A very positive start!

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!

Busy but constructive day off

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.

Drax - May Bank Holiday

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!

More Starters Flyball...

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

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)