Insert clever quote that relates to my Post

I am in awe of the people that find a quote that exactly matches their theme of their post on their blogs! I think it would probably take me an extra 3 days on average to find a quote I wanted to use! So I haven't bothered!

Well I have lots to write but I don’t know in what order or whether to put it all down in writing anyway!

I have some thoughts on some things that have happened recently, agility-based and non, and I would also like to tell you all about how the dogs have been doing at their first couple of shows of the season.

So I guess I will start with the dogs’ progress and see where we go!

Easter we were at Kernow K9, we had a tradestand so we were kept very busy all weekend. All our products seemed to go down well, and we had sold out of a couple of types of toy by the end and very nearly run out of headcollars! The rope toys were really popular, they are my current favourite too, especially as there is pink rope and we have some new special pink camouflage webbing in for the handles! Great for Princess Phaze who actually can get through toys nearly as quickly as naughty Cruze, so she can look girly with pink but we have a hardwearing toy!

I was a little disappointed at the lack of Graded classes, 3 grade 6 dogs and not a single graded class for the entire 3 days, not brilliant, there was one class down as graded but as that was the Pro-Plan Qualifier it became a combined class, I certainly felt for my friend who was the fastest Grade 6 run, and only needs one more win to Grade 7, she came 2^nd behind a Grade 7 dog and when running it thought it was a graded class. She took it better than I would have done!! We had about 7 clears over the weekend, the best runs being Cruze came 3^rd in a jumping and Magic came 4^th in a 5-7 jumping. Cruze was also clear in the Olympia qualifier but with a couple of bad turns was a couple of seconds of the qualifying times. At the time I was despondent, but looking back on it, at least I seem to be able to get round the Qualifiers now, where as last year I was flailing around failing miserably!!

Phaze ran really nicely, her agility runs were combined 3-5 classes so a little more technical than would have been ideal, as I just wanted to give her some confidence in the ring. She was slower in the ring than she is at home, but listened beautifully. This is her first ever run at a show, and if I’d said tunnel (!!!!!!!!) would have been clear! Ooops!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6TlYVik08E

On Saturday she had a clear round and one really wiiiiiiiiide turn and came 2^nd!

The following weekend was Wallingford, nothing to report there of any real significance! Magic was out of sorts on the Saturday and when Dairin had a look at her she had some tight muscles in her abdomen, so she had lots of hot water bottle treatment and massages – which she was really pleased about!

Knock Out pairs with 2 pairs plus 4 normal runs to run first thing on the Saturday was a nightmare! Don’t think we will be trying that again!

Phaze and Magic had a lovely clear in the Rainbow Rebels team

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6U8zJl3XXA&list=UUAcgjyNLJnI3gwcwYFermQg&index=3&feature=plcp

The experienced dogs weren’t quite so good in the SWAT Team! Whoops!! Maybe Toni will want the well behaved girls in the Crufts team instead of the grown up merle boys!

Last weekend was Cornwall/Dartmoor. And Magic had an absolutely amazing day! 3 out of 3 clears and she won both the Agility and Jumping, so she is half way to Grade 7 in one fail swoop! (And again overtaken the boys as she is a girl and better behaved!!)

Unfortunately no video of her wins, but her Agility round was stunning, lovely running contacts on all 3 pieces of equipment, nice to see she can do it in a competition environment. Her jumping run was poetry in motion! Really nice course, some technical bits and some bits where Dan had the advantage with his ability to run! There were about 6 or so of us watching and with each jump she took you could feel everyone willing her on and leaning forward at each jump! At the end she got a lovely round of applause :o) If that had been me that would have been one of my highlights of the year I think! It’s nice when people get behind a competitor on a run, you often only really see this at finals nowadays, but it made such a nice atmosphere.

Magic SC run C4-7, 6^th place

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czV7QlP82pQ&feature=channel&list=UL

Phaze had a 7^th in G3 jumping
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxS2JziQc5Y&feature=BFa&list=ULczV7QlP82pQ

We had been at the Grade 6 ring for the last hour before this run and I had walked this over 2 hours ago, there was no queue and they were about to close the class so not too bad a run seeing as I didn’t know where I was going half the time!

I had said my aim for this run was to get a decent wing wrap turn into the weaves, which we managed, so all in all pleased with 7^th.

Phaze Agility G3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ey3XvAeM98w&feature=BFa&list=ULzxS2JziQc5Y

Shame about the pole but we would have been holding our seesaw anyway!

I had planned on holding her DW in this run, but the Cadet swinging backwards on his chair at the bottom of the contact put paid to that idea!

We only stayed for an hour at Dartmoor on the Sunday. The weather was due to be horrible, shows further up had already been cancelled so we were expecting the worse weather to approach by lunchtime.

Phaze ran an amazing Agility round! For the first time she felt like she does training at home! I held the Aframe in this class! And put in an extra jump for good measure ;o)

The Merles all ran the G6 jumping, Cruze worked really nicely, but there was 9 weaves in the ring so he missed the last one. This is something that REALLY grates on me!! Some people say oh well the dog should know to keep weaving until there aren’t any weaves left. I strongly disagree with this! If you look at how we train weaves, 2x2/channels etc, what you are teaching the dog is a pattern, which in my mind includes ‘enter on this shoulder’ and you ‘exit on this shoulder’. For this reason I never train 9 weaves even though some judges stick them in grade 6/7 courses, I don’t know what the logic behind this is, but I stick to my reasoning for how I train weaves and therefore if 9 comes up and the dogs pop the last weave they are not asked to repeat them.

We decided not to stay and wait around for the Agility, Magic had worked really hard on Saturday and I was going to pull Cruze out anyway as the course was using the Aframe twice and currently Cruze and I are having Aframe issues and as I am unable to train my Aframe at home as we don’t have one I didn’t see the point in hanging around and running in the rain when chances were Cruze wouldn’t complete the Aframe correctly.

It is a real issue not having an Aframe to train on as Cruze is suggesting to me that now he is completing his contacts quicker he is not as comfortable stopping on it, he is a big dog and he does pound into the ground on 2o2o with the Aframe, he uses the last raised slat to slide and jam his back paws onto and pushes his front legs into the ground, this is something that concerns me and I spent the winter thinking I would retrain it once I had an Aframe I could happily do repetitions on safely.

So new Aframe is on order and hopefully my entire season won’t be wasted without any Aframe criteria! Not ideal for a Grade 6 dog, but these things happen and I will not insist he runs a piece of equipment how it has been trained if I think he could be doing it more safely for his needs.

We are going to UKA this weekend followed by Vyne on the Monday, and I will update the bog after that as it will then be linked to our brand new SWAG website so one of my duties is to keep up to date with our news on here!

The video camera is charged and ready to go so if nothing else at least there will be some video footage! Thank you again to Pat for the videos on this post as they were all done by you not us! Don’t know how I am going to manage without my official video-er this weekend!!

It's Finally here!!! The countdown is over!!

Well the 2012 show season has begun!!

We entered UKA NADs months back, mainly for Phaze to have her first chance in a ring and do some training and for Magic to get some training runs for her running contact work she has been doing over the winter.

We have treated ourselves to a trailer tent for the show season as we could not face putting up a tent every weekend again this year! We nearly ended up not going as Dan is just too busy, we can’t use the trailer tent yet as Dan needs to book his towing test (stupid rule in my opinion!), it was really cold the weekend before so we decided we wouldn’t camp. So that was it we weren’t going. Several days later we were going again as we really did need to train some runs! Dan’s parents kindly agreed to let us impose ourselves on them for the weekend so we could travel daily…….. then I realised that Phaze was in season! So we weren’t going again! She is very secretive about her seasons! I think she is actually coming out of season rather that into season so hopefully we won’t miss too much of the beginning of the show season.

We were still umming and aaahing about whether to go or not on Thursday but decided we’d go see Dans parents (have a lovely Indian Takeaway!) and compete Saturday and decide from there.

Saturday we trained a few runs, they were all a bit sticky on the rubber contacts, but generally some good bits, I was really pleased all my hard work on cueing turns and teaching Cruze to put in a check stride before a turn seemed to be working. We had a lovely time and it was nice seeing everyone so we thought we’d go back on Sunday! We came away with a 2x 1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd AND on the last run of the weekend; we qualified for our first Final of the year! Cruze and Magic qualified for the Split Pairs Final in December at The Hand Equestrian Centre. So very pleased with that result :o)

Dan and I have lots of plans and hopes for this year, the dogs are all working well and we hope to put everything we have learnt at SWAT over the winter into practice this year.

SWAG is going really well, so well that I have been lucky enough to be able to drop some hours at work to give me a day to work for Dan! We have a trade stand at K9 Kernow Easter show this year, well at the moment it will literally be the Marquee with us standing inside it! Hopefully we will have had some time to make a few products to put in it by next week! As well as a few exciting new products!

Blade had the chance to meet up with several of her brothers and sisters at Newbury at the weekend, they are all so similar! She is one of the friendliest pups we have ever had, no ‘Poodle Phobia’ or running away from German Shepherds either which is a nice bonus!

We plan on getting her DNA tested soon, several of her brothers and sisters have come back as no collie at all which would mean she could compete in ABC classes. Blade’s agility training has not yet started! She will be competing in 12 months time and is now 10 months old so she will begin to do some training soon.

 Eco, Blade, Flicker, Vali

NAUGHTY BLADE!!!!!!

Blade and Vali comparing balls!

So it is Carn Brea on Sunday. Always a lovely show to start the year off, Dan is judging so I get Thai back for the day; cannot wait!

Then Kernow at Easter with a few more qualifiers, hopefully they go as well as the last one!

2012: What do you hold in store?

I have heard lots of people say 2012 is going to be their year, a lot of people I know through work and agility had a difficult 2011, but everyone seems sure that 2012 is going to be better! All the positivity seems to be rubbing off on me as I have had a great year so far! All 16 days of it!

Phaze has been my main focus for the last month whilst the boys have been on their winter holidays.

I decided to give 2x2s a go. I have never quite been happy with how to train weaves, and don’t believe any of ours fully understand entries, so thought 2x2s may be the way forward. I have certainly not worked up to 12 weaves in 7 days but I am happy with how we are progressing. She certainly understands her entry work, and she seems to be developing a nice stride in them and I am hoping we will be up to 12 weaves in time for our private lesson at SWAT next weekend.

I am really excited about Phaze, she has such a good work ethic and really enjoys learning; she is very bright and very fast so I have my work cut out for me!

I am hoping to breed from Phaze in the future and so will be spending a bit of time this season watching some potential boyfriends for her. I already have had a few people asking about puppies from her, so no pressure on us to look good on the agility circuit! Lol

The BVA have managed to send Phaze’s Hip X-rays back twice now as they can’t work out how to look at them on the CD sent. I knew I was in for trouble when the vets told me Phaze would be the first one they were sending on CD rather than physical X-Rays, so hopefully sometime this year we will get the results back!

I have a few ideas of some dogs I would like to know a bit more about, and have had a few suggested to me, I enjoyed watching all the Olympia runs on You Tube and thinking ooh that dog would compliment Phaze nicely!

We have also spent some time over the Christmas break sorting out our Show Diary for the year. Our first show of the year will be Carn Brea, Dan is judging so I will not only have 3 dogs to run but one of them will be Phaze! I have several people on hand already to walk me to the ring and remind me to breathe and then pick me up on the other side of the ring.

Then we are at Kernow K9 for Easter, always a good show and nice to be close to home as you never quite know what the weather will be like. We have a trade stand there this year, which will be a good chance for us to let everyone know that we have extended our range of products at SWAG and that we now own Bungee Dogs

We hope to have trade stands at a couple of other shows too this year. Both SWAG and Bungee Dogs are going really well at the moment and Dan is keeping busy, busy enough not to make me all the products I ‘need’ before the show season starts at any rate.

Dan and I went to a Training day at Coombe Park on Saturday, the home of South Devon Agility Club in the winter, we both really enjoyed it. It was a slightly different format to the usual workshops in that it was a 3 hour workshop with 2 different trainers, Toni Keating and Neil Ellis. We spent the first hour and a half with Toni concentrating on handling and contacts. The second hour and a half we then concentrated on jumping sequences, weaves and handling with Neil. This was Cruze and Thai’s first session back after being on their winter break, and we were both pleased with how they worked and took a lot away from both sessions. I would recommend Toni and Neil to anyone who wants a really interesting and varied training day; they are also both very motivational and provided e, which is especially helpful at the beginning of a new year.

I think this year might be an exciting one for us, agility training is going well, business is going well and future plans are all exciting. I like 2012 already J