Packington Agility

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

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

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

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…

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…

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

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!