Snow and a little agility

Firstly I really do luv the snow when it's fluffy and new and I can walk over to the Look Out which is miles and miles of woodland :) but..... when the darn snow hangs around for ages and keeps half thawing and freezing again and then it snows again, well it just gets annoying lol

Some photos from our first snowy walk - apologies to those on Facebook who will have seen these already!

The little bit of agility is that we went today to a training in the ring thing at Lesley Oldens lovely indoor school, you get 4 runs - 2 jumping and 2 agility. Thanks to the people kind enough to offer their video services after my last post today I nabbed Neil to video me - thanks Neil. Bless Bex he took the tyre out so Neil stopped filming while we composed outselves and of course checked Bex was ok - he seemed fine the tyre is a soft one I think he just took off too early - I could have edited it but it's all a learning curve! More practice needed on tyres at speed!




Hope everyone is staying warm as it's been sooooo cold!

The journey started :)

I like to think of starting competing with a young dog as a journey, so much to learn and so much to look forward to. After having no competitions for what seemed like a long time we have had a full weekend!! Saturday Winter League - Cad won the medium section of 1-7 Agility, Kaiser was 4th in 1-3 Agility and Bex's first time running at Winter League and he had two messy runs and then two lovely runs, 1-3 Agility he came out of the 8th weave pole and then his last run of the day a stunning clear round in 1-7 Agility - just out of the 6 places all of which (I think) were taken by grade 6-7 dogs.

So an early start today to go up to Solihull to Midlands Border Collie Club, a mixture of courses but hey that is the variety of agility!

Here is Bex's first run 1-4 Agility - loads of good things to take from this run - even if it was an E :)

We then had a jumping run - no video - same course as in the video of Kaiser - Bex ran past two jumps - all due to my timing not being right!

Then the last run of the day 1-3 Agility - I am not knocking the judge but the jump where I went wrong was a really tricky bit for this grade and the ending was hard too - nothing dangerous about it so no reason not to have a go (no weaves used in this side of the arena as they can't peg them - we can't peg at our show but use weaves with a heavy base that don't move much at all - I do like to see weaves in a course!)

If any of my Blogger/Facebook friends see me at a show with a video camera and don't mind doing the occasional video I would be sooooo pleased :)

A Kaiser Video

I hardly ever get any videos of my dogs (sad face :(..) so as Bex is just starting out I thought I would try and get some (not an easy task!) so starting here with a video of Kaiser today at Midlands Border Collie Show - 1-3 Jumping, no weaves and he was just out of the places. To think he could not even concentrate all the way round the course at one time (and still has some lapses of concentration lol)

Wyre

Well I thought I'd make the slightly ;) mad trip to Wyre! It was a long day but I'm glad I went. I borrowed Meg and Jaf and Fog stayed home, so 4 dogs to run! I'd entered Bex and spent days and then the journey deciding if I would run him and ended up thinking I'd wait and see what the courses were like.

Afraid no video as I didn't like to bug anyone to video my runs as none of the people I knew that well were there.

Bex ran lovely, 2 nice waits, 2 very fidgetty waits, lovely contacts and one weave entry missed, we are not ver used to running whole courses and this did show a bit but I'm happy this will come :) we had no clears but lots of good bits. The best run scorewise was a missed weave entry in 1-7 jumping :)

Kaiser had 2 great runs and gained a 3rd in Grade 3 Agility and an 8th in Grade 3 Jumping.

Cad got 6th in the medium KC qualifier.

Meg - well she was a bit mad! Plastic poles argh lol - best run was one pole down in 6-7 graded jumping.

An enjoyable day and nice to catch up with fellow agility loons! Now if they could just move the venue a lot further down south that would be great!

Posting from my iPhone today - not done that before!

Just a quickie

For those who do not "do" Facebook (I know that is most people - maybe Helen?) I wanted to try and put the video of Bex on here from his first show at the weekend - he only had one run and there were parts of the course I was not sure how to do as I have not done much pulling him off things - he was only 18 months and 2 days. I didn't care it was an E as Bex did not really know and I thought it was good experience to start him off at the venue where we train - although it is of course not that noisy or busy at training! Still lot's to work on - especially the wait as I was not confident he would wait in those circs so just ran him off the line.

Kaiser got a 17th on the same course and Cad a 7th in the 6-7 Jumping. It was a very busy day and I did enjoy it but am also glad it's over for another year - we were inspected by a Field Officer and scored Excellent - phew!

The blog must go on!

Well either post again or bin it lol - still love reading everyone elses just don't seem to have the inspiration to write my own however these are busy but exciting times as Bex is coming up 18 months - he may do a couple of shows over the winter we shall see how it goes but really the end of November is a funny time to be old enough so next Spring we can look forward to competing.

We have been lucky enough to attend training days with people who I greatly respect as trainers and admire them running their own dogs and we have learnt loads - it's just putting it all into practice! We went on a 3 day agility camp back at the end of August and trained with Dave Munnings, Lucy Osborne and Sian Illingworth, a different trainer each day and we did 90 mins in the morning and afternoon and social things too.

More recently I have trained Bex again with Dave Munnings and with Nancy Hudson and Natasha Wise, he has his fabric crate to go into between runs or he starts to go a bit nuts....ooops!

Just yesterday we trained with Natasha and Trevor Greenslade took a lovely photo of Bex - it's the first one I have of him doing agility so a really special photo to me :)



To give the others a little mention too - Kaiser has had a couple of really good results - a 3rd in 3-5 Combined Agility at Gillingham and a 2nd in Grade 3 Agility at Lune (Oct), he still finds it hard to concentrate all the way round the course and if something takes his attention he looses so much time doh! An Alan Score photo from back in the summer.



Cadbury is as scruffy fluffy barky lovely as ever - well to me anyway lol - an Alan Score photo of him too



Oh dear it looks like his ears needed a brush lol

Fog getting older and more leaky - hate it when dogs get old :( This photo is from a few years back



And a Fog and Jaf one from a good few years back too




That's all for now must get on with paperwork things for North Downs Show... x

(thanks to Alan for the Bex photo at the top of the page)

Such a bad blogger!!

Just seem to have no time to blog these days and don't ever seem to have any photos or video to add and just text looks quite dull!!

Just back from a lovely 10 days at Lune and Barrow - hate to do a list of results but Cad was a little star and did not spook in the ring once - following on from an incident at a show over a year ago some things can now really scare him and that really upsets me and makes me think about not running him. Yes it's lovely to do well however I just want Cad to be happy in the ring! I know the kind of things that scare him and try and avoid these if at all possible. Kaiser did some nice runs and got a few places but still seems to have problems concentrating! Not so little Bex has just turned 13 months and is such a sweetie he is loving his training and is due to start in a class this week, not sure how that will go as it's not specific for young dogs so we might need to improvise a little lol

The view of the rings on one of the days off



A bit misty but the view from the caravan



Went for a lovely river and woodland walk with the dogs on one of the days off but I couldn't take any photos as had my hands full keeping a good eye on the dogs and also did not want to risk dropping my new Iphone4!

Please ignore the grassy caravan floor!



TTFN will try and blog again soon!