the litter will also be heterozygous merle (Mm) and the other half will be homozygous (two copies of the same gene) for non merle (mm).

Problems arise when two merles are mated together because you now have the probability that 25% of the pups will inherit the merle gene from both parents so statistically 25% of the litter will be homozygous non merle (mm), 50% will be heterozygous ‘normal’ merle (Mm) and 25% will be homozygous ‘double’ merle (MM). The effect of the double merle gene is to drastically dilute the colour pigmentation so you end up with a puppy that is almost entirely white and this is where the problems lie. The colour pigmentation cells are involved in the development of optical and auditory systems (sight and hearing) so the lack of pigmentation can result in a whole host of deafness and eyesight issues.

What this means is that the fact that these double merle puppies have issues is secondary to the fact they are mostly white (if that makes sense)…the genes themselves don’t cause the problems, only the fact that the genes result in a lack of pigment so, while the double merle pups themselves will likely have health issues, the rest of the pups in the litter are perfectly normal healthy puppies and should a double merle be retained and bred from (whether it be deaf and/or blind itself) it would not pass any of these issues onto it’s offspring. It was (and probably still is in some places) common practice for ‘colour breeders’ (those breeding solely for colour and nothing else) to deliberately do a merle to merle mating and retain a double merle pup as a stud dog. Being homozygous MM means that a double merle, when mated to a solid coloured bitch, can ONLY pass on the merle gene and therefore can only produce merle puppies. It is also much more commonplace in breeds where merle is more prevelant, such as Australian Shepherds and shelties.

Here are a few interesting links regarding double merles but let me just clarify that I WOULD NOT EVER recommend a deliberate merle to merle mating; intentionally producing defective puppies is not my idea of good breeding practice and having to make the heart breaking decision to have a newborn puppy pts is not something I would wish on any other caring and conscientious breeder.

LethalWhites.com

Double Merle Genetics

Deafness in White Aussies

August Flyball

2010-08-25T15:06:00.006+01:00

For some bizarre reason I thought it would be a good idea for us to enter a flyball tournament every weekend in August (which also happens to be a 5 week month) but not content with just that we would include two weekends that involved 2 sanctioned tournaments i.e. 7 sanctioned tournaments in a single month…nuts I know!

We started at Eastham on the Wirral over the 31st July/1st August weekend. I don’t entirely remember what happened that weekend but the Pawz and Racers ran really well and got new seed times and the Demonz ran really rubbish! To be fair, everyone in our division (div 2) ran really slow and I am pretty convinced that the ring was ‘out’ making the runs longer than they should have been…our other two teams ran in the other ring which ran really well (possibly a little on the short side??).

The following weekend we took the long trek up to Dundee for two 1-day sanctioned tournaments held at Caird Park and Camperdown Park (fab venue). We ran ‘scratch’ teams since Gemma couldn’t make it so Mac replaced Bailey in the Demonz and we mixed the other two teams together on a submitted time. The dogs actually ran really well and we ran some good times plus we ran Travis and Maisie in the starters and they were both fab! After chatting to my friend Hazell (Tyne flyball teams) on the Saturday night about the problem she had running her two dogs (River – Bryning Super Cool and Jack – Bryning Bold Jack Donohoe) in their top team we decided she would move River into our team so she could run them both herself and get the best out of them. So the next day River ran with us which was really nice since Lexie ended up running with 3 of her kids (Dylan, Faith and River); this also did the trick for Tyne who ran sub 18.00 seconds for the first time when Hazell ran Jack herself! We had a really nice weekend, good company and good flyball…very enjoyable and worth the long drive.

Hear No, See No, Speak No… lol
Maisie, Mouse and Spark enjoy the wide open spaces of Camperdown Park

A rare pic of Tarka at 11 months old, she’s usually just a blur!

’HERE’s’ some more pics I took at Camperdown Park, none of the flyball I’m afraid!

The following weekend we were at the British Flyball championships, I couldn’t make the Friday and the Pawz really did struggle and came last in their division…oh well! The Racers were running Saturday with a new line up since we had moved Teal and Faith down out of the Demonz and moved Lexie up to join her daughter River in the team. Faith is considerably faster than Lex over 8” but not over 13” so she moved down with the height dog (Teal). The weather was horrendous…torrential rain meant the conditions were awful so despite them running some good times and winning all their races in the morning, it all went belly up in the afternoon with the dogs sliding all over the place and really struggling on the box; the times suffered and we ended up losing races, a real shame. Mac suffered the most, I could see him twisting off the box as he struggled for grip and sure enough he was very stiff that evening so had a massage and slept in his coat to keep his poor aching back muscles warm, bless him. We had a team BBQ in the rain on Saturday evening (true British spirit!) and all really enjoyed the fancy dress party and disco in the marquee…we all went dressed as Demons! Haha

The Demonz were running Sunday in Division 5, this was a real learning curve since this was a completely untried team of Dylan, Bailey, Lexie and River, we lost all our morning races while we all got a feel for changeovers etc but got it together for the afternoon and actually beat the two fastest teams in the division thus handing the division win to our old friends at Red Rose who were running an entire Bryning team in the form of Aztec (Bryning Aztec), Harry (Bryning Silver Harrier), Haze (Bryning Indian Summer) and Oz (Bryning Willie Wagtail)…very proud of the babies :o). It does just go to show the way flyball goes though, the two teams we beat ran fastest times of 17.60 and 17.62, we ran a fastest time of 17.85 (seasons best) and the Red Rose Rascals won the division with a fastest time 18.18! lol

There are some pics of the Pawz and Demonz ’HERE’
(kindly taken by David Flood)

A couple of my faves...
Ethan…on a mission!

Lexie…

And daughter River…

The following weekend we were over at Rotherham for the tournament hosted by our friends at Tyne. We were top seed with all 3 open teams which is always the kiss of death! True to form we didn’t win a single division! Well, apart from starters actually where we were joined by Beamer (a BC bred by my friend Julie) who was making his tournament debut and ran really well; along with Spud, Travis and Maisie they managed to win the division with the fastest time of the day…clever babies :o)

Spud - 10 years old and rather arthritic, he’s retired from competing but makes the odd appearance in starters when we need a ‘steady hand’ ;o)

Travis

Maisie

Beamer

There are more pics of this team ’HERE’
(thanks to Kirsty Price for the photos)

Again we struggled with the Pawz, Radley seems to be struggling for confidence at the moment and Fynn is struggling to concentrate for a whole division but I was a particularly pleased with Squirrel who ran her little socks off :o) We actually managed a 2nd with this lot and a fastest time of 22.17

The Racers ran ok, Mac was a little off form since he’d has an abscess on his foot so wasn’t quite 100% and I really struggled with my changeovers in on Dottie who is becoming increasingly erratic off the box, lots of lights, very frustrating!

The Demonz ran Sunday and again we seemed to struggle for consistency, throwing away easy wins on stupid lights…tsk! Hoping for better results this weekend coming at Drax!

Just Dogs Live & East of England Champ Show

2010-08-23T10:20:00.002+01:00

We arrived at Peterborough showground on the Thursday afternoon for 3 days of breed showing, flyball and agility at ‘Just Dogs Live’ which incorporated East of England Champ show. I kinda wished I hadn’t bothered with the show, Aston got a 4th in Minor Puppy dog but I was really pleased with the way he went at his first show. The class was won by Teddy, Starside Shameless, a ’Viggo’ son who also went on to win the Puppy Dog class too. I missed Jovi’s class, decided not to take Faith in as she was so out of coat, Dottie and Spark were both ‘binned’ (shock, horror!)

Teddy on the move….

Aston on the move…

Spark on the move…

Dottie on the move…

The agility was well, painful with Teal; she just isn’t enjoying it at the moment so I’ve decided no more comps with her until we can commit to more training and she can learn how fun it all is again. I actually really enjoyed running Faith, no clear rounds but she is getting better at listening to me and concentrating on the job in hand! I think we could get it together and make a decent little agility dog of her if we could get some regular training in!

The flyball was good, we had all 3 teams running but boy was it hot! I wanted a cool coat for Teal but they had sold out when I arrived, the very kind lady on the ’DryDog Coats’ stand loaned me one for the afternoon and it made a real difference, she ran SO much better; unfortunately by that time all the collies had started to flag a bit so we didn’t gain much but I ordered 3 of the cool coats to be delivered, 1 for Teal and 2 collie sized ones. They are by far the best cool coats I’ve ever come across and very reasonably priced too; I would recommend them to anyone. I also picked up one of the dry coats to use on Spark for his pre-show bath and this is really effective; lovely flat dry coat although he does look very funny wearing it bless him! lol

Some more photos of the dogs in the showring, some stacked pics of the puppies taken at the same time and a few pics of the dogs competing in the flyball (courtesy of David Flood) HERE

European Flyball Championships 2010

2010-08-18T12:50:00.000+01:00

A super quick catch up of the last couple of months starting with the Euros...

This seems like an age ago (well, it was actually!). EFC 2010 were held in Brecht, Belgium and hosted by the Black Brains flyball team. Five of us travelled out (me, Gemma, Paul, Alison and 4 year old Nico) with a total of 12 dogs between us. We only took competing dogs this year and no ‘cheer leaders’ mostly due to the new EU rule limiting the number of pets you can travel with to 5 per person. Gem and I were travelling together, I had 8 (Mac, Lexie, Dottie, Ethan, Teal, Faith, Squirrel and Jovi) and she had her 2 (Bailey and Fynn) so we were already up to our ‘5 per person’ quota with the dogs we had running. Paul and Alison had Dylan and Pip and although we had enough dogs to run 3 teams we decided to just run two 6 dog teams in case of any injuries or problems. It was another hot one and we all really enjoyed ourselves. Good racing but no trophies this year.

Some photos of us and our dogs at the event ’here’, these were taken by Peter from the Belgian kennel ‘The Border Inn’ who had come to watch; they have a blue merle Spark son (pictured in the photos).

And there are a whole LOAD more taken by David Flood here… ’here’

Gem and I headed straight to Brussels from the venue to stay with my friend Ann Eiserman (Doggone Borders), we had a good couple of days just chilling out, walking the dogs and visiting the city before heading back to the UK.

Photos of all the dogs out walking in the Park de Bruxelles (Brussels Park) ’here’; also known as Warandepark ‘The Warren’, very aptly named as it is full of rabbits! We had 25 dogs between us and not a bit of bother…quite a sight!

We drove back to the UK to spend a night with Joy and Becca in Oxfordshire where we collected Spark, Kitten and the puppies and bathed the dogs entered at East of England Champ show before heading over to the showground at Peterborough for 3 days of breed showing, flyball and agility.

Where has the time gone??

2010-07-15T11:43:00.002+01:00

Oh my word, 6 weeks without a blog post…I think that’s probably my longest gap yet! Well, as you might expect, an awful lot has happened in those last 6 weeks…hence the lack of posts!

My grandfather was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer back in February, the nature of this type of cancer is that it’s already well advanced (stage 4) by the time it’s discovered. He went into a hospice some 6 weeks or so ago and died, very peacefully, on the 14th June. I’ve always been very close to my mum’s parents; growing up without a father meant my grandad was the closest thing I’ve ever know to a father and he taught me an awful lot. I can’t tell you what an enormous loss this is to our whole family, particularly of course my grandmother to whom he’d been married for over 60 years. He had a fabulous send off at the funeral, I don’t think I’ve ever been to a happier funeral, it was a very sad but joyous occasion….just as he had wanted. We all had to wear bright colours and all the hymns were happy and uplifting ones. We’re all comforted by the fact he’s ‘home’ and at peace but we miss him so much and it still really hurts. Here he is, home visiting his beautiful garden for the last time, just 3 days before he died and having a cuddle with Esther...

Esther has stayed with my grandmother and I’m sure is a great comfort to her as she adjusts to living on her own; I’m so amazed and proud of her…she’s an incredible lady who I will never cease to admire.

We’ve been to a few agility shows (Wigton and RVA Just Dogs Live) as well as a couple of flyball tournaments (Rotherham and Eastham) and of course…the European Flyball Championships in Brecht, Belgium followed by East of England Championship breed show and Cambridgeshire Canines flyball tournament on the way home. I will do a couple of blog posts to cover these off later.

Most of the puppies have left but I still have a black/white girl from Lori’s litter after the person taking her couldn’t at the last minute :o( and two black/white boys from Mercy. I need to get new photos of these, obviously being away for 2 weeks has meant they’ve been left longer than I would have preferred before finding new homes but they’re beautiful happy puppies :o)

Kitten’s pups are now 6 weeks old and absolutely stunning too, I’m so pleased with what Spark is producing. We have a couple of weekends off now before gearing up for a mammoth month of flyball in August which will involve us attending seven separate sanctioned tournaments in a single month!

Packington Agility

2010-06-02T15:56:00.000+01:00

So, we have a weekend off flyball and what do I do? I book 3 days of agility shows instead! Lol I had entered Dog Vegas on the Saturday but ended up not going and having lots of people come to see puppies instead (I’d forgotten about finding time to fit that in! lol), lots of lovely people came to visit and now all of Lori’s pups have homes which is great. There are some new pics of this lot Here

We set off bright and relatively early on Saturday morning for Solihull and Packington Agility show, this was a nice little show and not too busy. I had entered both in 3 classes on Saturday but had decided to pull Faith from hers and put her in the anysize jumping instead, see whether I could actually get her to concentrate for an entire round and complete everything! The course was already running so I watched a few dogs go and it was fairly straightforward, it was early and quiet so I went and got Faith and she seemed fairly focused, she set off great and was really listening…so much so that when I forgot the course (yes…I did…and it was really easy!!) and she was heading the right way…I called her off the jump and she came! Good girl Fi but what an idiot I am!! 5f but a finished course and a well behaved attentive dog!! Woo Hoo!! Doesn’t sound much but I was very very pleased. That was Fi done for the day at 9.30am…Teal’s first class didn’t start ‘til 1.30pm!! I went and had a cup of tea with Michelle (who owns Haze…B. Summer Breeze, an Oz-Pip daughter) and spent some time with Moody playing with him around the rings and in Michelle’s garden with her other dogs. Moody is the very dark blue/white boy from Viggo and Dazzle’s litter born back in November who was sold as a puppy but returned to me a few weeks ago, apart from chasing and barking at the swallows in the garden (which is mildly annoying) I have yet to find any fault with him so I was starting to look for a new home for him when it started to dawn on me that I might not want to let him go again, with very limited input he’s very into me, keen to play and ‘do’…I actually really like this dog, although he is not one I would have chosen from the litter he has a super temperament and great working attitude, he’s a big strong powerful dog with bags of potential...hmmm….the following day I bought him a new lead and a training tug toy and we’ve re-named him ‘Woody’…nuff said! lol

Woody just loving a tug toy!!

They announced a rather impromptu measuring session over lunch and amazingly (for me) I was organized and had all my record books in the van so took the opportunity to get Teal’s second measure. I started to get really nervous while waiting that she might not get small again and I’d have come all that way and not be able to run her…stupid I know! She easily got her second ‘small’ measure, comfortably under the hoop…phew! That’s her done now, she won’t need measuring again :o) So, her first class was 1-2 agility, quite a fast flowy course but 12 weaves…I have a real hang up with weaves…it is definitely me and not the dog, I need to trust them more but I just really seem to struggle and don’t cue them very well! She did a beautiful A-frame but missed her dogwalk contact, ran the whole course nicely but just didn’t pick up the weaves at all, I took her back and sent her again, she went in at 3 and came out at 10, I ignored this and carried on to the finish…she tries her best and I don’t want her getting a hang up about them too! 1-2 jumping also had 12 weaves, again she did a lovely run but missed the entry again, we re-did them and she got her entry but came out in the middle and then completed….argh!! the 1-7 helter skelter (no weaves!) was a cracking course but you had to leave them in a wait and position yourself by 3 to get into position to get them over 3 and 4, I was sure we’d go clear in this but….she broke her wait!! (Shock, horror!) so ran over the first 3 before I got in position and then sailed over the wrong jump…big fat E!! Rather disappointing :o( We were all done by 3pm so set off and met Joy and Becca at Sally’s garden centre where they were moving the agility equipment to a new field, we did a bit of training and I proofed Teals dogwalk contact and we did some weaves…proving our weave issues are me and not Teal when she completed them perfectly every time for Joy!

We set off early again on Sunday morning, back up to Packington, no anysize class so I decided to try Faith in her normal classes. First up was grade 1 agility, she had a late running order so I waited right ‘til the end of the class before bringing her out and running her. Amazingly…she was pretty good! She went under one jump, just before the dog walk…something she often does when she gets that up-plank in her sights! But did a really lovely dogwalk and seesaw, was listening and completing her jumps, ran over to the pole picker to say ‘Hi’ after the long jump but came back, did a lovely A frame and weaves (because I hadn’t expected to get that far I hadn’t worried about them so she just did them by herself! lol) and completed the course! Again, this sounds like most people’s idea of a disaster but this is serious progress! This was the high point of her day, I pulled her out of both the jumping and helter skelter when she was back in her usual ‘eyes everywhere and not concentrating’ mode and going under jumps. I’ve decided to enter her in anysize classes where I can and failing that, agility only…I definitely struggle maintaining her focus on jumping only courses. Not ready to give up on her just yet!

Teal’s first class was the 1-3 agility and at the last minute we decided to try Joy running her, see if we could get her to complete those damned weaves! Right from get go this turned out to be a non starter, Teal was very hesitant and not at all happy about the fact her mummy wasn’t running with her…big baby!! She did finish the course (good girl) but didn’t complete the weaves as she was too distracted looking for me so I guess she’s lumbered with a crap handler! lol The 1-3 jumping was a fairly straightforward course but I hadn’t got to walk it and got there just as it was closing so didn’t have much time to think about how I was going to handle a change of sides, I decided to cross behind which was the wrong decision because she wasn’t far enough ahead of me…she stopped in front of the jump and I nearly stood on her…she actually squeaked in terror at the prospect! lol We carried on and completed the course with 5f…I was so mad with myself!! I think this affected her (and my) confidence in the 1-7 helter skelter later in the day which was in the same ring and we just went for a nice steady clear, no point pushing to compete with the fast and experienced G7 dogs, I just wanted her to have a nice, uneventful run and we did, good girl.

We had a nice weekend anyway, got to catch up with folk and see quite a few of my pups running, we’re entered at Wigton (near Penrith) this weekend so I’m planning to drive up each day for that, another nice small show (some of Teal’s classes are tiny!) but chance to gain a bit more experience. We’ll see how that goes.

Pontefract Flyball

2010-06-02T15:43:00.002+01:00

WAY behind on the blog (again!)…am so busy at the moment…there’s an awful lot going on with the dogs and family and I’m struggling to find any free time at all. Here’s a ‘relatively’ brief catch up on what’s been happening starting with out last flyball comp…

We ran at Farmer Copleys at Pontefract the weekend following Dinnington and boy…was it hot!! I got well and truly fried! We had entered 3 teams for the first time, Jovi was making her divisional debut and Sqiurrel was coming back to us from Tyne to make up the 3rd team (Demon Pawz) with Fly and Pip. Well, that was the plan anyway…I arrived on Saturday morning, just before that team was due to go in, opened the van to get the girls out for a warm up and….realised I’d forgotten Squirrel!! I couldn’t believe it…doh! Mad panic, we’d only got 12 dogs for the 3 teams so had no spares so I racked my brains trying to think of someone that might have a dog old enough and ready to go into open but hadn’t run for their own team yet and landed on Knott…the dog from Brigg that had been running with us in starters but is waiting ‘til they have enough dogs for a second team…bingo! Sonya agreed to run him with us so we had two dogs (and one handler) making their open debut! What can I say, they all did brilliantly, running a fastest time of 21.74 (which broke us out) and winning the division! Can’t tell you how pleased I was with Jovi, she was paw perfect and never batted an eyelid at having to suddenly run her own height (12”) instead of Squirrel’s 8! Jo and Knott accumulated their first flyball points…190 so just 10 short of their flyball dog awards :o) Knott will run with us again at Rotherham in a couple of weeks and then will go back to run with Brigg who hope to have their 2nd team up and running in July.

Our second team (Demon Racers) consisted of Mac, Dottie, Lexie and Ethan and were running on their own seed time. Paul did a brilliant job of running Mac start dog, 100 times better than the job I’ve been making of it recently! Some good consistent starts and nice consistent times form the Macman too, running between 4.6 and 4.8 all day. This was a seven team division run during searing heat so I was pretty pleased with that. Gemma was running Dottie who, I have to say, has been rather off form recently…not really sure what’s wrong with her?? I ran Lex 3rd dog and she ran really nicely, very consistently like Mac running between 4.7 and 4.9, not back on her best form yet but still lacking fitness (as is Dottie). Lastly Rachel was running Ethan who just seemed to be all over the place, to be fair to him he hasn’t run much over the last 7 or 8 months and I think he was just a little over excited! He had a lot of bad ball fumbles because he wasn’t concentrating on the box so his times were very erratic. All in all not a bad team performance, they came 4th having been seeded 6th and ran around their seed time. More to come from this team though me thinks.

Sunday saw us running our starter team, some nice solid performances from Knott and Jovi (as expected), Viggo completely lost his head, Maisie was good but has developed a habit of chasing back in so we’re just going to have to run her last for now and Fynn was ok but needed a lot of shouting to keep him focused on his own lane…work in progress! They came 4th but did run the fastest time (when they were all playing ball at the same time!).

We ran the Speed Demonz in Div 1 later in the day and had a rather frustrating day. Teal was very erratic (she hates the heat) and was running between 5 and 5.4 (not back to her best yet either), Dylan was on fire and consistently running sub 4.1 going start dog, Alison had a good handle on the lights too so got some good starts with him. Paul seemed to struggle with Faith and couldn’t get the changeover consistent but she ran ok. Bailey was right off form, running between 4.3 and 4.6, something really not right with him :o( somehow though, we came 3rd with the fastest time in a 3 way tie despite only having run 18.39…half a second slower than we ran at Dinnington (that was the leg Bailey ran 4.6). We have a couple of weekends off flyball so time to rest the dogs (and us!) and hopefully come back refreshed and fighting fit at Rotherham on 12th June.

Here’s a few pics of Eabha (Bryning Prime Time) from Dinnington the week before anyway…

On the mend

2010-05-21T13:59:00.003+01:00

The dressing is now off and she is feeling a lot brighter in herself,

this does of course mean that she has started complaining about being crated all the time and wants to attempt her usual running up/down stairs, jumping on/off sofa when she's let out! Another week of crate rest and she can then start having short lead walks but I'm really pleased with the progress she's making.

Dinnington Ruby Club

2010-05-18T17:05:00.002+01:00

A very quick review of the weekend tournament at Dinnington Rugby Club, sorry I don’t have any pics to go with it.

We had both teams running on Saturday and Tyne had all four of theirs on this day too, it was pretty busy! In light of the reliability/timing problems we’ve been having with the Demon Racers I decided to run the Demon Pawz as our second team and submit a time that was achievable by our slowest combination, ensuring that we had the same 3 dogs running all the races with Mac and Ethan alternating. Mac running start and Ethan running last so the middle order stayed the same…Pip, Dottie, Fly…Ethan ran all the races in the red lane (so he could turn left every time) and Mac ran all the ones in the blue lane…a seven team division so they had 3 races each…sorted! This definitely worked better and we got much more consistent times and won the division!! We still achieved a fastest time of 20.67 so not bad going at all. The team Squirrel was running with (Tyne Titans) were in the same division as the Pawz although they were bottom seed and did struggle in the division. All the dogs ran well though including Squirrel! I have pretty much figured out (I hope) what I need to do with her and what I can’t do, she’s very tuned in to where I am and what I’m doing so I have to be aware of that at all times! (she’d probably make quite a good little agility dog lol).

We ran the Demonz on the new box again and this caused us a few issues and unfortunately lost us a few races, we had a different boxloader with Paul taking over running Faith, in preparation for Belgium, so I don’t know whether it was that or whether there is actually a problem with the box, these Alvah’s are known for being a little temperamental, we’ll see how it is in training this week. The long and short of it was that a few times it didn’t trigger when it should have done and others it randomly triggered when it shouldn’t…darn it! On the plus side…We ran Alison and Dylan back start dog again since we ‘think’ we may have cracked the ball dropping issue (hurrah!), the dogs all seemed to run ok on the box and Bailey was certainly back on form. We managed a new seed time of 17.93 in the first race :o) While I was looking at the box before the afternoon races Teal went off with Gemma and her boys and, for some reason best known to her, Gemma thought it would be a good idea to repeatedly throw a ball…on a very hot day…resulting in a knackered little spaniel!! Lol I ran her in the first couple of legs and she was like a slug! Fortunately, we had Lexie on this team sheet since Dylan had shown signs of a shoulder strain earlier in the week so the cocker was put back in the van and I ran Lexie instead, it never does Faith any harm to have to run her own height (13”) from time to time because she’s rubbish at it! We completed the last two races of the day with Dyl, Bai, Faith and Lexie instead. I’m actually pleased Lexie got a run. Despite our poor results we ended up on a 3 way tie for 3rd place and ended up 3rd as we had the fastest time, pleased to see our lovely friends Rotherham and Tyne come first and second…(especially since both teams run dogs I bred lol)…excellent result!

On Sunday we just had our combined starters team running, Demon Tailwaggerz. Fynn seemed to suddenly realise there were dogs running in the other lane and had a few stupid moments, Viggo got spooked by a dog crossing over into his lane and totally lost the plot (he is such a baby!) but Maisie and Jovi both ran great and I was especially pleased that they also both ran together and passed each other. We had also run Jo in the warm ups on Saturday and she’d been fine so have bitten the bullet and entered 3 teams at Pontefract this weekend!! This means Squirrel will be coming back from Tyne to run for us and she and Jovi will be running in a four dog Open team…wish us luck!

Little China Doll…

2010-05-18T10:44:00.003+01:00

This is often what springs to mind when I look at Esther, particularly in comparison to her littermates, she’s such a finely built and, to be honest, scrawny little dog but she runs and plays with the big dogs and is one tough little cookie, or so I thought. Truth be told the big dogs, particularly Spark and Ethan, pretend to play rough with her but are actually very gentle. The fragility of these little breeds in comparison to the collies became brutally apparent on Weds night when, while running around my bedroom like an idiot before bedtime, she dived across the bed and fell off the edge and screamed her little head off! Now, I’ll admit, I wasn’t terribly sympathetic at first; these terriers can be rather prone to dramatics so I thought she was over-reacting as she hopped around on 3 legs refusing to put her left hind on the floor. I had a quick look and the pain seemed to be coming from the top of her leg/hip…I really wasn’t sure what she’d done…a knock or sprain but she was obviously unhappy…it was late at night so I gave her a double dose of metacam and put her to bed to see how she was in the morning. Come morning she was still holding the leg and very quiet so we went straight down to the vets; after a quick examination it was concluded she’d probably broken her femur (thigh bone) and needed x-rays (cue a very guilty feeling me!). I left her in and went to work and rang after lunch to be told she had indeed broken the femur which was going to require pinning. Poor little girl :o(

x-ray…

The vets said they could do it but suggested she might be better going to an orthopeadic specialist so I immediately called Tom who runs with the Dolphins flyball team and specializes in this kind of surgery at Nantwhich Veterinary Group in Cheshire, he agreed to see her straight away so I took the afternoon off, went and picked her up from the vets and drove down to Cheshire and left her in Tom’s capable hands; we talked through the options and decided on internal surgery rather than the external fixators so she’s had the bone pinned through the centre and plated. This has left for a very neat wound that has been stitched internally so nothing to come out and nothing for her to chew at but this surgery is obviously very invasive, involving a lot of muscle and tissue so she’s still very sore and feeling very sorry for herself.

For the moment she's quite happy being left in her crate sleeping, she has 2 weeks of complete crate rest before she's allowed out for short lead walks, she should be having follow up x-rays in a months time to make sure it's healed and then hopefully, fingers crossed, she'll be good as new.

A rare weekend off…

2010-05-17T17:26:00.001+01:00

So, we had a flyball free weekend so what did we do? Stay at home and relax? Catch up on all the housework and gardening? No of course not, Saturday afternoon I drove down to Oxford to collect Moody (A Viggo-Dazzle puppy who has been returned to me at 6 months old) and visit Joy and Becca. Moody, thankfully, is a lovely little lad (actually, no he isn’t little…he’s HUGE) who has fitted right back in with everyone and enjoyed his visit to Joy and Becca’s farm as much as the rest of my lot…charging down the bridlepaths and across the fields and then jumping in Joy’s pond! Lol We had a nice evening, Chinese food and Rioja and a good old natter and then headed over to Sally’s lovely garden centre, Purely Plants near Banbury, on Sunday morning to do some agility training; our first in ages and much needed before our competition at the end of this month! We did some good little bits but it really did highlight our need for regular training; I must get back up to HBK Agility
again as it’s the perfect setup for me but just seem to really struggle to find the time. We had a nice weekend and it was lovely being able to catch up with Joy, Becca and Sally and all their lovely Bryning babies of course :o)

Joy also helped me get some new photos of Aston who has just turned 6 months old, he’s still very much the baby but shaping up nicely, I’m very pleased with him :o)

Drax - May Bank Holiday

2010-05-17T17:09:00.007+01:00

Fallen a little behind on the blog again…oops!

So…over the bank holiday weekend we went over to Drax for three days of competition. Two days of open competition on the Saturday and Sunday and multibreed on the Monday. As it happened we didn’t have any teams running on the Saturday so had a nice leisurely day pottering about and helping the Tyne teams. I took most of my dogs with me and also had Ebi, my brother and sister-in-law’s parson puppy from Squirrels’ litter so he and sister Esther had a nice weekend together and had chance to catch up with their littermates Boz and Stella.

Here's Boz making the most of his 'ringside seat' in Bob and Lyn's caravan ;o)

The weather was kind and I crashed with the Tyne team….proper camping…in a tent and everything! lol The clubhouse there serves excellent food and is good value so we ate all our meals in there. We also collected our new (secondhand but new to us) flyball box, we’re planning to move from a boomerang box to a flat fronted CanAm style box which should give us faster box turns but requires a well trained box technique.

So Sunday arrived and we had a busy day ahead, three of our teams running, two of them at the same time in different rings! Hmmmm, that was going to be fun! I was also down to judge the division that Squirrel was running in with Tyne so had to ask Gemma to judge for me. As it happened I needn’t have bothered, Squirrel ran the first couple of races perfectly then just decided she wasn’t going to play ball. Firstly she wasn’t bringing her ball back, then she was bringing the ball but not coming over the hurdles then eventually she just refused to run at all….arghhh!!! What on earth possessed me to train and run a terrier??!! lol I just put her back in the van and panicked about what we were going to do for multibreed the next day when we needed her to run! We managed to hastily secure a super-sub JRT from the York Monsters flyball team…phew!

Here’s a few pics of her when she was actually doing it!

Very happy with that box technique…

Really MUST do something about that hurdling!! lol

It just turned out to be one of those frustrating days, we were top seed in Div 2 with the Demonz and 2nd seed with the Racers but just really struggled to get it together…everyone seemed to be struggling with the new start light sequencing so there were loads of false starts for both me with Mac and Gemma with Bailey. The dogs that tend to hit the box hard really struggled and were way off their pace including Bailey so the first team really suffered…we had thought it was due to us running on the new flat fronted box but he ran no better when we switched back to the boomerang, just seemed to struggle getting his footing when pushing back off which we eventually put down to the hard ground in that ring…most of the div 1 dogs were also way off their pace and a lot of teams were running a good 0.5sec off their seed times. I saw a lot of 4.1-4.2sec dogs clocking 4.5’s instead. On a positive note all the other Demonz ran well on the new box and it particularly seems to suit Teal and Faith well; Gemma has taken it home to do some box work with Bailey and I’m hoping his underperformance was down to the ground and not the change in box type. We ran an 18.17 as the fastest time which is just rubbish…we seriously need to tighten those changeovers!

We ran the Racers on the boomerang but struggled for consistency with running a 6 dog team…going to have a re-think about that one. Running a 6 dog team is actually quite tricky when you have 6 unevenly matched dogs. Firstly, you get a seed time based on your fastest four dogs, which obviously you’re not always running so can’t always achieve and secondly, you have handlers swapping between dogs which makes consistency very difficult and it showed in our results…lots of lights and lots of ‘should have won’ races…all in all rather frustrating. Ideally we could do with sticking to running the same 4 dogs but that then means 2 of my dogs don’t get to run. Lexie and Ethan have hardly run at all this year and it’s really not very fair when both are good dogs and both enjoy it so much. We desperately need to get that 3rd team running but until Squirrel starts running more consistently and we get Jovi out into Open competition we’re a bit stuck. The Demonz finished 3rd and Racers 4th, not a great day.

Thankfully our starters all ran really well, I swapped between Maizy and Jovi since, at the moment, I feel they both need me to run them…Jovi is very much a ‘mummy’s girl’ and has eyes only for me and Maizy needs someone who knows her well enough to be able to react to what she might do next…she was much better this week and we didn’t have any running back up the lane or dropping the ball…good girl :o) The revelation of the day was Fynn who ran very reliably…always got his ball, always brought it all the way out and no running back up the lane…by jove…I think he’s got it! He’s also picked up the pace but is only putting in about 50% effort…I’m hoping the rest will come as he gains more experience. I was very pleased though when we ran them in singles on Monday without any netting and they all ran perfectly…Maizy is certainly nothing if not consistent…she ran all 3 timed runs in 5.07secs exactly! She has loads more to give but considering she’s actually only been doing flyball for 3 weeks I’m over the moon with her performance!

A few pics of the babies thanks to Brian McMurray from Tyne…

Jovi

Maisie

Fynn

Monday was a much more successful day altogether, Squirrel still started the day ‘out on strike’ so our second multibreed team (Demon Medley) ended up only containing one of our dogs for most of the day! We decided to run Dylan on the first team (Diverse Demonz) rather than Bailey simply because there’s nothing between them time wise when they’re both on form but Bailey had definitely been off the previous day. We also ran that team on the new flat fronted box. So that team ended up being… Ruaraidh (xbreed), Leo (standard poodle), Dylan (BC) and Teal (cocker) and worked really nicely…of course my changeover with Teal was easy peasy since that’s the changeover we do every week in the Speed Demonz but everyone else did a great job and we easily won the division with a fastest time of 17.84.

A few pics of the Diverse Demonz thanks to Kirtsty Price from Linnotts...

Ruaraidh (Rory)

Leo

Dylan

Teal

We had to work somewhat harder with ‘Medley’ which consisted of Finnbarre (standard poodle), Bailey (WS), Jet (xbreed), Scooter (JRT) and Squirrel (when she finally decided to do it!)…it was a shame because they were narrowly ‘pipped’ in a couple of the earlier races and it wasn’t until the last race, when we were against Scooters team (Monster Mash) that I decided to give Squirrel a go and see what she would do…of course she ran all 3 legs perfectly and they ran 0.25sec faster despite my late changeovers….grrrr…bloody terrier!! lol Scooter was a little star and that team would have been completely stuck without him. They managed a 4th place which is exactly where they had been seeded. Sorry, no-one took pics of this lot!

I’m just glad that Squirrel managed to finish the weekend on a good note and I have learned a valuable lesson….treat the terrier like a spaniel (i.e. be extremely nice to it and don’t let on it’s done anything wrong no matter what it does) or it just won’t run so our new team mantra is no longer just ‘keep the cocker happy’ but also ‘don’t upset the terrier’!! lol

All in all it was a good weekend, it’s a lovely venue for hanging out and spending time with friends because of the club house (although the food is far too good and portions too big…I think I’ve probably gained several pounds over the weekend!), 4 of Squirrels puppies were there which was nice and loads of Viggo babies to enjoy cuddles with too. Just a pity the weather wasn’t better, although mostly bright and sunny it was quite cold and windy with intermittent showers. We have a weekend off now and will be back out competing again on mine and Sharon’s birthday…Dinnington Rugby Club on the 15th May :o)

Tilly...a Viggo baby out of River (Bryning Super Cool)

too cute!

Better late than never..

2010-04-28T12:30:00.005+01:00

Well, Lori’s pups finally put in an appearance on Monday night…3 days overdue to her second mating!! I can only conclude that she ovulated a couple of days after her last mating which would make sense since she did continue to stand during this time and was positively throwing herself at Spark who just plain refused to mate her again! (stud dog’s perogative I guess! lol). With all of this and the fact she wasn’t that big, I expected a relatively small litter (she has whelped 8 pups in her last two)…I was wrong! After (what felt like) a very long labour she finally produced the first puppy at 6.30pm then got a bit of a spurt on, producing 5 puppies between 8 and 9pm! Number 7 came around 10pm and Number 8 arrived around 11.30pm and I thought she was done and went to bed only to be woken again at 3.15am by a very restless and agitated Lori who…produced puppy number 9! I am sure that she definitely ovulated well after she was mated and Spark must have very long-lived and active little ‘swimmers’!! :o)

Final Tally is…
• three blue/white girls…1 is classic, the spit of Eabha, 1 is classic but less collar and the other has classic face and collar but white flashes up her hips and small patches of white over her bum.

• Three black/white girls…1 classic and the other two very flashy with a lot of white and the white patches over the body too.

• Two blue merle boys and a slate merle boy, all three classically marked with pale powdery merling…all very like Spark to be honest.

All in all a very nice litter that I have no worries Lori will make an excellent job of rearing, just as she always does :o)

More Starters Flyball...

2010-04-28T12:08:00.005+01:00

The youngsters are all coming along nicely and last week's training session went well with Maisie , Jovi and Fynn all running in a team together (so all should hopefully be ok at Drax!) so I was feeling quite hopeful about running the girls in starters at Norfolk Park over the weekend. Lori ’s pups were due mid week (21st to the first mating and 23rd to the second) so I expected we would have puppies before the weekend but no…nothing…Saturday she was a little restless but I knew she hadn’t started so decided to go to Sheffield for the flyball and leave her with some peace and quiet.

I got hopelessly lost trying to find my way into Norfolk Park…last time I went I had a sat nav…now I don’t…I missed the first couple of races in starters…doh! Maisie was running with the Alphas and Jovi was running with Tyne…of course…the first race for both of them was against each other so I opted to run Jo with Tyne and Mark took Maisie to run with Alphas…she will run for anyone but decided she wanted to run every leg!! What can I say? She’s keen!! Lol

Jovi ran well in a few different positions. Positives – I had her running in from 35ft and doing nice tight changeovers with the dog coming out, not bad for only her 3rd time competing. Negatives – I have a feeling she’s going to be like Ethan (not surprising since she is his niece) in that she runs in like a train but has a lot of eye and is really having a good look at everything on the way back! As a consequence her runbacks are slow and I’m struggling to find anything to motivate her out quicker…hmmmm. The Tyne team finished 4th and Viggo also managed to complete a few legs too! So Jovi now has another rosette :o)

A couple of pics of Vi and Jovi taken by Jess Penaluna from the Tyne team (thanks Jess!)

Maisie…well…as I said she is very keen…she is also running in from around 30ft and happily running past another dog, she is also much more focused than Jovi on the runout…she comes belting back to me and goes ‘what are we doing next?’ with a big smile on her face (she is just too cute!)…HOWEVER…if I don’t ‘answer her question’ quickly enough she belts straight back down the lane again…regardless of who else might be running! So…I’ve started having another ball for her when she comes out which is fine at keeping her focused on me BUT can make her drop her ball on the runback (yeh, I know...it’s a common complaint) so I’ve decided to start training her to return to a target like we have done with Dylan and his tuggy in the bucket. I have target trained various dogs within the teams I’ve run in over the years but never had to do it with one of my own so this is a first for me. I just need to have a think about what form this might take?? Anyway, the Alpha team won (again!) so Maisie has another 1st rosette, not bad for a little dog that has only been training for 2 weeks! (although to be fair, the Alphas do have a cracking starter team that she’s been lucky to run with)

Squirrel ran with one of the Tyne open teams, making her open competition debut and despite a couple of dropped balls (we were using full sized soft balls but new ones that hadn't been well 'broken in', she likes to be able to squash them so they don't make her jaw ache I think, she won't entertain small balls at all!) I was really pleased with how she did, some nice tight changeovers and no running out! She now has her first flyball points too, clever girlie! :o)

We are running our own starter team at Drax this weekend…Maisie, Jovi, Fynn and a couple of Tyne dogs too…should be fun! Squirrel is also running with the Tyne Titans and will be making her multibreed debut in our second MB team on the Monday, which has been seeded in Div 1 with our first MB team! Haven’t quite figured out how I’m going to run Squirrel and Teal at the same time yet! Fingers crossed Squirt behaves and gains her flyball dog award this weekend!

Flyball starters and training

2010-04-20T15:21:00.005+01:00

Arghhh…behind on my blog again already!!

I have an excuse though, I’ve been really poorly with a nasty sinus infection; this is one of those things that, until you’ve experienced it yourself, you really can’t appreciate how unpleasant it is :o(

I had come home from Sutton Fields at Easter with a heavy cold which always makes me a little nervous since I am prone to blocked/painful sinuses but the cold seemed to clear up within the week and all was fine so I tootled off over to Drax for the BFA judges and ring party training seminar on Saturday afternoon. I wasn’t attending the seminar but running dogs in the starters competition that was being held at the same time. The way this works is…those attending the training seminar have theory presentations and discussions in the morning then get to practice what they’ve learnt in the afternoon with some unsanctioned competition; in this case it was a division of starters and an NFC division of teams made up of dogs currently running in open competition that also happened to be there. It was a really beautiful day and I was really surprised when I arrived by the number of people that were there and how many were camping and almost immediately regretted not having brought a tent and camping gear! Anyway, I was running Squirrel and Jovi in the Alpha Dogz starters team and both ran well, Jo is starting to get used to passing with other dogs now and we were loading her ball in the box…she’s making excellent progress, especially considering the small amount of training she’s had. Both girl ran in various different positions and I was pleased with them both, the team all ran well and they came 3rd :o)

Hazell and Leanne arrived just as the day’s activities were ending, they were attending the seminar on Sunday but…Hazell had a spare tent and Sharon had a spare sleeping bag so….I ended up staying over! Lol Hazell had a lovely smart new black harness, still with the label attached and asked if I had a dog it would fit so I suggested Maisie, she was just a year old that day and I really needed to start her flyball training! We’ve been doing lots of groundwork in the last month or so…restrained recalls and sending away to a ‘dead’ ball or to take a ball from someone else but she hadn’t actually seen any of the equipment (I know…I am very lax in training my youngsters! lol). Anyway, Hazell gave Maisie the harness as her birthday pressie so while everyone wandered over to the club house for some tea we decided to make the most of the beautiful weather and the ring that was all set up and do some training; I wanted to see how Viggo was coming on (he’s staying with Hazell and she’s training him for me!) and also see what Maisie could do. I went to borrow the Cheshire Set box (which is the same as ours) and Hazell took Vi and Maisie into the ring…Vi knows exactly what to do so he ran straight up the lane and then back down again, it was all netted for the starters the next day so Maisie just followed him…up over the hurdles and back again. Leanne came over to box load and I did a couple of runbacks with Maisie…no problem, she was hurdling perfectly so we decided to try sending her up to Leanne for a ball…again…no problem..she ran straight up took her ball and came back…she was really keen! So after a couple more like this we decided that Leanne would show her the ball and then load it in the box as she approached…she took it straight out of the box, triggering it and no reaction to the sound or firing action. Ok…so…it seems…Maisie already knows how to do flyball!! Lol

Viggo was doing full runs up and down and triggering the box (this has taken a lot of work because he has been quite sensitive over the box) and, more importantly, he was doing this while Maisie was lined up and alternating his runs with hers…this is also a breakthrough because he has such a high chase drive that he finds the other dogs very distracting. There is hope!! All in all very pleased with both of them :o)

We then went to the club house and had something to eat and a few drinks with everyone before piling back to Sharon’s caravan for more wine (so sorry Sharon…didn’t mean to keep you that late!) and then bed. Well, the next morning I felt terrible…I was so cold I just couldn’t get warm and felt so ill. Couldn’t understand why I had such a bad hangover when we really hadn’t drunk that much. I got up and sorted the dogs out, went and sat with the Rotherham lot and watched them box training (and drank several cups of tea!) then went back to bed for a couple of hours while everyone else was on the seminar. Got up around lunchtime feeling a bit brighter but still not 100%. I asked the Alphas whether it would be possible to put Maisie on their teamsheet for starters and try some runs with her in the warm ups and they said they would be happy to run her so we decided to give it a go. I wouldn’t normally throw a youngster in with so little training (i.e. none!) but she had done so well the night before and I knew I would have to run her so we might as well see how she did. Well, she was super…ran really well throughout the whole division in numerous different positions and ended up being able to run in and do (loose-ish) changeovers etc…I was SO pleased with her! The team also won so not only did she make a fab debut but she won a first rosette!

Maisie sporting her FIRST rosette (which was sadly eaten by Esther this weekend!!...BAD parson puppy! lol)

We also made up an ‘open’ team with Leanne’s Floyd (a beautiful HUGE rottie-dobe cross), Hazell’s River (Bryning Super Cool), my Dottie and Squirrel…the idea being that it would be a good way to introduce Squirrel to open competition…no wings and no netting along the lanes but there was netting in the middle, between the two lanes. For some reason, Squirrel never even looks at the other lane in starters but as soon as you remove all wings and netting she gets very distracted by it…she doesn’t run over and chase but it draws her concentration and causes her to run out. I can only think this stems back to one of her first starters competitions last year where a Rottweiler (a friendly one but huge nonetheless!) jumped over the netting into her lane and scared her; I think removing the netting makes her feel a little vulnerable so she worries and watches the other lane. Hopefully, the more she runs and realizes that no-one is going to come across into her lane (fingers crossed!), the more confident she will become. Anyway, this setup was ideal and she ran paw perfect throughout, turning well off the box and not running out once…clever parson! Next thing we have to work on is getting her to hurdle (single stride) over the jumps. This is a big ask for a small, short-coupled dog…although she and Teal are measured the same height (both run 8”), Teal’s long and low build is actually much better suited to the action of hurdling. I have a few ideas to try to achieve this with Squirrel so we’ll see. She is set to make her open competition debut running with the Tyne team at Norfolk Park this weekend…fingers crossed! Until we have a 3rd team up and running we don’t really have anywhere to run Squirrel so she is going to run with Tyne for a while. We didn’t get in at Norfolk Park (I didn’t send the entry in time since the schedule came out the day Tammy had her accident and I forgot about it) but I will be going on the Sunday to run Squirrel and also to run Jovi and Maisie in starters too.

We stayed and had some tea in the club house at Drax and then set off home so my afternoon of flyball ended up turning into a 2-dayer! It was a lovely unexpected weekend though, good company, good food and flyball…what more could you want?! Got home and was so tired I just sorted the dogs and went to bed. When I woke in the morning feeling as though I’d had the previous day’s hangover, only three times over, I realized it hadn’t been a hangover at all…yup…the dreaded sinusitis, ended up having the whole week off work, two doses of antibiotics later and I'm back at work but still not 100%...not happy! This is typical, just as the weather has finally picked up and the evenings are getting lighter and I've done very little of anything :o(

So...puppies due this week and flyball at Norfolk Park to look forward to at the weekend...I hope this final couple of days of antibiotics finally knocks this on the head and I can fully enjoy both :o)

The van is back (again!)

2010-04-07T13:50:00.006+01:00

The van was back in the garage yesterday after the gearstick to gearbox linkage broke just as we were pulling out from Sutton Fields!! This meant it was stuck in 1st gear so I had to pull over and call for the breakdown people to come and tow us home…not a happy bunny!!

At least the garage (that had just fitted the new gearbox!)were very good and fixed it straight away yesterday so I picked it up after work and popped to see my brother and sister-in-law since it was her birthday. My brother has just started a new job (fitting out narrow boats!) but his previous job was at a signwriters and I’d asked him to do us some more team stickers for the box, buckets and jumps etc and make us some team backboards (yeh…now that sounds pretty serious doesn’t it! lol) anyway…he popped out to put the stuff in the van and I came out to this…

(please ignore the filthy state of my van!! lol)

He had been offering to sign the van for ages but I rather like being incognito (wink) but I do quite like these and they are quite subtle I suppose.

Easter Weekend

2010-04-06T15:48:00.003+01:00

Easter weekend is always traditionally the start of the outdoor competition season, be it agility or flyball which I guess is kinda strange because the dates can vary so much from year to year making the weather a tad unpredictable…3 years ago we had glorious sunshine and sunburn at Carlton Towers, the following year we had 6 inches of snow!! Last Year we decided to go to Anglesey instead and I’m so glad we did, 4 days of lovely friendly relaxed racing and beautiful blue skies and suntans…it was blissful so there was no hesitation in entering the Anglesey tournament again this year, a nice small friendly comp with no horrendously early starts and running from ring to ring! However…as Easter approached the forecasts told of impending doom and gloom…rain, snow and sleet….eek!!

I had a slight feeling of Déjà vu from the previous week when the announcement went out on the Tuesday that the Anglesey tournament was cancelled due to waterlogged ground…oh no!! Easter was cancelled!! After a very small amount of cajoling and encouragment however the wonderful Cheshire and Dolphin teams put a rescue plan into action and managed to re-organise the whole event at Sutton Fields on the Wirral. Since the venue was already booked for a car boot on the Monday there was a small change round so that multibreed and starters would now be running on Good Friday and the open competition would take place as planned over the weekend. Only slight ‘problem’ was that Gemma and I had booked to stay in a friends cottage on Anglesey so now had nowhere to sleep! No need to worry, our wonderful team mates immediately stepped in and offered us an inner tent and airbed in the caravan awning…sorted! We are so lucky to have such a lovely bunch of people to spend our weekends with.

The racing on Friday didn’t start ‘til 9.30am so we didn’t even have too early a start to get there; I picked Rach up at 8.30am and Simon, Sharon and Megan followed with the caravan; we passed Paul, Alison and Nico on the motorway but Gem was already there when we arrived so the 3 of us ring partied for the first division then went straight on to run in Div One of the multibreed. This was a rather ‘thrown together’ team which consisted of two of our collies (Bailey and Dylan) and my Teal (cocker) along with Steve’s Ruaraidh (that’s ‘Rory’ to any normal person lol) who is a collie/kelpie cross and Kathryn’s two standard poodles from Blackpool Supernova team, the lovely Leo and Finnbarre. For anyone that isn’t aware, multibreed is a sanctioned competition that runs independantly of open competition so dogs may run for any multibreed team regardless of their ‘normal’ open team. You must run four different breeds at any one time and may only include one crossbreed. This meant of course that we had two dogs that had to run every leg (Teal and Ru) and the collies and poodles would have to swap so we alternated between Ru-Leo-Bailey-Teal and Ru-Finn-Dylan-Teal and this seemed to work really well, Kathryn’s changeovers with her boys were just brilliant and we managed a fastest time of 18.13 with the first combination and went on to win the division…not bad for our first foray into multibreed but very much a combined team effort! I am fairly certain this team is capable of running sub 18.00 but I did make an interesting observation about Teal…that is that she is very much more ‘up for it’ when Gemma and Bailey are in the ring…I think this may be due to the fact that Gemma has run her before and is good at winding the dogs up on the start. Rather frustratingly this team also ran faster than our top open team and I know this is entirely down to changeovers…hmmmm…work in progress me thinks.

We have an additional speedy crossbreed available at Drax for the May bank holiday weekend so have (bravely) entered two multibreed teams there and will split the collies and poodles up; the intention is to run Teal as the height dog on one team and Squirrel on the other! Provided Squirrel behaves herself (and I am determined she will!)…these two teams will be very evenly matched for speed which should make for very interesting racing!

After all the multibreed was finished they ran a (slightly damp) division of starters in the afternoon, our team, Demon Novaz, consisted of 3 of our starter dogs…Squirrel, Jovi and Fynn, 2 from Supernovas, Kathryn’s beautiful lurcher Saffron and Gail’s little collie Mia along with Katherine’s little ‘Ronnie Rocket’ from Rotherham. Before we even started we knew we had 3 fairly reliable and experienced starter dogs in the form of Squirrel, Saffy and Mia, 1 unkown quantity in the form of JoJo and 2 total muppets in the form of Fynn and Ronnie so we weren’t hoping for much other than 4 dogs up and down and that’s exactly what we got. It’s a shame really that Jo and Squirrel both ended up having to run at the same time because Squirrel made a few errors and I think that was entirely down to me having to run Jo instead of her. I’m going to make sure this doesn’t happen again and I run one OR the other, I don’t want to ruin the good work we did with Squirrel last season. The two Novas dogs were fab, Squirrel was ok but did some nice speedy runs and was driving off the box nicely which I was pleased about, Jovi…considering she’s never run with other dogs or another lane was actually pretty good…she has a very strong eye but I learned that, provided I always lined her up on the left so she can concentrate entirely on her own lane, she’s fine. Dissapointingly we had problems in the last race when the team we were running against obviously had a last dog that was liable to run around and wreak havoc once it had finished, result…they positioned a ‘catcher’ half way up the lane, between the two lanes who chased the dog back and screamed ‘LIE DOWN, LIE DOWN’ at it to stop it from misbehaving. All very well and good but PLEASE would competitiors and judges consider the opposition team dogs when doing this sort of thing!!! This person was doing this just as I was releasing Jovi to run last dog on our side, result…a very frightened and confused dog that didn’t want to go up the lane (and who could blame her!) so I ended up having to wait ‘til the team had completed and the shouting had ceased before I could send Jo…not exactly very fair or considerate from either the other team or the judge in my opinion.

Amazingly we did get some good clean runs out of both Fynn and Ronnie in the warm ups (both also very excitable and likely to be distracted by the other dogs) and Fynn actually managed to complete a leg in competition too…there is hope! I have also very kindly been offered a place in the Alpha starter team at the ring party/training day at Drax this weekend so will take both Squirrel and Jovi and run them one at a time, see how we get on there then we have a combined Demon-Tyne starter team entered at Drax for the May Bank Holiday weekend too.

Fynn...at least he's a pretty face I suppose...lol

The main Open tournament took place over the weekend and we were extremely fortunate with the weather…dry, bright and breezy!

We had the Demon Racers running in Div 3 on Saturday, just three divisions of racing for that day so another lovely lazy 9.30am start…could get used to this! We were bottom seed by 0.3secs on a realistic seed time…needless to say…we got slaughtered. I was pleased with the way Mac was running though, his times have improved from Drax the previous weekend so hopefully he’ll be back to end of 2009 times once his fitness improves. I was particularly pleased with his box turns in the afternoon once the ground had dried up. I had started alternating Fly and Ethan as last dog (Fly runs best in this position and Ethan can only run in this position); he was running 0.5sec faster than her and Rach did a great job of swapping between the two and maintaining some nice tight changeovers.

Sadly Ethan went very very lame and had to be withdrawn from racing, he’s been suffering from an intermittent lameness/stiffness in his back end on and off for around a year now (started at Anglesey last Easter) which has steadily been getting worse and resting doesn’t seem to have helped but I have never seen him quite so lame as he was on Saturday…my poor, poor boy could hardly stand up after completing only a handful of legs so I took him along to Tom (orthopeadic vet who runs with the Dolphins) to have a quick look over fearing he had damaged his hips or something really terrible. After a thorough examination and some motion tests Tom’s initial diagnosis wasn’t great but could have been worse. Eth has a full range of motion in both hips with no sign of pain or discomfort in either of those joints or his cruciates so that definitely isn’t his problem, it appears most likely that he has sufffered injury/damage to the intertarsal structures in his right hock, apparently quite common in ‘sports’ dogs which is resulting in pain/inflammation after exercise and causing the lameness. We’re going to have to have x-rays to diagnose this for sure but the good news is that this is something that may well right itself over time. The surgical answer would be arthrodesis…making those small joints fuse together but this is also possble to achieve through pain management and a continuation of current exercise/activities which will eventually result in the same thing…a fusing together of the joints and an end to the inflammation/pain. I want the x-rays done before he runs again just to make sure that is what is causing the problem and running him on pain killers isn’t going to make anything worse. A dose of Metacam on Saturday afternoon and he was right as rain and hasn’t been lame since so it appears that it is the flyball that is aggravating the joint (so hopefully flyball will also be the cure!)

A slightly earlier start on Sunday morning (ok…still only 9am but we were getting used to 9.30am by then! lol); that said we weren’t involved in the first division of the day so still no rush for us. This turned out to be a beautiful day of sunshine and blue skies. I was judging the second division in (div 5) and the team were ring partying for me…what a great job they did too…Megan scribing for the first time with Rach operating the lights and supervising and Simon box judging…very professionally done :o) There was some really good racing in this division and with quite a few teams running on submitted times the added ‘excitement’ of break outs too. The Forge Mill team earned a very well deserved 1st place…worth the drive up from Worcestershire I’m sure.

We were racing in the last division of the day, Division One…again we were bottom seed and again we struggled although Teal did run a little bit better than she has for the last couple of comps so hopefully she will improve with the more we do. We ran a 17.84 with a smidge early change from me but just really struggled on changeovers again. We did have a change of handlers/running order and I think this will be the one we continue to run with now so everyone will get the chance to ‘bed in’ to their position and hopefully we’ll run more consistently. We ran Rach/Bailey start, Gemma/Faith second, Alison/Dylan third, me and Teal last. Rach really has been thrown in the deepend, coming from running a 6 second dog in the bottom divs to suddenly running a 4 sec dog in div one! She’s doing great but is understandably taking a bit of time to find her feet and confidence so start dog seems the obvious place to begin. Gem ran Faith second in an attempt to get Fi to focus better (I think she needs a firm hand) and also to utilise Gemma’s passing skills, Alison and Dyl moved from last to 3rd to help Alison improve her changeovers…Teal can be hard to run behind so the changeover should be easier behind Fi…Alison is also having to learn changeovers after spending two years running start dog with Dyl so this should come as the season wears on. Teal much prefers to run last and comes out much better to an empty lane…she is also the only dog we can send in on Dyl that does not result in his occasional ball dropping. Fingers crossed we can continue with this combination and see some improvements.

Although we had no rosettes to collect at presentation we did have plenty of awards!! Alison collected Dylan’s silver and I collected Teal, Faith and Ethan’s silvers along with Lexie’s Platinum…that was a lot of trapsing up and down! lol

Alison and Nico holding Esther at presentation...

Next comp in a month’s time at Drax, another bank holiday weekend and more multibreed…hopefully we’ll get some training in before then too :o)

Rother-Drax

2010-04-06T12:17:00.004+01:00

Well we had been entered to run at the Rotherham Rockets tournament to be held at the Phoenix Sports and Social club in Brinsworth on the Saturday, this was the last ‘indoor’ show of the winter season (I say indoor but it’s actually run on grass in marquees) but news came through early in the week that the ground was waterlogged and the whole tournament was being moved to Drax Power Station Sports and Social club instead! I didn’t mind because I like this venue too (fab and reasonably priced food in the clubhouse!!) and this venue fitted in better with the planned ‘hop’ up North to Newcastle after the comp to attend the North East BCC open show on the Sunday (6 dogs entered!)

Well, best laid plans and all that…the short story is that it turned out I had ordered my new van gearbox from a bunch of total cowboys (International Car Spares in Oldham FYI…be warned and do not order anything from these people!!) and it never arrived…I ended up cancelling this order (still waiting for my refund of £750!!) and having my existing gearbox re-built locally, needless to say…weekend arrived and I still had no van so we ended up taking a minimal team to Drax (in my hired Nissan Micra!) and we had to miss NEBCC…for the 3rd year running!! ( I think this show is jinxed for me).

Rach and Gemma came and stayed over Friday night and we set off early Saturday morning to Drax, the Micra was surprisingly nippy over the big hills of the M62 and we arrived in good time. We didn’t bother taking our box as Steve Leek had kindly offered us the use of the Dolphins box (which is the same model as ours); I kind of regretted this decision because, despite being the same model it is not adjusted quite the same as ours and we did have some box issues over the course of the day. We were running 2 four dog teams since I had only been able to fit 4 of my dogs in (Faith, Mac, Dottie and Teal…Ethan and Lexie stayed home) and Squirrels open debut was postponed yet again. The dogs ran just ok, Teal is still not running that well and Faith is still not focusing and is therefore inconsistent. Dylan and Bailey both ran really well and both clocked a number of sub 4 sec times but we struggled on changeovers and consistency, tried a couple of different running orders and were just generally crap! We had similar issues with the second team too but somehow managed to come 3rd with them, no idea how…a 3 way run off for 3rd place and we had run the fastest time so were awarded it! This team seems to suffer stamina issues, running much quicker times early on in the day and then struggling in later ones…this is definitely a team that benefits from having more than 4 dogs so we can swap dogs in and out. I am consoling myself that we are always rubbish at the start of the year but improve as the season wears on…fingers crossed!!

Here are a couple of photos kindly taken for us by David Flood from the Cambridgeshire Canines team who also kindly boxloaded for us in the afternoon (My lovely friend Hazell had driven down to do this for us in the morning but had to head off home before the racing had finished so she could sort her dogs out to run their Tyne teams the following day)

I particularly liked this pic of Mac…

And this one of Pip…

Here’s an interesting couple of pics of Faith turning the wrong way so she can ‘nosey-beak’ at the dog in the other lane…her natural box turn is to the right but when she starts doing this we will switch and load her left.

So here’s her left turn loaded right (the way she SHOULD be turning)…

And here it is when we switch and load her left…

I’m not sure if this actually makes any difference to her speed/times but it’s really infuriating!! Either way she loses time compared to her normal right turn...wonder if I could invent some dog blinkers like racehorses wear?? lol

There are a load more pics here

Will post the report from Easter weekend (just gone) later...

BCC of GB

2010-03-24T14:06:00.002Z

I missed the BFA AGM this year as it was the Border Collie Club of Great Britain Championship breed and agility show this weekend, they tend to hold the club show the weekend after Crufts so that visitors from abroad can combine both shows in their visit over to the UK which is a great idea and also ensures a good healthy entry. The class sizes here are not far of those at Crufts and it’s a good show for catching up with folk, more relaxed and less hectic than Crufts (well, usually anyway!). This is only the second year that the club have also held an agility show at the same event and I didn’t go last year but this year thought I’d be brave and attempt to do both. I entered Mouse, Faith, Mercy and Spark in the breed show (although I’d forgotten I’d entered Mercy and didn’t take her!! Doh!) and Faith and Teal in the agility; just two classes each Graded 1-4 jumping and agility for Faith and Combined 1-4 jumping and agility for Teal. Of course, the heavens opened on Saturday so I had to bath dogs and try to keep them clean amongst all the mud…typical! We travelled over Sat evening and stayed with my friend Julie at Trevellis Border Collies so we only had a short journey to the venue in the morning.

Agility

We got there shortly after 8am and I went and walked both of Faiths courses, this was her first time competing outdoors and I was hoping she would be less overwhelmed and more focused with the more open spaces…I was wrong! I decided to run her courses early and get them out the way, the jumping was first, started tyre and 6 weaves, I knew she could do this so wasn’t too worried but she ran staright past the weaves (as I saw a lot of other dogs do too) so I had to bring her back…she was just hyper and not at all focused so she made a very pathetic attempt at the weaves and I made her come back and do them again…it took 4 attempts but by this point she was just off her head, we did jump – tunnel – jump and retired from the ring.

Here’s Veronica running Ice (Bryning Osprey) on the same course…

To quote Veronica…Still 'mad as a box of frogs' but great fun to run lol

My heart also sank when I saw the jump-dogwalk start in the agility…such a common start to a course and one I know will guarantee Faith will go under the first jump. She is so focused on the contact equipment and she’s only a small dog, you sit or stand her in front of a large jump and her natural gaze will be right underneath it…I wish we double poled as standard here like they do in the US…anyway, she did exactly as I predicted and went straight under the first jump, did a nice dogwalk did jump 3 but went under 4 and then over 5 , you were then supposed to repeat 3 and 5 but instead she ran up the A-frame (also very predictable) and at that point completely lost the plot and was just looking around all eagle eyed to see what else she could do…we retired from the ring (again!). I have decided that there is no point trying to compete with her until we do more regular training; then hopefully the novelty will wear off and she will realise that agility is a serious business. We don’t have this problem at flyball but she’s done much more training for that; when we’re going to find time to do more agility training I really don’t know??

I didn’t get to run Teal’s courses ‘til right at the end of the day and she’d spent the day sat in Julie’s van at the agility end of the showground. Oh yes, I forget to mention that, unlike last year, this year they decided to have the breed rings and agility rings at opposite ends of the showground! I spent the whole day running back and forth and nearly missing everything…I was exhausted! This is not conducive to a happy confident cocker! That said I was pleased with her, unfortunately both her classes had 12 weaves in them and I know she’s not 100% on 12 weaves because we haven’t done nearly enough training on them (about 3 x 5 min sessions actually)…what was funny is that at home she’s been going in fine and coming out at 10…in competition she kept going in at 3? Bless her, she really didn’t think she’d done anything wrong and she wouldn’t knowingly anyway, she is a very biddable little dog and always tries her best. We did her agility run first and I totally mishandled the start (idiot!) but was caught by surprise when she broke her wait…we got going and she did a nice running A-frame but…missed the weaves, then went in at 3 so I took her back for a couple more goes then eventually moved on. I wish I hadn’t done that because it made her very hesitant on the rest of the course, she likes to make sure she’s doing things right and that knocked her confidence and she was really slow. The rest ran ok apart from her missed dogwalk contact, I was too close to the equipment and in front of her and that makes her rush to catch me up; she’s much better if I hang back or stay wide (I know this so I don’t know why I didn’t do it?!).

Teal’s agility run (kindly filmed by David Wilson)

Her jumping run felt better, much faster and more flowing and I just ignored the weaves so she went in at 3 and completed the remaining 9; she was better for not realizing she’d done it wrong. Considering the tiny amount of training this little dog has had she’s a little cracker…I think that once we crack those weaves and build her confidence she’ll be super. We have entered a couple more shows at the end of May so I have 8 weeks to work on those things.

Breed Show

We’d dropped off my grooming table and fabric crates in the hall and I’d left my van parked up there and took just Faith and Teal down to the agility in Julie’s van so once Faith had finished her runs (thankfully without getting too dirty!) we walked back over to the hall and I started prepping them all for the ring. Bitches were being judged by Bruce Kilsby (WHenway). Mouse was in first in Junior Bitch, I had ummed and arrhed about whether to bring her, she’s only just turned 12 months and is still quite ‘puppy’ compared to a lot of the older bitches in that class, she’s just had her first season and is out of coat and also quite skinny; she’s at that age that’s hard to keep weight on. I’ve not had her out in the ring since October when she was a pain in the arse and wouldn’t move (too busy with nose on the ground sniffing!) so I was interested to see how she went. She’s quite a willing little dog so not so difficult to handle…I know she still has faults that I hope will improve with age but she also has a lot of things to like, she has a lovely reach of neck and turn of stifle and is very balanced and free moving in profile and she has a beautiful pretty head with lovely soft alert expression (there you go, that’s my critique on my own dog lol). There were 21 entered in junior bitch, it was a HUGE class with some really lovely young bitches, Mouse had her sniffy head on in the move out and back (as did a lot of others so maybe there was something very smelly on that patch of grass?) but she moved nicely on the circuit…she has a lovely long easy stride, especially for such a little dog so I was pleased when she was shortlisted and placed 5th (VHC).

The judging broke for lunch and during this break they had the special classes judged by Veronica Avory and what a thorough job she did too, this judging over-ran the lunchbreak so was moved inside to allow the main judging to resume in the outdoor rings. The first special class was Special Open (Agility) Dog stakes for dogs that were entered in both the breed and agility show; this was a well supported class with 13 entries which included a number of dogs that have done a lot of winning in the showring (including a champion) so I was over the moon when Vicki and Diesel (Bryning Don’t Stop Me Now at Ruffs) won it! Next up was the Special Open (Agility) Bitch stakes which I had entered with Faith; this also had a good entry of 12; Faith went really nicely…moved out well and we managed to control that rather exuberant tail! She is looking really well at the moment, having the litter has brought her on nicely, she’s broadened up, filled out but still very muscular rather than fat and her coat is in lovely condition at the moment too. I was pleased as punch when we ‘did the double’ and Faith also won this class. Sadly the main judge did not seem to like Faith at all and she was unplaced in Limit Bitch or AOC class.

Lastly I had Spark entered only in the Any Other Colour class which had a good entry of 10 and included some dogs that have done a lot of winning. The dog judge was Doug Collier (Collherd). It had been a long day for the boy and he was tormented by the number of bitches in season around the show so was making his ‘best ears’ and gay tail at anything that so much as looked his way! He decided he was madly in love with the Bitch CC winner (and eventual Best In Show winner) Caleykiz Rhythm in Black and was whining when she was in the ring during the bitch challenge…funny boy! (although she is a lovely little bitch so he has good taste at least lol). Thankfully Spark knows when he’s ‘working’ and behaved himself in the ring, he went nicely and won the class (good boy) making it once again into the dog challenge, he went nicely in the challenge but the Dog CC went to Aust Ch Sh CH Danari De Beers IMP (Aus) handled by Gary Clarke and the Reserve CC went to the lovely Oliver, Etherial Up in Lights IMP (Aus) handled by Sam Goulding. Really pleased for Sam and Heather, he looked an absolute picture of power and elegance on the move, lovely boy.

Am afraid I have no piccies of any of the dogs because everything was just so hectic and everyone seemed to be really busy the whole day. Will maybe pinch one of Vicki’s with Diesel when she gets them uploaded somewhere.

I had all the dogs out for a blast of a run on the showground before heading home, they are just wild when confronted with a big open space and were doing enormous speedway circuits of the van! Lol I left for home just before 6pm and expected to be home around 8 but…as I was heading over Saddleworth Moor on the M62 the van engine started making the most horrendous sound and I had to stop on the hard shoulder, I couldn’t see anything obvious and as I set off again it seemed fine until I put it in 5th gear and the banging started again….oh no…gearbox!! I came off the M62 at junction 22 and limped home cross country in 4th gear arriving home about 9.15pm, totally knackered and extremely pee’d off! Poor old van is currently in the garage waiting to have a new gearbox fitted and poor old me is skint!

Crufts...p.s.

2010-03-19T13:00:00.003Z

Here's a vid of the dog challenge I found, taken by someone else who was filming Harry (the ticket winner)...

and here's a vid taken by the same person of the BOB challange between the dog ticket winner Sh CH Janbell Jamieson JW (handled by Pete Simmons) and the bitch ticket winner AM CH Bayshore British Connection Avatar (handled by Eric Broadhurst)

A lot of deliberating!! lol

A rather traumatic day

2010-03-18T14:29:00.002Z

Well what a day of worry we had following a freak accident first thing yesterday morning. I was getting ready for work and four of the dogs that were coming with me (Spark, Ethan, Dottie and Faith) were upstairs with me and being particularly boisterous and silly, play fighting and bouncing on and off my bed while I was getting sorted (this is actually pretty normal behavior) but once I grabbed my phone and coat and headed out onto the landing they knew we were leaving the house and did their usually race down the stairs to the front door; Tammy and Mac were already downstairs and the four thundered down to join them when I heard the most almighty crashing sound, I had absolutely no idea what they’d done but they’d obviously broken something! As I got half way down the stairs I was shocked to see the glass panel on the inner door completely smashed and a dog lying in the porchway, I could hardly believe it, this is a big old heavy glass panel. I ushered everyone out the back, they all looked fine and Tammy, who had been the one in the porch, ran through into the dining room so I started to sweep all the glass up and noticed blood on one of the larger shards, Tammy had blood on a back foot so I assumed she’d stood on some of the glass on closer inspection however I was appalled to see a horrific injury to her front left leg; a large gaping hole revealing bone and severed muscle and tendons, the shard must have sliced straight through. I called the vets immediately but they were still on answerphone for emergencies only so I decided to just drive down there and they would be open by the time I arrived. The nurse came out and had a quick look and then took her straight through to see the vet, leaving a bloody trail across the carpark and reception; there was too much blood and mess to see anything clearly so they just bandaged her up to stop the bleeding, gave her a shot of painkiller and took her through for a GA so they could investigate and repair the damage more easily. I was concerned she had broken the bone and Kirsty was concerned there wasn’t going to be enough skin to close the wound. I just had to leave her. After an agonizing couple of hours the call came to say she was awake and had a good colour, they had stitched the muscle and tendons back together and cleaned everything up and managed to close the wound, time will tell how well that holds but thank god she is ok for now and she is home.

The scene of the crime...

The patient...

I still don’t know exactly what happened, I can only assume Tammy heard me coming and was stood by the door waiting to go out, the location of her injury would certainly suggest that; the four dogs racing down the stairs were carrying so much momentum that they didn’t stop before they hit Tammy and the force knocked her straight through the glass panel. Those dogs could do that a hundred times over (as they have) without anything happening but for some reason today, everything came together in such a way that the worst case scenario did occur. Ok, maybe the worst case would be that a major artery was severed and Tammy bled to death, or…instead of a dog it had been my 5 year old nephew pushed through that panel but you know what…never, not once have I ever considered the danger of that glass door or ever even contemplated that someone might hit it with sufficient force to break it although the vet did tell me that her dog had done the same, rushing to the front door when the doorbell rang when one day she just didn’t stop and went straight through it! We have (fairly obviously) decided to replace the panel with a solid wooden one, no more glass

Crufts 2010

2010-03-16T01:48:00.007Z

Now, I have a bit of a funny love/hate relationship with Crufts…I wonder why every year I try hard to get dogs qualified and then enter them only to think nearer the time ‘oh, I’m not sure I can be bothered to go??’….I always do of course! lol

I hate all the hype and expectation that comes with this big show and I’m always saying ‘yeh well, it’s just another dog show’ and while it’s lovely to catch up with all my friends and puppy owners that I don’t get to see very often, the day seems to go so fast and I don’t get chance to see much or spend much time with people and the whole thing is just exhausting. Well this year I decided to just take the two dogs, Mercy and Spark, both entered in Limit so not due in the ring ‘til late on in the judging so I thought we could have a nice leisurely start in the morning and an easy day. Gemma and I left home around 7.15am having sorted all the dogs out that were staying home and we went and picked up Helen who only lives a couple of miles away and set off down the M6 to Birmingham. Now, while I much prefer being at Crufts on a week day (much quieter) the journey down during rush hour traffic (and endless roadworks!) I could do without, we hit a large hold up just before Birmingham on the M6 so took a small detour to take the toll road and arrived around 9.30am, taking 2 dogs and all the gear in between 3 of us wasn’t too bad and this year we ended up being benched right on the edge so caught all the ‘passing traffic’ to the Arena which was actually really nice (being that it was Thursday and not so busy) because we managed to catch all the flyballers on their way past going to compete in the first lot of Quarter Finals. This first heat included four Brynings…the three border collies…Zephyr (Bryning Bounce Right Back) and Tarn (Bryning Tarn) running with Warrington Wizzards and Kite (Bryning Black Kite) running with Wilmslow as well as working cocker Magic (Bryning Makin’ Magic) who was reserve with Dream Team South East. Magic and his young handler Jordan were also competing in the YKC Agility Dog of the Year competition. I was also looking forward to watching friends competing in the agility pairs competition too.

Of course, as I might have predicted, the pairs competition started just I went in the ring with Mercy for a HUGE Limit Bitch class, I had to watch on the big screen in the corner of Hall 1 which is in full view from the BC rings. Becca and Cheryl finished up 4th which was a great result (video of their run HERE) and better than I did with Mercy who went nicely but didn’t even make the cut…ho hum…such is showing.

Mercy in the ring...

(she is a buggar for anticipating the stop and pulling up short)

I was in Limit Dog with Spark shortly after, just as the flyball quarter finals started (of course!) so again had to watch those on the big screen. Wilmslow were sadly pipped to the post by Dream Team and knocked out but Warrington Wizzards won their heat and the Thursday final and made it through to the Semi’s on Saturday.

Spark has been dropping coat for the last few weeks but I often think this is no bad thing for him since he has so much! I think you get a better view of his shape when he’s carrying a little less and I was happy with the way we’d got him prepared, I thought he looked better than he had last year (when he’d come 3rd in a large Yearling class) but you never quite know what’s going to happen and I had no idea what this judge liked so had no expectations. Spark is a lovely dog to handle, I free stand him because he will naturally place himself into a nice stand without any faffing or placing of feet from me. I don’t know that he particularly enjoys the showring but he certainly doesn’t mind it, he’s such a biddable little chap and a bit of a ‘mummy’s boy’ so he’s always happy to be doing something with me and he’s always very willing to do whatever I ask. There were 28 dogs entered in this class with just 3 absent so you can imagine, with 25 dogs to be seen, this class took the best part of an hour to complete which is a long time for a dog to be standing around doing very little for most of the time. We were about half way through the line up and he was a little fidgety being gone over but I was pleased with the way he moved, barely batting an eyelid when a dog in the lineup backed out in front of me on our way round causing me to have to ‘hop’ over it! lol I was a little disappointed that both judges only had the dogs doing triangles and straight up and down, I don’t think this ever allows the dogs to really get going and make the most of those nice sized rings in the way a nice flowing circuit will. Anyway, I wasn’t really sure what the judge thought of him but Gemma did notice that often when she was moving on from one dog to the next she would glance back over at Spark so she was obviously wanting to get a longer look at him (I was totally oblivious of this, obviously engrossed by the flyball!). So all the dogs had been seen and the judge shortlisted, she pulled out a block of 3 of us stood together Sam Goulding and Oliver (Etherial Up in Lights) Della Lucas and Tikka (Aculsia Galaxy Choc Box) and me with Spark; it was a very strong shortlist from a strong class. The judge then came straight over and asked me to move Spark again, then a tricolour dog, she was obviously trying to decide between these two…I was absolutely elated when she came over and pulled Spark out first, his first win in Limit…woo hoo!! I took him straight back to his bench and put him away for a rest before the challenge, I figured we had about an hour before we were back in the ring and I wanted him out a good 15 mins before just to toilet and stretch his legs and touch up the grooming.

So, we watched the last class of the day, Good Citizen Dog and saw Vicki and Diesel (Bryning Don’t Stop Me Now) take 4th place (yay!) then it was back in the ring for the dog challenge with the ten other unbeaten class winners (I think the working class winner was excluded because he was beaten in another class). I have to say Spark was rather fidgety during the challenge, I think he thought he’d done enough for the day and was ready for home; the judge had a quick scan over and then asked just 3 dogs to move, the open class winner (Sh CH Janbell Jamieson), Spark and the Post Grad winner (Wizaland I am what I am for Birkvaughn); she went back to the table for the prizes and awarded the CC to Janbell Jamieson (a dog I happen to like very much and a very popular winner), I waited for a second to see whether she was going to call for the second in Open Dog (Am CH Sh CH Avatar One Nite Stand Bayshore) but she didn’t hesitate and came straight over to award Spark the Reserve CC!! I was absolutely over the moon but totally gobsmacked; probably what comes from going in with no expectations lol. The best of breed went to the bitch ticket winner, a very pretty little imported bitch, Am CH Bayshore British Connection Avatar.

Spark in the ring…

More pics HERE

We had a celebratory drink in the bar with a big group of flyball friends and Spark had a celebratory profiterole thanks to Jason Higgins lol. We hung around to see the BOB go in the group but ended up having to leave before they went in, I had a cracking headache and needed to get home to see to my dogs which was a real shame, I like watching the group judging and wanted to see how she went. By the time I’d driven home I felt terrible so just sorted the dogs and went straight to bed, not exactly a great way to celebrate I know! lol I woke the next morning with a stinking head cold…great!

Full Border Collie judging results can be seen HERE

Second in Special Puppy Bitch was a blue merle Spark daughter, Locheil Silver Sixpence at Croxlea and the winner of Undergraduate Bitch was a Mercy daughter, Locheil Eclipse of the Moon over Taranza!

So on reflection, despite my ‘it’s just another dog show’ attitude I have to concede that winning at Crufts IS extra special, not least because of the huge entries, 474 border collies entered this year, the largest entry in the pastoral group and one of the biggest entries across all the breeds and, although I’ve also won a RCC with Dottie in the past year (which was fantastic) this one was possibly that extra bit special because I bred Spark myself, and his mother Dazzle and I also own his father Ethan and although I hate bringing colour into it…he is a merle! lol I’m just so proud of my boy and can’t be thankful enough to Shirley Bell for letting me have his grandmother, the very special Canen Spangle back in 2005 and also to Heather Turner for allowing me to use the gorgeous Bond and letting me have my lovely boy Ethan too. I am so grateful to them both for allowing me the opportunity to breed my precious boy.

Anyway, Friday I really would have liked to have gone back to Crufts to watch the parson judging and some agility and flyball and do a little shopping but it wasn’t possible so I had to make do with the live streaming instead (and I’m sure my bank balance benefited too! lol). I was thrilled to see that the sire of my parson puppies, Chello (CH Giftrapped of Lovealoch to Pacolito) was awarded the dog CC, the Pacolito kennel had a really good day winning several classes and both the dog and bitch tickets, reserve bitch ticket and BOB of course too! They were also in the breeder stakes final in the evening which I was delighted to see was won for the second year running by the Tonkory kennel of Border collies, what an amazing achievement! (you can watch this on the Borderbeau Website)

Full Parson Russell Terrier judging results can be seen HERE

Who knows, maybe I’ll get Esther out to a few shows later this year and see if we can get her qualified.

Erin Logie and Surf (Bryning Time to Fly) came 4th in the YKC Freestyle competition on Saturday and the Warrington Wizzards (including Bryning Tarn and Bryning Bounce Right Back) came 2nd in the Crufts flyball final too…way to go guys!!

The final race...

Full flyball results HERE

We have talked about entering some flyball qualifiers this year but I really don’t think it would be possible for me to enter dogs in both the flyball and breed classes, especially since several of my flyball dogs are my show dogs too. My limited breed showing already plays a serious second fiddle to our flyball commitments throughout the year; Crufts is actually the first breed show we’ve done since NWBCC in October (i.e. in the last 5 months!) and I only actually went to 5 breed shows last year (two of which just happen to be on my doorstep, Blackpool and NWBCC) including Crufts although Spark did go to SKC without me. In those 6 shows Spark had 3rd in Yearling, 2nd in Graduate, 3rd in Limit (twice), and 2nd in AOC, Richmond being the only show he didn’t get placed at (I suspect partly down to him being a total pillock in the ring, most unlike him!) but where Dottie did gain the RCC…so not a bad year!

All in all I think Crufts 2010 was a great year for the breed BC’s with show bred dogs well represented in all disciplines and winning in the HTM freestlye, International Obedience and Agility Champ classes (both medium and large), long may it continue!

A well earned rest...

2010-03-15T20:35:00.009Z

So, after a weekend of lovely dry weather I woke up last Monday morning to another beautiful sunny day; I had booked Thursday and Friday off work so that I would be able to spend a couple of days at Crufts, as it happened that ended up being impossible because my mum went away so I had no-one home to look after the dogs so we could only go for the day but I decided to ring my boss and see if I could take the whole week off and he agreed that would be fine…yippee!! A chance to catch up with all those little jobs I wanted to do but hadn’t got round to and spend some more time with the dogs and make the most of the good weather we were finally having! Monday afternoon I popped round to see a friend and we went for a walk up Beacon Fell. I just decided to take my current competing flyball dogs for the extra walk in an attempt to get them a little fitter after our enforced winter layoff due to the terrible weather we’ve been having. We were out for an hour or so and walked through the trees and over the top to the trig point where we could enjoy the views.

Here’s a couple of pics...

...there are more here

Tuesday I had a day of catching up on chores, so while out doing all the shopping for me and the dogs I decided to take five of them round Cuerden Valley Park ; this is over in the direction of Batleys (where we get all our dog food from) and there is direct access into the park from Asda carpark which is rather handy! I often take the dogs here at lunchtime when they’ve come to work with me as it’s not far from the office. We did a nice long circular walk across fields, through trees and around the lake and were out for about an hour and a half. Although huge (370 acres in total) this is quite a busy park and the rangers are quite ‘keen’ on limiting dog numbers per person so five is the maximum I will take on my own. It’s so nice to be able to enjoy a relaxing walk and be able to stop and take photos and play fetch in the river etc rather than the forced march our daily walks usually consist of when I’m always pushed for time! lol

Here’s the motley crew I took with me (flyball dogs again)…

Teal eyeing up the ducks on the lake…

And some more pics of them here

On Wednesday Gemma had the day off so came up and we took ALL the dogs to the beach; well all apart from those in season and Spud who unfortunately is just too arthritic to go on big runs with everyone now (poor Spud). We split them into 3 manageable sized groups so were on the beach for nearly 3 hours in total…what a beautiful day it was and not at all busy, how I wish I could be at home every weekday! All the dogs had a lovely long run and swim in the sea and Aston, who was enjoying his first trip to the seaside, also had his first swim…he’s proving to be just like his mother (Lexie)…a real water baby, we couldn’t keep him out!

Lovely wide open spaces for running!!

A few more pics of them all here Then it was back home for some lunch, a bit of flyball training with the youngsters… Jovi, Fynn and Squirrel. We’re having to really work on Fynn’s drive back from the box which is currently, well…non existant! We’ve had dogs like this before and it does come eventually so we’ll just keep working on lots of chasing runbacks.

Squirrel on the box…

Although she’s jumping on the box nicely she’s still not pushing off very well with her back feet, not sure how to ‘fix’ this but will have a think about it. then off to the local butchers/farm shop to pick up lots of bones for the dogs we were leaving at home the next day then straight to the vets with Esther for her vaccinations (she was a very brave girl) and finally time to start bathing and prepping the two dogs we were taking to Crufts the next day…Mercy and Spark; both shampooed and rinsed twice then blow dried (which Spark doesn’t mind but Mercy hates) then all off to bed before the ‘Big Day’!!

Training at last!

2010-03-10T08:21:00.003Z

We've had a week of beautiful weather, dry and sunny so we finally got to have a really good training session on Sunday afternoon; all except Gemma who was unfotunately working.

A very useful session, had a few ideas about re-structuring the teams at Rotherham in a couple of weeks so we'll see how that goes. The girls that have had pups (Lexie and Dottie) are both getting fitter and faster so hopefully they'll be back in form for Anglesey at Easter.

We did some chute training with Fly to work on improving her box turn (whish is non existant!); she is picking this up really well, it's going to take some time to transfer this improved technique to the box but it's progress!

We also ran both Squirrel and Jovi on the chute. I'm really pleased with JoJo's progress, she is now happily doing full runs over 9" hurdles although she hasn't quite figured out that there's an endless supply of tennis balls at the box end yet so I am having to throw the ball back to Simon each time, this si a common thing with dogs starting out and I'm confident that as she does more she will realise and become more box focused. Now to continue building this and start working on changeovers, we did a few very loose passes with Fly and she was fine.

Squirrel had her first tarining session since having the pups, she's come off the litter as 'fit as a flea' and was totally up for it, I don't think I've ever seen her run so fast so I was really pleased with her, even if we did have to have a 'victory lap' after every run! lol

All looking very promising for the start of the outdoor season next month. I will try and get some pics/videos at our next session.

And then there was one...

2010-03-10T08:05:00.006Z

The last parson puppy, Fagin left home on Sunday so now I'm just left with little Esther who looks like she will be staying :)

Here's the two of them snuggled up on the sofa for the last time on Saturday evening...

And here's Esther snuggled up with mum the next night...bless...

She is a lovely little pup, not as bold and outgoing as I would normally choose, she probably is the quietest in the litter to be honest but I'm sure she won't stay that way living here! lol

Here she is playing in the garden with some of the big dogs.

and 'striking a pose' in the garden...

I've really enjoyed this litter, lovely quiet easy puppies, far less demanding than the collie litters and such fabulous little characters...love them!

and another month has passed...

2010-03-04T13:35:00.001Z

Oops, another month has gone by without an update.

Well, what of February then…our parson puppies have all left home now apart from ‘Fagin’ who should be leaving this weekend and Esther who…oops…has accidentally ended up stay ; whether she stays here long term remains to be seen; I don’t really want another puppy right now but there’s just something about her that reminds me so much of Squirrel at the same age, I’m loathed to let her go. Plus, I figure if you’re going to use the 2009 top winning parson as the stud dog then it really only makes sense to hold onto something from the litter; if the perfect home comes up where she could go on breeding terms then I will likely part with her. This is precisely what I’ve just done with Pixie, the little slate merle bitch I’ve kept from Viggo and Dazzle’s litter, she is cute as a button and just had to stay but I didn’t want to rear 2 collie pups at the same time so Aston has stayed here and Pixie has gone to live with our friends and team mates, the Morgan family, down the road which is just perfect. She is settling in very well and I’m very pleased with the way both pups are shaping up so far; even in this ‘off’ phase of puppyhood (around 16 weeks) they are both still looking very nice, beautifully proportioned and sound puppies.

We competed at Gap Farm again during the month and, in contrast to our January comp, we just had ‘one of those days’ when we just didn’t seem to be able to get it together and ended up 4th in both divisions (1 and 4) but threw in a few ok times. I was pleased with the way Faith ran, not so much Teal who still seems to be lacking form (and carrying too much weight!)…room for improvement me thinks! Next comp is Rotherham at the end of this month, running on grass under canvas, I do like this venue so am really looking forward to it.

Also coming up this month we have Crufts (next Thursday); I’ve only entered 2 dogs this year and may end up just taking Spark, Mercy is carrying a little extra weight at the moment and I noticed last week that she has also broken a tooth while away, we’ll see. I am looking forward to a nice easy day out at Crufts for a change where I might get to see a little more than just the BC benching area! Following this there is BCCGB championship breed show and open agility show on the same day; I have entered both but it is also the same day as the BFA AGM…hmmmmm…tough call. We’re also planning to go to NEBCC open show which is the day after Rotherham flyball so a busy month ahead!

More pics and news to follow…(I promise!!)

Parson babies at 5 weeks old

2010-02-01T14:35:00.003Z

Here they are, like tiny little toy dogs :o)

Although they're active and playful they're much quieter and easier to manage then either collie or cocker pups and a real pleasure to have in the home.

There are still a couple available to the right homes, I think they'll make fab little flyball and/or agility dogs but equally just make super little family pets...just love 'em!

Flyball at Gap Farm

2010-02-01T02:36:00.005Z

Well, this was a couple of weeks ago and was our first tournament of the year and our first time out competing since October. We have some new team members for 2010 in the form of Simon, Sharon, Rachel and Megan Morgan (yep, we’ve doubled in size overnight! Lol) and their smooth working sheepdog Fly. We are all practically neighbours since ‘the Morgans’ live in the same village as Paul and Alison which is the next village to mine which makes meeting up together nice and easy (apart from poor Gemma who lives some 40 mins away in Manchester but considers our house as her second home I’m sure lol). Some of our dogs have run with Fly before since we were all previously members of another team so I already knew what to expect when planning teams. The first decision we made was to always run Fly last dog, at least for the time being. I don’t like having dogs that will only run in one position and in fact Fly is not one of these dogs but I do know that she has a very strong eye and runs out much better when there’s no other dogs in her field of vision. We also ensured that the rest of the team were well at the back of the ring and out of her immediate eyeline so she could focus on Rachel and her reward ball. We have some work to do to really get the best out of Fly (her boxwork is atrocious!) but something as simple as running her last dog made an instant difference and knocked a considerable fraction off the times she has been running. We ran her in the Demon Racers with Mac, Pip, Dottie/Lexie and Fly last, this was the first competition back since having pups for both Dottie and Lexie, both ran well, just need to get a bit fitter. I had submitted a time of 21.50 for this team and we ran a fastest time of 20.89 (so not a bad estimation!), we had been seeded 5th in Division 4 but came away with a respectable 2nd place!

Vid of this team in action…. Mac – Pip – Dottie and Fly.

The Speed Demonz were top seed in Division One, based on our pre-break seed time of 17.71 and running the same combination of dogs, Dylan, Bailey, Faith & Teal. Poor Rach got thrown in the deep end running Faith in this team as did Simon who was our boxloader for the day, Simons first time boxloading and Rachel's first time running Faith and her first time in Division One but they both did a brilliant job! Faith is starting to get back on form and ran really well, much more focused than she had been pre-break. We had issues with Dylan dropping his ball so just moved him to last dog (where we know he won’t do it!), this does affect his times but better that than a fault every leg! So Gemma and Bailey ran start, not his favourite position either but I didn’t want to change Rachel’s changeover with Faith and no-one is going to run a cocker start dog are they?! Lol Our times weren’t very good but they were consistent, considering we’ve only trained once since we last ran everyone did a really great job with changeovers etc. We had the benefit of Sharon to collect balls and Megan on the line for both teams who did a brilliant job of taking down all the split times (that girl can write fast! lol) which gave us the opportunity to review the splits when we got home. This revealed…Bailey was about 0.2secs off his normal pace (as I would expect with him running start), Faith was running better than she had been and getting back to her best (yipee!), Teal was 0.25-0.35 off her best…I had noticed in the videos that she was throwing in a lot of double strides so she is lacking fitness but she also came in season the next day, this could well have been affecting her. Dylan was about 0.2 off his usual pace too which is down to him running last BUT this is less of an impact than we’ve previously seen with him which I put down to running in against Teal as opposed to a bigger dog, worth making a note of this!

This team running against the Alpha Dogz...(Bailey, Faith, Teal, Dylan)

and again aganist Barney Owlers..

These videos were taken by my friend Minna who was over from Finland for the weekend, Minna took home one of Vi and Dazzle's boys...she owned their great grandfather Jouko (Fin CH Pikkupaimenen Fair Play) whom these babies are line bred on.

Also making his open competition debut for the host team Notts Supadogs was Spark-Kes son Tarn, Bryning Goshawk. He ran brilliantly in Division One and their team knocked 0.5sec of their current seed time! :o)

I picked up Drake's Silver award and Gemma and Bailey picked up their Chica Chicana award too! :o) All in all a good day running on a new and fantastic surface...can't wait for the next one!

A sad day...

2010-01-28T14:04:00.002Z

The little parson baby passed to the Rainbow Bridge last Friday. I took her to the vets to see what Stuart thought and he immediately noticed her exagerated head shape, after chatting about her behaviour and symptoms it seemed most likely that she was suffering with hydrocephalus and that the resultant lack of co-ordination was the reason she was struggling to feed properly, even when bottle or hand fed she was taking on very little. This had already left her tiny and thin and permanently hungry so we had to make the difficult decision to save her from any further suffering; she passed peacefully away but it was a very sad moment, having watched her fight to survive and start to develop her own little personality over the last four weeks...sleep well little girl x

What I hadn't expected was Squirrels reaction, she spent the next couple of days searching round the house trying to find her and was very quiet, almost depressed, for the next few days. I brought her and the rest of the puppies downstairs as a distraction and thankfully she seems to be ok now. The rest of the babies are doing really well, new photos to follow...

The heartache of breeding

2010-01-21T15:03:00.002Z

I’ve done it again, fallen way behind in my blogging, I was sure I’d have much more time for blogging over winter but I just don’t know where it goes??!!

I’m going to do a couple of separate postings to catch up re. different things rather than another mammoth one ;o)

On a general note, the parson puppies are all doing great guns (4 weeks old tomorrow and I really must get some new pics) apart from our little ‘squidge’…at this very moment I am struggling to make a decision on her future, she is gaining weight but so incredibly slowly, she hardly seems able to take on enough food to sustain herself let alone grow and yet she is relatively bright, she sits up and is on her feet and toddling around with the others but she just looks so pitiful. She is painfully thin, a real tiny scrawny little thing and her coat is rough and disheveled despite being kept immaculately clean by Squirrel. She makes attempts to feed with the others but my feeling is that there is something wrong with her gullet or epiglottis that makes it virtually impossible for her to swallow correctly so while she is hungry, she can only feed for a very short period at a time and seems unable to take on enough before she starts to struggle. Poor Squirrel knows there is something wrong and is trying her best to care for her, she even picks her up and carries her to me like she’s asking for my help and as the other puppies grow bigger and stronger and more boisterous I worry that she won’t cope amongst them all for much longer. Early on I had decided to let nature take it’s course, if she lived she was meant to and if she didn’t then she wasn’t but now I am really concerned that she is surviving and suffering, hungry and weak and struggling to breathe. I’ve obviously grown very fond of this baby and don’t want to let her go and despite her best efforts to stay alive I wonder if the kindest thing I can do is make the decision for her. It’s a really tough call and one that is testing every emotion I have.

The whole of December in one go...

2009-12-29T19:18:00.011Z

Gosh, a month without a blog update, I think that must be a record! I have just been so busy at work and at home with the puppies and Christmas and everything else that I’ve hardly even found time to sit down, I’ve done no Christmas cards…electronic or otherwise and I don’t have our 2010 calendar done yet either (it’s a poor show I know) so really no time for blogging or catching up on friends’ blogs either…ho hum!

We’ve seen two birthdays with Squirrel turning two at the start of the month and Ethan turning four a couple of days later; with that and Christmas on top the toy box is over flowing although, as always seems to be the case, several toys have already been demolished and consigned to the bin

(this is just one of our THREE toy baskets!)

So, what else has been happening? Well quite a lot when I look back actually!

Flyball
The weather has been so bad (wet, wet, wet!) we’ve really done no training at all for a couple of months, the same with agility. Gemma had been up at the end of November and taken the training chute to do some work with Fynn and when she came back up at the beginning of December the work she’d been doing was evident. He is now much more focused on his ball and is doing some nice jumps on and off the chute, we decided to try him on the box to see what he would do and he took to it fine, the motion is initially quite slow as he’s having to think about what he’s doing but he’s not bothered by the movement and noise of the box and is looking promising. We also did a little bit of work with Jovi, she is keen as mustard but is definitely more hesitant than Fynn, I think her technique will improve as she grows in confidence.

Fynn’s first go on the box…

Make video montages at www.OneTrueMedia.com

A week or so later and Gemma was back up, this time with Alicia and Lola so we set up a couple of jumps and the box in the garden and did some work with all 3, I was really pleased with them all. Lola has already been doing runbacks and has a lovely hurdling action; her main issue at the moment is focus (she is SO like her mother!). Fynn still needs to think about his co-ordination a little more but I was pleased with the way he was running up and down the hurdles and doing the box nicely too. JoJo is very keen still and was eagerly running up and down and taking the ball from the box but her box technique is still not great. I think time and practice will be the key to this because she’s keen on a ball and she also wants to get back to me asap so she has the key things that make up a good fast turn once we sort her technique out.

Agility
We’ve done no agility training (apart from the odd bit in the garden) for months and months. I did make a set of weave guides to finally press on and finish teaching both my girls to weave. I’ve been training them on channels but really struggled with the transition to normal competition uprights. I could kick myself for not having made these guides sooner! They have absolutely done the trick!

Faith first time with the guides...

Teal first time with the guides..

5th December saw our second agility show with Faith and Teal; I was very undecided about whether or not to run them both as I really hadn’t finished proofing the weaves for competition but I ran them through in the garden a couple of times and decided to go for it; it is only 5 mins down the road after all. When I arrived I had missed Teals’ first class (graded 1-2 agility) and when I looked at the 1-2 jumping I decided against running either girl on the course, it just wasn’t the nice flowing confidence building sort of course I was looking for. I had also missed walking the small combined 1-7 agility, I watched a few dogs round the course and decided it was something Teal and I could tackle, even if we weren’t going to stand a chance against the higher graded dogs it would be good experience. It was a nice flowing course with a couple of little ‘handly’ bits here and there but it was going to be a bit of a blast and I hoped Teal wouldn’t be too crazy and start missing contacts. She did a nice calm startline wait and then we were off…jump-dogwalk to start (again!) and she nailed the running contact (big smile) then off over a series of jumps which she ran fast and accurately then a straight tunnel and out over a jump into an empty space, there was another jump in line that she had to come back over while I had decided to also put a reverse turn in to get on the other side of her…it was only when I actually got there that I realized how big the gap between the jumps was leaving a serious risk of her coming through the gap and getting 5R and I dithered…the lack of any command at all saw Teal land the jump and then run straight to the scribe who was sitting on a chair directly in front of her! I moved across and put the turn in as I called her back and she thankfully ran back and over the jump and we continued the course, over the A frame another star of jumps and then straight down a line of tyre, seesaw and jump home…our first clear round!! I was so pleased with my little girl!! It was only looking at the results later that I realized how close we had been to a place and how dearly that hesitation had cost, there were 100 grade 1-7 small dogs in the class and places to 10th, despite it being a combined class Teal was only 0.5sec off being placed and ran a faster time than quite a number of grade 6/7 dogs that had run clear. I am certain that she would have placed top 5 without that ‘blip’ mid round…that’ll teach me to get there in time to walk the courses in future! Live and learn I guess!

I did walk the graded large 1&2 agility which was a really lovely course that I really wanted to have a go at with Faith, it was right up her street and I thought we stood a good chance of a decent clear. I decided to adopt a different technique in keeping her calm so Veronica queued for me and I brought her in right at the last minute and wouldn’t let her watch. This technique proved to be entirely the wrong one. I set her up on the start line just as a springer spaniel started running in the next ring and she just couldn’t take her eyes off it! As I released her it ran up the dogwalk that was alongside our ring and Fi crashed through the first jump (since she only had half an eye on it!), ran through the tunnel, over jump 3 and then kept going in the direction of the next ring!! I yelled her back and set her up to continue but her neck was craned back looking toward the other ring, there was no way she was going to concentrate so I picked her up and carried her out...arghhhhh…sooooo frustrating! I think maybe we need to leave indoor competitions well alone for now, get some more training in and come back to agility again when it’s outdoors with bigger rings and less noise. I also think it may well be better to let her watch as much as she likes before running her, let her get it out of her system; we’ll see I guess!

We managed to get a small amount of training in just before Christmas when we went down to Oxford to stay with Joy and Becca for the weekend while going to watch Becca and Teal (Bryning Time to Shine) competing at Olympia. It was a fab weekend, Olympia was great…a day out with friends…agility, showjumping and shopping…what more could you ask for?! Poor Becca had been in bed all week with tonsilitis so was not on her best form and struggled on the huge courses but the girls did really well, the clear round in the morning saw them place 16th and into the pairs final in the afternoon where they came 3rd, fastest time but 15 faults between them…a real shame.

There is full footage of both the semis and the pairs (and in fact the whole competition) on the Horse and Country channel website...brilliant!

Becca and Teal appear around 5 minutes into episode 3

Semis Episode One

Semis Episode Two

Semis Epiosde Three

Semis and Final Episode Four

(video of the pairs filmed by me still to come!!)

Weather
Like most of the rest of the country we’ve had quite a lot of snow and ice over the past week or so which has actually been really nice. A little hairy driving too and from work, the shops etc but bliss when taking the dogs out…the ground is hard underfoot and everyone stays clean!

This was our lane and house on Christmas Eve (a white Christmas!)

and the dogs racing around in the snow in the garden...

Puppies
Well, the puppies have all grown up and many have left us already. Aston (Bryning Volante) is the black/white dog pup from Tally and Lexie’s litter and he is the one staying. I had wanted a black/white dog pup from this litter and since he was the only one I didn’t have a choice but I am more than happy with him, he’s beautifully constructed, well marked, very toy orientated and has a really nice happy outgoing character…perfick!

There is still an ongoing dilemma as to which of Dazzle’s girls will stay but I am pretty certain it is the little merle bitch, she looks like a little wind up toy but is an absolute menace! Not decided on a name yet, something cute and girlie..we’ll see .

Here’s three of the girls (one has left for her new home already) playing tuggy in the lounge…

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

and here's them again playing in the dining room..

and here's the boys...

I am very pleased with these as Viggos’ first litter and he’s had two more born over the past few weeks so it will be very interesting to see how they turn out too.

Christmas day saw the arrival of a very special delivery…our first parson puppies!! Squirrel is proving to be a really natural and devoted mother, the puppies are all doing well apart from the little bitch that was the smallest at birth, she really is tiny and seems to be struggling to feed so I’ve started supplementing her, will keep everything crossed that she starts to gain weight and strength and starts to thrive but it is a bit of a worry.

I think that sees us just about up to date!

Tally & Lexie pups - 3 weeks old

2009-12-01T17:32:00.001Z

And heres Lexies pups (plus one), same age and same stagegreedily falling onto their first meal and gobbling it all up (with Lexie patiently waiting to see what they might have leftnot much! lol)

It never ceases to amaze me how much they change in such a short space of time, in just 3 weeks theyve gone from little deaf/blind blobs to active little creatures that can wobble around and eat proper food and in another 3 weeks theyll be running around and causing mayhem like Dotties pups now! lol

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Viggo & Dazzle pups - 3 weeks old

2009-12-01T16:35:00.001Z

Heres Dazzles pups (less one) enjoying their first solid mealsoaked and mushed up Eukanuba puppy (lamb & rice)Mmmmmmyummy!! Three weeks old so starting to cut their first teeth and ready to start weaning, they needed little encouragement to eat although they are all quite fat and well fed; Daz is doing a good job as usual :)

Make an on-line slideshow at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Seamus & Dottie pups - 6 weeks old

2009-12-01T14:47:00.002Z

A short vid of Dottie's pups, 6 weeks old today and getting ready to fly the nest :)

There are still a couple of puppies available to the right homes including the very feisty black/white girlie causing all the trouble and that cute squiffy faced blue boy :)

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

My favourite, and extremely naughty little girl...

Nature or Nurture?

2009-11-25T11:28:00.006Z

Having two litters born so close together, it’s always interesting to see how they grow and develop differently but what I hadn’t thought about when I gave Lexie one of Dazzle’s pups to rear, was the way this could demonstrate the influence of the bitch on these things, even during these early stages. Both litters have just turned 2 weeks so eyes are opening and they have been photographed, wormed and nail trimmed; the difference between the two litters is already very noticeable. (New pics on the website - Dazzles’ pups and Lexies’ pups)

Dazzles pups are great big chunky things, their eyes are mostly open but not quite fully yet but they are incredibly noisy and very very active! I found them almost impossible to photograph because they were just zooming off here, there and everywhere and couldn’t keep still! They are also very inquisitive already, when taking each pup out the rest were crowding at the front of the pen wanting to see what was going on despite probably being able to see very little just yet. Dazzle is a very fidgety bitch, she’s up and down and digs all the vet bed up and moves around the pen a lot, she’s always very restless even when with her pups; she’s also very nosey and likes to keep popping out to see what else is going on and I think this has made her pups the same already. It has to be said that none of them batted an eyelid at the wormer and nail trimming.

Lexie’s pups are not quite as well grown as Dazzle’s but their eyes are fully open, including the Dazzle pup she is fostering. I wonder if her constant attention and cleaning is a factor in aiding this? These pups, including the Dazzle baby, are quiet and contented, nowhere near as active as the pups Dazzle is rearing, they’re only just starting to push up on their feet and don’t have the strength and motor function of Dazzle’s just yet but then they haven’t needed to. Lexie is a very quiet and attentive mum (not the fidget bum she is normally!) and she lays with her pups constantly and keeps pulling them in close so they don’t need to keep moving around to find her like Dazzles do. Lexie’s were not so happy about the wormer and nail trim, it was a bit of a shock to their quiet and sheltered lives so far and as soon as they went back in the crate Lex was in there cleaning the traces of wormer off their faces quick as you like!

must remove all trace of the pink liquid!!

everyone ok?
spot the odd one out!

the adopted baby has made herself at home :)

All that said they are also in very different environments; Lexie is up in my room so the pups have not encountered any other dogs yet. Daz’s are in the dining room where other dogs will wander in and out and there’s a lot more noise and household bustle down there so maybe that is a factor too? I am going to bring Lexies’ downstairs this week so they can start experiencing more, Lexie never likes this move, she’s always very protective and likes to keep all the other dogs away so I tend to leave her separated a little longer than the other girls.

Another week of growth and development to watch with interest!

Wilmslow Agility

2009-11-24T15:46:00.002Z

On Saturday we went to Wilmslow Agility show at Myerscough college which is just down the road from here and I had decided that, despite having done no training over the summer, I would just enter Faith and Teal and see how we got on. Neither of them are weaving yet and the last show I went to at Myerscough there weren’t any weaves in the G1-2 classes (they’re hard to peg down on the surface there) so I was hoping for the same…alas no…weaves in every ring! So I decided I would run them both anyway and use it as a training exercise and a way of seeing how each of them would react to a competition environment. We didn’t complete a single course and it was all very messy, Teal was at least focused and driven but Faith was off her head and had absolutely no concentration at all. That said, I found a couple of positives to take away for them both.

The most Faith managed was in the Combined 1-2 agility which started jump – dogwalk; I knew before we even started that she would go under the first jump, this is something she tends to do at the moment when there is an exciting piece of contact equipment on the other side, she gets her head down, focuses on the up plank and complete fails to notice the pole above her head! Some shows will double pole these sorts of jumps in G1 but sadly not here so she went under as I expected, we just carried on, I can’t blame her, she’s not had nearly enough training. She then completed the next jump and a ‘star’ of three…onto the A-frame and then down over a jump out to a curved tunnel…they had to jump back and then complete the two jumps again but this time not do the tunnel….this proved too much thinking for Faith so she ran up the A-frame again…we left the ring. In the next class which also started jump – dogwalk (argh!) I set her off and she ran straight up the A frame which was set up to the right of the dogwalk…I’m seeing a theme developing here! Grasping any positive I can from her performance…her contacts were lovely, some of the best in the class…fast and accurate with just a single command to ‘go walk’ onto the dogwalk/A-frame and she ran straight down into her 2on-2off and waited for the release; I think this is probably the one benefit from having not trained, she’s not had chance to ‘un-learn’ this! It’s just everything else we need to work on!

I was most pleased with Teal, I was a little concerned about how she might react to the noise and bustle of an agility show, this was quite a big one for her first ‘go’ at agility competition but she wasn’t fazed at all and in fact she was a little OTT hyper in her first class; she managed to bounce of someone’s chest in the queue!! I was so embarrassed…she does it to me all the time when she’s excited but I didn’t expect her to do it to the woman stood next to me! Her excitement showed, she broke her wait so that I had to replace her and then when I released her she set off like a bullet, did most of the course (except the weaves of course) but missed every single contact including a very dramatic flying seesaw to finish…eek! Back to the drawing board. We had an hour or so to wait for the next agility class and thankfully she had calmed down a bit by then, she missed a couple of jumps which I realised was my fault for running on too far ahead (wait for me mum!!!) BUT she nailed all 3 contacts…nice fast running ones too…result! The small 1-2 jumping was the last class of the day and by this point all the other rings had finished and they were packing up; I don’t know if it was this or whether it was me but she just didn’t feel like she was that up for it in this class, in hindsight I should have had her out for a good while before she ran and played with her and warmed her up. I think she’d got cold sitting in the van (probably should have put her coat on) and she gets a bit ‘mard’ when she gets cold; she was really clingy and missed a few jumps trying to stay with me. All in all I was pleased with her, especially considering how little training she’s had; not just recently but ever….she’s probably had less than 10 training sessions since she started her agility at the beginning of this year!

They’re both entered at Wyre in 2 weeks time but I probably won’t run either of them until we’ve got some training in. Although both are due in season fairly soon and Teal will hopefully be mated so she might not get much training in before then.

A 'quiet' weekend at home...

2009-11-17T12:14:00.004Z

Well, we had a pretty quiet weekend, the weather continues to be awful…constant rain!! Saturday we had lots of people come to visit Dotties’ pups so 4 of them have now been chosen, they will start leaving for their new homes in 3 weeks time so I need to pull my finger out and decide on registered names! They are a really lovely litter, I started weaning them last week and they are eating like gannets!! Dottie is being a great mum again, very relaxed and easy going around them but attentive at the same time; they’re all lovely clean and well fed babies. New pics of them due today now they are 4 weeks old, ready for their next dose of wormer and well ready for another nail trim!

Sunday wasn’t ‘too’ bad a day weather-wise, it stayed mostly dry so I took the opportunity to take some updated pics of the youngsters in the garden. The lighting still wasn’t great so they’re mixed quality… some better than others it has to be said!

Jovi aka ‘JoJo’ – Bryning Amistoso Love Always

Tarka – Bryning Riverine

The ‘boys’…
Wesley– Glendream Stargazer at Bryning and Travis – Raezhaven Bryce at Bryning

Maisie– Randoms Maisie

I also did a little bit of agility training with Teal and Faith before it got dark and started pee’ing down again! I don’t have a lot of equipment at home so it was very basic stuff but since neither girl has trained for months it’s just as well! We did a very simple loop…jump – channel weaves – jump – seesaw. I was actually very pleased with them both since they were both really ‘up for it’ and had remembered their contact position/run off well. I kinda have this theory that less training is better for this sort of thing, once they have an understanding of what you want, leave it alone so you don’t risk inadvertently ‘de-training’ it when your focus moves elsewhere! lol

Biggest problem with Teal was her popping out of the weaves if I’m running too close…everything is a race with her so I have to hang back and let her finish them or she thinks I’m getting away from her and comes out to catch me up! Faith’s biggest issue was ducking under the jump before the weaves, Faith LOVES the channel weaves so was getting her head down in anticipation of the entry and completely failing to see the jump! I dropped the pole on one side and asked her to just complete the jump a few times before then asking her to find the weaves afterwards, this seemed to cure it! Not much use in the ring though! lol

Both girls are entered for their first show this weekend, just down the road at Myerscough College…I may well chicken out and not run them though, it is rather mean to expect them to compete when they’ve had no training all summer, we’ll see what the courses bring and then decide I think (cluck, cluck lol)

Dazzles’ pups were also a week old on Sunday, new pics on the website, and I have to say they are really fat puppies…bordering on obese! Lol

Six big fat chunky slugs and then the little pale merle girl who looks like a midget but is actually just a normal sized puppy! She was the smallest at birth and while she is doing fine I am a little concerned that she may be struggling to compete against her monster littermates so I’ve made the decision to take her away from Dazzle and let Lexie rear her instead. This isn’t something I’ve ever done before but then I’ve never had a bitch with such a small litter before, the little girl is much closer in size to Lexies’ blue boys (not the monster black fella!), although only a day between them in birth dates Lexies’ were of course 5 days early. I wasn’t sure whether this was going to work but Daz doesn’t seem too concerned about being a pup short and Lexie has accepted the new pup so all good so far. I moved her while the mum’s were out toileting so Lex came back to her bed to find the new addition and she did give her a good sniff all over and obviously knew this was not one of hers but she is a very maternal bitch and just let her feed and cleaned her along with the boys and happily settled down with her increased brood of four; her pups were a week old yesterday so new pics to come later.

Last night Jovi and I travelled down to Tom and Kate’s near Wrexham, meeting Gemma and Fynn on the way to get blood samples taken for rabies titre testing. Fingers crossed both will pass and be joining us at the Euros next year…wherever that may be!! As yet we are all still waiting to find out whether the Austrians and/or Germans are going to host the 2010 event.

Think that’s it for now :)

Blue Monday...

2009-11-10T12:34:00.007Z

We’ve had a busy couple of weeks really with one thing and another but our winter puppy season is now well underway!

Squirrel has been mated so we should hopefully be expecting our first litter of parsons around Christmas time! Here's a pic of daddy 'Chello'…

CH Giftrapped of Lovealoch to Pacolito

Dazzle whelped Sunday night, bang on the date I expected. We got a nice litter of 7, 4 girls and 3 boys (the reverse of Dottie) and all dilute of course…2 blue girls, 2 slate merle girls and 3 blue boys. I’ll get some individual pics on the website later but I am very pleased with them. The merle girls don’t have a lot of white on them, much like Dazzle and granny Spangle, one is very pale and powdery like big brother Spark and the other quite patchy, very like Spangle actually. The two blue girls are very classic, full white collars, white faces and white front legs, there’s one classic blue boy with a half white collar (like daddy Viggo!), one dark faced blue boy with a tiny narrow blaze that may well disappear and one very dark blue boy…blue face with a tiny white snip and two blue front legs with white feet. I think he’ll be very striking!

Not wanting to be left out Lexie decided to whelp last night too! she wasn’t due ‘til the weekend so was quite early and only produced 3 pups which is unusual for an early delivery but it really is as well she didn’t wait because the black boy is a monster and she struggled getting him out…I think a c-section may have been necessary if he had been left much longer! He’s going to be very much the ‘odd one out’ amongst all these blue babies though! lol

The two blue boys are marked very like daddy (Tally), white faces and dark bodies, 4 blue legs with just white on the feet. The black boy is more classically marked like Lexie, it’ll be interesting to see how they all grow.

'Tally' - Sh CH Littlethorn Continental

That’s the last of our expected litters arrived so now the anticipation ends and the hard work starts! Dottie’s pups are 3 weeks old today so I’ll update their page with new pics later too; they are lovely little things, bright and active and noisy and nosey…just like mum! Lol

I am, as always, fascinated to see how these 3 litters turn out, although Daz and Dot are half sisters the 3 litters are all very different bloodline combinations and it’s always interesting to see the differences in growth and development between different litters. I also have the enviable task of deciding who stays and who goes…some tough decisions me thinks!

Surf's Up! :)

2009-11-02T17:01:00.004Z

Here are a few pics from Erin and Surf (Bryning Time to Fly) taken at the YKC weekend at Newark showground where they also managed to qualify for Crufts in the YKC Heelwork to Music! :)

Well done girls!! :)

New Arrivals

2009-10-27T13:17:00.005Z

Tuesday morning I woke up and could hardly move, the trip to Batleys on my way home from work for our fortnightly dog food shop had taken it’s toll and my back was agony again (shifting 9 sacks of dog food probably not the best thing for a bad back!). I struggled to get showered and dressed and get the dogs sorted by which time it was 10am, I rang work and told them I wasn’t going to make it in and went and laid back out with a bolster cushion under my back until the pain killers started to take effect then went and let the dogs out for a run for 20 mins (all the standing around in the wild wind I could manage) and shut them back in the yard with roast bones to keep them busy. When I went back in the house I found Dottie in the whelping pen digging furiously….hmmm…puppies on the way it would seem! At least she’d already had her ‘pre-whelp groom and trim’ so was nice and neat and ready to go! Normally I hate the hanging around waiting for a bitch to whelp but on this occasion laying on my bed all afternoon/evening was a godsend! lol

The first pup arrived just before 11pm, she was pushing and pushing and obviously struggling so I took a look to find 2 enormous fat feet protruding, they looked quite dark and I feared the pup may be dead (paranoid after her first litter!), he was coming backwards so I hooked his tail out and gently pulled down while Dottie continued to push…he was fairly firmly wedged but we managed to get back end, abdomen and chest out in one push and he started to wriggle (much to my relief!), another strong push and the rest of him came, a flashy black dog with a dot on his head just like mum! As he dried I realized he wasn’t quite black and looks to be a seal/white, darker than Wren when she was born but we’ll see how he develops.

The rest came quite easily, I had to just keep an eye on her as she’s quite enthusiastic over the chewing down of umbilical cords so a couple I had to tie off and trim down with sterile scissors to get her to leave them alone.

We finished up with 4 boys (2 seal, 2 blue) and 3 black girls. We will wait and see whether any of the girls develop tan points, there are no clearly defined points at the moment but paler areas under the tail, sometimes this can fade and other times it will develop…we’ll just have to wait and see.

There are individual pup pics on the website Current Litter page.

We have a couple of weeks to enjoy this brood before Dazzle’s arrive, she’s starting to show quite nicely now and Lexie is day 40 today so starts her panacur worming regime and a step up in her feeding, just 3 weeks before she is due so we’re going to be very busy in November!

(this was written a week ago it's just taken me that long to get around to posting...sorry!)

NWBCC...bit of a damp squib :(

2009-10-21T20:37:00.001+01:00

We got home after 9pm on Saturday and were just so exhausted we crashed out and did nothing. I waited for Heather, Audrey and Sharon to arrive and we all went straight We got home after 9pm on Saturday and were just so exhausted we crashed out and did nothing. I waited for Heather, Audrey and Sharon to arrive (around midnight!) and we all went straight to bed in preparation for the busy day ahead at North West Border Collie Club Champ show. Those 3 left early to get to the venue when the show opened but we didn’t have any dogs bathed so Drew did them all in the morning with a quick blow dry and then left home just after 9.30, judging started at 10.00am with the bitches so Mouse was first in. My fears were confirmed and she found the stinky floor in the equestrian centre irresistible and would not get her nose up off it to move, I am despairing with that dog! When I came out of the ring someone said they had thought she was lame and a quick trot up and down did reveal a slight hop on her left hind. I asked Anna Fox, who was there showing but also happens to be a McTimoney Corley practioner, to have a look over her and after a thorough ‘once over’ she was declared to be perfectly ok but likely suffering some soft tissue injury, not suprising the way she throws herself about! Rest for her…that should be fun!

Next in was Fynn who moved really nicely but just would not stand! Too much ‘sit’ training me thinks, he placed 4th (again) but tbh, the less I say about the dog judging the better I think, suffice to say that I shan’t be entering under that judge again that’s for sure. I was pleased with the way everyone else went… especially Vi and Fi who haven’t been in the ring for a year and both went really nicely, neither were placed though 

No pics I’m afraid, I just wasn’t in the mood and it was so dark and damp I think we’d have struggled to get any decent ones anyway!

I really wished I hadn’t bothered tbh, especially since the standing around in a freezing equestrian centre for 5 hours really didn’t help my poor back! The only consolation was the 10 min drive home, I really felt for those that had travelled a long way to experience some pretty bad judging. I just got home and climbed into bed…to warm up and rest my poor throbbing spine. After a couple of hours I was feeling better and decided I needed to get moving so set up the whelping pen in my bedroom and gathered all the necessaries (towels, newspapers, extra vet bed etc) in preparation for Dottie’s pups arriving, she was due Wednesday to the first mating but had been mated twice 6 days apart so I was expecting the pups any time over the next week.

Rotherham Flyball - ending the season on a positive :)

2009-10-21T19:26:00.008+01:00

Well, it was a cold and miserable weekend, not least because I was suffering with a terrible bad back. It’s not so much the pain that was getting me down but the fact I couldn’t easily do all the things I wanted to! Saturday was actually a beautiful crisp, sunny day but involved a 5.30am start to get all the dogs up and sorted before we left for Rotherham, I also had 3 cocker pups to take with us that were leaving for their new homes but we had the van packed and left for 7am (a little later than planned) and headed off for the scenic journey over Woodhead pass. We made good time which was lucky because they started racing 5 mins early and we were second race in Division One with the Speed Demonz, the only team we had entered. We were 6th seed out of 7 teams on a seed time of 17.90, top seed being the Live Wires on 16.96, nearly a second faster, we expected a drubbing! I had been a little undecided who to run in the absence of Dottie or Lexie (both in whelp) so we ended up with 6 dogs named…Dylan, Bailey, Teal, Faith, Ethan, Mac. The first 3 were our set line up and we’d try each of the other 3 and see how we got on. We started with Mac but I soon put him away, he just doesn’t run all that well over 8” and Ethan and Faith seemed to be running better. Of course, they both have the ‘turning the wrong way in the opposite lane’ syndrome but fortunately in different lanes so I just alternated them in and out with each other depending on what lane we were in. Dylan was back on top ‘pre-injury’ form running consistent low 4 seconds and everyone else seemed pretty fired up too. We did better than expected and beat both Dolphins and Cheshire Set but stupidly lost against Moltens (yep…you guessed it…lights!), this put us 5th so we exceeded expectation but we also ran a new seasons best…in the last leg of the last race of our last tournament for the year! 17.71 which consisted of a perfect rolling start, 4.12 from both Dylan and Bailey, 4.57 from Faith and 4.90 from Teal. Ethan was also running 4.5’s which is pretty damn good for him, maybe we’re finally starting to see his potential coming through. This gives us a nice base to start working on over winter, we know Fi can run 4.2’s over 8” so she definitely has more to give, I’m sure Dyl and Bai will shave a little more time off as they get used to running the lower height too and Teal…who knows…we can but try! I am toying with the idea of trying out a flat fronted box over winter to see if that brings any benefits. I’m conscious of not wanting to fix what ‘aint broke since most of our dogs have a decent box technique but I am told that a good box turn on a boomerang should hold up on a flat fronted box too, we’ll see.

The cocker babies all left with no problems…Tally (Bryning Totally Trouble) has gone to Ellen from Cambridgeshire Canines

and Charlie (Bryning Brock) has gone to Hannah from Ready2Fly

...so hopefully we’ll see both out on the flyball circuit next year. Bracken (Bryning Bracken) has gone up to Co. Durham. It’s very quiet at home now with just Ziva and Tarka and will be more so next weekend when Ziva leaves us to go to her new home in Northern Ireland.

We also saw Jude (Bryning Crazy Talk) from Ethan and Dottie's litter and what a handsome boy he's turned into...

the joy of puppies! :)

2009-10-15T23:59:00.007+01:00

Well, not a lot happening in the last couple of weeks. We had a couple of birthdays…Faith and Dylan turned 3 (which meant it was also my brother and sister-in-laws wedding anniversary and I still managed to forget!) and Spud turned 9.

Spud is my little choc tri working sheepdog, he’s a very funny character and was like an old man from the day I brought him home at 6 weeks old so I guess he is gradually ageing into himself. He was diagnosed with an additional and malformed vertebra in his spine as a puppy and with arthritis in his elbows and then his wrists a few years later so he’s always been a bit ‘special’ and limited in what he could. He took what felt like an eternity to train but turned out to be not a bad little obedience dog and was a pretty good little flyball dog in his youth too; still running sub 5 secs up ‘til last season and having the occasional run out in starters this year but he’s slowed dramatically in the last 18 months so I took the decision to retire him completely. He had his last run out in starters at Rotherham back in July and hasn’t run since. He is however still playing a very active role at home as ‘Nanny Spud’…I wouldn’t like to guess the number of pups he has played Nanny to over the past 9 years, he is supremely patient with all our litters and the pups we’ve brought in, he’s playful and caring with them but a good gentle disciplinarian too. Everyone loves Spud and he is greeted every morning by an excited flurry of frantic licks by all the girls and youngsters which he patiently puts up with (bless him).

Last weekend also saw visits from Susan Owen and her husband who have Mouse’s litter brother Jeep, they were over visiting the UK from their home in Oklahoma, we spent a lovely hour or so with them being harassed by Mouse, Faith and granny Lexie for fusses and cuddles….what a soppy lot! Gemma also came up to collect Fynn …hurrah…peace and quiet at last!! lol He is of course quiet and lovely now he’s gone there! More time and attention is all he needed and now he has it which is great. We snapped a few pics of Faith, Lex, Ethan and (a very pregnant looking) Dottie too for a friend who has written an article featuring show bred dogs that are competing successfully in flyball and wanted a pic of the four of them to go with it. Why is it you can’t ever get a pic with everyone looking good at the same time?? These are the best three from the 44 we took in total!! (don’t you just love digital cameras?!)

Sunday Gem and I travelled down to Mansfield to bring the cocker puppies home, we spent a nice hour or so with Julie (Trevellis Border Collies) before loading the babies up and bringing them all back up here. James and Keeley (and of course Maizy) have done a great job, 5 happy, outgoing little monsters! They were 6 weeks old on Monday and I’d forgotten quite how mental 6 week old cocker puppies are! Here’s their first foray out into the garden at our house…

Cocker pups at 6 weeks old
They start to leave this weekend so we only have a week of them all together. I’m not sure if I’m happy or sad about that?? lol Although I had decided not to keep one of these after getting Travis (their half brother), I weakened and we’re keeping Tarka, Bryning Riverine…she’s bonkers!! (reminds me so much of grandad Drake!!)

‘Brock’ is still to find his perfect home, he’s going to be a very unusual dog, it doesn’t look as though he’s going to roan up so he will likely remain open marked white and black with light flecking and tan points…this is pretty rare (well I’ve never seen one before!).

This weekend we’re at Rotherham on Saturday, competing in what will likely be our last tournament of the year and at NWBCC Champ show on Sunday which is really local to us (great!). I will also start preparing the whelping pen in my bedroom in preparation for Dottie who is due next week (to her first mating)…fingers crossed all goes well with that, she’s quite big and very unhappy and restless already (I’m not getting much sleep with her night time fidgeting!). I’m still not sure about Dazzle ; I think she probably is in whelp but she’s very good at hiding it (like her mother before her!); Lexie is definitely in whelp though and starting to show quite clearly, her more slender frame and considerably less coat make it impossible for her to hide!

Lune Valley and Becketts Farm

2009-10-07T00:03:00.002+01:00

Saturday was another ‘day off’ but turned out to be another busy one. Why is it that my supposedly relaxed days always seem to find me rushing from one place to another? Anyway, we went down to Manchester first thing and took Faith to see my friend Katherine who is a McTimoney Chiropracter to have her checked over. It was a few weeks back we’d competed at Acremead and I noticed Faith was struggling to run under 5secs (she’s usually around 4.3-4.4) we’d also done some agility training and she’d refused to jump full height so there was obviously something wrong despite no obvious signs of lameness. I decided to get her checked over before running her at Becketts on Sunday and I’m really glad I did because it transpired she’d suffered a hamstring tear and had quite a build up of scar tissue on her right hind leg as a result (cue me feeling really bad), no flyball for Faith…lead walks and hamstring stretches prescribed. We’re not doing very well with these, she’s resisting the push forward and I don’t know if this is because it’s just very uncomfortable or just Fi being her usual stubborn self?! Lol I’m going to see about taking her for some hydrotherapy.

Anyway, we then headed back home, popping in to see Paul and Alison and Nico to see if they fancied coming along to Myerscough to watch some of the agility. I thought it might be a good way to break Nico into the noise and activity at a flyball show since Agility tends to be less noisy and manic so a good transition. Luckily he absolutely loved it and didn’t want to go home :) Hopefully he’ll enjoy watching Dylan run at Rotherham in a couple of weeks. Had a nice afternoon watching lots of runs and catching up with folk. I was slightly peeved I hadn’t entered my girls (although Fi couldn’t have run anyway) since there were no weaves and the small G1-4 agility looked like something Teal and I could have tackled. I have bitten the bullet and entered Wilmslow at the end of next month. Now we just need to get Fi back fit and get some training in! Sparks’ brother, the lovely Max (Bryning Bright Star) and Sharon were back running now she’s out of plaster, only 2 clear rounds but both saw them with trophies, a 2nd in G3 jumping (losing by 0.02s!) and a 3rd in G3 agility…clever boy! :)

We left Myerscough and headed over to Clitheroe to meet Steve and Bridget who were at a wedding reception, we went to collect Orlaith with the intention of mating her but unfortunately it was too late and we’ve missed her season, better luck next time (which won’t be that far off she has such a short cycle!). We did stop and have tea at the Calf’s Head at Worston, I don’t know about being in a recession, the place was absolutely heaving! We then went home, fed everyone and got changed and went round to Paul and Alisons for drinks and X-factor. Very sensibly though we didn’t stay out late since we had the early start for Becketts in the morning.

Up bright and early on Sunday to get everyone out and loaded up for Becketts, I decided to leave Travis and Wesley at home since Trav had a dicky tummy and I didn’t want him crated in the van for long periods. I do need to get some new piccies of the pair of them though. We arrived for the start of racing at 9am and were ring party first thing, this wasn’t too bad, the weather was kind, bright and sunny but it was rather nippy. Next we were in Division 6 with the only team we’d entered, Demon Pawz. I did feel a bit bad because we were already top seed by quite a margin (about 0.4s) but since entering the team Gemma had decided to come and wanted to run Bailey so I knew we were going to run quite a bit faster (Bailey is probably 0.75-1.00sec faster than Pip who he was replacing)…we ended up running 18.51 with Paul from Cheshire Set still telling us off for not tightening up! That’s the Pawz seed time well and truly blown! We ran Mac - Bailey - Teal - Ethan. Genna from Alpha Dogz kindly ran Eth and Amanda boxloaded for us and I have to say…Ethan ran really well and he even managed to consistently turn left all day, regardless of what lane he was in. I actually think this is because we were so much faster than the opposition so he was always well ahead of their last dog going in…there was nothing to look at in the other lane! I will have a think about how we might use this to train him out of his ‘nosey beak’ box tendencies! The last race of the day was rather sad as we ran Drake in place of Ethan. These 3 legs will likely be his last as a Demon Dog, he went to his new home straight from the tournament so it’s just a case of seeing how he settles but I don’t forsee any problems to be honest. We will miss the mad little buggar, he’s such a loveable character but I think he’ll be much happier in a home where he gets more one-to-one. What was quite interesting was that in that last race where both Teal and Drake were running, she dropped to running 5.2’s despite having been under 5.0secs for the rest of the day, I knew as soon as we went in the ring that her focus was not there, they really do not run well together! I must say she did look rather lonely curled up in the back of her crate without him on the way home bless her, she’ll soon have Travis coming everywhere with us to keep her company though.

Fynn and Lola both had their rabies vaccinations at the show, the first step in getting their passports so that they can travel to the Euros next year, fingers crossed they’ll both be up and running by then! I haven’t had any dogs done this year, anyone who’s likely to come with us is already passported thankfully!

I managed to take photos of other peoples’ dogs and videos of other teams but nothing of ours…sorry!

This is Bentley who runs with Molten, aka Littlethorn Bentley, he’s another son of Tally (Sh CH Littlethorn Contintental) and is a super little flyball dog. I’m hoping for something similar from our expected Tally-Lexie litter…fingers crossed!

So that was the weekend, next weekend we have visitors from the US (the people who own Jeep, from Rico and Faith’s litter) and I will be travelling down to Mansfield to bring the cocker puppies home, am just awaiting confirmation from the KC that their names have been accepted (2nd attempt, these new naming rules are proving a bit of a nightmare!); hopefully we will find the little boy the perfect new home in the next couple of weeks too. I think he’s just lovely :)

The Next Generation...

2009-10-06T13:35:00.005+01:00

The latest crop of Bryning Agility dogs are up and coming. The Bond-Lori and Rhett-Quinn pups have turned 18 months old in the last month and are set to make their debuts in the agility rings, however Surf thought better of it and decided to come in season! Brother Chief made his debut at the weekend though, he got lots of ‘nearly’ runs with just 5f and a clear in Grade 3 jumping with a 5th place :)

Some pics of Chief…lovely jumping style…very like big sis Teal.

Pics by Action Replay Photography

Diesel is also going great guns

Pic by Giruff

You can read all about D's training and progress on the Giruff Blog

Not much to report...

2009-10-06T11:20:00.003+01:00

Haven't done a posting for a couple of weeks but haven't really had much to report, we had a weekend off at the end of September so I spent it doing ‘normal’ things for a change…hairdressers, shopping and lunch out with my mum, family round for Sunday lunch and a bit of DIY and gardening…how very civilized! lol

I have finally secured the fence between us and the cows so no more jaunts for Spark et al out under the netting and into the field to roll in cow shit! The cows found my fencing very interesting and decided to assist by licking my hair and just generally being very annoying!! lol Squirrel has decided that now she can’t squeeze under the fence and run gaily around the cows (who just stand and stare at her rather bemused) that she will stand at the fence and bark at them instead…oooh…BAD parson!! This does of course also now mean that I can let dogs out into the main garden without having to be supervised which is much much better, they love having the space and freedom to really run around like wild things playing their chasing games and will soon wear each other out! Going for a run in the fields just doesn’t seem to cut it when they’re used to being away at the weekends and I do tend to find that we get a lot of loitering around the back of the van with hopeful glances every time I walk past. It’s funny because they get as much, if not more, exercise when at home but it seems they miss the mental stimulation/excitement of our weekend trips.

Dazzle had a bath and good groom on Sunday morning, she has more coat than any bitch I’ve ever known and it’s like a soft sponge that soaks up every bit of dirt and moisture! It’s a shame because it does actually limit how much I show her (i.e. very little), aside from keeping her in a box or her permanently wearing one of those all in one suits I don’t think there’s any way of keeping her coat in the sort of condition required for the showring. Thankfully Spark has inherited the harsher texture from Ethan and doesn’t require quite so much work!

Fynn also had a bath, he’s at that funny ‘in between’ age, 9 months old…not quite an adult yet but not really a puppy either. He’s an absolute pillock, very boisterous and bouncy…in fact he’s just a bigger, stronger version of Kitten! He’s shaping up quite nicely, just needs to mature and ‘tighten up’ a bit, he actually reminds me very much of Kitten’s brother and his namesake…Finn, Locheil Finnishing First who lives out in Hungary. Fynn will be going to live with Gemma and I’m hoping the one-to-one will do him some good. Hopefully he’ll be trained up for flyball and also attend a few shows in the future.

Dottie is starting to show signs of her pregnancy now and has gone onto 2 meals a day and started her daily panacur treatment, I just wish she would learn to slow down and take a bit more care of herself. Some bitches seem to instinctively do this when they’re in whelp, like a self preservation thing but not Dottie…she still tears around like a wild child, I think I’m going to have to separate her from the others and force her to stop; she whelped 5 days early with her last litter and 3 of the 9 pups she produced were stillborn, I can’t help wondering if this had something to do with her behaviour and am obviously keen not to have a repeat of this.

We were at Lune agility show (just spectating) and flyballing at Becketts Farm this weekend, I'll post an update on that later.

Darlington & Acremead...another long haul weekend

2009-09-21T11:56:00.006+01:00

Last busy weekend of the year with a 520mile road trip to take in Darlington Champ Show, being held at Newby Hall in North Yorkshire on Saturday followed by flyball at Abingdon in Oxfordshire on Sunday (despite there being a flyball tournament on in Darlington too!! lol)

Dogs were bathed on Friday night in between watching ‘Strictly’ and catching up on my e-mails/facebook etc. This was the scene underneath my desk...

the two lone feet are Ethans' since he was right in front of my chair and under my legs then my old WSD Spud (aka Nanny Spud lol) with Travis draped over him and little Wes curled up on his feet. Wesley is our newest addition who arrived from Scotland earlier this week. He is from the same breeder as Squirrel, my friend Paul Fitzsimmons (Glendream), and they are actually cousins.

Eventually we got everything packed and prepared for the weekend but it ended up being a rather late one to bed (for a change!) followed by a fairly early start, although I didn’t have anyone in the ring ‘til Limit dog and judging wasn’t starting ‘til 9.30am I wanted to get there in good time so I could have Spark out around the rings and get him settled before his class, so we didn’t have a repeat of last weeks’ performance! We arrived just before 10am and got set up and sorted. It was another hot day so I got Spark prepped and then walked him round the rings and sat in the shade by the James Wellbeloved stand and watched the judging. He’s still dropping coat so a lot had come out after bathing and more again on grooming in the morning, I do think Spark is one of those dogs that often looks better for losing a bit of coat (like his dad) and was happy with how he ‘scrubbed up’. The judge was from Denmark and this was his first UK appointment so I wasn’t sure what he’d do, I do wonder how these foreign judges cope with the big entries here though, they’re around 5 times bigger than the biggest entries on the continent so that’s a lot more dogs to assess!
Limit dog was the largest class of the day with 18 entries and some nice dogs in there so I wasn’t sure how we were going to get on but Spark redeemed himself and I was really pleased with the way he went. No repeat of last weeks’ giddy shenanigans (good boy) and he didn’t even seem to mind being picked up by his tail while being gone over (!! See the video). I was really pleased when he was pulled out for the shortlist and more so when he placed 3rd, he’s really starting to mature and look the part now and I’m happy that he’s holding his own in these large strong classes, I think it’ll be another year before he’s really at his best though, we’ll see.

Mouse, well…what can I say…she is one very ‘foody’ little dog and had not forgotten about last weeks’ tasty delights from the boxer ring, the result being that she just wanted to move round the ring with her nose glued to the floor the whole time…arghhhhh!!! It’s very frustrating because when she did get her head up and move properly she actually moved really well. She got binned anyway.

Dottie was in Limit bitch again so wasn’t in ‘til late afternoon, this was a relatively big class but she went really well, received a lot of nice comments ringside but got binned, just not flashy enough for this judge I don’t think…hmph…just look at the way she moved in the vid though...love this dog :)

We left the show around 4.30pm and headed straight down to stay with Joy and Becca (again!), we had another lovely meal and evening with them (thanks guys) but were very sensibly all in bed for midmight! Joy and Becca left for Trent Park agility early doors and we left later to drive the 30 mins or so down to the flyball at Acremead kennels. We had a lovely day at the Mad Mutts show, it was so small and friendly and relaxed. There was only me and Drew running a team that consisted entirely of my own dogs, having 7 competing at the moment I had to draw straws and decide who to run and we ended up with Mac, Faith, Lexie and Teal and stuck to those four. My old friend Pete who used to run with us a few years back before emigrating to Spain was in the country and came over to see us and lend a hand which was great, it was lovely to see him and great to have an extra pair of hands. Sharon and Richard from the High Flyers also came over and helped us out too even though they didn’t have a team entered (aren’t flyballers just the best people?!) and we had Nat from Bristol on the line and keeping us in order. It was a fun day and we came 2nd in Div 3 with a fastest time of 19.54 which had actually broken us out…oops! I’d entered the Demon Racers on a submitted time of 20.05 to ensure we got to run on Sunday but knew it would be close (if you submit a time you cannot run more than 0.5sec faster or you break out and automatically lose that leg, break out 3 times and you become ineligible to compete). We managed to ‘hang lose’ and not break out again but lost a crucial race against the Bassetts on lights (doh!) so missed out on that first place…ah well…c’est la vie!

Squirrel ran in the Mutts Intermediate team and did really well, they ran best of 5 legs in a 7 team division (the most running she’s ever done) with wings instead of full netting and she was great, running with lots of dogs she’d never met before and running either start dog or in a later position with no problems…clever parson! There was a photographer on site who got some lovely pics of her, I’ll see if I can find them and post the link.

Made it home for around 10pm and promptly fell asleep exhausted…what an exhausting but fun weekend!