Daventry

Can't believe it was our last ever time at Daventry :-(, been going since I was 12! I got drunk for the 1st time at Daventry way back then lol!

Anyway, we had Ballistics as 3rd seed in div 2 on Saturday. Team was Diefer, Asher, Lacy, Rosie and Bunty (Luna was in season). 1st couple of races Diefer was a git in the warm ups and was running out so we took the ball out everytime he went wrong and left him out of racing completely. In the 1st leg of the 1st race we hit our fastest time of the day of 18.30secs. Asher was start on this and ran 3.75secs!! (it was 3.82 with 0.07start) What a dog! Won that race. 2nd race, Rosie decides to play up aswell and do the same as Diefer and run up the side, she did this for 2 legs so we kept her late on the changeover and she then started doing it right again. Somehow we won that race aswell! In the afternoon, something seemed to click with Diefer and he didn't look like running out at all. Still didn't run him for the 3rd race and managed to win that one. 4th race Rosie ran out again so we took her out and went with Diefer, he ran fine, only let him go from about 15ft though, won that one! Last race we thought would be really tight, we rested Lacy and again Diefer ran properly! And amazingly we won that aswell, winning the division. How we did it, I will never know! Times were disappointingly slow but then it was very hot, poor Bunty was knackered. Asher was fantastic, he did tire a little bit with the heat but still hit 3.75 twice, 3.76 and 3.79 from what I saw and I didn't see that many times. Although I also saw a 3.98 and a 4.02 later on in races so maybe he's not quite at full fitness yet!

Missiles were helped by a bit of extra speed from Jive this weekend as we didn't have Molly. This made a hell of a difference to them although the others also seemed to run well despite the heat. They did a best time of 23.58secs which bettered their seed time by about 2.5secs. Although to be honest this just made them competitive rather than them often being annihilated. They had some really close racing and came 2nd.

Rockets were top seed in div 5. The team was Jemma, Sonny, Smartie, Elliot, Perry and Jamie. The team seemed to gel quite well despite the changing around of dogs and they all ran well. Jemma seems to have got the hang of this racing malarky although we haven't yet tried her in the red lane, maybe next time! Elliot did totally lovely box turns once we remembered to tell him "on the box" on his way down! Sonny's box was also better but still not as good as it is in training, still more reps needed! Big lesson to everyone, NEVER retrain, always get it right from the start! Smartie, Perry and Jamie were consistent as ever although still need to work on Jamies box aswell. The team managed a best time of 19.71secs. They just lost 1 race and it was very tight so they came 2nd.

Great weekend, sooo hot, dogs coped well though and us humans had a water fight which greatly helped! Frimley next weekend and we get to race Jolly Jumpers!

Worcester Agility

I went with high hopes that his pole knocking had improved, he soon knocked me down to earth so to speak!

Here's the video of his, Jemma's and Elliot's runs:



1st run was C1-2 Agility. At the start he really wanted to go right so when I released him I think he was a bit off balance and had the 1st pole. Was pleased with his seesaw, dogwalk was a bit slow. He then had the pole after the dog walk, I think I changed my arm too late and again put him off balance as he pretty much ploughed through this 1! Was really pleased with the rest of the course, turns were a bit wide but his Aframe and weaves were lovely. So 10faults and a time of 36.something. Winner was 31.something I think (and I know this dog is really speedy :)) so not too bad considering he turned the wrong way a couple of times and I held his contacts.

Next was C1-2 jumping, he worked this quite nicely. Again 2 poles but he listened well and again nice weaves from quite a fast entry. Just not sure why he ran past the last jump.

Lastly there was G1-2 jumping. Started with fast blast around the outside, 1st 3 jumps were a bit angled though so he knocked 3rd and 4th jump, just don't think he could shorten his stride enough. He also had the pole at the jump before turning back for weaves. Again great weaves as he flew at the entry. We got e'd when he took the jump after the tunnel. Was pleased with the way he worked the box apart from another pole! (you can see the course abit better if you watch jemma's round on the same course).

So 8 poles in 3 classes, not a great average really! Nevermind, he actually worked the handling of the courses alot better then he has before so definitely improvements. And to be honest I'm just pleased that he is able to run again :-)

A bit of Agility

Asher's now back to jumping full height, he looks absolutely fine and is possibly jumping better than he was before which is good.

We went through a couple of bad weeks with his weaves, he just wasn't confident about what I was asking and kept coming out at No. 10. To the point where he was just stopping dead at 10 and looking forward, very odd. So took it right back and did it as just a single obstacle, went mad with praise when he did them and after a couple of go's he seemed to realise. He's been fine since.

Contacts have also had ups and downs, I'm quite happy with Aframe. Some dogwalks he does amazingly and others are a bit slow, maybe I'm being too picky!

I've been pleased with his responsiveness around courses recently, he seems alot smoother to run. He appears to be thinking more and preparing for jumps and turns better. Maybe I am improving slightly, I really do hope so!!

We've had some tricky exercises at training in the last couple of weeks and he has done really well. We are at Worcester Agility show tomorrow, very much looking forward to it. Lets hope his improvements translate to the ring!

Acremead, the May version

So 4 teams this weekend, great fun, I love having lots of teams in! Missiles, Extraset and Rockets ran Saturday.

Missiles were the usual team and ran well improving their seed time by over a second but only managed 5th place.

Extraset were Jemma, Perry, Elliot, Jamie and Jive. This team ran fabulously. At the last Acremead with Piper and Smartie in the team they managed 20secs so when submitting a time for them we thought 21secs would be reasonable as Perry and Jamie were running just over 5.5 and Jemma and Elliot just under 5. Well this lot decided they didn't think much of our estimation and in the 1st race did 20.16secs... oops! We then had to be really careful not to breakout again so held back lots on our changeovers and ran late 20s for the rest of the day. Needless to say they won the division! As much as I'm not a fan of winning by such a margin, it was an honest mistake and we genuinely didn't expect to run that fast so we were all ecstatic at how well the team ran. Sarah's housemate Tasha took some videos so I thought I would time and see what the dogs were running. The reason for breaking out soon became clear! Perry was doing 5.1ish, Jamie 5.3, Elliot 4.6 and Super Jem had sped up to 4.4secs!! I think Jem had suddenly realised that it might be fun to race the other dog rather than just stare at it on the way to the box so was flying. Elliot was also coming back better and his box looked really good. Still some work to be done on his return drive but luckily Sarah is a good pupil and I'm sure will get that sorted!

Rockets were ran as Diefer, Sonny, Smartie and Bunty (with Rosie as reserve as she is coming back from injury). We were hoping Diefer would be fine running over the lower jumps especially as he had run faultlessly over 12" at training last weekend. Well he was fine in the red lane but was still being really naughty in the blue lane. There was really no excuse for this as he ran fine for most of last year over this height. Back to the drawing board i'm afraid and he needs more boxwork as it didn't look good! To be honest the rest of the team were also a bit all over the place and never really gelled. Sonny ran well in the morning and did nice boxes but looked sluggish in the afternoon. Smartie was great but had an odd moment where she suddenly went lame and then 5mins later she was fine again. Bunty was another one who was great in the morning but dropped her ball a couple of times in the afternoon which she hasn't done for years! So overall a bit of a kerfuffle! We submitted 19secs and they managed 19.44secs I think. We came 3rd but should really have won it as we beat the top seeds and eventual winners and only lost the other races on lights, it just wouldn't come together!

Ballistics ran Sunday. The team was Piper, Luna, Lacy and Asher. Again we had a submitted time, although not very well planned, we were asked at the last acremead if we just wanted to submit the same time as we ran at that show which we thought was 18.58secs, we just went with it not knowing which dogs were going to run. Some how our fastest time was recorded as 18.69 and we ended up in div 2 on that declared time. Well with these dogs we knew we would be quite a bit faster than this so again had to be careful on changeovers. Piper looked fantastic, lovely box and running 4.1-4.2 over the 12", his handler was also more confident and was doing excellent starts. Luna looked faster than the last show although not sure what times as changes were so far out! Lacy was great as always and looked more comfortable over the 12" than last show. Asher had a whale of a time running anchor, he point blank refused to be beaten back and won a couple of legs by just a couple of 100ths of a second despite going out 2/3 jumps behind! The only problem with him when he plays catch up is that he blows his box turn, they weren't terrible but certainly not as good as when he runs start. And he proved my point in 1 race when he was actually out before the other teams last dog and did beautiful box turns so that is something for us to work on. We won every race and I thoroughly enjoyed the racing. Our best time was 18.28secs but I think we could of knocked pretty much a second off that with tight changeovers. It was good in a way that we couldn't go much faster as we now don't have Piper for the next 3 shows so atleast we are on a realistic seed time for the dogs that will run in that team although right now don't ask me who they will be!

The Ballistics win on Sunday was dedicated to Tess who would of been 13 on that day. I miss her so so much so I'm glad we were able to mark the day with a win for her.

It was also Asher's 4th birthday on Saturday and his present was of course being allowed to run all day on Sunday, I don't think he would of asked for anything better!

Below are a couple of videos of the Extraset