Summerick Dog Blog

Scanda Lena Loo at UKA

2011-12-08T05:38:00.000-08:00

Oh dear I am four weeks behind now... still have UKA and Olympia to write about... UKA first...

Scandal was a little star for me at UKA. We had qualified for the Beginners Steeplechase back in March. The Finals were held at the Hand Stadium where they held the WAO in May 2011.

It felt a bit weird doing a 'show' in December. But it wasn't so bad as the venue was only 35 minutes from my house :-) so although we had to be there early for the check in and warm up run, I didn't leave the house until 6.20, so not actually too early.

We had a warm up run first, a lovely spread out course, nice and flowing. Ahhh it is SO nice to do a flowing course again! Scandal went clear in this, she was a bit scrabbly on the flooring the first half, having not run on 'non-grass' surfaces very often, however adjusted half way round and seemed to cope much better.

Then the semi final, we ran about 12th, there were 20 in each height of the semi. To get to the final you needed to be in the top 10 in each height. Scandal did a lovely clear and won it :-)

This meant she ran last in the Final, this course was a bit more trappy than the semi, two sets of boxes that the dog needed to go through rather than diagonal. I have worked hard at getting Scandal to do this and it seems to have paid off... I know at least 3 of the 10 got E'd on one of those boxes. Scandal worked the course beautifully, went clear, and WON the final :-D what a clever cookie.
Thank you to Bernadette for taking this pic of us :-D

My main aim of doing this show was to be in a competitive environment before Olympia, work a big course, and enjoy the excitement and pressure, rather than nervous which worries Scandal. I'd also set myself a goal of getting to the final and then getting a top 3 place... so we achieved everything I set out to... very happy :-)

Catch up

2011-10-24T05:54:00.000-07:00

Kind of lost interest in blogging a bit now… plus just don’t seem to have enough time to do it. Sooo here goes, roundup of the last month or so.

Gillingham – Scandal got into the champ final again – yeayyy! Got e’d about 100 times in the actual final, I got way too excited and handled like an imbecile, poor Scandal… but we had fun, and got our monies worth of the expensive champ class :-P

Then our next show was Chippenham – I must admit I was not realling feeling it for this show – had had 2 days off work that week, the dogs hadn’t trained since Gillingham, I felt sooo dizzy in the morning – every time I did a front cross when walking a course completely lost my bearings, didn’t really bode well.

Scandal’s champ jumping didn’t really go to plan – she missed her weave entry and then ran round a jump. She did a nice round in the agility and came 5th – didn’t seem nearly as fast as at the beginning of September - she seems quite flat after her season so I think it’s hormones. We didn’t get in to the champ final, however it’s definitely given me the champ bug for next year :-)

I ran Honey at Chippenham, which apart from 1 run at Gillingham and the semis, was her first show since KC Fest – I have to say that after having struggled all year to get any kind of bond with her, in the last month she has improved so much as a pet (nothing agility related) that we are actually getting on pretty well. She’s on lead for most walks so doesn’t ruin them by running off, and now has something that resembles manners – e.g. doesn’t barge out of as many doors, waits for her dinner, and just generally does as she’s told more often than she doesn’t.

So back to Chippenham, Champ Jumping she was clear, and motored from about halfway round the course and even gave a couple of excited yips, think she was about 4th in this. The champ agility she did a lovely round with a great dogwalk (the lure of being homeward bound) and finished 2nd. She qualified for the final in 2nd place, so ran penultimately. She was doing a beautiful round, then I sent her into a tunnel and off I ran, instead of collecting her, so she put in another jump on her way to me. Silly Char – Honey’s done so well this year and has qualified for every champ final I’ve done with her bar one, and then I’ve messed up every champ final bar one. It’s hard as I have to push her harder as she still doesn’t tend to ‘give’ unless she has to, but in doing that it's out of my comfort zone so my timing's not great. We’ve done 1 training session in the last 6 weeks and she was crazy, she’s going to have until the middle of November off agility and then we’ll start training for Olympia.

Last week I went to the WAO tryouts with Scandal, probably not the best prepared for it as we had only trained once in the last 6 weeks or so, I only entered it as a last minute thing, I don't particularly want to qualify for it as I don't think Scandal would be ready for that level of competition at the start of next year, but thought the tryout day would be a good experience, and it was. We ran 4 'drill' type exercises and then 2 courses, we didn't do too badly but there are certainly a lot of things that I've taken home to practice! She was also lacking her usual spark, again I think hormone related. I think she was about 8th overall in the 650 height, out of 20 or 30 ish dogs (can't remember exactly how many). Like Honey, she is now on agility-rest until mid November.

Yay for the fact that we now have no shows until the UKA Finals and then Olympia, love having my weekends back! x

Olympia Semi Final

2011-09-12T05:39:00.000-07:00

This is Scandal’s run from the Olympia Semi Final at Stoneleigh. I have watched it back lots, I think all the hits it has on youtube are me watching it on repeat. I think Scandal looks like she is driving a lot better in this. My handling was a bit dopey on 3 – 4, I thought the turn was HUGE but although wide, she didn’t waste 5 minutes as it felt when I was running it. And she drove on to the dogwalk really nicely. Love the acceleration she gets after the aframe. Very pleased with her weave entry. I think this is one of my favourite runs of the year. What a good Scandalbeans.

What a weekend

2011-09-08T05:04:00.001-07:00

Scandal's champ runs from Prestbury Park

Well, that has to be one of the best weekends that I can remember. On the Friday, Scandal had the Novice Olympia qualifier, and Honey the Small Olympia qualifier. Saturday was Scandal’s first champ at Prestbury Park, and Sunday was the Senior (6-7) Olympia qualifier.

Friday my alarm went off at 4am and I promptly switched it off and went back to sleep. Eventually managed to get up and was ready before we planned to leave at 5.30 (those who know me will know this is a record).

I had decided to do something a little different with Scandal this weekend. After KC Fest, where she just exploded with excitement and I couldn’t keep the lid on her, I decided (especially with 3 days of agility) that I would not queue at all, keep her right back away from everyone, and see if it helped with both her and my stress levels. I’ve found Scandal very hard work this year with the two incidents of a dog running into her and another dog attacking her, she has been quite nervous when being approached by strange dogs and more so in agility, which has made her quite reactive to a handful of dogs, although she is improving and is much better than she was in June. Out on walks etc she is fine, but I need to manage it better at shows.

The first class was the warm up for the Novice Olympia. I was excited and a little apprehensive knowing how disastrous last year’s semi was with Scandal bottling out of the big jumps. Well she was great – not fully confident but was very giving and did a lovely clear and came 4th.

Then the real thing. We ran pretty early so did not have the luxury of knowing how many clears there would be. She took a pole after the flat tunnel which proved to be the ‘bogey jump’ of the class with many dogs taking it. So I had to push it, and Scandal flew. Up to 15, which was the easy part to the course… dogwalk tunnel and then a long straight home… Scandal came to me after the tunnel instead of doing the jump… and it was the Joint Aid jump which I should have known she wouldn’t want to drive to. She flew straight past it and over the long jump. So that was that, our hope for the Novice was not to be!

Then a fairly long wait till Honey’s semi. She was fairly excited for the warm up and came 5th. Then in the real thing, she did an ‘ok’ round, got a bit caught in the flat tunnel and was generally sluggy and felt like she didn’t really want to be there. We had run early, so had a long wait as there were quite a few clears, and was delighted that we got in with 8th (top 10 qualify). Clever Honey.

Saturday, Scandal’s champ. I was soooooo excited about this, and perhaps it was a good thing as it meant that the semis weren’t the be all and end all that they were last year. I had my own goals from what I wanted from the champ, and was hoping that the courses wouldn’t be too hard for me to remember.

Champ Jumping first – massive course, really spread out, and a few subtle turns that would see half the class get e’d. Scandal did a lovely run apart from getting slightly caught in the flat tunnel and came 3rd, which I was uber chuffed with. It was one of the first courses where I have felt that she has almost caught me out (at the rigid tunnel) with her speed, infact I thought she was going to take my legs out when I said ‘tunnel’ too early. She loved doing the huge course.

Champ Agility next – again fairly big course and I decided to do a 3 obstacle recall to get a better angle to the long jump, which worked really nicely. I took her seesaw steady as didn’t want her to try and slide it as she hasn’t been on that many rubber contacts. Such a good little girl, luckily for me after the flat tunnel you could put them in either end of the rigid as Scandal had other ideas to me (I was more concerned with her going straight on over the wall.) She did a lovely clear and came 7th… and then it dawned on me that we would make it to the final!

Champ Final – we ended up 2nd over the first two courses combined so ran 19th out of 20 in the final. I did not watch any of the other dogs as have been keeping Scandal away from the ring and other dogs, Will Rolfe was running 18th and I watched a tiny bit of his run, and knew he was clear as were a few others. I took the first 3 jumps a little carefully as 2 was the wall and Scandal has never jumped it on an angle before. How she managed to keep her feet up on the jump before the weaves I have no idea as I completely mangled the turn, got in her way and she had no idea what I was doing. But she saved me and looked pretty neat over it, then through an angled box where for some reason I decided to shout “go go” as she was doing the long jump and I think she had thought she’d finished as she took off over it, lol. Dog walk into tunnel, I had decided to run it and she caned down it so fast I nearly didn’t make it over to the next jump in time. Managed to steer her round the last bit and we went CLEAR! We got the reserve CC. O M G. I am still smiling about it. We were 0.2 off Will and Scoot who won. Ant and Gass were 3rd, Ian and Bobbie 4th. Go Scandalbaby. Soooo happy.

Olympia Qualifier final day. We were in the 6-7 semi. Our warm up course was the same as the 3-5 invitational – really nice. It did not go well. Scandal completely demolished the spread, which was number 5, took off miles too early and just ploughed through it. Scandal so rarely takes poles and is not a careless dog, and her confidence can get knocked sooo easily that the last thing I wanted was for her to potentially hurt/scare herself. Checked to make sure she was ok and then we carried on. All going well until the flat tunnel, long jump, where she ran past the long jump. I called her back to re-do the long jump and then she cut through it coming out the side, so had to re-do it again…. Ahhh there are times I just wanted to hurry up and finish and this was one of them lol.

So, the semi final. Our running order was half way down, and by then there were around 15 clears so I knew that a fast five would not be good enough and it was more likely that a fast clear would be needed. Scandal was amazing. I just tried to say the minimum but give her clear enough commands. I thought two of her turns (3-4, and the box after the weaves) were huge, but they weren’t too bad looking on the video, but something for us to work on. She did a lovely clear and came 4th, so has qualified for Olympia. WOW. I have wanted to qualify for Olympia ever since seeing agility probably 13 or 14 years ago at Olympia, got to the semis with Rix and Tia but always blew out in the qualifiers. And then this year I qualify two dogs! I am soooo happy.

The only slight issue is I now have to get seriously fit. I was exhausted running Honey on the Friday so goodness knows what I will be like at Olympia with the ring about a million times bigger. So much for my planned winter of utter laziness! We just have Gillingham and Chippenham left and then a couple of months off. I am very happy with how the dogs are running and have met all my goals for the year... now to write some more :-)

Tia still doesn't think she is 9, thinks she is a puppy, is sooo bouncy and happy... and still very silly. I think this year might be her last at full KC height as watching her runs back with Imogen at KC she does jump squiffy on a couple, but then that is something she has always done from taking off far too far away. She will have the rest of the year off now as it's unlikely Imogen will be able to run her at the UKA Finals in December, so we will see what next year brings.

Ricky is doing well at 12 and a half, he has been a bit up and down in the last couple of months but he seems much better now (shame the same can't be said for my bank balance lol), he has enjoyed going round the rings at KC Fest, oh and he was at the prize giving for Scandal's Olympia on Sunday and got in on the group shot :-)

Love my dogs :-)

Olympia Agility video and Scandal the Sheepdog

2011-09-01T09:35:00.000-07:00

Here is a (slightly delayed) video of Scandal winning the 6-7 Olympia Agility at Agility Club, and some of her other runs including her G6 Jumping win in Barrie’s class (cooool course).

Two weeks ago I took Scandal Tia and Ricky down to Cornwall for some sheepdog training (for Scandal) and some walks on Bodmin Moor too. We did 4 days of sheepdog training, and I think Scandal was delighted that we had traded in a weekend of agility for a weekend of… heaven.

She’s so natural and focused when it comes to working sheep. It took her no time at all before she was going out round the sheep and bringing them back to me, and if I changed direction walking backwards, she would go the other way to keep the 12 o’clock, sheep, 6 o’clock position. The best bit was on day 3 we were out in the field and had *finished* the training session and were stood chatting in the middle chatting, and Scandal decided that we hadn’t finished, took herself off, beautifully collected the sheep and brought them to us, and then kept them with us. She would have worked until her legs dropped… now… if only I could get the same dedication to agility, lol.

Last weekend Ant very kindly let us use his field as Sian was down, and I got to do an hour of agility with her on Saturday and Sunday. I worked Honey too… training with Honey has not been going well lately, she really doesn’t like me, wants Imogen back I think… and I find it pretty hard to like her, when she gives absolutely nothing unless she has to. Not like my lovely little ‘what do you want me to do mum’ collies. But still, I am persevering because I get glimmers of this completely awesome little dog. And sometimes (occasionally) at home, she’s quite sweet… when she’s not barging past me, catching pigeons, jumping on the furniture, barking/whining, running round with my shoe, etc etc. And this weekend showed me why I do persevere – Honey was CRAZY for agility. Well that just knocked me off my feet with surprise. We got ‘squeaky spaniel’ who squeaked/screamed her way through the weaves, the aframe, jumps, like a total nut. She thought Sian was great fun. I got a bit carried away with my enthusiasm, I don’t think Sian could work out which of us screamed the loudest. But wow Honey totally rocked.

The problem? I have no idea why she decided she was going to go similar speed to training at my field, no idea why she was so excited, wanted to work, wanted to do agility. But hey guess that is the ‘fun’ of spanielsaurus J

Scandal was soooo lovely, I am so pleased with how she is turning out. I still couldn’t get my brain to operate fast enough sometimes, but when it did, we did some nice stuff. She is a very happy Scandalina at the moment, I think she’s still in euphoria from all the sheepwork we did J

KC Festival

2011-08-16T05:11:00.000-07:00

I had a great time at the KC Festival. I stayed with Jess and Lee, but had my own tent so could fill it with the endless amount of junk I appear to need for 4 days away.

Scandal was, as predicted, a complete lunatic, out of the 4 seesaws she did over the weekend she held 3 seesaws perfectly and I put her back on 1. She held all her dogwalks bar one which I put her back on. I took her out of 2 classes, she is obsessing with her 'out rounds' which she loves, and wants to fit in wherever possible. She also decided that weave entries were optional, and didn't actually make one until her 4th class of the weekend. She got a 3rd in G6 Jumping with one little blip at the start (she keeps going quicker than my brain can deal with) and an 11th in Marc Saunders fab G6 Agility with held contacts. I hate holding contacts but feel that with Scandal speeding up at each show I really need the control and Scandal has to know 100% that I expect her to wait for the release command. The majority of each round she did was great, just little mistakes from me being too slow.

Honey was great, 10 days of being on the lead on walks and she seemed very excited to be off the lead for her agility runs! She won the YKC Int'l Agility with Imogen on the Friday, and got a 3rd in the British Open Agility and 9th in the British Open Jumping with me. This put her into the finals on the Sunday for the British Open, lying 4th from the end, and also in the Nations Cup. She got e'd in the British Open, but ran pretty nicely which was a relief in front of so many people. Our team in the Nations Cup got a 3rd in the Jumping and 4th in the Agility which put us 3rd overall and on the podium!!

Very proud of Laura and Be for having an awesome weekend and winning out of grade 3, qualifying for the Novice Cup semi and getting a clear in the semi and 12th place. Lee and Todd also had a clear and won G1 Jumping.

Scandal was in a great mood over the weekend and spent most of her free time playing with Tia, or Stig, Jess's puppy, which she was totally in love with. By yesterday she was absolutely shattered and spent all day sleeping and I didn't hear a peep from her. Back to normal now though!

Agility Club

2011-08-08T05:03:00.000-07:00

I do actually have a video finally... but I haven't uploaded it yet. I must try and do this soon but the week is flying by and I have soooooooooo much to do at work, I think I'll need the Thursday of KC to sleep and recover.

Well we were in Kent on the Friday before Agility Club so coming up from that way to Ardingly. And a pedestrian had for some reason chosen Saturday morning to walk up the motorway and get run over, so they shut the motorway between two junctions, in both directions. Lots of traffic and Garth’s own diversion later to avoid the car par park that was the official diversion, we arrived at Ardingly at 8.40. Just in time for Imogen to walk her first champ, and just not in time for me to walk the 6-7 Olympia. Now, the 6-7 Olympia I had chosen to be the one class out of the 3 agility’s I had this weekend to go for – not so much to qualify for, but to gage how Scandal faired against some of the top class 6 and 7 dogs. I loved Simon Peachey’s course, big and spread out, there were a couple of bits I was unsure about how to handle, and I went through these with Tracy F, studied the course for a while until I was confident how I was going to play it, and then we were off. Scandal seems to have gone up another notch in confidence levels and decided that she was going to adopt a new form of startline wait, a crouch, a cross between a down and a sit. She was fantastic, good grief I love her sooo much! Everything I asked her to do she did as fast as her little socks could take her. I told her ‘poles’ and she drove to them, and even though she was driving to pole number 2 or 3 when she realised where the first was she pulled herself round to make sure she got it. Ahhhh she was good. She went into the lead, and held it through the rest of the class. She won it by 1.5 seconds. Cripes, that little girl is a good baby.

Scandal’s other class was a G6/7 jumping and I took my own line to give her a blast. She came out of her weaves as I was pulling off them, but got them 2nd time round.

Sunday, we took our own line in the G6 Agility as I wanted to practice aframe weaves, which she nailed, and then seesaw with me racing her, which she tried to hold on to with her tail, so she went back on that. And then she did a lovely running dog walk to finish yay! G6 Jumping, Barrie James’ course, loved it, and Scandal loved it too and won it! There were a couple of turns we need to work on as Scandal didn’t put a neat check stride in, but she felt like she was motoring.

The Crufts Singles was our last run and probably the only one this year where I’ve thought ahhhhh, help. Scandal thought she knew best :O she did a lovely sequence at the start of tunnel under aframe and very sharp turn into the weaves. I was going to train this class anyway as have no intention of trying to qualify her for Crufts ’12. So I raced her dog walk, telling her to target, and she just ran straight through the contact over the next jump! Just completely thought I’d told her to run it (or, whatever, she thought she was doing the right thing). So she went back on that, and then we did 3 jumps to seesaw on our way out, and Scandal ran straight through that too! At this point I picked her up and left the ring. Well, well, well. I kind of knew that as I’d pushed a few of her grade 6 agilitys and the class on Saturday that I’d have to train a few for a while, but didn’t quite expect Scandal to do that. All fun though! Looks like we will be training all our agility’s over the next few weeks!

I did two runs with Honey, the Crufts Singles and Olympia. And…. She won the Singles and came 2nd in the Olympia!!!!!! This should hopefully give her enough points for the Crufts Singles now, and also qualifies her for the Olympia semis. Good span.

Imogen ran Honey for the first time in 4 months and despite only being allowed to train twice since April they did some great stuff, Honey having 5f in the champ jumping and then an E in the agililty (Honey in her own little world after the dw). They then regained their confidence for the Agility Club Junior Over 12 Finals in the evening and won it, and Tia came 3rd with 5f! They also had 2 fab runs on the Sunday, one judge giving Imi a judges special for great handling :-) with just a small error in both classes. Imi ran Tia in the Singles and got a lot further than we did, Tia just running round a jump. Hopefully she will be able to do some classes at KC Fest.

We've just had a weekend off... what a novelty. Honey is currently on 'Ruff Love' after running off AGAIN after we trained last week. She was gone for ages and it was dark by the time we found her. I was convinced she had been stolen as there was a suspicious looking car that had gone by the time we'd gone back to take the number plate. Stupid spaniel was found later in the night, in the woods, happy as larry, not at all worried! So, she's on lead, or in her cage / puppy pen. Makes me realise how demanding she is as she's always pawing, clawing, jumping up, barking, whining, etc etc. When she's on a lead she's on a headcollar so she can't tow me. We trained once on Saturday for 2 mins, and she was great, very enthusiastic (and promptly tried to run off before I could catch her again). I find this sooooo hard to do as my dogs get lots of freedom, so this is a bit of a culture shock to us both. Still, better that than a stolen-spaniel or a squished-in-the-road spaniel. Time will tell whether it makes any difference.

Caerphilly and UKA

2011-08-03T05:03:00.000-07:00

I will keep Caerphilly very brief (for me anyway). We (Scandal and I) had 3 runs, 5-7 Circ Jumping where Scan was running somewhat conservatively and ran round a jump, we just carried on. 6-7 Jumping was a bit silly IMO, with 6 pull throughs (all the same style too, not very creative) and I decided that I would do this as can’t keep not doing her jumpings, but work on layering the weaves with the finish jump so I’d be pulling off to the side. We managed 5 pull throughs and then on the 6th one, round a box, Scandal decided she preferred her favourite ‘out round’ rather than through. But she did beautiful fast and confident weaves with me layering the jump so I was very happy J

The 6-7 Agility, I mostly liked the course, it had huge spacings which suits Scandal but not me quite so much. It also had a weave entry that while I thought Scandal could do it, was much tougher than the ones you get in Novice, and I’m aware that Scandal’s still learning to find them in the ring. I decided I’d just send her to it and drive at them, rather than helping her or hanging back. Also needed a ‘here’ running past a jump which involved me working it from the other side of a different jump, much easier if I had a vid but I don’t! Scandal needs one agility, and somehow, I was absolutely point blank determined that this was going to be it. I think in the last two months I have learnt that you need to believe, without belief you won’t reach your goals. And I believed in Scandal, I believed in our training and trusted Scandal to do her stuff. And she did. The first 5 jumps she was a little steady, and from then on she just flew. It felt amazing, like we were a partnership, and she understood me and I understood her J she did a beautiful pull through, lovely fast dog walk and aframe, a great ‘here’ command where she ran with me until I told her what jump to do, the longest snake she’s ever done (the spaces between each jump were hyuuuge), speedy seesaw and spread to finish. She won it by about 2 secs, taking us into Grade 7 and Champ. Wowwww. Scandal’s 4th grade 6 show, and 4th win.

I’d entered Honey in an agility class too so ran that with her and she actually ran quite fast, was a very good girl and tried hard, and won it! Yayyy!

UKA

On the Sunday I entered UKA, I wanted to hold Scandal’s contacts in Beginners Agility, which she did, by the skin of her teeth, i.e. seesaw weeeeee, just keep my toes on. Trained her gamblers and she did two super stop dog walks which I rewarded her for (doing good tunnel/dw discrim too clever girl), and a fab weave entry which I also rewarded her for. Then she missed her weave entry in the jumping, no idea why, it was very simple, think she was just soooo excited. Not going to make a big deal of it, she’s still finding her feet, and her speed. Was very pleased though with how happy she was and how confident she looked, so much fun running her.
Didn't run the spaniel, the sun was out and I just could not muster up enough enthusiasm, she is so exhausting to run, and takes a lot of psyching up, both her and me! Next stop Agility Club... and a video tooo...

Rugby

2011-08-01T05:05:00.000-07:00

Running 3 show behind but never mind big catch up this week!

We had a great Rugby show. This is always one of my favourite shows, we’ve done it for as long as I can remember.

Scandal was a good baby dog and won G6 agility on the Saturday, by 2 seconds! I said very little to her, just let her concentrate on her stuff, and she was such a good girl. In the Crufts Singles I was only going to train it anyway, it started 2 jumps dogwalk, she went into 4off and I said ‘good target’ and she reversed back on. We had a bit of a hitch with aframe weaves as Scandal seemed to get in a bit of a pickle with them and it took us 3 goes to complete them, but I stuck to what I had aimed for to layer a jump the other side of the weaves, which was good. The seesaw she slid and there was no way she was going to stop so I couldn’t help slip in a ‘waitttt’ which she duly did :)

Didn’t run the jumping as it was raining and I had misspaniel to run. Then on the Sunday, Scandal was having a super run in Jayne Widdess’ G6/7 Agility, worked sooo well and did 2 lovely ‘out rounds’ (I think these are her favourite thing!)…… and then she ran past the last jump coz she saw her bally. Lesson for me – must work the last jump! Was a bit gutted as we had done all the hard stuff. In the 6-7 Olympia Scandal did a lovely running dog walk, then nice jumps, then I forgot where I was going and sent her into the wrong end of the tunnel, poor Scandal. Couldn’t quite get the sharp turn into the weave entry but got it on 2nd attempt, and then 4-off on her seesaw, naughtyyy. Her seesaws this year are certainly very different to last year! I then didn’t do the jumping as just didn’t like it, there was no flow to it and I am not going to ask her to unnecessarily bend over backwards to make awkward turns/angles.

And then span…. WELL. She got 4th in the Crufts Singles, which I was thrilled with. Champ Jumping (I was on a high from the place in the Singles) Honey decided that on no account did she like the lovely flowing course the judge had set, and broke into a TROT. I wanted the floor to swallow me up, I was so embarrassed. She finished 5 seconds off the pace, it was truly cringeworthy.

Then in the Champ Agility… well, this it seems, was more do-able, Honey much faster and we came 3rd! How is it that she can go from trotting, to almost galloping, in the space of an hour?

This double clear put us into the final. I’ve had 3 goals with Honey this year and one of them was to go clear in a champ final (this year). She has done 4 champs and made 3 champ finals, but the previous 2 I had managed to mess up in the final. Finals with Honey I’m always in two minds about, I don’t get nervous about the course or running her. I get nervous about the fact that I have absolutely no idea how fast/slow she is going to go until I release her. I am so concerned she will have one of her “I hate agility” moments in a champ final, when there’s loads of people watching. Anyway, she was pretty good in this one, nowhere near her fastest but at least she ran, we went clear, and came 3rd. Yay good spaniel, and goal achieved! Woooo!

She was very naughty the next day in the Olympia Q… she was actually flying, and completely ignored me when I asked her to turn after the dog walk. Bad span. We re-did the turn, she ignored me, so I picked her up, walked her out to the car. I have never not rewarded her after a run. We then had to go and do teams, and I was slightly worried that she would refuse to work after still waiting on her sweeties from the last run. However, always managing to baffle me, she ran probably the fastest she’s ever run in her life, absolutely flew round. AHHHHHHHHHH! So frustrating, I just cannot work her out.

So we ended Rugby with Scandal on 3 wins towards G7 and Honey with a 3rd in champ final and more Crufts Singles points, what a great show :)

Diamond

2011-07-10T13:32:00.000-07:00

It was my first time doing Diamond show in Bristol, and I have to say, I really enjoyed it. Mainly I think, because they had good judges, I enjoyed running all 3 of the courses I ran today, so thank you Andrew Dicker, Barrie James and Martin Cavill.

I had figured that Saturday was going to be a rather messy and late night, so had hoped that my runs wouldn't be first on today. Wronggg, two first on, and one mid morning! That hasn't happened all year! Not that I am complaining as it meant that we could get away by 12 and I was in bed asleep by 2!

So walked the two jumping courses, walked them both wrong, and it took me 5 attempts before i managed to walk Barrie's course correctly, and it wasn't even that complicated!

After how great Scandal behaved at Lansdown (out of the ring), my hopes of a repeat of this were dashed when she behaved worse than she has done for months, launching herself around at the end of the lead like a total hooligan, getting her tooth caught under my watch and making all her gums bleed, and just making me wonder why I had got up at 7am at all. Mum came with me to the show today which was highly amusing, she hasn't come to a show for about 4 years so I found it very funny having her with me. She was very good and queued for me so I didn't have to, which was quite lucky as I think i would have murdered Scandal :)

So, first up (9.30...) 6-7 Jumping, once Scandal had slightly calmed down from her wild child antics she behaved very nicely, near-ish to the ring while mum queued. But she still wasn't as focused as she usually is - asked her to sit on the start line and she completely ignored me, just looking round the ring and seeing if she could see any dogs working in the ring in front. Got her into a sit and then we were off... my poor brain just couldn't keep up with my legs, let alone Scandal, who was flying. There were two bits that I so nearly messed up (one was number 3... great start!) the first bit I ended up working from behind and Scandal doing it all by herself and the second right at the end (where my brain had shut down completely) and just wasted a bit of time getting to number 17 as I was about 3 miles away from where I was supposed to be. Still, Scandal was a fabbidy girl and lovely and speedy.

I went back to the car to die for a bit, and then felt a bit better so wandered back to the rings. I seem incapable of dressing for the weather and had a 3/4 sleeve top on and it was soooo hot, but looked so flipping cloudy a few hours before. Luckily the clouds kept covering the sun so it wasn't too hot before we left. That didn't help my mood :)

Anyway they finished the jumping and I wandered over to see where we had come as Laura asked if we had won it and I didn't think we had but thought I'd have a look anyway... well she did and won it by quite a margin too! Yay! 2 down... 2 to go.

Barrie James 4-7 jumping up next and Scandal was blistering, up until a pull through at number 15 where my legs got tangled and I ended up in a heap on the floor! Cringeee.

Last class was Martin Cavill's 6-7 agility. I did tell Martin initially at this course was way way toooo hard, apart from the last 3 jumps that were in a straightish line. Then when most people had left the ring, I re-walked it and told Martin that actually, it wasn't quite so bad and I quite liked it now. :P

I think this was one of my favourite runs I've ever done. Scandal absolutely flew. I left her to get on with stuff and concentrated on saying the right commands and getting into the correct position, and trusted her to do her job and she did. However... lovely dogwalk, to wrong end of the tunnel at 13 into the weaves 14. My brain forgot what we had to do after 13. And I ended up in a heap on the floor again. Ahhhhhhhhhhh. Scandal was foot perfect, and bless her, while I was lying on the floor, re-placed herself into 2o2o very happily, good little girl :) so once I had picked myself up, we re-started from the dogwalk and she absolutely tanked the last bit, the fastest she has ever gone, and I even dared to pull off the weaves a little :)

Scandal is amazing me so much right now, we are getting to be a team and some stuff we are doing is looking pretty cool! Considering all we have trained in the last two weeks is wing wraps for 2mins, on two occasions, and my head was in a different planet for all of today, she did very well. I am finding it hard to get the motivation to train at the moment, just enjoy the long walks we do, but I am determined to train at least once, hopefully go crazy and train twice, this week.

I hope also that Imogen will be at Rugby and will run Honey in her first champ... fingers crossed :) x

Lansdown

2011-07-04T09:44:00.000-07:00

Our first show at grade 6!! Eeeeek!!

I drove up to Ant's on the Friday of Lansdown to have a lesson with Sian. It was great fun as usual, Scandal was brilliant, I have no idea how Sian gets Scandal to concentrate for an hour, but she does, and Scandal loves it. Apart from Sian made me run so much I was nearly sick :( :( poor me. Scandal looks so fit now, and really didn't struggle at all with the hour (which was pretty intense from where I was running!!)

Anyway so I'd pretty much decided that Saturday would be a write off as Scandal would be tired from the lesson so wouldn't be going as fast... but I also decided that the lesson was more important because I hadn't had one in nearly 3 months and it was showing.

Soooo first up, grade 6 jumping. Jeepers so much harder than the 3-5s I am used to!! But doable I thought, tested lots of things, pull through, out round, weave entry, etc. Scandal went CLEAR!!!! I have no idea how, I was really scared and only found my voice half way round, handled a bit feebly I thought (although actually doesn't look too bad on the video camera :P) but Scandal was fabs and only one turn a bit wide at the end. She certainly wasn't going at her normal speed but I think that was because I was so hesitant, so poor dog was unsure of what was up.

Anyway, Sian and Ant came over to announce to me that Scandal had gone into the lead :D which I was thrilled with... 170 dogs later and they closed the class, and Scandal WON it!!! Woooooop woooooop!! Sooo clever. And I was even more pleased that she would have been 2nd in the G7s... only Ant and Ruby had a faster time than her (by 0.4). And two of the dogs times in G7 she beat are going to the world champs in Oct! That was a real eye opener for me as I never realised her times could be that competitive against the really great dogs.

G6 Agility, Scandal was absolutely flying, until she got blown off the dog walk :( this was the first DW I'd asked her to run in a couple of months in the ring, I could have picked a better one!! You can see on the vid that a gust of wind just completely took her off balance as she was on the beginning of the middle plank, she went along the middle plank with literally only two legs on the dogwalk, before taking an enormous “ahhhhhhhhhh” leap and somehow getting the contact, bless her. Don very kindly let me re-do the dog walk after I had nearly died of heart failure, and she did a perfect running dog walk, lovely stop seesaw and finished the course really well :-)

Sunday, she had a pole in the G6 jumping when she tried to bounce on a 90 degree angle jump, after a flat tunnel, and tried to turn too tightly for the bounce… this is something I need to practice as she shouldn’t bounce if I ask her to turn, bad Scandal (… read… bad Chars training). In the CRUFTS SINGLES (ahhhh that was scary getting running orders for that!) she was way way better than I thought she’d be. Missed her weave entry because I literally stood still, in completely the wrong place and just said ‘poles’ and Scandal to be fair did try her best to get them! But was very pleased she ignored the dogwalk, which lots of dogs didn’t. Then near the end of the course she got a 5R for coming with me on a pull through instead of doing the 2nd jump… to be fair I did call her… poor Scandals. And another good seesaw :-)

Ricky was also very good, especially since both days I opted for a nice lie in and arrived at the show as they were calling to the end of anysize, hehe. A pole on Saturday and a clear on Sunday where he came 3rd! What a star. Must put a video up of him.

So all in all a good weekend, loved doing the harder courses. Gave Scandal a week off agility last week as I had lots of other stuff to be doing and had a non-dog weekend instead of going to Tuffley. Not actually sure when I’m going to be able to train this week but need to as we should be doing 1 day of Diamond – another local show woop woop!

Newton Heath

2011-07-04T09:42:00.000-07:00

I had just entered the Saturday of this, as I've had sooo many shows in June I figured I'd want a day off (which I did... good decision Char :))

Didn't enter Honey either (another good decision!) and I wouldn't have taken her anyway - she ate something Thames weekend and was really, really ill. She is better now, but is still looking pretty anorexic. Luckily she hasn't got any shows for another couple of weeks so she should be fine by then :)

My alarm went off at 4am but on hearing the rain promptly turned it off and went back to sleep. I got an email through at 5am and had the wrong setting on my phone, so it beeped and woke me up. It had stopped raining, so I got up, and managed to leave by just before 6.

We only had 1 run first on, Grade 5 Jumping. We arrived at 8.28 and luckily our ring hadn't started yet, so I was able to walk it several times. It was a lovely course, and to top it off, it was sunny, so good moods all round :)

Scandal did a really nice run in this, listening really well and felt really controlled, with me only having one retard moment when I got in the wrong place when I sent her into a tunnel, making the next two jumps a bit wide. Still, good enough to win it by a good margin :)

Then the 3-5 Novice Olympia, fab course IMO by Dave Deaville, pretty spread out, more like the course you would get at Olympia. Scandal felt lush in this and I think this is the first Olympia qualifier I have ever enjoyed running. The seesaw was near the end and as she went up it, ran to the end, she slightly glanced over her shoulder to see what I was doing and lost her balance and slid off the side, when it was about a foot off the ground. Just one of those things, we needed a bit of luck on our side. But actually I am so happy with how she ran, it doesn't matter.

We then did our last every G5 agility and it was a very flowing course. Started out with 2 jumps, seesaw, jump in a straight line, into wrong end of tunnel. I decided I'd test Scandal's wait, so ran out to the 4th obstacle... beautiful wait. "Go, go, seesaw seesaw". Scandal - beautiful sliding seesaw, stop...go. I was like, ummm, what are you doing Scandal! She has never self released off the seesaw like that! Perhaps her coming off in the Novice Ag made her think seesaws were fine to choose when to release. Anyway I asked her to lie down next to the seesaw and then we were off again and wowww she just flew. Beautiful stop on dog walk, lovely running aframe, nice weaves with me leaving her in them and pulling off to the side, check stride on her turns, couldn't have asked for anything more. Except a nice seesaw ;-) sooo pleased with her, having so much fun x

Thames

2011-06-19T03:03:00.000-07:00

Still a week behind...

After coming home early from Hinckley, I wasn't really 'feeling it' for Thames. I didn't go on the Saturday, instead taking the dogs out for a couple of hours with Laura... Scandal making us laugh with her stupid swimming antics. Once she has got over getting her feet wet she wants to have all the goes to get the toy, and swims like her life depends on it.

Of course it was pouring down on the Sunday of Thames. My asthma had been awful the night before and it had woken me up 4 or 5 times with me not being able to breathe... urrghhhh. I decided to give the 5-7 jumping a miss as it was first on and I wanted a lie in - saw the course and loved it, actually one of the nicest I have ever seen and would have loved to have run it, but in the wet, dogs were just slipping everywhere. Walked her G5 agility which again was lovely but I decided not to run it, really liked her Olympia Q... she was totally loopy for this, and it went jump jump, weaves... she missed her weave entry... great. We then did 2 more obstacles before I decided as she was completely tanking it, we would call it a day and not do any more obstacles - just not worth the risk.

On the plus side I have taught Scandal a trick. If you can even call it that. She goes through my legs and sits nicely. It is BRILLIANT! Nice calm focussed Scandal. However I think I need to train another trick as there are only so many times I can do that one in the queue!

Scandal's mum Ruby won the CC at this show, so now only needs one more before she is an Ag Ch :)

Hinckley

2011-06-14T05:48:00.001-07:00

Hinckley

Ok I am a week behind…

Scandal had her first G5-6 classes. We had a lot of fun. Her first agility she worked really well, turning on my verbal direction and shoulders rather than me having to use her name, she turned nicely away from the tunnel unlike the majority of the class which did a biggg turn. Held her contacts, she ran through her dogwalk and stopped on the floor. Stopped nicely on the seesaw. Then I got her e’d for not collecting her out of the rigid tunnel and she cut behind me over a jump, ahhhh. She was motoring, and we got a couple of lovely comments from people about how much she is coming on. Which I was super chuffed with.

G5-6 jumping and I watched dog after dog get eliminated on what I thought was a not too hard course. Well we got round clear up to about 17… and then Scandal ran past the flat tunnel, as I just ran and didn’t tell her tunnel. Woops. We really don’t like flat tunnels. Me especially :)

She then did a nice clear in the CSJ. As we have already qualified I just ran her quietly and expected her to hold her contacts nicely, which she did, although she wasn’t running flat out. Think she was about 10th or 11th in this.

Honey… hmmmmmmm. The most unmotivated dog in the world! Managed a 6th in the champ jumping and 4th in the champ agility, with her totally not trying. I have no idea how we got those places… she felt so slow. I really should stop complaining about her but I can’t help it! Anyway, these two places put us 18th to run out of 20 dogs… cannot even believe we qualified 3rd top!! I actually found it really embarrassing releasing her from the startline and her just sauntering off, not hurrying in the slightest lol. And… she missed her dogwalk… just after someone had that day asked about her RC and I’d said she hadn’t missed one yet. Jinxed that! Normally I give her the command (go/left/right) but I was so keen to get her actually running I just said go go go go go go all the way down… and she did! She did get 2 brilliant weave entries in these champ classes… not that she was running fast at them, but a huge improvement on a month ago.

She was very embarrassing in the Crufts Singles and ran past the first jump. I say ran, she trotted to me, with a big waggy tail. Extremely embarrassing. Then she missed her weave entry (a nice easy one), dorking around, so we came out took the easiest route possible to come out.

Sunday, Scandal’s Olympia qualifier, she was flying round, it felt amazing, I got through the bits I thought we wouldn’t… and then I forgot to say left, and Scandal ran past a jump. I am an idiot. She also bit me, very hard, which is the 3rd time in two weeks. Not a happy bunny. Scandal seemed to enjoy it though. Must manage her excitement better.

Then I did Honey’s Olympia… I GOT HER TUGGING IN THE QUEUE! MASSIVE ACHIEVEMENT! My achievement was short lived however, when it was our turn to run and Honeys legs turned to concrete when she refused to play tuggy and just sat there, looking bored. If nothing else, she has certainly taught me about humiliation. Anyway she ambled round at her usual “Half Hearted Honey” speed, somehow managed a clear although I thought she had refused a jump. And did a beautiful running dw. Damn that span.

Anyway I wasn’t really in the mood for any more agility after those runs, so we left, did the 2 hours home and then I met up with Laura and we took the dogs out for nearly 4 hours across the Mendips and Cheddar. This was definitely time well spent! I love our long walks.

Imogen did her first training session in 8 weeks with Honey and Tia (yay :)) and both dogs and Imogen were great. We set up some exercises from the Crufts Singles and champ from Hinckley and Imogen made them look easy…same old... Spaniel thoroughly enjoying having her buddy back :) hopefully they will finally get to do their first champ together next month.

Scandal is training well and being very cute and making me laugh lots with her cuteness. I so adore her. I am going to be doing a lot of thinking about how to manage her around the rings, she goes completely overboard sooo very quickly and it is hard to get her ‘alert’ but not completely past listening.

Oh I am hopeless, I forgot to mention that Ricky did an anysize class at Packington, and he won it! What a clever boy. At 12 ½ he is getting rather grey but still very happy, think he still has the mental age of a 2 year old but unfortunately the legs of a dog a bit older! Also strange that he is the same age as Imogen!! He is definitely more well behaved than she is :-P

Videooo of Princess

2011-06-12T10:40:00.001-07:00

From a couple of weeks ago, for those who haven't seen it on FB!

SWAT/Packington

2011-06-09T07:03:00.001-07:00

Well what a weekend that was.

This was Scandal’s 2nd show as a grade 5. After her pushing her waits and dog walks at Worcester I was wondering how the weekend was going to go. We’d had two (yes, I managed to train twice – woohoo!) brilliant training sessions with Scandal just being yummy, and me managing, most of the time, to steer her in the right direction.

To summarise… just super, I couldn’t have asked for anything more. Suddenly this green baby dog that I brought out last year, has matured like crazy in the last couple of months and we look like more of a team, we understand each other, I am showing/telling her instructions slightly quicker so she knows where she is going and it seems to be paying off...

SWAT on Saturday, I was determined she would stop on her dog walk with me telling her calmly to ‘target’, and she did. Lovely round, and she won it, taking us to grade 6. In the 3-5 combined jumping, bless her socks she fell over coming out the tunnel at the start, and then near the end span before a jump, I was sure the judge had marked it, but we went to have a look anyway as Garth was sure the judge had clapped - she had marked us clear – we came 4th, or 5th, I got a rosette for 4th but apparently they messed up and we were 5th, lol.

Grade 5 jumping, I lurrrved this course. We have been training an ‘out round’ in training and lets just say, Scandal hasn’t quite worked out that you are meant to jump the jump I’m recalling her over. Even if it’s on medium. Work in progress. She will do it if she doesn’t actually think it’s an ‘out round’, so we just don’t call it anything in the ring at the moment  Anyway so I decided to recall her to my hand and flick her over the jump, rather than send her round (if that makes no sense it was the 3rd round on the video, obstacles 1-2). It worked really nicely, I raced her on the weaves and she got a lovely entry, which I was pleased about. She went clear and won that too  Our last round, 1-7 jumping, we got e’d (by jump 2 lol) but Scandal did some really great work so again I was pleased… and starting to wonder if I’d used up our clear round quota for May as well as June.

Packington on the Sunday, started off the day brilliantly by winning combined 4-7 jumping. That was a COOL course, lots of distance, just the sort Scandal likes (I like it too except the running part). What was more cool was she won by 0.8sec, and an agility champ was 2nd – cooooly.

Then in the grade 5 jumping, Scandal again went clear, and got a 2nd. However I am more pleased that she actually went clear and did a generally good round, if a little switched off at the beginning. I need to have better contingency plans. I gave my lead/toy to the lead person, and off they went. I set Scandal up on the line, and the dog that had finished its run ran back in the ring to stalk us. So I released Scandal away from the jump, but had no idea what to do as I didn’t have my toy. We have such a routine now (although I’m sure it doesn’t look like a routine to most people) that I just didn’t know what to do. Anyway dog caught, Scandal re-set, and I was just leading out and someone noticed the long jump had blown down, and shouted this out. So, once again, released Scandal to me, by now desperately looking round for the lead/toy which had seemed to have grown legs and gone for its own walk. Tried to set her up for a 3rd time and she was stood there air scenting for Garth, completely oblivious to me! Got her back doing some hand touches (the only thing I could think of to re-focus her), and third time lucky, we were off. She felt steady 1-4 but then switched back into speedier mode the rest of the course. But that is progress from last year when she’d have probably been off to investigate another ring if we’d had to wait more than 5 seconds before going 

The Purina Pro Plan 3-5 Agility was last and the course was great, just nice and flowy nothing hard. Love these nice courses. Had decided Scandal had to stop (however, if she does a fast dw, I am happy with her stopping on the floor, if I correct, she will then do a slow dw). She did a run to the floor and stop, so off we went, everything else was great. On her seesaw I now run past them, rather than being hesistant, and she braked just a bit too late and slightly flew it, so we re-did it and she did a great one. So I was pleased with this.

Monday (totally worn out after 3 days of agility) was of course Olympia day. Olympia day Olympia day. I was so stupidly excited/nervous I could hardly sleep Sunday night and was wide awake by 6.30 Monday morning, even though we didn’t have to get there first thing. And it was chucking it down. I hate the rain. And, thanks to Scandal tearing a hole in my waterproof trousers, I don’t have any… Although I concluded afterwards that I’d rather have brought them with me and had 1 wet leg and 1 dry leg than 2 wet legs. Anyway I sheltered under peoples brollies where I could, and didn’t get too drowned. Scandal was in part 2 of the class, so watched part 1 and watched people do crazy things that always happens when it’s a qualifier, screaming at them on contacts, running round like headless chickens etc. Actually I do that too, so I best not chuckle too much 

Walked the course, I liked it, well I would have if it wasn’t a qualifier. Of course put qualifier in front and I automatically think we can’t do any of it… but normal class and I’d be up for it. Watched Martin Cavill and his lovely young merlie collie go clear and into the lead, and then watched several other really nice dogs go round. We were near the end and it wasn’t raining quite so hard when I went off to get her.

So, off I went, G went to queue and I went to the exercise area to warm Scandal up. Playing tug with her, and a frickin muzzled staffie comes absolutely flying at her, and thuds into her side… to be fair, not full on slam, but enough for my world to practically end in an instant. Poor Scandal was so focused on her toy that it completely freaked her out, I grabbed princess and manoevered myself between her and evil staffie. The woman managed to get the dog back and apologized and at that time it was more important that I calmed down than got in a tizz. Scandal promptly spooked at 2 little diddy puppies that she’d just said hello to fine, hackles up, wouldn’t go near them, growling etc. We did eventually get over that one. I then didn’t know what to do… put Scandal back… ‘calm down’ (which I knew I wouldn’t be able to do, I’d just get more and more angry that this idiot who knew she had an aggressive dog had let it off lead and come and get my dog, who hadn’t even seen this dog, and wasn’t even close).

So I decided we’d go to the rings, but take our time. I had half calmed down, half mad. G dropped back a couple so I could re-focus. That time passed quickly and I set Scandal up on the line, and then great… a horrible snappy barky dog that was running after us was stood RIGHT behind her, as the woman was trying to find her scribe sheet thing with the booker inner (or whatever they are called!). Scandal really didn’t want to sit. It’s the only sit she didn’t hold first time all weekend. Her sits had been rock solid up until then. Then of course I didn’t know what to do – make her sit, or know that it’s just because she’s scared of nasty big dog behind her (which to be fair I would’ve been too if I was her size). I asked her to sit, but ran out to where I wanted to release her so she wasn’t sat for very long. And then we were off, speedy Scandal ahhhhhhhh just lovely! I can still remember laughing going from the aframe to the weaves because we were having so much fun, felt like we were working together and it was going so well.

Ok up to the weaves it had been going well, so now I start to panic (and go into my conscious) – “AHHHH – we are going CLEAR in an OLYMPIA qualifier!!!” Next up was the seesaw. Having seen a multitude of dogs do various things on the seesaw, a couple sideways roll up and off it, lots skid up and slide off, some just bail out, etc. After the sliding seesaw in the dry on the Sunday, I figured if she tried to slide up again there wouldn’t be much chance of her getting any grip… but we had to run all classes me handling the same, so I was just going to say ‘seesaw seesaw’. However, plans and all that… “seesaw seesaw… WAITTTTTTT” a complete shriek which totally threw Scandal and she just stopped halfway up the seesaw like “ok ok, you didn’t need to shout” and then I had to coax her to the end of the seesaw. And the most amazing thing is she still won it!!! Holey Moley! I was so gutted that I’d messed up the seesaw, as I’d seen some great rounds and didn’t think that would be enough to get in the top 3… but it was! Lesson still learnt… I need to trust her, ALL the time, and any time that doesn’t work… more training needed!

As I said on facebook, it actually feels quite surreal. I am terrible in qualifiers as I just seem to completely lose the ability to get round a course, but apart from the seesaw thing, it was actually a good run. This year for me is about being able to say “yeah, that was a great run” rather than “yeayyy, a rosette”, as I want to be able to know that we’ve done our utmost best rather than hmm that turn could’ve been tighter. And this weekend we had lots of runs that I loved! I am so happy with her, 100% solid on her weaves, 7 out of 8 perfect waits, and the 8th I could put a reason to. Aframes were all brill, dog walks were all fast with no self releasing, one ‘oops’ slidey seesaw, one ‘oops’ slow seesaw, her turns are far far better with me now being able to verbal cue her from a distance, and she adding in a check stride. We still have lots to work on, and I’ve got some ideas to help us proof things.

I will write about Hinckley very soon!

Last few weeks

2011-05-21T11:12:00.000-07:00

Ahhh we've been busy the last few weeks. I will start with Beacon.

Firstly saturday was small/medium day so I had Honeypot. We started off somewhat disastrously in the champ jumping and agility, getting e'd in both and looking like we should be in grade 0. Honey still insisting on missing her weave entries and plodding round... me just being generally rubbish.

The day then slightly improved with Honey getting a 7th in the Olympia qualifier despite having a detour on a jump on a snake, which she really didn't want to do... came to me, then eventually went over the jump, which seemed to take her an hour. She only really got going half way round and then she flew.

And then, my day was topped by Honey deciding in the Crufts 6-7 Singles she was going to RUN and run FAST!!! I have always said that if Honey ran like she does in the ring in training, I wouldn't run her, however this little dog is seriously hot in training, absolutely nuts and sooooo much fun. I want to work out how we can transfer this attitude to the ring. Amy Lawson gave me a couple of really helpful things to work on - thank you Amy :)

Anyway back to the Crufts Singles. It was a fairly fast flowy course, all I wanted was for Honey to get a slightly hard weave entry, and just run a bit faster than she had gone all day. In training she's crazy and you can play fight with her, however try and do that at a show and you'd think you were murdering her. Honey really did not want to play to start with, however much persistance later and we finally arrived on the start line me looking fairly battered and bruised with scratches all up my arms where Honey had turned into a crazy dog. And then she RAN. Woop woop, she was brilliant, I couldn't have asked for any more from her. To make it even better, we came 2nd just 0.3 behind Bernadette and the fab Zaz, and beating a couple of agility champs/ticket winners in the process! Ahhhh that was seriously cool, love the spaniel when she tries for me ;-)

The next day was big-dog (proper dog ;)) day. Scandal had the CSJ agility, Dog Vegas and a 3-5 jumping. Her first run was the CSJ. I watched Sandra Adams do an absolutely stunning round with Pip, Pip has to be, IMO one of the best young dogs in the country, she is amazing. So I watched this amazing round, and turned in to something possessed, I was so determined we were going to get round that damn course, I have wanted Scandal to go clear in the same class as Pip ever since she came out as I wanted to see how far behind Pip she would be, to give us something to work/aim for.

Well, when I put my mind to it, it seems that sometimes we can achieve! Scandal was perfect, she ran faster than she has ever run before (and so did I :) : )) it was a total sh*t or bust run, and my god it felt good :) absolutely thrilled with Scandal for being so fantastic putting everything she had into it.

So later on at the end of the class I duly trawled off to see how far behind Pip Scandal would be, only to find out much to my complete shock, that we had won it!! More AHHHHHHHs. That has actually made my year to date, I was convinced that we wouldn't be able to beat Pip's time, but we did. Yipppeee. I think, for the first time ever, that I now believe in Scandal, believe she is good enough, and believe it enough to dispel any crap that has arised since she came out.

The other 2 runs weren't that grade but some super good bits including Scandal doing a lovely slightly difficult weave entry and trying her little tri and white socks off.

Had a weekend off last week and enjoyed doing totally non-dog things which was great considering my next weekend off seems ages away!

Then today we had Worcester.... hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Just one run for Honey, the Olympia qualifier, we worked on what we've been practising all week and Honey was doing her behaviours in the queue but not on the start line (although she did look slightly more lively than usual :)) however it's progress and it's progress that I am looking for.

She ran really well - not of the same speed as her Singles run from Beacon, which of course is what I wanted again, however she ran a much better speed throughout the course (i.e actually started off fairly fast) got a nice weave entry even with me at weave pole number 6 by the time she got there, and was just lovely in general. We came 4th, which I am really pleased with as she's now had 3 top 10 places in a month of running amongst the grade 7 dogs, so can actually hold her own. Of course 3rd would have been even better as top 3 qualify, but we're working on it... it actually felt like we were working better this week and I expected more of her and she rose to it, good girlie whirlie.

Scandal... hmm tis best not to talk about it! Her Adams Derby the spread, bane of my life, put us out of doing the speed bit, despite practising spreads since Shrewsbury which she has no problem with, she couldn't do it in the ring.... and then she self released her dog walk (stopped about a metre off the contact), which she was put back on, but more of a game than just calmly put her back and take her out, all got to be fun for the baby.

Sooo then the Pro Plan qualifier, I didn't know whether to stop or quick release in this. I decided it'd be a stop-go (ie comes to a stop, rather than hitting the contact, but I release soon as she's in position). Well, Scandal decided that we'd do a quick release. In my shock at Scandal again self releasing I couldn't quite decide whether to put her back on or carry on, and sort of did the worst of both worlds by feebly saying "Scandal" to pull her off the wrong end of the tunnel, which she did nicely... running straight past the correct end, missing the tunnel out completely and going for a gap between the tunnel and a jump. All I can say is LOL, because it just shows how silly I am, I must know how to react if she does this (STRAIGHT BACK ON THE CONTACT!) and not change my plans. I can't say I am suprised she is doing it, I have quick released several in the last month and have just started doing a running dog walk in training again, so I did expect a bit of this, but two in the same day was a shock to the system. Will have to have a BIG think about this.

On the positive side her turns were absolutely beautiful and her seesaw and aframe in both classes were yummy :)

In the grade 5 jumping (Scandal's first grade 5 eeeek) we favoured a tunnel over the weaves... several times. She just could not see the weaves at all, definitely something to train, although it probably would have helped if I'd handled and given the correct verbal cues... gosh I need to work on so much. There were parts of the rest of the course that Scan looked awesome on, driving in to me, steadying for turns... and then I actually forgot how to do a pull through so we just carried on like nothing had happened, Scandal was flying though. If I can just operate my brain quick enough she is soooo lovely. Need a fix for my brain and quickly :) magical fairy dust maybe? :) x

Shrewsbury and Vyne

2011-05-03T14:37:00.000-07:00

Went up to Shrewsbury over the bank holiday as it had Dog Vegas and Adams derby qualifiers... well we'd have been better off staying at home as we were terrible! Think we managed to get eliminated in most classes, although did some good bits in nearly all of them. One of the rounds I was sure Scandal was being a total moron, but watching the video back it is quite clear that it is I, that is the moron. Poor Scandal.

The only thing Scandal is definitely being a pain on is her waits. Shuffling, and doing the whole paw-malarky. I actually just need to start taking her out when she won't cooperate rather than it being a battle of wills to get her to sit vaguely upright as I lead out. But I guess it's cooool she is getting keener and actually wants to go!

Vyne on Monday, it was good being back at a big show, loved Brian Auty's G4 agility. Am seriously fed up with crappy courses which have no more than 6 paces between each jump and are just a series of 90deg and 180deg angles... then you get to the higher grades and the dogs can't judge distances properly or find a line of jumps that isn't glaringly obvious, coz they've only had to do straight up n down in the ring. Ahhhh. That was a little rant. :)

Anyway so no clears all weekend for Scandal, and she topped it off by missing her weave entry in her last class on Monday, after I'd been really pleased with how strong her weaves had been all weekend. GRRR!

I ran Honey at Vyne as Imogen couldn't go, poor Honey just isn't ready for champ yet, we have soooo much work to do, finish off teaching her 'come here' command, out, etc etc, I trained her last week as I have not run her for months and she decided she couldn't get any angled weave entries. Dave Hutchinson judged the small champ at Vyne and set up a right hand weave entry... which Honey promptly missed :) she managed to get round the rest of the jumping (and do a lovely fast weave entry easy peasy!) with just 5f and came 16th out of 47. Then in the agility, with no dog walk (where she could normally make up a bit of time over the dogs with stop contacts) she manged to get a 2nd! Hahaha brilliant, beaten only by Bernadettes lovely Zaz. Clever Honey. She managed to take 0.3 off of Alan Bray's poodley, bless Honey. Think she made up all her time between obstacle 18 and 19 where she could just run towards the finish line.... however that cost us in the final when she came out of the flat tunnel, I said weave (right angled weave entry again) and she just said 'see ya' and hared off over the finish... naughty Honey, hehehe. Was fun running her though, and nice to be in champ again. Made me realise how well Imogen has done with her, my god you have to work her, she literally gives the bare minimum (although on her good days she is amazing) and if you put in less than 100%, she's like an absolute slug. I need oxygen at the end of her runs. I hope that as I will be running her a bit more she will start to like me (I can hope) and then she may run a bit faster (again, I can hope) as it's a bit embarrassing when she is completely wedged in to 2nd gear. Aim for this year - Honey to do a whole run FAST, rather than just on the last two jumps :)

April

2011-04-28T15:58:00.000-07:00

Well we are just having toooo much fun. Scandal is just amazing to train, so much fun (as you can see from her dorking around at the start of the vid... what a bad trainer I am letting my dog self reward ;-)) we've made more progress in the last 5 months than we have in the last 18.

Scandal's had 4 clears in the past month and 4 wins. I said to a friend the other week that what I wanted this year more than any win was as many "perfect runs" as I could - runs where I didn't let Scandal down, remembered to cue her, etc etc. Well I think our Olympia run (second to last clip in vid) was getting there (woah I was tired after that run) and then the jumping run (the last clip) was pretty much our first ever perfect run. Wooop-de-woop :) not perfect by a lot of people's standards but boy was I chuffed with it, it's the first time I've ever felt in control and not like my legs/brain were 3 miles behind Scandal.

I'm still going running twice a week, well I say run but it's more of a lumber. We don't run it all but I try and walk/jog/run at varying speeds so hopefully some fat will fall off somehow. Don't think it's working yet but I can still hope :)

Love the fact that the show season is well and truly underway, having sooo much fun. Ohhh and Imogen qualified Tia and Honey for the UKA Junior Nationals in December, which is pretty cool. Tia was great in both classes and got a 1st and 2nd... Honey... hmmm naughty spaniel. Gotta love the spaniels, but I think collies are definitely for me!

Just a quick post

2011-03-29T12:05:00.000-07:00

Just a quick post, I have all these good intentions and then time just runs away.

Loving the lighter evenings, have been for 2x short runs in the last 2 days, I am determined to get a little faster, more than aware that I just don't have the self discipline to be super slim and super fit, but can definitely get faster as I am sooooo slow running Scandal. Scandal is getting faster, she is training like a dream, seemingly no hormones that stopped us training for a month last year, apart from she hates Tia, so Tia's on holiday for a while (Scandal likes that :))

We've done 2 UKA shows the last 2 weeks, Scandal has qualified for the beginners steeplechase final which I'm pleased about. She's been perfect and I couldn't ask any more of her. In the agility in the vid and the agility on the weekend both courses she ran past the obstacle after a straight tunnel (one flat and one rigid) Tia is great at this but tooo great... can't turn her at all after one, so I have done less of this with Scandal and it shows! We will be working on it.

Vid of Mapledurham...

She is so much fun, she is concentrating better on the start line, looking where we are going and not at who she can chase! I still can't hold her near the rings or queue with her as she's exhausted herself from barking by the time it's her turn, even if we aren't right next to the rings. However Garth can walk her right alongside the ring on a nice loose lead and she's sooo chilled... ahhh well, guess he and Imogen will just have to do the same shows :)

Tia's loving working with Imogen, although Imogen got a shock running her on the low jumps at UKA, Tia loves 22" and doesn't struggle like she does a little at 26. So goes tooo fast for Imogen's little legs, and barks and barks, and listens less n less. Hopefully with some more training that will balance out a bit :)

Love life, even though it seems I have no time and just end up rushing from one place to the next... better than being bored tho!! Yay for the Spring and sunshine!

Hare n Hounds 2011

2011-02-27T09:28:00.000-08:00

Back in Sept or Oct I'd mentioned to Garth about doing a couple of shows over the winter, to see if Ims could get any more of Honey's wins to grade 7 (she had 1 of the 4). By September Honey was a right porker and I think had had enough of doing agility every weekend and during the week too. She was spayed mid October and I think the first session of any sort that we did with her was in December, just running a flat plank on the floor. Tbh we didn't train again apart from 1 lesson with Dave over Christmas, and then down at Carol's in the middle of January. I didn't have anywhere to train and the equipment was in storage. All I had was the weaves and 4 jumps (not that I ever used more than 2 jumps... far too much effort to carry 4 jumps to the park). So the dogs had a pretty long break from agility. I have spent a long time building Scandal up again slowly - she is really fit now. Proprieception/balance stuff twice-three times a week, hill running twice a week, a really long 3-4 hour Mendip walk once sometimes twice a week, and then whatever else I can fit in. She's looking so much better now and is more muscly too.

Anyway going off on a tangent as usual. So, I suggested to Garth we did Hare n Hounds as they had loads of classes, plus it was a 2 day show. I really wanted Ims to get to grade 7 so we could do the same shows, I wanted to do the ones with qualifiers and a lot of them don't have great classes (i.e. lots of Small Grade 6's!). Plus with Ims not being able to do as many shows now, it would be nice for her to enjoy the bigger shows and the prestige of being up with the big'uns in champ/Olympia Q/Crufts Singles etc.

So, show entered, it came round pretty quickly, hardly any training apart from Garth working on Honey's running contacts with the manners minder.

The show was lovely, I entered Scandal in a BC Ag on Sat, and BC jumping on the Sun, Tia had 2x junior and 1 5-7 each day, and Ricky had a Veteran jumping each day. Saturday was a special day as it was Ricky's 12th birthday. Ricky's never been a clear round machine, but he did a beautiful clear on his birthday and ended up 3rd :) what made it even more sweet was when I went up for prizegiving (grinning like a cheshire cat - that moment of being in the ring with Ricky, who was running his little old socks off for me will stay with me forever) I said it was his birthday and they gave us a big bowl of dog treats/chews and a toy - which I thought was so kind of them. Rix thought this was great and practically took my hand off for the treats. The next day Ricky then had the honour of taking Garth round his first ever agility course... Garth did a bit of training with Rix last year but only in July/Aug so nothing for ages. Well Rix was Rix and did his naughty startline (I had instructed G he needed a 4 jump recall ;)) and then went off like a rocket and went clear :O awwww, I actually nearly cried. What's better (worse!) is that the pair of them bettered my Saturday result by coming 2nd, bless Mr Rix, still runs his heart out and just loves his agility.

Tia was a good girl for Imogen. She doesn't take the mick as much now, Imogen's in control much more and they are looking good together. They had a couple of top 3's and a nice clear in the 5-7 agility with a held dogwalk too, so that was good. Considering when Imogen first started running Tia, Tia would pretty much do her own thing and launch off contacts (despite Imogen saying in her dainty voice 'target') they have really improved. It will be nice for Tia to do some junior classes with Ims this year, can't believe Tia will be 9 in a couple of months, still acts like a puppy, don't think she will ever grow up.

Scandal, well she was really good, nothing much to say, I need lots of work on my handling, I was really pleased with her weaves so that pretty much made my weekend (small things), and she jumped nicely.

And HONEYBEAR. What a super sausage. I think a place on the Saturday in juniors, she ran well in every run. Ims went home for her last run as her grandparents were up, so she went back to see them. So I ran Honey. Woop woop. Run fast with the spaniel. Infact, being the twerp I am, I ran so fast, that I fell over on a turn. Actually fell over. In the sand. Idiot. Bless Honey came running over to check I was ok. I then proceeded to get us e'd later round in the course. I blame the shock of falling over. Best stick to a slower speed in the future :)

The next day was a lot better. Honey won 4 classes :O and so is now grade 7. She won 2 jumpings and 2 agility's. Several of them she won by 5+ secs, and in the graded class had a faster time than the 7. So well and truly into champ. Good spaniel. So it was worth the long journey up. AND I drove pretty much all the way home (only because I was happy with Ricky being wonderful, Scandal being yummy and Honey being brill (oh and I guess Tia trying hard :)) so the 4 hours flew past. Glad we made the long trip up. Think Honey will suit doing less shows and less training. Hopefully her hormones won't be as bad now she is spayed. Clever Spaniel and clever 12 year old Ims - they will look cute in champ together :) :)

Here's the vid of some of our runs from the show... doesn't Rix look great :)

Scandal beans

2011-01-21T13:29:00.000-08:00

I've been wanting to post all week but just haven't had the time :( tooooo busy not enough hours in the day! Tonight feels like the first time in ages I've been able to sit down and relax which is just bliss!

We had training with Dave on Saturday, this was the first time I'd ever trained Scandal on a t-day, it was brilliant not having to do any 'readdddy' stuff as she actually wanted to have her go because it was sooo exciting watching the others. It was nice doing sequences and watching the others to see how theres did it and also picking some ideas up from what others were doing with this.

I did have a tantrum with Scandal right at the end of the 2 and a half hours (we both needed a sleep :)) because she wouldn't weave... looking back with a clear head its completely obvious why she can't weave... because apart from our one-to-one with Dave in December, we have done no weaves since September, and haven't trained them since August. Our last 'show' was the Olympia semis in Sept where Scandal ripped her dew claw we think from slipping on the weave pole cross bar, so probably confirming to her that weaves are evil and something to be avoided at all costs. This she did, running past them, and then going in the 2nd pole even when I was stood a metre from the weaves. Felt really really dishearted as she was terrible, find it harder as both Tia and Ricky picked it up quite naturally, and couldn't understand why Scandal just cannot.

Sunday and Sian came down from Kent as Ant was training in Bristol, I was really gutted that I couldn't train with her as think she is fantastic and her Canen bred dog Flick really reminds me of Scandal. However Gemma O saved the day by saying that I could use her field which Sian was going to use too - thank you so much Gemma :)

Gemma lives the other side of Bristol to me, I always think of it as quite small and takes a max of about 15mins to get through lol, however it took a good 45 minutes and is really close to the Hand stadium which I didn't realise. Ahhhhh geez, soooooo glad I went, it was BRILLIANT, Sian is AMAZING :D we did a bit of work with Scandal on the uprights then went on to pretty closed up channels. Sian I think is the most exciting person Scandal has ever met, I have NEVER seen her go soooo bananas! And she did the fastest weaves she's ever done in her life, although to start with she'd do 3 or 4 and then come out and want the toy - she very quickly got the hang of it and was then absolutely flying with her confidence flooding back and some. I know where I am going with her weave training now so am verrrrry happy. Yay for Scandal hopefully having good weaves for the summer :) :) :)

Weave pole proposal

2011-01-01T08:56:00.000-08:00

How novel, having time to do blog posts! I think I've done more in the last week than in the last 6 months!

The agility liaison council meet on 20 Jan to discuss several proposals. These can be found on http://www.thekennelclub.org.uk/cgi-bin/item.cgi?ap=1&id=3451
One of these is an amendment to weave pole spacing. At the moment the distance between weave poles varies hugely, anything between 18" and 24" is acceptable. There is a proposal to standardise the distance to 24". If any of you reading this blog agree with this proposal I would be really grateful if you could email your reps (if you can't attend your area meeting) and voice your thoughts. The contact details for the reps are at the bottom of the page on the link above.

Watching dogs weave on the continent when we went there in 2009 was a bit of an eye opener as to how much easier it looked on their backs... so many dogs over here end up weaving with their spines in an "S" shape wrapped around 3 poles at once, but this should help ease that. It will also be better having one consistent distance rather than each week the dog not knowing what it will face. Something I feel very strongly about :)

First lesson

2011-01-01T08:14:00.001-08:00

On Thursday me, Imogen, Lee and Jess had a lesson with Dave. It was my first lesson since May, at Dave's new place in Newbury. It's a lovely venue with lots of miniature shetland ponies dotted around, much to Scandal's delight. It's lovely and flat ground which wasn't too squishy at all, just right :)

Well me and Scandal were pretty terrible, I thought we were gonna be bad but not quite as bad as that! Scandal had little enthusiasm to do anything apart from straight lines, didn't want to weave and I was so unfit trolloping round the course I was worn out after about 5 minutes. Even the foundation stuff Scandal didn't want to do, ambling to the jump wings despite my efforts to excite her. Dave had a little go with her and got more out of her than I managed to, but still nowhere near what she can give. We did do 2 running dogwalks at the end and she did these really nicely so I'm pleased that we did something well!

So Friday I went out with my jump wings to our local park which is perfect as it's so flat and nice short grass. I trained Rix and Tia first for a few minutes each and by this point Scandal was screaming the van down, so I got her out and boy did she want to train, I can tell this by her nice sharp teeth leaving a bruise on my leg... naughty Scandalina. She was 100% better than yesterday, really keen, firing towards the jump wings, turning nicely on my position and driving in to me when I turned and said her name. I find it hard with her as she loops quite badly rather than driving to me in a straight line but Dave gave me some ideas on how to work on this, she looped once at the start and after that made a real effort to turn on the spot rather than continuing on her own path.

Watching Dave's DVD has made me realise I haven't done anywhere near enough foundation with her, his dogs can power into a turn, whip round the wing and power back out... Scandal powers out but generally at a 90 degree angle to me so she can do a bit outrun, so more to work on and build up slowly.

On a different note I was sad to hear Silvia T had lost her oldie Lo, one of the first Pyreneans I ever saw and took a liking to. Ricky will be 12 in two months and it scares me silly that he's now getting old. Dad's springer Zac was put to sleep a couple of weeks ago at the grand age of 16. He was the first dog I ever ran in agility... Zac didn't particularly want to do it but did it in the hope of a biscuit at the end of a course, bless him. Life is just too short...

Imogen and Honeybear

2010-12-28T04:38:00.000-08:00

I'm so proud of this pair, they came to me this time two years ago for their first lesson, Imogen had just turned 10 and was such a shy little girl who would barely say a word to me, let alone to Honey. Honey was 2 years old, with a very strong hunting instinct, I remember at the end of the lesson talking to Garth and Imogen and saying 'where's Honey?' she'd gone through the fence and had run down into the valley after pheasants. I gave Imogen lots of homework each week and Ims was always the perfect student coming back having perfected everything that I'd asked. They did a few shows in the summer of 2009 but hit problems with Imogen being even quieter and shyer in the ring than at home, sometimes managing to do the entire course without talking to Honey - Honey responded being the sensitive little soul that she is by trotting round next to Imogen's side and occasionally stopping for a sniff or a wee mid-course :) towards the end of 2009 their ring-confidence started to grow and Honey had broken into a canter, they won a couple of jumping classes in August and then at Dashin Dogs in September won several classes including a 1-3 agility taking them out of grade 1.

2010 and a couple of small limit shows to prepare them for Crufts, Honey more speedy and Imogen louder. Crufts came and went, Imogen getting a 4th in the semi final (top 3 go through to the final) their downfall being Honey didn't understand a quick release in the ring having never done one before and didn't want to release from her contacts!

Two weeks later and Honey was hit by a 4x4 the first time I'd taken Imogen to a show on her own, she ran off chasing pheasants - the screeching of brakes and her screaming as she took off in the opposite direction to where we were will stay with me forever, as will the comfort in so many people immediately coming out to look for her and the relief when I was 'tresspassing' through private property with big 'keep out' signs when she came happily running towards me through the reeds, seemingly completely fine. She went to Lowri's and was pretty much ok apart from some bruising, we think she must have bounced off the car rather than being underneath it.

Their agility success continued and they won out of grade 2 the following month and then grades 3, 4 and 5 pretty much each time they became eligible for the next level. They hit problems in June/July with Honey being in season and deciding she wanting to naff all to do with agility and it was as much as Imogen could do to get her off the start line let alone run with any enthusiasm. This continued all through July and poor Imogen accounted for all of their efforts in the Agility Club Starter finals and the Agility Club Junior finals where Honey wouldn't have looked out of place back in grade 1. Imogen had luckily gained confidence ten-fold and had no problem giving Honey loads of encouragement in order for Honey to donate any energy that she had to running the course.

Finally at the beginning of August with Honey having the enthusiasm of a dying fly, I decided that action was required! For those of you that can remember dad's Bex before she was spayed, she was incredibly hormonal and did not want to be anywhere near agility after her season. Last August dad got her a vitamin jab and she was a different dog, absolutely flying, in fact dad couldn't keep up with her! So Garth took Honey to the vets and gave her the jab a week or so before KC fest.

Well, that's certainly something worth remembering if anyone else has a similar problem! Imogen and Honey had the most succcessful month in August, at the KC fest they won the YKC Jumping Semi Final qualifying for Crufts, qualified top for the KC Novice Final although Honey broke her wait so they were e'd on the 2nd jump in the final! But better than the previous month where Honey did not even want to go! They also qualified top in the International Junior competition as well as winning a grade 5 agility. I think one of Imogen's highlights will be beating Bernadette in the KC novice cup jumping, I think Imogen had a 2nd and B and Itz were 5th, Imogen was soooo thrilled as Bernadette is one of the few people that Imogen will always spot from miles away (or maybe hear the shelties yapping hehehe) and want to watch, so it was great for Imogen to realise she could be competitive against her if she really put her mind to it.

We followed this on to Dogs in Need where Honey was just fantastic getting a clear in all the classes she entered and I think she had a top 5 in all these classes. The icing on the cake was Imogen winning the DINAS Junior Under 12 final with Honey doing a brilliant run and showing what they were made of.

Grade 6 certainly hit Imogen hard with Imogen realising she had no time to let Honey break her waits, and Honey was now giving Imogen no let up and 'breathing time' to remember the course mid way round! They got their first win towards grade 7 mid September and then had a couple of close calls with 2nds, one of which was absolutely stonking and probably the best round they have worked in terms of difficulty... with Honey breaking her wait at the start and catching Imogen off-guard - Ims certainly realising that there was no room for error with just 0.1 between her and 1st!

We then had Honey spayed in October as can't be doing with those horrible moody seasons! Honey is looking fantastic now and has lost a lot of weight as she was looking rather porky by September. Much to my amazement she also has lots more self control with Garth able to call her off a pheasant which is rather remarkable considering last year she had no recall regardless of whether there was a pheasant there for temptation or not, lol. Imogen has qualified for 3 classes at Crufts 2011 - YKC ADOTY, YKC Jumping and YKC Small Agility. We've not been able to do any agility because of the snow but I know Imogen is looking forward to her lesson with Dave on Thursday and then we've got a couple of training days booked in with him over the next couple of months.

All in all it's been a fantastic year for Imogen and Honey and I am just so proud of them. Imogen's now Miss Confident (and Miss Argumentive too at times ;)) which is a huge difference to the little girl I first met two years ago who wouldn't say boo to a goose. 2011 will hopefully be a great year for them and I can't wait to see how the pair develop in grade 6/7.

First weekend back training

2010-12-05T10:02:00.001-08:00

Scandal's had almost 13 weeks off agility and I thought what better way to celebrate her 2nd birthday than to do some training - didn't bank on lots of snow and frozen ground though!

We did some training yesterday on an almost flat plank and I am thrilled (not) to say that Scandal seems to think that the contact is electrified and should be leapt over at all costs. Something to work on at least!

We also did Honey's first training session since she was spayed 7 weeks ago in October. She faired much better than Scandal and was pretty much 100% with her contacts. Vid of her below.

I also uploaded a viddy of Scandal training in the ring in August doing her contacts how she is meant to - soon as I take the toy in the ring I am miss confident so Scandal is too. At least it gives me hope we may get there.

Today it was a beautiful day and the ground finally defrosted completely. We did some hill running this morning - this is fast turning out to be Tia's favourite game in the world - she squeals like crazy racing Scandal up the hill to the tennis ball, bless her. This afternoon we did the balance grid - we back chained starting with rewarding after 2 jumps, then 3, then finally 4, to which she could not decide for the 4th whether to bounce or clear both the 3rd and 4th in one go. She did not make the decision quite quick enough so went for a combination of the two and landed on the 4th one, ouch. After that she was fine and jumped beautifully, but I think we have a long way to go :)

Lee and Todd

2010-11-13T07:12:00.000-08:00

How awesome do these guys look - Todd is Lee's first dog, such a lovely team :)

Love my Scandal

2010-10-24T08:45:00.000-07:00

Loving Scandal... not loving autumn/winter and the short days!

Thank you to Cat for the lovely pics :)

Today I met up with Laura and Be today and we took the all dogs out for just over 2 hours, including some hill running. Scandal and Be looked great and although tired were not overly so, however I think we nearly killed Tia (she is fine ;)) so I am going to have to scale it back a bit with her as I don't want her damaging her cruciate again. Although it's brilliant exercise for them, and me, my legs are aching now, maybe at this rate I will get fit too :)
Walked 5 miles with all 3 dogs yesterday and they all did great, Scandal especially, her hind leg seems to have settled now and no problems at all, so the proprie stuff seems to be working.

Really want to start training Scandal again now but am determined to hold off until December to give her a proper break. Plus, as soon as it starts raining I'm sure I'll lose all enthusiasm for it, so just a matter of time!

SMART

2010-10-17T09:10:00.000-07:00

Scandal went to SMART for a few days last week. Hasn't been lame or anything but in my paranoidness I am always sure she is breaking or about to break.

I have been awfully lazy with doing her proprie exercises lately... infact we have hardly done any in the last 5 months. And it shows.

Scandal doesn't use her abs, which isn't really suprising considering I have done nothing to get her to use them since 5 months ago. So she is not weaving/jumping as well as she could (well, was not... she hasn't jumped since mid Sept).

So Lowri's given me some exercises to do with her and I've been thinking of a few of my own. Scandal loves working again! She really struggles with 'crawl' - this just happens to be something Tia is a total pro at (one of the few things!) so Tia gets to play too :-) so we are working on that... her crawling with each individual foot rather than jumping with her back legs and somehow her front legs under her chest (so you cant see her feet) with her head on the floor, not the best way to crawl!

Also doing some skateboard work, which I can't say Scandal's entirely convinced by, and the balance ball and wobble cushion. And some handstandy stuff but not against a wall, against a sofa so it is lower, but is involving her using her front end.

Oh and we are doing hill sprinting (Scandal, not me, so she, not we ;-)) twice a week.

Ohhhh and to top it allll off Munnings is moving to Newbury - how BRILLIANT :) I am so happy that he will only be an hour away and we won't have to tackle the M25!

I am actually looking forward to starting agility again with Scandal in December, I think I'm going to get a much more mature doglet than a few months ago. Well - I hope!

Scandals 19 months

2010-09-11T09:28:00.000-07:00

Made this vid a couple of months ago but forgot to put it on here. Scandalbabyyyy.

The good and the bad...

2010-09-07T13:56:00.000-07:00

Well we've only got one more show to do this year, and 2 more finals.
Everything kind of went a bit pear shaped after June... having no lesson since May is definitely showing, my handling has gone t*ts up! We didn't have a clear after Weardale until DIN where Scannie won G4 jumping.

We only competed 1 day of KC Fest as Scan escaped out of the garden, ransacked someones caravan/bbq/other food source, burning her nose and getting the worlds biggest belly in the process, was really sick, and took a few days to recover from it, poor girl.
Edited to add a nice pic taken by Cat Clark :)

We had the DV final at the end of August. Scandal was superb, Lee was judging and having won a couple of Lee's semis/finals I was keen to win this with Scandal ;) well she flew round, and then Char = wally, panicked at the end instead of holding my ground just ran at the last jump, and Scandal ran round the penultimate jump, a wall, which she'd never seen before. She crossed the line in 33, the winner was 34. Was really chuffed with her, she was soooo good, I just couldn't quite hold my nerve.

The weekend just gone we had the Olympia semis, didn't get off to a good start as Scandal hated the big wings, running round jump no 3 like it was going to eat her and doing a huge jump over the next (the joint aid jump), she then ran awkwardly and kinda fell up the aframe, somewhere over the course she managed to split her dew claw. I vet wrapped it, and she then decided she would act like a frog and could only walk in leaps, so that had to come off for the final, luckily it wasn't a bad split but of course poor Princess I just wanted to wrap her in cotton wool :)

In the final Scan was great, just me again not holding my nerve, I walked the course and just lost every ounce of faith that I had, normally I walk a course and even if it is hard, I am excited about running it but all the excitement just melted away leaving me dreading it and not looking forward to running it, I have never not looked forward to running Scandal. After the weaves I didn't pick Scandal up correctly so she didn't have a clue where she was going, and got a refusal at the next jump. A 5 would've got us in but she made sure we didn't by taking a pole... she's only taken one possibly 2 poles in the last 2 months of competing so I guess fate just has a way of making sure :)

I was really gutted, and actually cried like a right baby about it that evening... not the fact we didn't qualify, but the fact that the last 2 weekends I have let Scandal down sooooo much, and made her look absolutely rubbish, when in fact she is not. However looking on the bright side, it has taken all of the pressure off as I can now give her 3 months rest, and don't need to worry about keeping her in peak condition when the hours are short, and I won't be getting home from work until it is dark. I am still not happy about her hind leg so hopefully we will be able to work on this over the winter so she will be fully weight bearing on it next year. And of course next year she will be more mentally mature, and I won't have the thought of a massive final bearing down on me in the next 3 months which I am sure would not have the greatest effect on either me or Scandal!

Hopefully I will update this again soon when I have more time... just very rarely on the PC now I have internet on my phone, I can check my emails on the go and so don't go on anything else!
Ohhh one last piccie of my Princess :)

Rugby, Weardale

2010-08-01T11:55:00.000-07:00

Oh dear getting behind again...
Scandal's first grade 4 was Rugby and she was great getting a 3rd in G4 agility, was really pleased with her. Felt like we were starting to click.
Tia managed a 4th in grade 7 agility, bless her as there were 120 dogs in the class.

Weardale and Scandalbeans qualified for the Olympia semis with a 2nd :-) YAYYYYY!!! Out of 260 dogs in the class. She also had a 2nd in the G4 jumping.

This weekend I was a bit crazy and decided we'd do Ag Club on Sat as Imogen had Starter and Junior Finals, but I really wanted to do Derby as it had an Olympia qual... Imogen had a 3rd in the Junior Final but Honey is being soooooo difficult just does not want to know... yet a couple of weeks ago she was flying, and probably will be in another couple of weeks, damn spaniel, give me a collie any day :-)

Our day did not go well yesterday with Scandal missing her dog walk in the 3-5, much to my horror. I know it was my fault as I was not clear enough telling her it was a run, but she still should not have jumped it anyway, grrr. We redid the down plank ok, then she went in her weaves and came out at the 3rd, so we left.

Into the practice ring we went, and she couldn't do the dog walk in there either... 1 way, towards the tunnel... the other way was fine, Grrrrr. She could do both by the end of all the millions of sessions we had tho ;-)

Then in the jumping she had a lovely run but bobbled in the weaves 2 jumps from home, but we carried on as no point making a big deal of it.

Today in the Olympia I said "go" after the aframe instead of right, and she did, again we carried on. Then her dog walk, as she went up it, she lost her balance, nearly fell off, got her stride completely wrong and pretty well missed the contact again... hard as I wanted to say "good girl for trying to stay on" but at the same time please can you try and get the contact anyway ;) Gary the judge let us redo it and she did it perfect this time.

Jumping she was lovely just had a pole but worked soooo nicely.

Then the agility, the dog walk was near the end and 2 jumps on sharp angle after it, all I wanted her to do was a nice running dog walk didn't care about the jumps after it, so put her toy out of the ring by the score tent in a straight line with the dw, she did a stunning run and then we did a "go go go" to her ball, she did a perfect contact so I was really happy :) apart from the judge did ask why we didn't want to finish, I don't think he quite realised how important I thought it was to reward Scandal for doing a brill contact and abandoning the last 2 jumps :)) but anyways I am happy.

Honey was a bit better, 1st in G5 jumping and 2nd in Junior U12s, Tia got a 4th with 5f fastest time, she and Imogen are working so much better now.

Week off next weekend, then KC fest, woohoo :)

Tuffley

2010-07-04T10:09:00.000-07:00

Just a short(ish) post as nothing too exciting happened.

On the Sat, Scandal's first run, she won 1-4 jumping, it was a pretty fast course and I didn't say too much to her, just left her to it and put the directionals in at the right places, she was a good bean. Her bro Chilli came 3rd :)

Grade 3 jumping she did some crazy bounce work all lovely, came out of the 10th pole on 12 weaves, again i have been ready for her to do this so we 'happy Char'd' it back to the start and she was fine, rest was lovely.

KC 3-5 ag (may as well write E on my ticket before I've even booked in). Was having an absolutely blistering run, then scrambled up the dog walk as went on wide, re-corrected her stride to do a perfect running dog walk, and I was so stunned that for the snake which followed I said "right" but didn't turn my shoulders so she ran round the 2nd jump, what a twit I am, my brain just can't react fast enough, it's faulty, wish I could swap it for a better version!

Today in her CSJ agility she felt quite floaty, weaves were a bit steady, she fluffed her aframe contact although got it fine, but she did a 'ahhh' moment where she went up it with a bit too much momentum and then had too long a stride on the way down. Then took the pole after the dog walk, I need to do a lot more control work after the dog walk, but seeing as she won't even do a RC in training at the moment I think it will have to wait. Then at the end again my brain had gone into the faulty section and I couldn't remember her wing wrap commands, so we re-did the sequence... oops. Oh and to top it off she did the worlds slowest seesaw. Yay.

In the G3 agility it was Graham Taylors, 'interesting' but I loved it. Scandal worked the first part fantastically, almost sliding seesaw (which i held), tight turns, perfect aframe, then wing wrap to weaves she almost went back up the aframe instead of the weaves, found them at the last moment, took herself out round the first pole and as I was miles infront couldn't quite get the entry and went in the 2nd. So we redid and she was lovely, then did the next bit lovvely and we did a stop dog walk, for no particular reason other than we need to do more of them, and it wasn't miles speedy but she ran all the way into position. Then went in the wrong end of the tunnel which was last obstacle.. hmm going to have to work on this as she's done it twice now, found the wrong end of a tunnel (instead of staying on my line, flicking away).

Then the Alpha 1-3 agility, I'd decided to train it as we are away for the final, well Scandal was lovely did a nice stop on her seesaw, I didn't say much to her on the jumps just let her find her line as she was trying sooo hard to keep the jumps up, perfect aframe, then did the best stop dog walk shes done, back feet right on the last inch of the contact :) and a lovely go on to finish, she finished 5th, so I was really happy with her.

Absolutely adore running her, she is the best little girl in the world. I even cooked her an omelette tonight as she was so good :O

Imogen has been at Dashin Dogs this weekend with Honey and Tia, and has done brilliantly, Honey winning 4 classes and a 2nd, and Tia having a 1st and 2nd in juniors! Yayyyy :)

x

GT UKA

2010-07-04T10:08:00.001-07:00

Running a week behind! I entered the Saturday of GT but somehow forgot to enter Scandal in the Sunday of Lansdown, even tho I entered Ricky and Tia lol??

Had 4 runs at UKA but only ran 3 of them, as the gamblers still had at least 1.5hrs to go and we were all hot and bothered and home seemed much nicer than melting.

Ohh and I got Scandal measured, my friend Laura's dog Be was measured standard and we both decided Scan was smaller than Be, so I wasn't worried... hmm I think I should have been! Cut off for standard is 500mm... Scandal was measured as... 499mm :O so she got in by the tiniest of margins... I can't believe she's 20"... especially as people told me last year she'd be medium, lol!

Decided before I'd even got to the show that I was going to do all 3 runs NFC as I think Scandal needed a confidence boost. I managed to miss walking all 3 of my classes, the only one I walked was gamblers which I never ran, ahhhhh, scatty head on! Well I didn't actually arrive until 8.45, which explains why I missed the first one, but the other 2 I was just being ditzy.

First run was jumping, and I rewarded her wait at the start, then rewarded her weaves. Her weaves felt slower than usual but hey we're ignoring that, she did them, that's all I care about :) then did a nice bit next, but tried to bounce a jump on a wide 90 degree angle and crashed through it, she looked a bit suprised so I called her to me and gave her a stroke before we carried on - made me feel better anyway!

Next was steeplechase, rewarded her wait again, and sort of made up my own course so Scandal wouldn't have to do lots of bounces, but she bounced instead in 2 places where the jumps must have been at least 8 paces apart :O crazy long stride. I did 3 wing wraps with her and rewarded her on 2 of them, the 3rd one we did coming out of a tunnel, I said 'cik' and she really digged in and turned sharply, so I was happy.

Last run was agility, again rewarded the wait, did perfect aframe, then 3 jumps, perfect running dog walk, tunnel, and I rewarded at this point, then jump weaves, rewarded after the weaves, then couple of jumps seesaw - which she got but didn't hold position, so we re-did the sequence of jumps-seesaw and she got it nicely.

Hmm more seesaw work, although I did realise that we didn't do any on the one day we trained last week, oops. I'm pleased with her weaves being good, and of course it was really nice to be able to reward her dog walk, as I haven't rewarded any since our last UKA show. Such a good Scandalbean, she tried so hard!

Newton Heath

2010-06-28T11:52:00.001-07:00

Thought I better write another post otherwise Dan will be moaning... ohhh wait, he already is :P

Here is the video of Thames and Newton Heath

Scandal seemed to have gone up a gear at this show - although by the end of it had gone down a gear - more on that later.

First day was great - she won the G3 jumping with a really flowing run, steadied nicely for a pull through, did weaves that were almost fast, and tried really hard. We also had a 3rd in G3 agility with a held seesaw. I screwed up the wing wrap before the dog walk hence she went up the dog walk really slowly as she wasn't sure if she was right or not. Ohhh I'm an idiot!

Then it all started to go downhill on the Sunday. Her 3-5 Olympia agility went 3 jumps, dog walk, jump, pull through. I was so impressed with her speedily running down her dog walk that I was a fraction late with her wing wrap command, and then bent down, rather than standing up straight with high stop arm, so she ignored me and went round. Then did a perfect seesaw, then went in to the tunnel after which they had to turn right. I said "Scan scan scan" shoulders facing right way etc, but nooo, she completely ignored me and took a jump that wasn't even near, at which point I got cross and said "SCANDAL, NO" pretty loudly. She was alright after that and did speed back up again, but I was cross with myself for getting cross with her.

Her C3-5 jumping I cued her for a turn after 2, which she went to do, then flicked off, now this annoyed me as Tia does this but I've made a real effort to do loads of work with Scan so she doesn't do this, anyway so we had an almighty wide turn where she nearly took the wrong jump, then did 3 more jumps and she knocked this damn jump that she'd wanted to take in the first place down... then her weaves.... arghh. She's been trying SO hard on her weaves and has been perfect in them barring her first ever run at Hinckely. So she skipped a weave pole... cue horrified Char... wtf do I do when she misses a weave pole? (I am rubbish if I don't have a backup plan).

So I sent her back in from where I was stood, which was a 90 degree angle for Scandal to get... she missed it. I sent her in again, and she missed it again. So I sent her in straight, and she paid me back for this by walking through them and then stopping at the 6th pole... excuse me while I just die of embarrassment.

After that I decided that I'd have to really grit my teeth and stop pratting around as I sooo want her to get confident and of course she isn't going to if I'm not positive.

Her final run was G3 agility and started jump-weave. She came out of the 10th weave pole, think her confidence was given a big dent in the above jumping class. Put her in again (happy Char) and she flew through them, and then did a lovely rest of the round, incl a perfect running dog walk so I was happy. So a really great run apart from the weaves. I am not worried about the weaves, I know it will come back, I just have to make sure I am not shocked or suprised when she does it, and handle it a lot better, grrrr I need a slap!!

Thames

2010-06-26T08:59:00.000-07:00

Ok I'm a bit behind, but never mind.

Thames, Scandals 2nd show, she was lovely, had some great runs, on the Sat in the G3 jumping she ran past the last jump, it was on an angle and I thought she'd pick it up and she didn't. Then got a clear and a 3rd in G3 agility, slowww seesaw due to me handling like an idiot!!

Then we had a lovely round in the 3-5 combined agility which was a CSJ qualifier, and won it by 0.6!!! So out of grade 3... hmmm a bit soon, I only went for it coz it was a qualifier and they are exciting!

The next day in the G3 agility she was having a gorgeous run, felt like she meant business :D did a rather scary aframe but I didn't correct her as could see she really didn't mean to do it (and this proved correct with her doing a perfect af in the next run), and then did a getting-faster set of weaves, and then went into the wrong end of the tunnel. I could have helped her into the right side, but she must have just decided the entrance she could see was the best. I then tested her seesaw and she flew off it, well didn't fly off, but came off a bit soon, so we re-did it and she did the same thing again, oops.

In the 3-5 Olympia, I messed up and she took a pole, did a lovely aframe, and then launched down the plank of the dog walk instead of putting a stride in. She got the contact but I don't want her doing a dog walk like that so we re-did the down plank and she did exactly the same thing, so we did it again and she was ok. And another slow seesaw to finish.

The 1-4 jumping was next and she was gr8, ran early and then we left, and found out when we got home she won it - yay for Scandal :D she felt really floaty in this run and not trying... but she must have been trying if she won - I struggle with her striding, it's soooooo long and effortless, that it's not mad scrabbly like Rickys which is what I'm used to, and so feels really slow. And I'm not pushing her at all, I'm just trying to get in the right place, say the right commands, and that's hard enough :D

Love the baby dog :) x

Hinckley

2010-06-07T14:57:00.000-07:00

How exciting, what a lovely show, I've never been before but will definitely be back again, was such a friendly show, thought the tannoy woman was great :)

First Ant's run with Ruby in Leah's 6-7 agility - loved this course! Ant and Ruby made it look so easy, like a walk in the park.

Tia... 4 classes, I just ran her in 2, didn't even enter her in Champ as knew my mind wouldn't be on her this weekend. She ran ok, my handling was as usual dreadful, but Tia did nice contacts and... hmm thats about it.

Honey was entered on the Sunday and as Indy was at her grans I ran Honey... last time I ran Honey at Wye Valley she went like a slug so I can't say I was particularly looking forward to running her, however she was very good, she's still a lot faster for Indy, but at least she didn't insist on facing the back of the score tent this time!

Scandal baby beans... ohhhhh she's my princess!

She was sooooo good, I am so pleased with her. Very exasperated at myself for handling like such a dork so much of the time. Ok so a quick (long) run down of her runs... first run g3 jumping - not really focussed, neither of us were, I was still cross that she'd bitten me in the queue, not hard but enough to hurt, I didn't really know what to do with her as she wouldn't focus whilst I was walking her around and couldn't get her to calm down like I could the past few UKA shows. She ran round I think 3 or 4 jumps and couldn't find the lines for the jumps at all, also missed her weaves. Then the runs just got better, graded 3/4 agility she was fab... but again I was an idiot, we'd done the dog walk, and the weaves, and were clear up until no 14 which was the aframe. Straight line after the aframe = frame... go. What do I say? Frame. GO GO GO GO GO. And Scandal did. Straight over the apex and I think only got 1 paw on the aframe on the way down. Apart from wanting the floor to swallow me up we quickly re did the contact, and she then completed the course nicely, I am sooooo so cross with myself for saying this as it's precisely why I don't - she'll take her stride too deep. However looking back on the vid it's almost like she was expecting the next plank to be a dog walk type, as she didn't drop down over the aframe at all.

3rd run, CSJ 3-5 agility, I did a stop on her dogwalk which she did, with a nice nose touch at the end, then due to my crappy handling she ran past a jump, aframe a little cautious and high (altho she got the contact) but anything's better than the previous attempt. Nice weave entry which she straightened herself for, and nice seesaw. Went over the last jump and she went off SNIFFING!!! Someone had left a treat on the floor, which she was very pleased with herself for finding.

Sunday
Dog Vegas 3-5 agility - loved Matt Goodliffe's course, did a lovely running dog walk and I was so impressed I forgot to tell her where to go afterwards so she did a wide turn after the jump, then seesaw, hmm well she almost got 1 paw on the floor before I released her :D then nice aframe, slightly wide snake but I was v pleased she didn't run out the ring to get her toy as I'd seen lots of dogs do, thinkin they'd finished! Nice weaves, wide wing wrap, and nice straight bits to finish. OMG was I excited when we did OUR FIRST CLEAR :D woop! She got a 2nd, wow, what a star, I am so pleased with her, and sooooooo relieved we didn't win, as I desperately don't want to be out of G3. We also qualified for the Dog Vegas 3-5 Final - yayyy clever Beans!

G3 jumping - Scandal was so much more focussed, came out wide after the tunnel so I just said 'poles' and she brought herself back in and wrapped round the first weave pole, you can't really see from the vid how wide she was but I was so pleased that she found them, I'm determined to let her find them herself and not help her too much. Did a wideish turn after a snake, then a nice go on to finish and another CLEAR!! She got a 3rd in this, what a great baby.

Novice Olympia 3-5 agility - loved Graeme's course, thought it was just right. I didn't help Scandal enough for directions when she came out the flat tunnel and she turned the wrong way, I haven't done this nearly enough and really ought to practice it a bit more as think I've set it up in training like... twice in the last 6 months. Seesaw I dorked about on and hesitated, so Scandal hesistated, and then realised I was hesitating and ran forward for the next bit, which was followed by a left turn, so I turned soooo late, and Scandal tried so so hard to get over the jump, but knocked it, again I am uber cross with myself for handling so badly as she hates knocking poles. Rest of it was nice, bit wide, but Scandal being good trying very hard to listen and understand what the hell I am doing. Nice running dogwalk-tyre to finish.

I can't believe how amazing she has been, after the 1st run, I got my ass in gear and had (more) control over her around the rings, so she went into the ring focussed on me rather than what was going on in the neighbouring rings. So, we walk around with food up until the dog on the line goes in, then I take her lead off and we play tug, or rather she goes bananas ragging the tug... but again seems to work - will try various things in the coming months and see what works best for her. She is so much fun to work and tries so hard, really pleased all her weaves were perfect apart from her 1st run, yes they are still not fast, but she's able to do the correct action for the most part, which considering she couldn't/wouldn't last month is a big improvement. Love that she listens so intently and doesn't do her own thing. I just need to be a lot more decisive and actually move into the correct position QUICKLY rather than gawping at her. Oh and maintain criteria for the seesaw, and practice running past it, rather than waiting for her to do it. Just didn't want her flying off it at her first show, as she is a woos and would spend the next 6 shows crawling up it, lol.

Wow, this has to be the worlds longest blog post. Can you tell I'm a bit happy? :D

Scaredy beans

2010-06-04T02:38:00.000-07:00

We've done 1 training session in the last 8 days, I have been in very non-agility mode, Tia hasn't had any training for 12 days, we've been for some lovely long walks, had a BBQ, my guys have got to play with Todd, Be and Copper, and just had lots of general chill out time. We had a lesson with Dave on Weds, and that's it until her first show tomorrow... Hinckley... I nearly died when I got her running orders, I feel so nervous, I haven't run in 'novice' for over 5 years and am quite excited to be going back there, love the fast and flowing type course. Scandal is working so well and trying so hard, she can be a bit 'floaty' but I think gradually when she gets more ring-savvy the confidence will come through. She is so so biddable and I am looking forward to working a quiet girlie who tries her little socks off.

Scandal was great at Daves, her jumping has got tons better, she doesn't 'loop' so much now, isn't jumping so stupidly, and I don't have to rev her up as much, she genuinely looks like she has some interest in running! Weaves, once she's at about the 4th pole she'll swim them, she got all her entries and didn't bobble once, pleased she found her entries as they were next to the dog walk so she discriminated nicely. Her dog walks were bad, have lost her stop contacts, although I think it was partly coz Dave was stood behind with the toy, so she got to the middle plank of the dw and turned around to gawp to see where he was, grrrr, she then did a few ok-ish ones, then when we did a running one she leapt down the plank and was high, so downed her and then all the rest were perfect. Aframes were nice as were the seesaws apart from that she was sliding down and stopping at the bottom and then deciding when she deemed it fit to carry on herself :)

Oh and some have asked about her chase drive... well it's still improving all the time. I called her off a deer last week, she came, first call, did such a wheelspin that she kicked all the dust up :) so we are getting there. She hasn't run off on any of the walks we've gone on (touch wood) and she sticks close by rather than going off hunting. She's still obsessed with the farm animals, particularly cows, but again I can call her away from them and she will generally come first call.

I will leave you with a video of Imogen winning 1-4 jumping, they still managed to win by a couple of secs despite the blip at the end... from a dog who was sooo obsessed with the finish jump you couldn't pull her off it, to one who's choosing the weaves over the finish jump... hmm, I guess it's progress of some sort!

SWAT

2010-05-31T02:31:00.000-07:00

I decided not to do SWAT on the Saturday as last week Tia took it upon herself to a) jump in her top cage of the van whilst the door was shut and b) run into the patio door whilst trying to get away from golf ball sized hot air balloon in the distance. She was a little lame after (a) so I gave her the week off any agility.

Then I had some kind of food poisoning on Saturday night, however as I ate so much food that day it was hard to isolate the thing which caused it. So I felt really rough on the Sunday morning, plus I'd heard that the ground at SWAT was a bit bumpy, Tia, agility and bumpy ground really don't mix, her class was on first thing so would have to run on wet grass = decision made, stay in bed.

Did a fair amount of revision, then heard from Garth that Imogen had her first grade 4 classes and had won the 1-4 jumping by a couple of secs. She trained her agility but Honey was 100x better than the last couple of weeks, stopped on the dog walk and Honey slightly came off her aframe but reversed back on. So Honey's now partway to G5, eeek, not yet!

Laura also won the G2 jumping with Be on the Saturday, woop woop am so proud of them :-) only their 2nd show.

Jess and Lee had Rix over the weekend so they could run him in veterans, however veterans was on so late that in the end they didn't run him in either class, still, Rix enjoyed his holiday. Tia and Scandal have been total pains the last week, Scandal has SO much energy, and doesn't think that me sitting down revising is good enough, and spends her time either dropping things in my lap, trying to lie across my papers, or play fight with Tia making so much noise that I cant concentrate.

So yesterday afternoon as it was such a lovely day that we took Scandal Tia and Honey for a walk near Chew Valley Lake. It was a 6 mile route that looked out over the lake with stunning views, going through several lovely little villages too, the dogs loved it. Tia and Scandal were tired when we got home :)

Scandals 1st win :)

2010-05-28T09:33:00.002-07:00

Scandal was sooooo lovely at UKA Phoenix. She was like a different dog, so much easier, we had NO BARKING between walking to the van, queueing, running, and going back to the van. AMAZING progress :)

She won the beginners steeplechase out of I think 60 dogs. I trained her nursery, it's the first time I've asked her to dog her stop dog walk in the ring, and as you can see, she was a bit like "wtf?" But then the 2nd and 3rd time was lovely, and she did a lovely running contact too. Her training has gone really well this week, she has been very enthusiastic, we are looking forward to seeing Dave next week, hopefully he will think she has made a bit of progress :)

Blackdown and Leamington

2010-05-20T06:55:00.000-07:00

Still behind but hey getting there :) am trying something different with the videos so it's not cutting out half the vid, so hope it will work!

Blackdown

Well Tia had a pole in her 6-7 jumping but did a BRILLIANT weave entry :D she took the pole before the weaves, coz I came to a halt to give her space to find the weave entry herself. So pleased - its the sort of entry I train but then in the ring bottle it and make sure she gets it, rather than letting her find it herself. But now I'm making an effort to test the things we do in training. Good T :-D

5-7 jumping - OMG, one of my favourite courses ever. Soooo hard, tested lots of skills, but if you handled it right (ok, I didnt :)) it flowed superbly, we had a ball, Tia was brilliant, listened soooo hard, which after the last few weeks where listening skills have been optional, it was appreciated we had them back :) we got e'd, but got e'd quite late on, which I was pleased with, as there were about 100 places we could have done, but just about managed to save most of them :)

Agility, Tia had a pole, but perfect contacts, straight down into position, so again very happy :-)

Indian and Honeypot won the 1-3 jumping by a couple of seconds, and then had an abolutely storming run in Neil Ellis' SUPER G3-5 agility, prob the hardest course Imogen has done in the ring, she and Honey were fabbo and did a super clear to win it, they would have won the G4 and G5 parts by 8 and 9 seconds respectively :O only problemo is Honey now appears to think she has running contacts, which are getting progressivey higher each week, lol. Back to training them in the ring next month I thinks :)
They have now got 20 wins in KC competition in the last 2 months :O

Leamington

Tia only had 1 run - 1-7 jumping - as I said 'go' she went to go over the jump and then stopped, think she thought I'd said a test word (green, gas etc) so I said 'go' again but poor T was right under the jump and only just cleared it. You had to do the straight tunnel twice and the 2nd time Tia fell over in it at the end - not sure what it is with her falling over in tunnels at the moment? She was really good bouncing jumps, no poles, and not too much barking either, came 4th, good T-bag.

Imogen and Honey had 2 3-5s, Honey broke her wait and missed her aframe, naughty wait, but Imogen said "come on" on her aframe and Honey obediently did, lol. Then had a 2nd in the jumping, and then a 3rd in 1-7 jumping which was great. Honey didn't seem quite 'with it' a bit of a sleepy spaniel I think!

Also had a practice ring so I took Scandal in and they were really nice people, very generous with the time as no one was waiting, I took her in twice, rewarded loads for brilliant waits, only one aframe she did was a little high, we also did left and right turns after the aframe which she did nicely, jumps wise she was great but she is bouncing everything tho - scary! Also did a couple of seesaws which were good.

Only letting her weave at home atm - still got the first 4 as channels and the next 8 as uprights - she's starting to power through them now, yay, head down and swims them nicely. Hope this week we'll go onto all uprights - eeek! Phoenix on Sat then her first show is Hinckley **faints**

:-)

Handling

2010-05-18T00:53:00.000-07:00

Ok running a week behind so here goes

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzJrmTXpnJo

Did UKA at HJ Agility on Saturday. It was a really nice show with lots of thanks on the tannoy for everyone who'd given up their time to help, rather than moans/threats about people not helping, which made a nice change :)

Scandal had 2 classes, nursery agility and steeplechase. In the nursery we did our own course, the aframe as the third one. She got the contact with a front and 2 back paws but at the moment is a bit doubtful when she comes over the top of the af so isn't going as deep into the contact on strange af's. However I think the more she does, the more confident she will get.

Still have a problem on strange dw's - the first dw she did she got the contact but it was high, so we did it twice more and she was much better. But we don't get 2 trys in the ring - ahhhhh! I don't know what to do for the best as no point stopping at the moment as she'll do the 'fine, I won't bother' rather than enjoying herself like she is right now. Oh, and I couldn't remember my wing wrap commands, and was all over the place... idiot.

In the steeplechase I opted to train it again. Oh dear my handling is appalling. 3rd jump was slightly offset so I turned my shoulders to make sure she didn't run round... except I should have done this on 2, not 3, so on 3 she had no idea if I wanted her to run in a straight line or turn, so she bounced the jump but knocked it, poor Scan, she hates knocking poles, can just imagine her thinking 'wtf are you doing mum, idiot!!'

Pleased she turned tightly after the straight tunnel, see, she isn't always WIDE ;) then the next bit she picked up nicely, but then the only slightly harder thing, ie the 2 jump snake, I screwed up, wtf was I even doing? No wonder Scandal didn't have a clue, I don't have a clue what I was trying to do either! And she did the sequence much better when I worked her from behind the 2nd time. Guess I am too obsessed with trying to get in front/handle like I'm working Tia, which I don't need to do. Just my comfort zone.

End result = Scandal gone up another gear in enthusiasm stakes, Char gone down a level in handling abilities!

Proud :)

2010-05-06T06:45:00.000-07:00

Lee and Rix at Shrewsbury in anysize, coming 3rd... Rix is 11yrs 3 month and I'm sure he's running faster than he was a few years ago!

Jess and Cop at Shrewsbury, just 1 pole

Winning Grade 1 agility by over 2 secs :D

3rd in Grade 1 jumping (lol at Lee's comment at the start :))

Laura and Be in their first KC show

I'm proud :D

Shrewsbury, North Somerset and training

2010-05-04T12:21:00.000-07:00

Just a small update as I am meant to be revising!

Had a nice weekend at Shrewsbury, Tia was mad, and very hard work, arguing lots and taking 1 pole per run, barking way too much and not really listening. There were some nice bits she did in each run and some bad bits!

Then at North Somerset she had a lovely run in Graham Partridge's 5-7 agility and won it, she did a lovely run apart from a deviation when I said "weave" instead of left, weave, she carried on in a straight line and went round the ring pole, and then into the weaves. But she barked a lot less and it felt like she concentrated a lot more :) in the jumping she had a pole near the end and then I called her too early before she went in the tunnel, so she span. But again felt like she was working a lot better. Then in the other jumping the beginning and end were good, just a bit in the middle was a bit rubbish!

Imogen and Honey had their first grade 3 classes and ended up with 6 wins and a 2nd, all fantastic runs, they had 2 other classes with brilliant 5fs, Imogen is working much harder with her now and it is showing, as Honey is so much more up for her runs :)

A big big well done to Jess and her springer Copper for winning the large grade 1 agility by over 2 secs, and a 3rd in the jumping, 0.1sec from 1st. Laura and Be had their first KC show just in jumping classes and did 2 stunning E's, both E near the end, but amazing stuff, perfect front crosses, Be working fast and very tight, lovely weaves and lovely send ons. Made me very proud to see them working so fabbly!

Scandal was super all weekend, very little barking, and if she did bark, it was really easy to get her attention back on to me. She is 16 months old tomorrow - eeeek! We did some training tonight and I think it was our best session to date, she was uber up for it and worked soooooo well, boy do I love her :) well, most of the time :) have been up on the Mendips for an hour chasing rabbits with the 3 dogs, they are all very tired now, especially Rix, poor boy, he didn't stop running the whole time, don't think his legs appreciate it afterwards!

WBSDS and Scandals training

2010-04-27T07:23:00.000-07:00

Ok well first of all I now spend quite a lot of time when I have Scandal out practising 'flicky feet' it seems to have the desired affect in getting her to concentrate and take her mind off watching the dogs working. Here's a little vid of her doing flicky feet.

Ahhh I love it, just have to increase the duration of it now. When we're walking round the rings she flicks her feet even more, very very bouncy and excited!

Her weaves really have not been improving so we have gone back to channel weaves. On uprights she was doing 1-step, 2 step, followed by a cross-over-paws-step, so she's back on channel now, they are really close together, probably an inch apart, but she's a lot happier on them and single steps. So over the next month hopefully we can close them up again.

And now on to WBSDS.... hmmmmmmm!

Ricky wasn't great in his 2 anysize classes, I can barely get a wait out of him at all now, he's so naughty, and he is 11 after all so I'm not going to throw his classes to get a wait back! He was a bit clumsy this weekend, he jumps loads better on medium, as he actually has to jump, rather than just step over them. We had lots of lovely comments on how fast and keen he looks, which is nice :)

Tia... omg, we have never had anything like this before. She just blew her top. She'll be 8 years old on Saturday and I don't think I've ever taken her out the ring before. Well we walked out of 2 classes on Saturday. Crazy beans. Out of the 5 runs we had over the weekend, she only did 1 perfect wait, the rest involved numerous amounts of creeping. On Sat, Mike Bacon's 6-7 agility, more of a FCI type course, LOVED it, thought it was hard (for me anyway :)) but couldn't wait to do it. I recalled Tia and put a front cross in, which sent her ploughing through the jump. Then, on a 3 jump star thing, I was stood in middle of the star, said right, shoulders etc facing right, and she just randomly flicked off and went left. Then the aframe/tunnel combination she ran past altogether, then when she finally went in the tunnel, she cut across me when she came out. And then finally when I asked for a pull through, amidst lots of barking she again took the pole and did a wide turn... so we left! She got in more barks in that 1 run than I think she does in most days of competition, it was like she'd left her brain at home.

So then 6-7 jumping and she worked it a lot better, had a pole due to me not collecting after a turn, then the fricking weaves! Ahhhhhhh! She got a great entry, then bobbled at 5. So we did it again and she came out of the last weave.... I was pulling off towards the next obstacle, but still expect her to stay in the weaves, and as she was already e'd, great chance to practice. So we tried again, me not pulling off quite so much, and she came out again. So we left! Bad Tia. More training.

The 1-7 jumping was one of the easiest 1-7s I've seen, and the only slightly 'tricky' bit, if you could even call it tricky, ie through a box, round, and back through, despite my 'come, come' command, Tia pinged off diagnally. Actually, on the video, it was totally my fault, for flumoxing around too long and then slightly stepping over towards the jump Tia took. But I would be grateful if she didn't bark quite as much so she at least looked partly like she was listening :)

Sunday, we tried a different tactic, getting Tia to do tricks etc in the queue so she couldn't get so wound up. Much better, we had a 'skin of your teeth' clear in the agility which i was pleased with as lots of E's. Wasted too much time dithering at the end so just out of the placings. Tash and Maddie won it, can't believe Maddie is 12 years old, she was absolutely stunning and just flew!

Then T did a nice round in the 6-7 jumping and a simple pull through at the end, again I didn't collect Tia for the next jump and she ran past it, duhhhh handler. However it was nice that Tia was listening again. We didn't do our last class as I hadn't walked it and figured it'd be good to end on a goodish note!

Imogen and Honey had their last 1-2s and won 3 of them. I got in a bit of a strop in 1 of the jumpings, Honey missed her weave entry because the 2nd and 3rd weaves were horrendously wonky, the dogs would have had to bend soooo hard back to get the 2nd one. However, after Imogen ran, the judge re-pegged the weaves SO THEY WERE COMPLETELY STRAIGHT!!!! THAT IS NOT FAIR! And when I pointed this out to the judge, she said they weren't wonky in the first place, however, why put an EXTRA 3 pegs in to the first section of the weaves, if there wasn't a problem with them? Grrrr, fine if you're going to have wonky weaves and it's the same for everyone, but don't change it half way through. CONSISTENCY!!! Rant over, I feel better now :)

Phewf, long post!

Wallingford

2010-04-21T14:46:00.000-07:00

Lush show, lush weather :)

Firstly Imogen and Honey were AMAZING, Honey speeding up all the time and their last run of the day on Sunday was fantastic, Honey going almost the same speed as she does in training. Im made me smile in the agility on Sun, Honey in the tunnel and Imogen yelling "COME ON!!!!" they are both really enjoying being in the ring now. 4 runs in 1-2 over the weekend and 4 wins, winning on Sat by 2 and 5 secs, and on Sunday by 3 secs each class. The week before I had promised Imogen that if she worked hard last weekend/this weekend she could have whatever dessert she wanted from a restaurant... so we went to Pizza Hut so Imogen could have her profiteroles 'to share' for herself, she managed 12 out of the 14 profiteroles which I couldn't quite believe!

Ricky had a clear in anysize on the Saturday and loved his tripe stick or whatever it was that he got at the end. He was hopeless on Sunday knocked 2 poles and kept pinging off to try and do whatver he wanted, made me smile as at the end he normally grabs his toy and runs back into the ring, and I can't get him back. Well this time he picked his ball up and promptly dropped it and ran to the lady giving the tripe sticks out :) I'm sure lots of people prefer rosettes/trophies for this class but I sure know what Rix prefers :)

Just ran T in the G7 jumping on Sat and she did a roly poly in the tunnel :O which the dogs went into on an angle, altho the tunnel itself was straight. Well most dogs slightly collected themselves before the tunnel but not Ditzy. She did a massive stride IN to the tunnel and promptly skidded in it and I just saw Tia's upside down legs in it :O so I called her to me rather than carrying on, to check she was ok. She was very excited and barking so once I'd gathered all 4 legs were still working we carried on and she finished nicely.

Then Sunday she had a lovely run in the agility, was flying, got her weave entry but then skipped the next weave, put her in again and same thing. 3rd time lucky. Watching the vid back she is absolutely flying, extending probably the best she has ever done and is barking more than ever (grrrr) it was long jump weaves and she hit the weaves really fast, more fast than she is used to I think lol. Just one of those things and I can't expect any more of her as I don't train the weaves at home as it's a lot of pressure on her back and legs, maybe I need to think about it tho and just do 4 poles so can practice entries.

Did some nice bits in her jumping but again T barking so much that she ran past the weaves, think a combination of Tia barking, vvvv loud tannoy and me not having shoulders in right direction (mainly latter!). She is so much faster though, we need to do much more training!!!

Oh and I have to blog about how brillo Scandal was. She was better on Sat than Thatcham thank goodness, I told her off twice when she went ridiculously OTT and was being generally horrible,the rest of the time a 'sweeties' when she is looking at a dog in the ring and she's straight back to watching me, and is then rewarded about 10 sec later. Well, Garth walked her round the rings on Sun afternoon, grrrrrrrr Scandal is so good for him!!! I think she barked once, maybe twice the whole time, he's mr calm, so she is miss calm! She completely adores him, and he only has to calmly say 'Scandal, no' to her and she's back casually walking by his side, head relaxed, none of this bouncing/growling/barking stuff that I have! So she can do it, I just have to be calm and relaxed, oh and not stop to chat to people, as then Scandal gets bored and diverts attention to competing dogs.

Daves training

2010-04-18T12:44:00.000-07:00

Ok I'm getting behind with the blog, this post is nearly a week late.

Imogen, Laura and myself went to Dave's last Tuesday, Garth drove, yay :D we had a lovely time and then went to Sandwich Bay afterwards which is a private beach which was lovely, then went and had Fish and Chips on the beach which was lovely too. Was nice for the dogs to have a good walk after training as I think it's good for them to be able to unwind.

Imogen was as usual brill, she picks things up so quickly, Honey was great, and even bounced a jump right at the end which is good as she'd had an hours training. We do an hour with each of them, but break it into half hours, so we all do a half hour, then all do another half hour, gives them all time to rest in between. Was pleased as it's the first time Scandal's had an hour, the other times shes had 45 mins, and she was still remotely up for it at the end which is much better than she has been before.

I absolutely loved this lesson and was probably one of my faves, got so much out of it and have been practicing the stuff this week and feel that we have made lots of progress but still lots to work on. Scandal's dogwalks was good she hit every one nicely, they only thing she did was on one of them she was expecting me to throw her toy afterwards so ran round a jump. Aframes were nice apart from the first one when she did the apex-contact, and didn't put a stride in, time out for 10 secs and she didn't do it again. The seesaws were the first seesaws she's done anywhere except mine, and she was lovely on them, did a fast one too. Not too worried about the speed of them as think will come eventually plus it looks slow on vid as she'd done about 50 mins work by that point so was flagging :)

So we did loads of work in collection after a turn rather than me just doing the turn and assuming Scandal's following, me cueing but not too early or too late as I tend to do one or t'other :) Scandal was great at collecting herself for a front cross but I was not great at collecting her afterwards. I'm sure she had sped up as at times I did feel like she was leaving me for dust and I was trailing. The one thing she was not good at was lots of cross behinds on a staggered line of jumps in a straightish line, she decelerates nicely but doesn't tend to shape into a turn after. We did some work on cross behinds after this and they were good, it's just the staggered line for us to work on. Actually I think looking at the vid we've got quite a lot to do in the way of working on her finding a line and powering off to it, she now (thankfully) can power down a straight line, but if she's ahead of me and I say 'right' and she has to power 5-10metres to the next jump she won't go full speed, I think it's coz she wants to be sure to get it right, she's being careful :)

Also did the most full height stuff she has ever done (not much!!) and she was so much better than I thought she would be, I don't think it's gonna be as much of an issue as I thought it'd be. She's still much more comfy on 22" but then we have still got 6 weeks or so before our first KC show.

Laura's Be is looking amazing and the difference in her in the or 5 lessons we've had with Dave... well looking at the first vid from back in October it's hard to believe it's the same dog as the stuff Dave has got her to do has so helped in sorting out her striding, learning how to jump, and powering to the jumps.

So all in all a good lesson, got another one end of next month just before Scandal's first KC show eeek!

Scandal's first UKA show

2010-04-15T06:48:00.001-07:00

Mixed weekend with Scandal - i took her to Wye Valley on Saturday and felt like we made massive progress, she was much calmer round the rings, sitting quietly, no lunging and only a bit of barking... almost civilised.

Then at Thatcham, omg, what a pain. I forgot her headcollar so we kicked off to a real bad start with me resorting to muzzling her as it calms her down very slightly and means she can't bark quite as loudly. All the good work from Saturday was immediately undone, if I have her out long enough she calms down a little bit, still bounces around but no lunging, but then she didn't calm down at all on Sunday I think due to having no headcollar, which evidently has more positives than I thought it did.

Here's the video of parts of her runs, editing out the toy playing, and a bit of stuff we did at Dave's on tues, more about that in another post.

Her first run was beginners steeplechase... 1-8 she did brilliantly, then on a turn I said 'left' and she did, so I said good girl (=toy)... and so she ran past the next jump :) so we did the turn again, which she did nicely. Then she got totally confused on the last bit, it was a sort of arc shape, which most of the baby dogs just couldn't do... infact I think the only ones who managed it were the ones who ran the 'long' way round, but with Scandal I wanted to cross behind - however have taught her cross-behind = sharp turn, and she just couldn't understand what I wanted and kept pinging off to pick a jump up (a mile better than when she was clingy) so I got on the inside of the arc and made it easier, in hindsight I should have done that at the beginning and not seen how she got on.

In the agility, the start was jump-dogwalk and I'd decided we were going to do a running contact, she did a big leap down the down plank and just got the contact, ... so we did the down plank and she did it great, so we did the whole thing (expertly captured on camera... not ;)) and again she was great. Then we did aframe, jump tunnel and she was nice again. Apart from Garth pressed 'stop' on the camera as Scandal went up the aframe, and start just as she left. I was well moody after that, oops! And then did a simple jumping bit to finish, which I was chuffed with, she's trying soooooooooo hard.

Must must must work on my waits. Again in both rounds we had 'sit. wait. one paw forward. one paw back. one paw forward. both paws forward.' I get so excited that she is keen and wants to go but I have got to insist she sits properly else I think very soon we won't have waits at all. I will work on this over the next couple of months but then in training she has a very upright sit, doesn't lean over at all. Not like in the ring! I am really pleased however that she is very enthusiastic, which is completely opposite to what I thought she'd be like!

Yay the sun is here :)

2010-04-10T07:58:00.001-07:00

Just come back from Wye Valley, lovely show, even better with a river to play in (not swim in, Sandals won't go in further than her elbows, she has forgotton how good she got at swimming last year!)

I ran Honey in 1-7 circ jumping and she didn't like it one bit, and went on a plod, on set up Imogen has recently taught her to set up like Bernadettes Zen (I think) where the dog comes and sits between your legs, well when I did this with Honey she decided she'd go the other way and sit facing out the other way, ie the opposite way I wanted her to go, so she could wait for Imogen to release her! Think she got a low place in that but would have been interesting to see what she'd have got if she had her speedy socks on!

Imogen redeemed herself after last week and worked brilliantly, in the 1-3 graded Honey was flying and at the end just came off the seesaw a bit too early, but was something like 16 secs faster than the winner of G2, and 4 secs faster than the winner of the grade 3. She then won the 1-3 graded jumping in G2, winning by 9 secs, and her time would have put her 2nd in the G3 part. So all smiles :)

Did 5 mins with Scandal at Bincknoll on Wednesday working on running contacts and she was lovely, I did the last plank a couple of times and then the whole thing, she was scrummy :) nice aframe and weaves too. Yay for Scandal :) we've only had a chance to do 5 mins of training up at the field this week and just spent it working on one jump doing lots of rewarding for turning the right way, tightly. Going to Thatcham tomorrow, Scandal's first UKA..... ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Great weekend at TAG

2010-04-05T13:08:00.000-07:00

I'm exhausted. I had forgotton how draining camping shows are. Especially with two kids who want to play Connect4 at 6.45am!!!

Tia was amazing, I couldn't be any more pleased with her, she did everything I asked, she loved every second of it, by the 3rd day she wasn't arguing with me quite so much on turns and the 4th day in the jumping I finally got a round out of her that I thought was almost perfect... apart from the bit where she ran past the last jump... oops.

She hasn't trained on 26" for about 3mths as has been training on 22, whether this made a difference or not I don't know as I think in 4 classes she had 1 pole, although 2 of them were on wing wraps with me dropping my steady arm, so totally my fault.

I think training with Dave over the winter, and him giving me tons to work on (with Scandal) has also transferred to Tia, I have only had 1 lesson with Tia, and that was about 15 mins as it's all she can do, we have got another lesson next week and I think I may do 45 min with Scandal and 15 with Tia again.

I am so different in my philosophy of shows and classes now, at one point I wanted to beat person X, or win class Y, but now I couldn't care less, of course I am still really competitive and want to do well, however my aim is to beat the course, and I think it is the first show that I felt like I could handle the courses and be confident in Tia. I didn't run 2 of her classes as one I thought the ground was too slippy, and the other I thought the course was totally inappropriate for the ground conditions, everything was minimum distance with sharp turns that required the dog to bounce, and the dog had to do several jumps several times, so the path was a mud track, and I wasn't prepared to put Tia round that. For almost all the other runs the ground was nice, soft but the dog could still get a grip on it.

Rix was good, winning anysize with Lee on Friday, and then just having a pole in most of his other classes. Still a fast boy at 11 yrs :)

Imogen did well getting 3 wins and was then pants the next 2 days, grrr naughty child. Jess and Copper span did great getting a 2nd in agility, and 7th in 1-3 jumping.

OOoooh and small handlers look out for Sam Lane's GORGEOUS 20month old chocolate working cocker spaniel, won out of G3 this weekend at her first show and just oozes drive, she is lovely.

And thanks to those of you who recommended Asics shoes, I got a pair the day before TAG and they are LUSH, they are cushioned and I feel like they have springs in them, they are the most comfy pair of trainers I've ever bought and I want to get another pair already :)

Bincknoll

2010-03-30T14:33:00.000-07:00

Well Scandal had her first show on Saturday. We went to Bincknoll as Scandal could do nursery agility and 1-3 steeplechase on medium height NFC. As it was they also did a nursery steeplechase which was the same as the 1-3, so Scandal got 2 goes at it :)

I was dead chuffed with how she did, have been panicking at how she'd do. Infact the reason I wanted to do this one was because they only had 1 ring indoors and 1 outdoors, so there wouldn't be agility going on for her to watch. As it happened when it was Scandal's first run, there was a bit of equipment fenced off with barrier netting, and I took Scandal's lead off, and she took off towards the fence, not speedy, but a bouncy trot with her trying to work out how she could get through the fence I imagine! I called her back and she came straight back and for the rest of the show no problems. Her waits were a bit naughty on all of them, the first one she moved her paw (we are very strict - sit wait = sit wait and not stick one paw as far forward as you can) but I let it go as I was excited that she was looking keen! We broke it down and did 1-7, 8-12, 13-18 (ish) as I just wanted her to get everything right and have loads of opportunity to get rewarded so she thinks that staying in the ring is more fun than going off to chase other dogs! In the 2nd round (on the vid) we did pretty much the same except I did the tunnel as well before giving her the toy in the first bit.

In the agility it went jump-dog walk-tunnel, I've decided to stop her on her dog walk until I can get in the ring at UKA and train it properly, so set her up to succeed, didnt want her first experience to be leaping off the dw! As it happened I said "target" and she ran down the contact and then looked like she was going to stop but then trotted off it, great... so I called her back and went to the top of the down plank and did it again, with me stood behind, and she went down and did a lovely target, and then bit me when I gave her the toy, thanks Scandal. So then we did tunnel and a couple of jumps, then I gave her her toy again before the aframe, because it was a straight tunnel aframe and she hasn't been doing full height aframe for too long (god i'm rambling!!!) so again I didn't want her soaring off the aframe. So we did tunnel aframe and she did a nice aframe, good girl.

Anyway if you are still reading this! here is the video

All in all very pleased except still got massive prob with her chewing toys, Garth made her an 'indestructible' toy with some very very strong rope and she chewed through it within about 5 minutes :O the problem is she is much more keen to chew the rope part than the actual toy which is fairly annoying. Naughty Sandals.

Imogen and Honey were on form too, getting a 1st and a 2nd. Coupled with Honey getting out on to a road when we were walking her and getting hit by a car, brought us all back down to earth with a bump!!

Took Honey to Lowri's on Monday so she could do a fitness assessment (to be on the safe side after getting hit) but turns out she needs some treatment, so then off to Garth's vets we went which was Langford veterinary centre... well, I am still cross about it now! They wouldn't just write us a referral which is what my fabbidy vets would do, no, we had to go in and see the stupid rude vet, for 5 minutes, for her to poke Honey around and tell us she needed x-rays, to which I replied, thanks, but no thanks... now, can you just write a referral to SMART in Cardiff please :) well, you should have seen the look on her face, if looks could kill! She did tell me that this would mean Honey would probably be out of action for a long time, as if this specialist is going to try and keep Honey out of the ring for a long time? Cheeky moo, as this won't be the case I'm sure! After giving me a massive death stare she disappeared off and then came back a few minutes later to say that would be fine but she wouldn't be able to write us the referral until tomorrow. And then charged £29.50 for the consultation. OMG, I know vets need to make a profit, but that to me is ridiculous. I am so cross. And it makes me appreciate what an angel my vet is ("hi, Ricky's lame, I want to go to xyz, can you write a referral please?") lol!

So I am going to Lowri's tomorrow with Rix, Tia and Scandal, and taking Honey too, my lot haven't been for 3 months and I can really tell with Ricky, he's much stiffer than he has been.

Imogen trained Tia yesterday and she was brill, although I suddenly remembered that Tia's been jumping 22" for 3 months and hasn't done any 26... never mind.

We are off to TAG in 2 sleeps time, OMG I can't ever remember being this excited about a show :D :D

6 (& 7)

2010-03-29T13:52:00.000-07:00

Ok 2 posts combined, im getting behind.

Trained Scandal for 10mins on Thurs I think it was, or maybe Fri, she was great lovely aframes but was high on her dog walk twice, nooo idea why, but was doing lovely rights and lefts and picking up jumps really well so I was pleased.

Yesterday just did snakes and wing wraps mixed in, haven't done many snakes so kept them on small, only did about 5 minutes tops, she was just brill, think she was perfect every time, seems to be clicking what wing wraps are finally! Also did seesaw and think was best seesaws she has done, gaining confidence in running to the end when she knows I'm not gonna hold it.

Did some gridwork with her today along with Lee and Jess's dogs and Scandal was the worst one of the lot - ahhhhh! Really struggled with gaging distances after the first 2 jumps, just jumped longer and longer and closer and closer to each jump, before jumping the last 2 as a spread. Did some work on it placing the toy in the gap, just doing 3 jumps etc but soon as put it back to 5 she wanted to do the last 2 as 1, so we did 4 and left it at that. She was fine with the moving grid and we will do the progressive next week. The other 2 dogs Cop and Todd did fab, both quickly adjusting and jumping nice and balanced taking off in the middle between each jump. Lots of work on this in the future!

For those that want to know - Honey was seen by Lowri today for a fitness assessment and has got a sore shoulder and hind leg, so is off for treatment along with my 3 on Wednesday. Think she probably got bumped off the side of the car rather than being hit infront - it was a 4x4 that hit her so if she'd been infront would have probably gone under the car, rather than living to tell the tale.

Scandal had her first show on Saturday - nursery agility and 2 x steeplechases, we ran them all NFC and took her toy in for all and broke them up into small sections, as it was Scandals first time working in an uber exciting environment I wanted to be sure to be more exciting than anything else, as still paranoid about her running off, will blog about it tomorrow.x

5

2010-03-23T10:43:00.000-07:00

After having a chat with Nancy on Sunday about Scandal, I decided that I would ease up on Scandal's training for a couple of weeks as she was so flat last time I trained, probably due to her season finished, and I was putting in more energy than she was, she didn't want to be there! So rather than working against her, and building up anything negative, just not train.

So today I went to Jess's, took Scandal with me and thought I'd give her a go and if she didn't want to I'd just tie her up and we'd do some with Copper and Todd. Well, Scandal was great :D she was very keen, happy to be there and wanted to work. Her weaves (still only 6) were faster, we didn't do any dog walks, just the aframe, not sure what to do on the aframe as she was working a lot faster, and even just doing 2 obstacles before (on a turn, so not even a massive straight-on to the aframe) she was trying to do a 1 hit aframe, ie she flies over the apex and touches the contact, which of course I don't want as I think it's dangerous. But its hard as then she has to go slower to get her two hit, and then I moan that she's not going fast enough! So we made it easier and I just did the aframe from closer up, the reason she was doing a 1-hit was because I was infront to pick her up after a turn, so she was playing catch up. Then we did some stuff on me doing a front cross on a turn and her dropping in tightly, not sure how to describe it hmmm but once I got my timing sorted she was great :)

I think we did 2x 5 minute sessions. Not going to ask for longer than that for a while, it's hard as then I feel like I can't get everything in, but need to keep her happy. Ahhhh she was a good girl. Well, that was until I tied her up for the 2nd time and we were doing stuff with Todd, Scandal LOVES Todd and they play so nicely together. Scandal decided she wasn't having any of this so chewed through her new (very thick) lead, and then proceeded to chew through her new ball on a rope too! So I retied the lead, and she chewed through it again, grrr naughty Sandals. Then she did some good work where I kept her with me (off lead, seeing as I had no choice grr) and Jess worked Todd, and she stayed with me, no chasing Todd. Yay for Scandal having a little bit of self-control :) There is hope!

Happy days

2010-03-21T10:17:00.001-07:00

Lovely day at Chippenham, firstly thank you to Bernadette who offered for me to put Scandal in her car, Scandal got to camp next to the wonderful Zen :O I can only hope some of Zen's awesomeness rubbed off on Scandal and eagerly await our next training session :) well done Bernadette on winning the ticket it was a stunning run.

Imogen and Honey did well in the jumping, winning 1-2 jumping by a second, think there were several dogs who did it in 22, and Imogen did it in 21, which she was dead chuffed with. In the 2 agilitys Honey was a bit pushy, she's getting far more confident in the ring now (which of course is fantastic), did lovely dog walk in one, and lovely aframe then moved off when Imogen moved off, so Imogen put her back (wow - progress!) and then in the 2nd agility Honey self-released off her aframe which was a shame as lovely up until then, however Imogen was very self-disciplined (again - wow!) and put her back. Which is nice as they'll still be grade 2 for all of April now which is good.

Shona also did really well with her Welsh Springer ceri getting a 2nd in 1-3 agility, considering they've only done about 4 shows and their last show was August, is brill. Shona put Ceri in the back of the car with Honey, so her mum could drop her and leave her at the show as it was going to be a long day, hence the reason for Scandal going in Bernadette's car. It amazes me how well adjusted the dogs are and how they don't stress about going to different vehicles and take it all in their stride.

Well done to Nancy and Zeki winning 1-3 jumping and going grade 4 :)

Love doing shows when it's sunny, I'm so looking forward to the show season!

Got a 1500 word assignment due in Tues, which I've mostly done, and a journal, which is 10,000 words, due in Thurs, which I've done :O and after handing in the 15000 word dissertation last week, I'm feeling all typed out. But great as we break up from uni soon and it will just be tons of revision, which I can do out in the sun, and much better than having lots of assignments hanging over you! Woop, can't wait till TAG :)

4

2010-03-20T10:09:00.000-07:00

Didn't do much today as Scandal was quite flat which made training soooo much effort - think I was more tired than she was by the end of it!
Dog walks were 100% and aframes I think we probably did 8, one she didn't do a 2-hit on the down ramp the rest were lovely including turns, infact she went deeper into the contact on turns.

Am putting some jumps on full height and although she is stretching out over them she is getting herself underneath the jump and then ends up miles past it, rather than doing a nice arc shape. Think I will keep the jumps on 22" for a while longer (training on my old jumps today so they only have medium and large, no inbetween) and then raise one end to 26, so she doesn't notice such a difference, she's fine with 20 and 22, just seems to be 26 is a bit more difficult for her.

Have brought 4 weaves home and am planning on putting her through them once, 3 x a week to get her dinner in the evenings, so she starts to value doing them speedily a bit more! She seems to quite like doing them, quite often she'll take her toy off and then walk through them carrying the toy... emphasis on the walk - long as she doesn't have to do it fast she is fine! Grr!

3

2010-03-19T10:28:00.001-07:00

Went to Jess's yesterday - thank you Jess for letting us use your field and for filming :)

Scandal was a good girlie even with distractions of their chickens which she got a great view of stood on the top of the dog walk :) her contacts were 100% too which I was even more pleased with... ok so her stops weren't perfect but she's driving down quicker now, she understands she has to stop, just when she is going faster her momentum takes her a little further on, which I'm not worried about at all right now, main thing is that she gets as much reward as possible to build her confidence.

I back chained her dog walk so did 2 of the down plank and then the whole thing, I expected some jumps but didn't get any so that's cool!

She was a bit steadier but as it was a new venue that is just how she is, she is careful and that is fine, as her confidence comes and she gets more reward for being right, I think the speed will start to come :)
Here's a vid of Scans...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmIFe3loaz0

2

2010-03-19T10:25:00.001-07:00

Written a couple of days ago... Trials and tribs of Scandal's RCs continue. Sunday they were great again, so got Imogen to run round playing with Honey (as Scandal looooves Honey), Scandal would look across, when we weren't running, but when we were she was as good as gold and concentrating really nicely, contacts great.

So couldn't think of what else to do so got Garth to hold one of their chickens and stand about 5m from the dog walk. Hmmmmmmm. Once I'd persuaded Scandal she couldn't just stare at the chicken, she did some good stuff. Her dog walks were slower but still held up 100%, was really chuffed as thought they'd be all over the place. I did fear for the chickens life at several points but luckily it's a very brave chicken, who's used to Scandal and Tia thinking it's a sheep.

x

Crufts again

2010-03-18T05:40:00.000-07:00

Forgot to add a couple of things

Firstly was thrilled to see my obedience trainer (not that we've been for over 6 months now!) win the Crufts dog obedience championships with her supper Aussie Buck, who is only 3 years old, think he entered 4 or 5 ticket shows last year and won 3 of them, Susanne doesn't campaign her dogs heavily and Buck will now be retired from obedience and compete in WT where he's already WDex. Buck to me epitomises what obedience is all about - style, accuracy, drive and precision, without being OTT with an awkward head carriage that seems to be becoming more and more common. Absolutely loved this dog since seeing him in novice a couple of years ago, he took my breath away back then and has done every time I've seen him work since then.

I think worst part of Crufts for me was seeing a horrendously lame collie competing in YKC ADOTY, a big chunky collie, who skidded after number 2 and was clearly holding his leg up, despite several shouts from the audience (me included) that the dog was lame, she carried on, I know when under pressure people don't notice these things but the dog was running on 3 legs and was measuring terribly, it made my blood run cold to see a dog running in so much pain, they really do give everything even though their body is telling them to stop.

Watched a bit of the breed show BC judging but not for long, the BC bitches seem to be tiny, and most of them to me are barbie type collies now, with hugely long coats that are kept trimmed, I would love to see some of them do a days work. Was nice that Sarah's Skye won her class as she isn't OTT (in my expert opinion :)) so nice to see these more normal looking collies getting put up.

Should have a new video up of Scandal by the end of today :) x

Crufts

2010-03-17T08:49:00.000-07:00

Haven't had time to do a blog post for ages... have been swamped in uni work... handed dissertation in yesterday, seems strange now I havent got it hanging over me, just one more assignment to write and a journal to hand in (well, write!) next week and then revision revision revision for easter, exams starting in May and finish 2 days before Scandal's first KC show, so will be nice to do the show without having to worry about revising.

Crufts was great, we stayed up there weds night to saturday, sooo knackered after each day. Imogen had a 4th in YKC ADOTY on thurs, lovely run, top 3 qualify for final so she was just out of the placings, which was a shame, but great considering they've only been doing agility for 14 months, has also taught her that she does have to push, and can't fanny about like she can in grade 1! Honey is working amazingly well in training and could easily hold her own up against grade 7s, fabulous little bitch, her attitude has changed so much in the last year, complete nutcase now, hope that as Imogen gets her confidence they will start to enjoy being in the ring a lot more.

Show season starts now - Chippenham on saturday, then a show every weekend from then on.

Tia is back home and touch wood there have been no fights and not even any grumbling, shows how much Scandal's season must have affected her. They've been playing loads and are loving chasing each other and trying to outrun one another on walks. Tia was a bit stiff yesterday after running, I think it's because she hasn't done it for about 3 weeks, hopefully it won't be long before her muscle is nicely built up again.

x

1

2010-03-09T08:30:00.000-08:00

Ok, so seeing as I'm rubbish at keeping a diary/scribbles of how training's gone, I thought maybe I could try and keep an up to date version on the blog.

So here goes.

Thank you to the people who emailed me suggestions. When I trained today, Scandal again did perfect running dog walk, from whereever on the dog walk I released her (including full ones). We also did some stop ones and they were great, really pleased with them as she's driving down into the position really nicely where ever I am.

So, to make the running ones a little harder, and adding in a distraction, I put her half way along the dogwalk, and had Ricky alongside, on the floor. Said 'go' and Scandal flew down and hit the contact very high up. So we went to the end of the down plank, but again she jumped. So, I gave her a 'time out' for 10 secs. I think the 3rd and 4th one she then got nicely, so I moved her back a bit along the dog walk. Jump. Jump. We worked on it for a while and I think we made some sort of progress. But Scandal got about 6 time outs, which for me is higher than I'd like, however the majority of these were at the top down plank, so I'm not bringing her any closer than that.

So... I think what is happening is when I train at home, there are no distractions, or distractions that Scandal is well used to and it doesn't bother her. But add anything else in and all of a sudden she does a completely different behaviour. So, we need to increase distractions at home, setting Scandal up with a much higher chance of her succeeding, ie from the top of the down plank, and then move her further back as her % of success increases.

So... plan will be for now to do stop dog walks at UKA shows, and KC shows. When I feel that the running dog walk will hold up in the ring, I will try it out first at UKA, and if it is ok, do it at KC. So we have got a lot to work on, but at least a plan of action to go with it :D

x

Contacts

2010-03-08T04:13:00.001-08:00

Scandal's aframe has been looking really good this week. She only did a 1-hit twice, the other times it was a nice 2-hit on the down ramp. Her turns are also coming on nicely.

The dog walk on the other hand..... ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. I HATE THE DOG WALK!!!

The dog walk at home = lovely. Nice and confident, 100%, running through the contact perfectly. We went to James and Sam's yesterday, and Scandal didnt hit one dog walk contact properly! In the end we left it, even if I only let her go from the down plank, she still was missing it.

I'm now at a loss with what to do. When she misses it, I say 'no' and we go and do it again. Previously, this worked... she'd almost always do a perfect hit the next time. However yesterday it became quite clear that Scandal had no idea what she was doing. Then I got into a tizzy because she wouldn't do it (and I didn't know how to solve it) so she jumped off from even higher up.

So, the plan for the time being, until I've worked out what to do, is to do a 2o2o dog walk everywhere except home. Increase distractions at home, and see if she still maintains criteria.

I don't know what to do... don't know what is best. If I call her back, she flattens. She'll keep trying, doesn't shut down, but she doesn't go as fast, which throws her stride out even more. If I ignore it, and carry on, then I'm accepting that (it'd be like her not stopping in 2o2o and me just carrying on) and then I don't see how she'll differentiate wrong from right. I guess the best thing to do would be to let her pick her toy up, but not play with her, and then jackpot it when she does a good contact. Problem is, like yesterday, if she doesn't do any good ones, then she switches off completely.

If any one has any suggestions on how I could work on this pleasse get in touch, harding_charlotte @ hotmail.com (remove spaces) as I'm completely at a loss with what to do next!

Mixed week

2010-03-02T09:56:00.000-08:00

Well started off well, with Daves lesson, then on Friday Scandal fell off the dog walk... gave herself a dead leg, which ok'd itself after a few minutes. Then she seemed fine, so gave it a few hours and then did another couple of dog walks and they were perfect, she was low across the whole dog walk rather than the stupid jumping which she was doing.

Then on Sunday we tried a raised aframe, did it slowly a couple of times so she knew it was higher, all fine, then did one a bit faster, again fine, then the next time, she went up the apex, and carried on skywards... and landed on the floor. After I recovered from just seeing Scandal's near death experience we did it a few more times and she did it much better.

Not enjoying this RC malarky right now. It's great when it's going well but they go so fast there really is no room for error. In 2 minds about stopping the whole thing now. Did the aframe today and Scandal just wants to go from contact to contact as soon as she's further back than 1-2metres. So I've got no idea how we are going to ever get it into a course.

The dog walk was looking really good today, correct striding, head low, we are putting 1 or 2 jumps before and after it now, all going swimmingly.

Jumping on Sunday we did at 22", she's 15 months and I felt she was ready, however she seemed to find it harder to adjust to this height than when we went to 20". So may do some 20 and some 22 for a couple of weeks. She's fine on the straight ones and wing wraps but on a star she can't keep a tight curve like she can on the lower jumps.

Did some of the stuff we worked on at Dave's and it went really well, with Scandal now driving at me after a sharp turn, rather than pansying in a curve to the next jump :) she is very up for it and it makes training so much easier.

Feel like we have got so much to work on. It was so lovely to train today in the sun. Scandal was knackered, I don't think she's ever got so warm from training before! :) x

Brilliant Scandal :-)

2010-02-24T12:41:00.000-08:00

Scandal was AWESOME at Dave's today. I can't ever remember being SO pleased about how a lesson went! Her go-ons have improved massively, got to work lots on her powering out of left and right wing wraps, but her attitude was completely different to how it has been, I don't know if it made any difference that I was uber hyper and maybe that made Scandal hyper too? But it was so lovely that she actually really wanted to do it and I didn't have to use endless "ready ready" before we started.

Her running dog walk was a bit of a disaster - she hit the contact every time but did what she started doing last week and BOUNCE BOUNCE BOUNCE across it... her second stride that she was putting her in was sending her rocketing up the 'up' contact and continuing "up" along the middle plank, so she was landing virtually on the down plank, which was scary. Had a chat with Dave and if it's not something I can resolve I will revert to 2o2o dog walk as she will hurt herself if she does that and falls off. After she calmed down she did do some perfect ones which I was really pleased with.

Laura and Be, and Imogen and Honey were also great, so all in all, a really fab lesson. Dave also got Nala out so he could show us what he meant about Scandal and Be looping after some turns, and how they should do a lovely neat turn and power back, or to a jump in a straight line. Think I've got a months worth of homework to do.

Dave also got Boss out and he is just scrummy, I want him! Lovely and leggy and the nicest attitude, ahhh makes me want a pup all over again!

I am so thrilled my puppy is now looking like she's really keen and wants to do agility. It's like a big circle... she wants to do agility... so I'm happy. So she really wants to do agility... and I'm really really happy :D what a good girl, woop!

Love lessons with Dave, come away with so much to train and practise, but feel its all do-able, and Scandal's improved so much since last time, so hopefully when we go again in April, she will have made even more progress :D

x

Naughty Scandal

2010-02-23T06:52:00.001-08:00

Met up with Laura and did some training yesterday. Did 5 minutes today too and she was great. But to start with today she was Naughty-I-Want-To-Stalk-The-Pony-Scandal who can't concentrate on anything else except stalk the pony. However, after her initial stalk, she got over it and worked really nicely, which is I think one of the first times she's managed to work through the distraction of pony-at-the-gate and remain as focussed as she did - what we generally get is 80% agility, 20% thinking of eating the pony, however I think today it was much more agility.

Yesterday we worked on lefts, rights and cross behinds, and also on the dog picking up speed and then turning. Scandal got faster and faster as the session went on, and got wider and wider and then started pinging over the wrong jumps. And what did I do? I shouted at her! WHAT A MORON!! I was frustrated that all of a sudden she couldn't possibly go the way my shoulders were pointing and so shouted, and then Scandal slowed up. Not much, but enough to give me a massive slap on the wrist. I think I am going to wear an e-collar and give Laura the remote, so she can zap me if I get cross! So I had to train today because although we finished on a positive yesterday, I was still annoyed that I told her off for going fast. So we had a very short but productive session today where Scandal was lovely and fast.

I do think I'm better just doing 5-10 minutes with her, but just feel because I can't train 3-4 times a week @ 5-10 mins, when I do once-twice I should do half an hour or so to make it worthwhile. But we are both much better on shorter sessions. Ahhhhh cant cope with a pup!

She is also in season (maybe thats why shes been faster?!?!) and has been extra grumpy, especially with Tia, who, on Sunday evening stood on "Scandal's Step" (ie the patio doorstep) and Scandal then proceeded to tell Tia that under no circumstances should she stand on Scandal's Step. Bad brat puppy.

I've handed in another assignment, so just have dissertation and one other assignment to hand in now. Woop. Looking forward to our training sesh with Dave tomorrow. Hope Scandal can concentrate for that long!

Training too much?

2010-02-16T07:43:00.000-08:00

One of the things that has got me thinking is - how much training is too much?

With Scandal, from a young age she was running a plank twice a week, and we were doing things like wing wraps, practising 2o2o FP, putting paws on a seesaw 2" off the ground, and then the things like balance board, wobble cushion etc.

I've been watching a few vids recently as wanted to see what Scandal was like compared to these dogs age wise.

Now, one of them (not in this country) is about the same age as Scandal. She's just introduced it to channel weaves. In one of its 3 weave sessions in oen day, it did over 40 reps on the channel weaves. The channels were probably about 6" apart. So even though the poles weren't fully closed, I still think that's a lot of reps.

Then, the running contacts. My theory with Scandal was to do it from a younger age but then don't have to do it every day, so her muscles/joints/shoulders get rest days. Again, watching vids recently, dogs of Scandals age who've only been doing running contacts for a couple of months, are doing RC pretty much every day 10-20 reps. Some of them also include the dog jumping on to a table which the plank is on, at speed, so the dog is onto something hard, 20" heigh, 20 times a day, and lets say 5 days a week. And that's not including anything else such as jumping.

I am glad that now, I've done most of the dogwalk training with Scandal and we're still only doing it twice a week (if that). There've been times when we've trained 3 times or 4 times a week, but generally it's twice. I think it's better than waiting till the dog is 12 months and then hammering the dog almost every day.

I also think it's hard as many agility competitors/trainers take 1 of 2 views:

If your dog comes out at 18 months perfectly, ultra fast, and wins everything, it's because you did too much from too young an age.

If your dog comes out slightly steadier at 18 months, nice and consistent, with lots of room to speed up as it gets older, then you're a cr** trainer for not getting the dog speedy enough before it comes out.

That's my view anyway. Scandal's still jumping medium now at 14.5 months. She does some jumps at the height above medium (I think it's 2" higher).

Planning on going to 22" at 15 months and then full height between 16 and 17 months. I don't know what Scandal thinks of my plans though, so maybe it will be different??

UKA Valentines weekend

2010-02-15T03:31:00.000-08:00

Had an interesting time at the UKA show on the weekend. Tia did the agility and jumping on Saturday and had a pole in each, but ran nicely, extended on most of the jumps. But I was stupid and ran her contacts, coz 1st place got a chocolate heart and I wanted one. Then Tia knocked the 2nd to last pole grrr, serves me right for being stupid!!!

Imogen and Honey had a great time winning Beginners Jumping and 2 steeplechases. Honey's starting to run more like she does in training now which is great.

Jess and Copper had a stunning run in the Beginners Jumping on Sat, but sadly not clear as naughty Cop broke his wait and Jess put him back (yay!) he seems to get faster every time I watch him run.

Yesterday was a bit of a disaster, there was a car boot sale so we had a walk round it for half hour, I took Scandal, as always good for socialisation, I love taking her anywhere with me as away from agility she is so chilled out and sweet, a little girl who must've been about 2 or 3 had her arms round her and was stroking her, didn't want to let go, Scandal loved her and when the little girl stopped stroking her Scandal leaned on her and nestled into her, it was an "ahhhhhh cute" moment!

So, Scandal was walking round, on her headcollar, all lovely and relaxed. Bought a couple of blankets for the dogs kennel, and then heading back and walked past a stall/lorry thing selling lamb chops. OH MY GOD, Scandal completely flipped. Imogen was walking her, I turned round to see Scandal leaping in the air, like a wild pony that had just had a headcollar put on for the first time and was trying to get away. I took the lead from Imogen and backed off a bit, but Scandal was still going absolutely bananas, then I thought she was going to back out of her headcollar, so went to hold her collar but she scratched my arms in her panic and I dropped the lead, thought she'd be off but luckily she only ran a few metres away before cowering down, poor girl. Got her sweeties out and she took a couple before deciding she didn't want any more. I didn't have very many sweeties left so couldn't do any de-sensitizing work as didn't have enough to work through. Once we got past the main crowds (Scandal still with her tail tucked so far under her legs it touched her belly) I let her off the lead so she could trot in front and check that scary-meat-man wasn't chasing her and she calmed down a lot.

I don't know whether it was the fact that there were lamb chops hanging from the lorry, that the butcher guy was cutting them up, that they were using a microphone that was fuzzing in the wind, or a combination of all three that freaked her out, but she NEVER freaks out and has never done it before. I took her into the UKA venue later on and we did a couple of jumps on the practise jump which she loved, then when we were waiting for Imogen's prize giving there were a couple of bangs from people moving stuff and she had a couple of wuffs, but calmed down soon after. Have noooo idea what was going on in her head, a couple of people have said it may have been the smell of meat, but I assumed as she's had raw bones which she goes crazy for, that she'd like that smell. Perhaps I'm very misguided! Oh dear, the stress of having a young dog. I'm evidently paranoid now that this may reappear, but not sure what to do, whether to walk her past some butchers in our town, or what. Poor Scandaluna, what a traumatic time for her.

Her only agility last week consisted of 10 minutes on Friday, we did a sequence that we'd been doing at Daves when she was 10 months old, but built on it a bit more. She was fabbidosee. But no contacts, weaves, or anything else. Ahhhhhhh. Must get training this week!

Training in a new venue

2010-02-11T06:55:00.000-08:00

One of Scandals 'dislikes' is training in a new venue. Ok I'll rephrase - she's happy to train in a venue, providing she's not doing agility. She'll happily do heelwork (or our version of it :-)) or tricks, and she'll happily watch other dogs running, but doesn't have much interest in doing it herself. Last night I trained at Bincknoll and took Scandal in whilst we were setting up. Usually when I am setting up sequences/courses at home she'll be running round with the toy in her mouth like a mad thing, but yesterday all she wanted to do was sniff and try and find morsels of horse poo. Grrrr! Once everything was up, we did a couple of short sequences and Scandal was lovely - careful, but lovely. Then afterward we'd finished training Ann built a steeplechase course and Scandal got to have 2 go's at it :-) I broke it down into 3 sections as at the moment, especially in a new venue, I want to reward as much as poss, give her less chance to get anything wrong, and reward the great bits. Scandal was great and at the start of the course both times put herself into a sit without any commands from me, I'm really pleased with this as it's transferred nicely into agility from all our training around being a pet, ie sit before your lead comes off, sit before dinner, sit before you go through the door etc. She did lovely waits, 2 lovely cross behinds, responded really well to turning on my shoulders, and did a big go on round the arena and I layered most of it but she still went on really well, so I was dead chuffed :-)

I'm not expecting her to come out all guns blazing at 16/18 months, she's a lot stronger training at home, but anywhere else she is more careful, maybe because it's a different surface (last night was the first time she'd trained indoors) or because it's different equipment. Hopefully training in a few different places over the next few months will help. I can't wait for her to be out now, it is lovely working such a biddable and honest girlie :-)

Scandaluna and training

2010-02-08T05:15:00.000-08:00

We've been on the Mendips for the last 4 days, the dogs have been great, Scandal hasn't run off at all which is even more great :D and watched a rabbit running away yest but evidently decided it was too far away and wasn't worth chasing :-)

Her training has been going really well, wing wraps seem to have clicked (take 2) this morning I put the wing wrap jump up to medium and no matter how close I put it to other jumps she was just doing the one jump so perhaps she's starting to learn that cik/brake does not mean do all the jumps in the vicinity :) her running dog walk was 100% on the 3 we did, aframe getting there, and today we did stopped dog walk and she was oodles better, starting to power a little bit more, very independant contact she will go down and nose touch no matter what I'm doing.

Here are her running contacts for those that want to see them

Imogen and Honey are coming on really well, Honey really enjoying her agility and Imogen getting tons more confident :-)

Scandal's brothers and sisters at their birthday party in December

Get a bit carried away with the vids as Garth has a great vid cam programme which is sooo much quicker than mine and in the time it takes me to upload 1 vid at home I could upload 100s on theres, despite them having the slowest internet in the world!

Tia is now a bit lame, we had a fab training sesh this morn, she was jumping 20", we were practising "go rounds" (outs) and she decided rather than go "out" she'd try and cut in and take the jump from the side nearest me, only she didnt have any room at all so I think somehow took the wing of the jump and brought the whole thing crashing down, I think she has just bruised it as she is really not very lame at all, but evidently after her history I am uber paranoid! Lots of stretches and massage for the next couple of weeks, will do a couple of cycle runs with her at a trot to make sure she is using her leg properly again and not short tracking on it. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. I was only saying to someone last week, as I was training T, that I had finally put her old injuries behind us, and was now training her with more confidence that she wasn't going to break again. And then she does brake. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! Poor Tia, she's so accident prone.

Had fun house sitting, Tia got to watch the ferret all weekend, although again this morning I nearly drove off without her as packed the van up, turned the engine on, reversed out the drive and then out of the corner of my eye saw Tia still sat by the ferrets run! Oops. Scandal pounced on one of their chickens on sat, I shouted at her to let go which she did, and as she walked away, one of the other chickens chased her, soooo funny, Scandal flew out the gate with her tail between her legs, and then when I let them out on sunday she didn't want to come in the field with me, what a woos! So she just obsesses with the ferret too now.

Only a couple of weeks till Laura and I go for a lesson with munnings, really looking forward to it,seems like I havent had a lesson in ages, think we need it!

Training

2010-01-30T04:24:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I trained Scandal again, first time since Sunday when she hurt herself. I trained her at my grans field, with my old jumps (ohhh Id forgotton the joys of having to stick the nail of the arm of the jump back into the main part of the jump to keep it upright!!) as 1. I didnt want to drive too far and 2. I thought it may be a good idea if I trained Scandal in a different place to last time, for my own peace of mind. I let Scandal have her ball as I walked into the field as she does her own warm up of cantering around for a few minutes. I did wonder what sort of training session we'd have when she took herself over a jump set on small height and she leapt over it so high I'm sure she'd have cleared the KC 26" height! Certainly wasn't planning on letting the pole attack her again!

I started off just doing some wing wraps with her, the jumps on small height, which I left them on for the entire training session as I just want to make sure she is fully confident again before I raise them. She did some good wing wraps, the only thing is, if I do a wing wrap round a jump, and then the next time want her to do a "go on" after that same jump, she wants to do another wing wrap, i.e. she's repeating what she did last time, not listening to commands. Same vice versa, if we've done that jump previously as a "go on", and then I ask her to wing wrap the next time, she wants to jump long. By the end of the session we did seem to be making progress. I've been quite lazy with wing wraps and haven't done much of them until this last month, so have to start doing them more often now.

We did some 'fun' stuff, I've set the jumps quite randomly, i.e. they aren't in straight lines, so she is having to look for the jumps, part of the stuff Dave told me to work on with her, to get her powering off, rather than being all 'floaty' which is what she does if she's not sure where she's going. She's got amazing speed on straight lines, but anywhere else, she just doesn't use any of her power. So yesterday we worked purely on having tons of fun, she made mistakes, disappeared numerous times to the wrong one, but I think she was suprised at how excited mumma was. Don't know whether she thought her punishment for knocking a jump over on Sunday was 3 days of lead walks and no training, so she thought she better try extra hard! But she was awesome. I need that attitude for every training session. I just feel like I need to do more with her than we are. Yesterday I trained for 10 minutes and she was knackered. So our entire training sesh was...10 minutes - if I'm only doing 10 minutes a time then I need to be doing more than 1 or 2 sessions a week.

We've got another lesson booked with Dave for February, boy do we need it! Hopefully Scandal will be able to do her running contact on his dog walk and a) not fall off, b) not jump off and c) impress Dave at the same time ;-)

x

Dogs

2010-01-27T10:23:00.000-08:00

The dogs have had a very boring week, only 2 short walks a day, Scandal has been on the lead, yesterday she had 5 mins off lead just trotting around, today had about 30 seconds because I could tell she was uber excited and any second was just off to do a massive outrun. She looks completely sound, have been doing some balance ball exercises to hopefully build her leg back up, stretches and she's been having a short massage too. Think I may do a bit of work on one jump with her on small, on Friday, lots of rewards for doing not very much, then if she is ok, train as usual on Sunday. Rix and Tia are doing well, Tia is being more of a fruitloop than usual think it is because she is not having very much exercise, sorry Tia, only 1 more week of it then back up to longgger walks :-)

Tempting Fate

2010-01-25T08:36:00.000-08:00

What an idiot. Last week I said about what a clean jumper Scandal was. I can count the number of poles she's ever knocked on one hand. Yesterday she completely misjudged her stride, hit the jump and then somersaulted over it, and was very lame. Oh, and ran away from the jump like it had just attacked her. Hmmm, she had just started going a bit faster too, sure she won't be doing that again! She looks ok today, have done some stretches with her, and she is on lead walks, much to her disgust. Was hoping to get to Lowri's on Wednesday but won't be able to now as too much uni work, it is never ending at the moment!

Tia was also in the wars managing to get her tail fur stuck in a jump wing, I had to send Imogen off to get some scissors so I could cut Tias tail out, there was no way the fur was coming out, it was hard enough getting the fur out without Tia attached to the jump! Think Im gona shave her tail fur now, stupidly long anyway!

Scandalina

2010-01-18T02:45:00.000-08:00

Scandalina is 13.5 months now and it suddenly dawned on me a few days ago that we appear to be falling really behind with our training, before the snow she was still on small height, she is good at go-ons but everything else just wasnt what I wanted.

So I've been housesitting this weekend and my agility stuff is in the garden, how perfect :D

So we did some training with our 4 upright weave poles on Saturday and Scandal was great, also did some jumping sequences on medium height and she was totally fine, she seems to be a good jumper and has a very clean style, don't think she is going to be a pole knocker (yay) hopefully the balance work we did with her when she was younger has really helped. Yesterday we did seesaw, low running aframe and dogwalk, her dogwalk was 100% perfect, woohoo, much more fast and confident, she is actually running now, rather than half running half stalking.

Running aframe: Having watched some videos of running aframe where the only criteria seems to be "no jump" at the end, I've decided I'm not going to train Scandal with this same criteria. Basically because if the dog is leaping over the aframe and landing in the contact zone, the area of the contact zone is pretty small and at the speed dogs do it, doesn't leave much room for error. So, I want her to touch the aframe twice on down side - once near the top and once in the contact zone. Therefore as the aframe is low at the moment it means she cant meet the criteria running at a full gallop as otherwise she could get from one end to the other in a single stride. Seems to have taken to it well, I am glad that I at least have trained a running dogwalk as it seems to have transferred over quite nicely.

Good ScandalBeans :)

Edited to Add: This is why I dont like the 'one hit' aframe contacts, where the dog just hits the contact zone on the way down, I think the dog doing what he does in the vid is much more likely to happen. Thank goodness the dog was ok.

Reflections on 2009

2010-01-08T13:21:00.001-08:00

Now we are safely in to 2010 I've decided to have a little reflection on 2009... :-)

2009 has on the whole, been awesome. Ok... I'll rephrase that... 2009... from July onwards, has been awesome.

Tia

At the beginning of the year I had almost no hope of Tia coming back to agility, well, I always had a little bit of hope, but the reality side of me said that it was just nearby impossible as she was so broken. Yet here we are in January, coming up to 2 years since we went to Lowri's, and Tia has been sound for 9 months and been competing at full height (albeit very lightly) for the last 6 months. Going to Denmark, Austria and France in July was SUCH a highlight for me, it was amazing, to spend a month in great company, Lee was brill to go away with and he is Mr Sensible so I knew he'd keep us safe. If it was down to me, I'd have probably lost all our passports in Austria and Tia would still be in quarantine! LOL! And we both learnt how to use a Danish washing machine so the trip was educational too :-)

We have given up obedience, my goal for 2009 was to retrain Tia to work stylishly and motivated, and that is what we achieved. However, somewhat strangely... when I in my head achieved this, I lost all competitiveness, and I realise that the only person I wanted to prove to that I could do this was myself - I did it, Tia was working brilliantly, but I had no more desire to do obedience shows. I don't think that working on one side, with the dogs head up high, does any good for a dog in terms of them muscling up/favouring one side more, and I would rather do fitness training/agility training than obedience. So we quit obedience! Tia has just got stronger and stronger and is looking so fab. She behaves immensely immaturely, and it's hard to believe that she'll be 8 in May. She's training on 22" at the moment and looking good, the plan is to enter 2 classes per show with her, planning on a show a couple of times a month, and we'll see how she goes.

Ricky

In 2009 I only did a handful of shows, Jess and Lee have taken Ricky off for quite a few weekends and Lee and Ricky have done brilliantly. Ricky adores them, and loves his weekends jetting off in the caravan. He's nearly 11 years old and is doing brilliantly. 4 years ago I remember worrying what he would be like when he was 10 or 11 as he was getting quite arthriticky, yet he is going great guns. He does get tired very quickly when I train him, that is the only problem, he still has the mind of a 2 year old and I am sure he would work all day if he could! So 2010 for Ricky is just about keeping fit, keeping healthy, and enjoying his veteran classes.

Scandal

And then on to Scandal, where do I start. She has contributed to the high lights and the low lights of the year! Low lights being my failure to train a reliable recall for her, she has improved tons, but still not 100%, which I find really frustrating. She is an absolute loony watching agility, again I have found this frustrating at my perfect girl going from angel to maniac in a split second. I have learnt a lot and I think I will be able to deal with her a lot better this year. Last year has certainly been a lot of trial and error... more errors I think! Her agility... again I find quite frustrating, but I will do a separate post soon as to why. I do think I should make a video of all the tons and tons of rubbish I have on my video camera, so you guys can see how bad it is most of the time! Amazing what a bit of video editing can do, hehe. Obedience on the whole I've been pleased with, she's decided in the last few months that heelwork isn't quite so bad and actually seems to like doing static position work, and hand touch when my arm is outstretched. Not going to compete with her but I'd like her to be able to do the basics.

The second half of the year I have been to a lot of shows just to watch and it has been lovely to catch up with people after not seeing a lot of them for over a year. Imogen started her training with me at the end of December 08, by Sept 09 she won out of grade 1, had qualified for Crufts YKC Agility Dog of the Year, and qualified for the Agility Club Starters Finals. I am so proud of her and Honey, I think they are going to have lots of fun this year :) Garth's been a great chauffeur and very patient with Scandal, when he is trying to have a sleep in the car and Scandal won't stop barking, naughty Scandal :) I enjoyed travelling to shows in their company last year, and am going to take Imogen to some shows in the sexy van this year, well, there is a spare cage in the van which might as well be occupied (for Imogen if she is naughty :))

Outside of agility it has been a tough year, and I have no doubt that if I hadn't got Scandal, I'd have probably quit agility completely now. However, she is my little ray of sunshine, my angel, she is the sweetest, softest little dog going (if you haven't seen her at home, you are probably wondering which dog I am talking about!) and makes me smile so much, she is very much the comic out of the 3 of them, bouncy and sooo playful. No matter how much other people let me down, I know that she never will!

I have learnt that when times are hard, those guys who are your closest friends hold their hands out for you to reach, and if you reach out and take their hand, they will be there for you to help you through your darkest times. So many people have been so kind, I find it amazing and very humbling to have special friends that would go to the end of the world to make sure you're ok.

So 2010 now and the next couple of months are going to be a bit of a slog, finance exam revision, dissertation draft due in at the end of the month, plus 3 pieces of coursework due in for next month. A few months ago I wondered how it would ever be possible to get through the last year, now I can see light at the end of the tunnel and it doesn't seem such a scary path to take. And I am REALLY looking forward to what 2010 may bring. But at the moment, I'm loving every minute of it :D

January

2010-01-05T09:38:00.000-08:00

Went to a local show on Sunday, to watch Imogen, you get 2 runs in the jumping and 2 in the agility, Honey won the jumping with her first round, but her 2nd round was faster she was just a bit gawpy running past the tunnel, but I preferred this round so I put it on vid :D and poor Imogen I made her take her toy in both rounds in the agility and reward Honey on her contacts, much to Imogen's horror :D here is the vid. Love Honey, she is such an honest little dog.

Time's still flying, Scandal's 13 months. We did some training today, just seesaws, which I was pleased with, as Scandal seemed much more confident on knowing her 2o2o position, weavies, and 'come' (dont take any obstacles, stay on my hand). Her weaves are getting better with each session, the 2 sets of 4 channels are closed up as much as possible now. Able to send her from any angle and she's right about 80% of the time. Also practised sending her into the weaves and me staying far away from them or pulling off, which she was fine with. Want to do jumping and running dw but wont until the ground has improved, which by the weather forcast looks like it might be a while!

Scandal was in trouble this morning, she ran off and managed to get herself stuck the other side of a fence, with a gate with lots of barbed wire, Scandal was in a total panic and wouldnt look at the small hole that was to the side, if you pushed all the brambles out the way. So her long suffering owner had to climb through the brambles, wiggle her fingers so Scandal could see where she was, and when Scandal came to sniff, pull her back through the hole. Damn puppy, I have no idea how she got into the field as it's all sheep fencing/thick bramble hedges round it. That's the first time she's disappeared for ages (and my fault as I was on the phone and not concentrating). Infact I was very pleased with Scandal on Friday, we were walking on the Mendips, looking for a missing labrador, and a bunny appeared right infront of us when we were on a track, well off shot Scandal, but, much to my suprise, when she lost site of the bun, she turned round and came back, after only about 50m. What a good girl. Didn't fancy having to look for a lab AND a collie/fox! Oh and found the Lab too so all was good :-)

Xmas and New Year

2009-12-31T10:16:00.000-08:00

Love having all the time off over Xmas, dogs have had loads of really long walks and more training than they usually get. They are loving it too :)

Went to Dawn's for a lesson on Monday. I was not impressed with Scandal! The first exercise, she TROTTED into the tunnel. She (and I) improved after that (not that it'd be hard) but I was just so mortified at how slow she was. Nothing like what she has been like lately.

I have set up in the house a tall bag that is like a cone, so we can practise our wing wraps. I taught Scandal these when she was younger, then haven't done much with them since, practised the other day and they were rubbish, guess I just thought she'd remember them. She has been going wild while we've been doing them at home, so hopefully will have the same attitude when we do that at the field!

Trained her today and, back to princess Scandalina. She was brilliant. I did a low aframe for the first time and she was great, running right to the bottom which at this stage is what I want. Only thing is when she was going over it with a run up she wanted to only touch the contact on the way down, and I want her to touch at the top, and touch the contact. So we went from closer up. Have just started doing her left and rights on it too and these were good.

Did targets on the dogwalk, haven't done them for aaaages as running so much more fun, she was good, didn't think for one moment about doing a running one. Mainly did them with her going from half way along the dog walk, dont want her doing many full ones at the moment.

Introduced another set of 4 channel weaves. So she does a set of 4, then there is a gap of about 2 metres, and another 4. She did this really great and then somehow got a little confused and started missing bits out of the first or bits out of the 2nd. We then got a couple of good ones and I left it at that. Pleased with her first attempt on 8 weaves. Really cool to see her action start to come together.

Didn't do any jumping. There just seems to be soooooo much to train, and I only like doing it in small sessions, so will have to do jumping tomorrow or the day after. She was a keen bean today, just have to get her like this at other venues now!

Happy New Year everyone :)

Scandal video

2009-12-22T00:36:00.000-08:00

Scandal at 12 months old.

December

2009-12-20T12:33:00.000-08:00

Seem to have had a bit of a break through with Scandal's jumping work in the last week or so. I have found myself getting much more enthusiastic about training her, and the result has been showing, she is getting more keen, and seems to be enjoying it more. Weaves are looking nice, going to add another 4 this week hopefully. Just got to dig them out of the grass at home, and transfer them to field, much easier now I have a van they can go in, rather than trying (unsuccessfully) to get them in my Fiesta. Contacts were a total disaster today. I got Laura to film them (thank you) as I wanted to see what they were like on video, yesterday Scandal did 5 - 4 perfectly and 1 a little high. Today she seemed to be rubbish on 99% on them. It's the first bad session she has had in ages so am not going to throw all toys out of the pram just yet, but it is a bit frustrating that it all went to pot.

We had a lovely walk on the Mendips for 1.5 hours, the dogs love it, it's so great for their balance work, couldn't get a more uneven place to walk them! I never seem to take many pics so took lots today. Most of it is of the scenery which is very pretty!

Scotland and Woodside

2009-12-15T03:16:00.000-08:00

We had a lovely weekend up in Scotland. It is very cold up there, I think it was below freezing for the entire 3 days. It didn't rain though which is much better, and the dogs stayed very clean. We drove up with 2 dogs and returned with 2 dogs - Scandal didn't run off at all which was great. Both she and Tia were very well behaved, apart from Scandal's behaviour at Woodside, which was less than good! We stayed in a lovely cottage in Alva, Clackmannashire. On the Saturday we walked around Loch Katrine in the Trossachs, which was stunning. Some piccies below! Went to friends for dinner on Saturday night and then back to watch some of the Xfactor - perfect!

Woodside
Lowri had suggested keeping Tia rugged when we are at shows where it is cold - this I did. I don't know if it was this which made a difference, but she was A-mazing! Completely wild, but a lot of fun. I had her on the startline and she was whining and barking, complete fruit loop. I stopped her very briefly (ie so all 4 feet hit the floor) on her dog walk, and front feet hit the floor on the seesaw, before releasing her, and she ran her aframe beautifully. We got 4th in the grade 7 agility, her first clear at grade 7 :-) Imogen did really well with Tia in the junior jumping, especially considering the fact that Tia was REALLY pushing her luck and was refusing to wait on the startline, but Imogen held out and insisted, and so eventually Tia decided to co-operate. It was just Tia's fruitloopiness of not running in a straight line and wanting to cut up Imogen's path that got them an E, but Imogen handled like a pro and Tia looooves running with her.

Scandal... hmmm. I wanted to get her to the seating area, which meant walking through the rings, so she went completely ballistic doing this. Then we had nice calm Scandal when she sat very calmly while I treated her, she could just see the rings, so I guess this is progress. Then on the way out, she decided she was going to dive on to the orange fencing and bite/claw it, so I had to prise it out of her paws, which was a bit embarrassing, as at the same time she was doing her best screams which meant everyone turned round to look at us. I ended up carrying her out as this was a lot easier than walking with a total idiot at the end of the lead. I have no idea what will happen when we start competing but it is going to be hard work if this is what she will be like to queue with!

Trained on Monday and Scandal was great, lovely dog walks and I have just moved the dog walk up to full height now, we are going from half way along the dog walk again. 4 channel weavies were perfect... didn't do any jumping as I was bored by then :-D Tia did some training too and was great, what clever dogs I have :-)

Happyyyy :-D

Flying Scandal

2009-12-08T12:31:00.001-08:00

Just a short post...

I thought Scandal had wings today... have been using food for the dog walk as have been doing lots of work on her adjusting her stride, so thought I would use her bally and see what they were like when she was going faster. As I described to Katie, I sometimes find it a little frustrating that I haven't yet worked out what the key is to really get Scandal to drive, I am sure it will come with time, but I like things NOW :-D I find it more frustrating as Scandal is sooooo super fast but saves the super fast button for when she is chasing something, ie deer. Well, on the dogwalks today, you would have thought Scandal was going after a whole herd of deer the speed she was going!! I just thought "oh my god, slow down princess" as the speed of it was quite scary. I am not sure I even like her going that fast! It all looks very reckless!

Her channel weavies were perfect today, as were her wing wraps and go rounds. I am finding there is soooo much to teach, we didn't even do seesaw or other jumping stuff today. Hopefully training on Friday before we go, and then Monday when we are back. Must start training regularly again!

Rujaff Birthday Party

2009-12-07T10:51:00.000-08:00

Yesterday we went to Swindon for a birthday party that Jackie had organised for the 8 pups from Ruby and Jaff. I was looking forward to seeing her brothers and sisters again as have only seen a couple of them, and that was back in June/July.

They got on really well and we let them have an offlead play in the barn, was great to see them all running round with each other! We did a little sequence of 3 jumps - tunnel - 2 jumps and I was convinced Scandal was going to be slow, forgetting that it was the first time she had worked around other dogs, anyway she went like a little rocket and bounced them all, bless her.

For those not on facebook here are some piccies of her sister and brothers.

The pups from left to right
Pepper, Robbie, Rave, Scandalina, Rocky, Chilli, Che, Nell

Nell, the r+w girlie

Che (was Squiffy)

Rocky (was Fish)

Robbie and Rave

Robbie

Rave Chilli and Scandal

Pepper (was Spot)

It was a lovely afternoon, Scandal was on her best behaviour, apart from one occasion when I was sat on a bench watching the pups do some training, she tried to climb onto the table to get the box of peanuts, so I caught her, and was going to have a cuddle with her on my lap, only Scandal decided against this, and wanted to get down IMMEDIATELY and then proceeded to climb on to my head, and in my mad scramble not to let her fall off my head (in hindsight, she'd probably have landed a lot better if she had jumped!) I fell off the bench backwards and we both landed in a heap. My bum is killing today! Naughty puppy! I do have some video but it will take aaaages to upload so not sure when I will get it all on.

Went jogging again with her tonight, she loves seeing the world at a faster pace!

We are off to Scotland on Friday, I can't wait, soooooooo excited!! I think Scandal will love it :-)

Happy 1st Birthday Scandal

2009-12-05T02:37:00.000-08:00

I cannot believe it that a) time has gone so fast, and b) Scandal has survived her first year with the amount of stupid/mad/crazy things she has done.
It has been an up and down year, Scandal contributing to both the ups and downs, but most definitely more ups!

This pic was taken of the guys on the mendips a couple of weeks ago... love it there!

Scandal celebrated her birthday by rolling in fox poo, and then having a cold hose + fairy liquid to get rid of it, gross!! I am glad my dogs don't roll in it as a habit, I think that is only the 2nd time Scan has done it, it's grim, and turns my stomach every time!

Clever Scan

2009-12-04T09:06:00.000-08:00

Pup was awesome today, sooo much better than Monday when I gave up and put her back in the van!

She was really up for it, we did 2 half dog walks and then 2 full dog walks at running, which were perfect, and then 2 half dog walks with the target and again they were lovely.

Channel weaves (4poles) were great, I am working on saying 'poles' then running still towards them but at a different angle, to make it even harder for her as her chase drive kicks in when she sees me running, and she wants to leave the weavies to come and catch up with da mumma. She's probably 100% with me standing still from any angle, but drops to 70% when I add me moving/running too. Loving shaping them, if she gets it wrong, ie goes in 2/3 pole, I just wait for her to correct herself, and yesterday she went through so many variations before working out which way in was the right way... she was perfect after that so I think it must have sunk in as she was working it out!

Was really up for jumping too, and powering off into the tunnel, didn't herd any jumps (she was getting really bad at running round, esp the first one) and was sooooo responsive to what I was saying. Clever little cookie.

I think it's a record and hope I'm not speaking too soon, but Scandal hasn't jumped up at ANYONE this week while we've been out on a walk. Or run off. Progress :-)

Sexy van :-)

2009-11-29T15:40:00.000-08:00

LOVING the van!! It is wonderful. So powerful, it makes me giggle every time I tap the accelerator and off we zoom. The only problem is when I overtake, I have no idea if we have passed the car or not, so it takes me a while to cross my fingers and pull back in. I have got 2nd mirrors on each mirror (blind spot mirrors?) but not sure how they work... all seems a bit confusing really! Saying that, today I drove it in the morning in the dark, and then this evening in the dark... maybe if I drive it in daylight it will be easier?

Had a horrible encounter with two deer this morning, I was more scared because the road where I met them, I am usually going along at around 40 - 45 in my Fiesta, so wouldn't have been going slow enough to stop, however in van aka pride and joy, I was only doing about 25, as I was going around a corner (little country roads) and did not want to drive too close to the hedge and risk scratching it... anyway two deer were in the side of the road, but fairly hidden until last minute, one ran out infront of me, so I slowed down, then it's stupid friend ran out at the last minute and literally just missed my bonnet, phewf, I nearly died, would have been so mad if it had left any dents in the beautiful silver paintwork! I don't think I will ever be able to get out of 2nd gear again down that road, I have driven along it fairly regularly for the last couple of months and never seen any deer, and the one time I met them, I was driving really slowly... someone was looking down on me today!

Garth and Lee very kindly installed my 2up2down cages today (that I bought back in September :-D) and it is so fab putting the dogs straight in. They also removed the top half of the steel bulkhead as it was a bit rattly and also meant I couldn't see the babies. It is still pretty quiet and once I have the radio on I can't really hear anything else anyway :-) I just love it, I have to keep it tidy though!! Going to get some storage stuff for the middle section of the van... want to get some coat hanger type things, but the hooks which I can hang over the bulkhead, so I can just reach in and hang said coats up. Know what I mean but can't remember where I've seen them! I don't think I have ever got so excited about a car/van... I even gave it another clean/polish today, even though it was already sparkling... probably would've been better spending that time on my car - will be sad to see it go, it has been great, but unfortunately it isn't big enough for me, 3 dogs, and all my luggage that I take to shows!

Took Scandal to the ltd show at Conquest Farm today. She managed to sit through the prize giving, at the back, and only barked twice (clapping is very exciting). Then once both rings were finished I took her indoors and had her doing waits and heelwork (our version of it anyway) in the arena and she was lovely, once she'd had a very intense look round for any sign of movement of people/dogs that may be walking or running round a course. Unfortunately at the moment even people walking the course is enough to make her scream... and make me want to scream at Scandal. Once she had been in the arena for a couple of minutes you could see her visibly relax and she wasn't looking so manic, she was concentrating on what I asked her to do instead of squeaking and shuffling and looking like she's about to pop. I am hoping at the show next week we can get quite near the door to the arena, but doubt we will go in unless Scandal's behaviour is perfect... which it won't be, therefore we won't be going in (setting self up to fail?!). At home if she knows the dog who is training in the field, I can have her off lead and she won't chase - she will be excited, but not so crazed up that she's beyond taking any notice of what boring mumma is saying. Hopefully we can build on that and have two dogs training at once with her milling around - I think she'll find this uber hard, as 2x movement = 2x as exciting. Might be at this stage for a couple of months I think!

Still glad the control of dogs (ie the queue test) won't be in place by June 10!

Great week

2009-11-27T14:17:00.000-08:00

We spent the day in Kent yesterday and I had another lesson with Dave. I soooo could not concentrate, and handled appallingly, Scandal was tired as had spent an hour chasing round with another dog beforehand (which in hindsight, was very stupid of me, but I didn't realise they were racing round the garden until they'd been out there for about 45 mins) and so she was quite sluggy, and very herdy, wanted to run round every first jump, which was really annoying, there were some bits she was soooo fast, and then other bits when she barely got into 3rd gear. Know lots I need to work on which is good.

Did some with Tia aka Mrs Keen Bean, she so funny, absolutely wild and sooooo wants to do agility, which I just think is great. We did some work on when to use the stop arm, and when I need to stop using the stop arm and teach her to come with me using my shoulders... she's so reliant on my stop arm that it slows her down too much but because she flicks off so easily I've used it too much to compensate for my poor training. She still gets tired very quickly and was knocking poles but that is partly due to lack of training and lack of jump fitness I think.

And now my most exciting news.... I have bought a van... YAHOOOO!! It is a Ford Transit Connect, LWB, SILVER :-D and I'm uber excited (apart from going down to get it and having to drive it home, major ahhhh!). I bought the cages for it about 2 months ago, so will be able to put them up (or, I will get a very kind person to put them up for me :-)) quite soon, it will be sooo great just being able to bung the dogs in the back rather than having to spread them throughout my fiesta in the footwell/back seat/boot. And hopefully the middle section will fit my bike in so we can go down on to the cycle track more often and take them (aka Scandal) out for a good run. Well chuffed, never thought I would find one. Not lookin forward to making the transition from car to van, losing use of all my windows!! And having to use my mirrors, oh and parking... hmmm it's taken 2 years for me to learn to parrallel park the fiesta so got no idea how I am going to learn to park a van!

Happy beans :-)

Happy days

2009-11-22T12:45:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I just have these days when everything seems so perfect and I couldn't be happier with my dogs.

Yesterday I went to the Honiton v South Devon league match, I just took Ricky and Tia as I thought as Scandal needs so much attention when we are at a show, I will instead just give more attention to T and Rix as they can be a bit overlooked when I have the naughty pup. I have to admit it was lovely to have two such well behaved and easy going dogs, they are such a breeze to have around!

They had 4 runs each, agility, jumping, tunnel fun and agility steeplechase (which had a dw and af). Tia ran at large G5-7 and Ricky ran at anysize G5-7 medium. Ricky hasn't had 4 runs at a show for about 3 years so I was excited to be doing so much with him!!

Tia: agility - trained her contacts, lovely 4offs, had a pole then I didn't cue her with my shoulders for a turn and she went round a jump and than ran off into a tunnel.
jumping - was doing a cracking round until I got LOST!!! What a prat. It was a bit of a tricky course, involving a push through (which we did perfectly - yay!) a couple of pull throughs which we also did, and then I had to send her through a box and recall her round the back of a jump - she did this wide, which put me/her out of position so instead of flicking her into a tunnel, I turned round and sent her down a line of jumps. I just can't believe I couldn't remember the course, it wasn't even like I had any excuse of lots of rings to walk! Tia loved it tho, was a mad girlie and put in two bounce jumps which I was uber pleased with.
tunnel fun - just a pole, was FLYING, loved doing big send outs to the tunnels. Came 7th even with 5f :oD
agility steeplechase - in this run, there was something about it that just made me so relieved I made (imo) the right decision to put Tia through months of rehab, she looked fantastic, even if i do say so myself :oD her confidence was awesome, she was completely bonkers, soooooooooo wild, and attacked every jump like she meant it, she did 2 bounce jumps, which considering the ground was soft, and 18months ago she couldn't bounce jump at all, is amazing. I saw so much enjoyment from my girlie in this, loved working, did everything I asked and just ran her heart out. I won't lie and say Tia is my favourite dog in the world, I do really struggle with her (as a pet) but I know that training her in obedience and agility and then doing the rehab stuff with her has totally transformed our bond, when I am training/working her she has no fears, no spazzy 'herd the cat/sheep/ferret/chickens' moments which rule her life, and we have so much fun. When she comes out the ring with her hollee rollee toy and comes out leaps at me to play with her I smile and think at how far we have come. We still have many moments of 'TIA... WHY IS IT ALWAYS YOU IN TROUBLE!!' but agility is definitely something where we can both forget all those moments that we clash and just have lots of fun. Oh dear this is turning out to be another rambly post, but I am just so chuffed by how she is running, how happy she is and the buzz I get from running her. I think it was the first time I have gone for it, since April 08, instead of running her cautiously as if she is about to break, and it was so good to really get into the courses rather than half working, half watching her!

And then good Mr Ricky, who was a great boy today. I wasn't sure whether to run all 4 classes but decided to as will probably be the last chance we ever get of doing 4 classes, he hasn't been too stiff this week and no lameness or anything like that, also the courses were all 5-7 and of course we are used to doing anysize straight up and down, so I was just a bit excited as to have something to really work!
agility - did stop-go on dogwalk and aframe and he did a lovely run, hard work getting him to turn tightly but he was fab and came 1st beating all the other 5-7s large med and small :-D
jumping - knocked a pole when I dropped my shoulder recalling him through a box but he was really tight and no hesitation from me about which frickin direction I was running in, no way was I getting lost again! Got 3rd in this with 5f.
tunnel fun - super boy did a lovely clear I think this run was his favourite, all the massive send outs to tunnels he was sooo fast! Got 2nd in this.
agility steeplechase - held his contacts, did lovely dog walk then knocked 2 poles, maybe he was tired I am not sure. Ran into 4 off on aframe, I held him there for a couple of secs before releasing. Good boy he tried sooooo hard in his runs, ran his little socks off. He is blooming hard work as when I use the cue arm for Tia she understands it and it doesn't feel like I am fighting her all the way round but with Ricky you have to almost stand in his flight path before he will put a steady stride in! Was so great being able to work him on hard courses, he was so up for it, I wish I hadn't had to retire him at the age of 8 but perhaps it's why at almost 11 (and no doubt with the help of Lowri) he is working faster than ever.

What a pair of good dogs I have, I am looking forward to two KC shows next month and then they are having a bit of a break till March/April time, when hopefully we will be doing quite a few shows, oooh the excitement :o)

Rubbishy weather

2009-11-21T09:49:00.000-08:00

I DONT LIKE THE RAIN!!! In fact I quite hate it. I have trained today for 2 hours and got soaked through to my pants, my coat is no longer waterproof and the waterproof trousers I was wearing evidently are not waterproof either.

The only agility training Scandal has done this week was yesterday and 5minutes today. Both times working on contacts, we did some running ones going from the middle of the middle plank of the dw, her first session yesterday of 8 reps she did 7 perfectly and was a little high on one, second session we did 7 and she did 6 perfect and one a little high. Today we just did one session of 5 reps and she was 100% perfect. We also did 1 session of targeting yesterday, and 1 session today and she was great. As I am still only doing FP with her as haven't phased out the target yet, I am making sure I just do lots of varying my position and time I click her, sometimes I ask her for 2-3 nose touches before I click. Did some work with no target and she is getting there now, she does do the "sniffy make sure my target really isn't here" and then once she realises it isn't, targets the ground really nicely. Only bad thing was where we have been doing lots of FP work over the last 2 weeks I have churned up the end of the dog walk area and she ended up with a really muddy nose and mouth poor little princess.

Took all 3 of the dogs over the Mendips yesterday and Scandal had her fluorescent coat on, she looks uber cute!! She's been strangely well behaved this week, no jumping up at people on walks, no running off, and even good in all her agility training.

I worked Tia yesterday and she was good, I can't seem to click with her and so we just do lots of straight lines and then separate work on her turns, rewarding sharp turns/pull throughs, she's very rubbish with her commands, generally because she is barking so much I am sure she cannot hear a word I am saying. I am hoping when we go to Daves this will give me lots of ideas on how/what to work on. I think realistically we are not going to be at all competitive in grade 7, I can't train her as hard as I need to, she has had a lot of damage done to her body these last 6 years, so is not going to be as agile as a 2year old who's never had an injury. Tia is working faster than before her injury, which while is great, is worse for me as now not only have I not worked her for a year, but I also have a suddenly speeded up dog who now turns like a ship and just takes her pick at which jump she's gonna do and off she goes.

Ricky also worked really well, Imogen did some work with him too and he was a good boy, infact he was really good as he held all his waits first time perfectly, which he never does for me!

We have a match tomorrow, taking Ricky and Tia, and Imogen is taking Honey, I am looking forward to it :D

4 x 4

2009-11-16T06:01:00.000-08:00

I've started Scandal's weave training off now. I was tempted to give 2x2 a go but decided not to as I don't feel I know enough about it having only watched the DVD and spoken to a few people who have used the method. If I had my very own 2x2 instructor over here then maybe it would be different :o)

I decided not to use v weave as Scandal is very leapy and I think she will just bounce through them and I don't want to encourage her to be high in them. I got a set of channels at the beginning of this but haven't really used them on any dog let alone Bandle, however decided to give it a go this week. I brought 4 poles home with me as they are in sets of 2, they are open about a foot now. We've done 4 sessions of about 5 minutes in the last 3 days. Scandal is now finding 90 degree entrances from both sides, she has cottoned on SO quickly bless her. At the end of this week I am planning on adding another 4 and possibly another 4 after that so she is doing 12 open. Then the plan is to go back to 4 and close them up, then add another set of 4 etc. Very pleased with progress so far, she lurrrrves the weavies :o)

Oh and I am saying "poles" rather than weave. After reading another blog, I realised why after all this time Tia still doesn't understand the command "weave". Well, it sounds too much like leave, she gets told to leave a lot (leave the cat, leave the ferret, leave the chickens etc) so weave/leave sound way too similar. Scandal is therefore learning "poles" :o) xx

Honey, Scandal and Be

2009-11-14T05:45:00.001-08:00

Agility training in Blagdon, November 09. Starring Honey (who I was looking after), Scandal at 11mths and Be at 18mths. Be and Bandle are half sisters.
They are so much fun to train :o)

And Michèle made a video of Ruby and Ant in Holland, how loooovely is Ruby :o)
For those that want to see it:

Todd

2009-11-08T00:02:00.000-08:00

Todd's almost 7 months now, I had him to stay for a day last week, he was good as gold. He is Astra Layce x Astra Keyne bred by Pam Duncan and Dane Redford, he is such a scrummy puppy.

And another pic of Scandal, coz she's just so cute :o)

Scandal's first lesson

2009-11-06T03:03:00.000-08:00

This week me and Laura with Be went all the way to Kent for a lesson with Dave Munnings. Laura drove, so I got to chill all the way there, thanks Laura :o)

The lesson was fantastic, it was the best agility lesson I have ever had, I learnt SO much, me and Laura filmed each other, and we are going to watch it all back and make notes (geeks :)) as there was so much to take in I am sure my brain has only remembered a tiny bit of it. Scandal was so good, there were only a couple of times I thought she was slow, and Dave said she isn't sluggy, so that's good too :o) I do have to work on getting her to drive forward away from me and I have done too much of running with her, so a bit like Tia she will only get into 5th gear coming down the last couple of jumps. I love training her and just find that I click with her, she doesn't have masses of drive, but it is coming, I find her very easy as she doesn't everything I say like Rix did, but she wants to do it more than Tia did. I now understand properly how to train her rights and lefts, as well as a few other things such as Scandal learning to stay on the line I am running, not cutting behind or infront/to the side. Oh and how to front cross properly so Scandal actually gets to see the jump before she jumps it, poor girl.

I think the 18 months or so I have been out of competing has done me the world of bad!! I feel absolutely hopeless handling, I have no idea where to be, my timing is out, I release Scandal from the start, and by the time she has come to me I have forgotton what I'm meant to say to her!! I could remember the (very easy) sequences Dave had set, but kept forgetting when to move across to do a front cross, etc, all things I was able to do at the age of 12 but it seems that in my old age it's gone from my brain now! Luckily Scandal is very forgiving and gets her bally anyway while her silly mum tries again to get it right in her head before giving Scandal another go!

I can't wait for our next lesson, I feel like I know where I am going with our training now, have lots to practise, and hopefully by the next time we have a lesson with Dave, we will see some improvement. It took ages to get home as some idiot (a.k.a me) booked it so it meant by the time we finished and got on the M25, we hit rush hour pm traffic, ahhhhhh! However as we were both on such a high, it didn't matter quite so much (esp for me, as I had a lie in the next day :))

Was hoping to go to Sharon's today and train with Toni, which I was so excited about, both at having a lesson with Toni as I have never trained with her before, and seeing Sharon's Diesel, however unfortunately as my car broke earlier in the week and I had to have it fixed (altho they didn't, it just cost loads and it is still broke) I couldn't justify more expense at travelling to Sharon's as she's soooo far away. Why do so many great people live in the South/South East?? Hopefully we will be able to meet up in the new year, although it makes me nervous already as it will be Scandal's first time training with another dog!

After Helen's advice in earlier blog post re: chase drive, it got me thinking as to how I could set up more challenging areas to work in where Scandal would find it harder to concentrate. We have been working on our waits with the chickens as the 'chase'. Scandal lurrrrves the chickens, I bring her in to the field which has the chickens hen house in, it took several goes before Scandal was able to sit calmly enough to open the hen house door, she was squeaking and shuffling around JUST like she does watching agility. She gets so excited when the chickens all come out, her head bobs up and down and she is shuffling her feet around, but she isn't going into a down and even when the chickens have flapped their wings she didn't break her wait. So we are now going to work on improving her sit position, holding a nice upright sit rather than getting lower and lower. Then we will move on to practising on the cows, if I could rank in terms of excitement, the ferret is a 7/10, the chickens a 8/10 and I think the cows a 9/10. And watching anything that is running at speed is a 10/10! But I hope if we can work on Scandal's behaviour and control around chickens and cows, and I can recall her away from them, and ask her to perform her tricks when they are near, then I will be on my way to getting improved behaviour watching agility, and her recall when she is off lead on a walk. Thanks Helen :)

Mendips

2009-11-01T12:44:00.000-08:00

Scandal has redeemed herself and has been good the last few days! We did UKA Cheltenham yesterday and while I can't say Scandal was good, she was a lot better than at Shrewsbury, did some sit and down waits, held her static heelwork position for a good few seconds, and didn't bite me (yay :D).

Tia was WILD. Actually, Tia was great, but we just aren't clicking, she is so much more enthuastic and my brain isn't functioning in the slightest bit fast enough to do her justice. In the first steeplechase she broke her wait (Tia NEVER breaks her wait) and much as I lecture everyone I teach to put the dog back if it breaks, I broke the golden rule and put my arm out and simultaneously said "go", Tia went on my arm movement, hesistated, and then spannered the first jump, I can't remember the rest, I think she took another pole. Then the second round it was going ok and right at the end she had 3 poles, got her stride a little wrong, tried to bounce jumps that should definitely have been 1 stride. In the last round she was beautiful, just a pole at the end but was 3 secs faster than the winner, it was nice to see that :o) I think I am going to have to start doing more courses with her in training as all the poles came towards the end, maybe she is getting tired. Steve was here the last few days of this week and we got some pics of Tia on Friday, had her running around and jumping etc, maybe it was too much for her doing jumping Friday and Saturday and her legs were achy I do not know.

We went for a lovely walk today and walked to the highest point on the Mendips. It's amazing for the dogs, bracken to run in, rocks to climb on, and in Scandal's case, cows, sheep and horses to stare at through the fences. The only thing that has got me worried is as we were walking up the track, must have only been about 100m from home, Ricky looked slightly lame on both his back legs, and then looked like he was going to collapse, I caught him and held him, but he was completely fine within seconds, perked up again and has been fine all night. I am not sure what happened but I do find it quite worrying, he is only 10 :o( poor Rix. I hope it was a one off and it doesn't happen again. x

Bad Behaviour

2009-10-28T03:56:00.000-07:00

Went to Shrewsbury small/med show on Sat. Scandal was SO bad! We didn't even get past the first two metres of the first ring, as she was such a fruit loop, I couldn't get her to concentrate. Normally if Iask her to do 'watch', or a recall-present, she will be perfect, eventually I got the watch, but she completely refused to do a present, and kept coming into me side on to make sure she could keep watching the agility. And then when she did come in straight, stuck her head straight through my legs so she could still watch the agility. Flippin eck she is hard work. It took 2 attempts, and the 2nd attempt about 10 minutes, before we got a 5second wait. Built this up gradually. But was still yapping all the way through. Then snapped when I gave her food, and got my finger soooo hard, that it swelled up, and there is still a mark and bruise now, normally she takes food sooo gently but becomes an absolute monster at a show!

I'm in Blagdon now, the walks here are amazing, a little too amazing for Scandal, as yesterday I was walking her and Honey. I took them on a new walk and thought I would just take the two, as all 5 might be a bit hard to deal with. Well, that was a good choice (not to take all 5!). I let Honey off first and she was quartering the ground and getting a little far away, so I put her back on the lead as the light was going and I didn't want her running off. Little Scandal with a halo on her head was being great, I was walking along talking to Honey when I looked up and Scandal is about 200m away tearing after a hare. Called and called, nothing. Then the hare goes through the gate into another field, which is running back down towards me, so only sheep fencing between us. Thought Scandal would come back on her way past, as she would've only been about 20m away. Well, I was wrong, as Scandal had no intention of coming back, she was off straight towards the main road, which thankfully has sheep fencing round it, although I wasn't sure if this went all the way round at that time. Scandal found a gap in the hedge and went through it, back into the field I'd just been in (I by now was in the sheep field (with no sheep) and running back down to where I'd last seen her). But no Scandal in site. She must only have been gone for about 10mins but felt like an eternity particularly as I had no idea what direction she'd gone in, didn't know if she'd crossed the road back towards the house, so didn't want to call her in case she had found her way back, but had to call her incase she'd got disorientated. Oh dear the relief when I saw her again. She'll be back on a flexi/long line now but it has been pretty frustrating as her recall has been fantastic recently and I thought we were making a lot of progress. Every other time I call her, she will always come back on first call, and absolutely fly to me, she has a quicker response than the other two, but evidently no response at all when it matters most!

Glastonbury Tor

2009-10-18T08:02:00.000-07:00

Took the 3 dogs up Glastonbury Tor today. Despite SOMEONE saying it was miles, it wasn't that far, and not too steep, much to my relief, I had visions of climbing a mountain like the one we did in Austria! Here are some pics of Scandal. I have got some pics of the other dogs but of course Scandal got the most, particularly as I haven't taken many of her in the last month. Scandal was really great, she came back every time I called her, didn't jump up at anyone, and only went to say hello to one kid. Sooo much progress. One lady was so impressed that she offered Scandal her ham sandwich for being so good, I had to turn her down as I do not want Scandal thinking that strangers will offer ham sandwiches on a regular basis, otherwise she will be thinking they are an awful lot better to visit than me!

Training

2009-10-15T05:08:00.001-07:00

I trained Scandal on Monday or Tuesday this week and she was lovely, running dog walk was great, she got a bit mixed up with the 'target' command but in the end we sorted it. Did some nice send ons into a tunnel.

Yesterday and today have been teaching her tricks, she can now reverse round the sofa and continue reversing up the first stair, which I think is real cute. Can put all her feet in a bowl (altho it's their water bowl so bigger than the food bowl) and can put her front feet on a chair and put her head below. She thinks these tricks are sooooo much fun. Crazy little girlie whirlie! Can't decide what to teach her next, I think maybe leg lifts, and will also teach her to beg. She learns so quickly, and loves freeshaping. Apart from she gets a little carried away and offers as many behaviours as possible in a short space of time, need to calm the Scandalbeans down!

She has been good with both people and dogs this week, no jumping up, and will come back whenever I call her. Infact I can't think of anything particularly naughty which she has done this week, I think that is the first in a long time, maybe she is growing up :O I can hope!

Update

2009-10-05T10:33:00.000-07:00

Scandal's now 10 months old, wowwww, old girl!!

We went to Dartmoor on Sunday, lovely day, Scandal was VERY naughty, and very excited, and thought the sheep were just a little bit too exciting (need I say any more?!). We had 5 dogs in the landy and on the way back they all crashed out, except Scandal, who carefully balanced over Rix so she could watch the traffic on the 2 hour journey back home! I am glad she does at least sleep at home, even if she was too excited to sleep in the car!

I have bought my van cages, and we went up and collected them last week, now I just need to buy the van :oD hopefully in the next couple of months. A Fiesta just isn't big enough to transport them all in safely, and means I tend to opt for taking 2 of them out rather than all 3 like I should.

I did no agility with any of them last week, just some nice walks, and practised Scandal walking to heel on a collar and lead without thinking the idea is to extend my arm on the way to the fields. Did a training session with Scan this evening and she was good, she still isn't driving like I'd like her to, but dog walk was lovely, we did 5 from mid point on the dog walk and only one was a bit higher than I'd like. We did some seesaw, where the end of the seesaw is a couple of inches off the ground, and she gets into 2o2o so has to move the seesaw. She LOVES this game, and just spends all her time putting her paws on trying to get a click/marker. I think this has come from a lot of the balance games we have played, like using a wobble board, where she thinks that movement is a good thing. I am pleased that she is so confident as Tia's always approached it quite gingerly, unlike Scan, who is much more gung-ho. I am going to be cutting down on the amount I do her dogwalk now, now I think she understands the behaviour, I don't see much more point in doing it (plus I'm quite bored with it now!) so will leave it for a month or two and just practise it on the occasion I feel like training it. I am pretty happy with how her training is going for everything, I would just like her to try a bit harder, but I am probably expecting too much/wanting too much myself!

I went back to Uni last week and am knackered already, dogs should be grateful they get any walks/training, the poor moma's doing way too much studying :oP (that'll be the day :))

Dashin Dogs

2009-09-28T11:33:00.000-07:00

What a brill weekend. Gorgeous weather, lovely venue, great people.

Tia - 4 runs, 4 eliminations, but they were just the best eliminations, I was as happy as if we had won! We had sooo much fun. She was crazy, she got more mad with each run (I think there were several "cripes, I'm actually doing agility" moments for her) so by the last run, my timing just got totally fuddudled, I handled her wrong and she was just bark-bark-bark so I did let out a TIA! but then we got back on track and she was just super after that, so much fun, wild, was giving it her all, loving every minute of it, and I am so grateful to my lovely little dog for trusting me enough to come back to doing agility even though 18 months ago it was so painful for her. I have really missed running her, we have a UKA show next month and then I will give her the rest of the year off, and start building her up again in Jan/Feb time, I am hopeful she will be able to do one or two classes at a couple of shows a month, maybe even a couple of champ classes, I get such a buzz from running her, just loved this weekend, although my handling is mega ropey, timing is all out, Tia is Miss Fizzy Beans! If we are able to do a bit more practising, maybe this will improve!

Rix was uber naughty on Saturday and leapt off his aframe in anysize agility, however he made up for it Sunday by coming 1st in Veteran Jumping with Lee, they totally stormed it, probably one of the best Veterans courses Rix (and Lee!) has ever worked, he was stunning! I ran him in anysize jumping first thing in the morning and came 2nd, this was despite me almost crashing into a jump, I could see I was running straight towards this jump but just didn't get out the way until I literally had to stop, what an idiot, I blame any alcohol still in my system!! Luckily Rix was oblivious to his stupid handler pratting about and carried on doing his stuff, what a good boy.

Imogen and Honey were ssssuper, and got 1st in Gr 1-3 Agility, 1st in Gr 1-2 Agility, and two thirds and a 5th in agility and jumping. I am so proud of them, still have only been training for 9 months and have won out of grade 1 and qualified for YKC ADOTY at Crufts.

I am still amazed that I have just done Tia's first grade 7 classes, when only 6 months ago it looked as if it would stay a distant dream. I am on such a high, all the patience, endless trips to SMART, the physio exercises, and building her up to be super fit, has been worth it, the guilt I had from making Tia train and compete when she was in pain has now gone, as I realise that everyone in life makes mistakes, we had tried our best to get Tia treated, but had failed to get correct diagnosis, until going to SMART, and I have done everything in my power to get Tia's health and fitness back up to a level where I know she is strong enough to do agility. Tia will always be my "drives me nuts" dog, she is a pain to live with and is a strange little dog at the best of times, however I do feel that when she does agility, she loses all the fears that she has when she's at home or out on walks, and becomes a confident, happy dog who just loves to run.

Here is a video of 3 of our runs. Thanks Garth for filming. Not bad ;-) Tia's 4th run was juniors which I didn't get on film, but Tia and Imogen definitely had fun!

Sleeping Scandal

2009-09-24T01:56:00.001-07:00

This always makes me laugh. Scandal decides at about 9pm that she is going to bed, and she buries into the curtains by the patio doors, spins around several times and lies down, recently she has perfected this so she is now completely surrounded by curtain. Here is her attempt last night. Soooo cute!

Scandal - the video

2009-09-21T12:06:00.001-07:00

Well here is the video of Scandal, training at 9 half months old!

Ric Roc

2009-09-20T05:07:00.000-07:00

I have done hardly any training with the dogs this week. We have walked lots, but the only training I did was on Friday when Jess brought Copper over, worked him round on the equipment while I had Scandal (off lead :)) in her crate, with the door open. We then moved on to having her sat next to the crate and being able to hold a wait, with no barking. She was a good girl :)

I took all the dogs down to Exmouth yesterday, Steve took some lovely pics of Rix, these are my favourite. I can't believe Ricky will be 11 in February, it doesn't feel like I have had him that long!

Thank you

2009-09-16T03:00:00.000-07:00

I would just like to say a massive thank you, to everyone who has been so lovely, kind and generous, when someone decided to turn my life upside down this week. I am truely humbled, and amazed, by everyone being so wonderful. Thank you, to every one of you, it means so much to me, agility people really are the best :)