Dylan's 2009 Review

Our 2009 goals, which I thought were way optimistic at the time.

• Dylan to win out of Grade 3 (on points or wins)
• Dylan to win out of Introductory (Jumping and Agility)
• Dylan to gain his 3000 points (Flyball Dog Graduate) award
• Dylan to gain at least 100 Agility Warrant points

Turns out it wasn’t as hard as all that. Dyl breezed into Primary with points and wins to prove it, breezed past his FDG some time midway through the summer season. We like to keep ourselves on our toes on a few counts; we got the last handful of points to take us over 100 AW points at Wyre.

This year, Dylan and I’s partnership started with Kim. Everything starts with Kim, in the end. There’s no way Kim could have objectively considered the options and presented her conclusions to me, like a human would do, but I do wonder if some part of her didn’t just know. Because the same weekend that Kim said she was done with this, Dylan said “hey, I can do what she does”. Dyl had been getting better placings and had won a couple of classes already, but I still wasn’t taking him as a serious competitor, and yet that weekend that Kim walked away, he won more than Kim had ever won at a single competition. So maybe Kim was trying to say that I had this other dog who was just waiting for his chance and needed the opportunity to prove himself, and the only way she could get me to listen was to walk away. Maybe Kim is less selfish than I think she is, or maybe she just viewed this as an opportunity to spend more time at home sleeping.

Whatever ways, it worked. Agility is so exciting right now with Dylan, we’ve been picking up the pace and smoothing over the problems, and it feels like we’re just on the brink of being a really great team.

Flyball has been a bit of a mixed bag. Dylan has occasionally wavered, but he is much more enthusiastic and noisy about racing now. His box turn is getting more consistent; probably around 75% at his worst competitions. Still work to do, but better!

For 2010, then.

• Dylan to win out of Primary Agility and Jumping
• Dylan to win out of Grade 3
• Dylan to get his 10,000pts (Silver Award) in BFA flyball



• Dylan to get his Agility Warrant (Silver) award
• Dylan to get his BAD-Bronze (5 BAA class wins)

Maybe crazy. I think we can achieve the first two, in some way or another. Theoretically Dylan could already be out of Grade 3, since he has the points, but I’d like a few more top-5 places to confirm he’s ready to move up. The BAD-Bronze is touchable, almost; we have 4 wins, just 1 more to go. Both the Silver AW and FD seem wildly out of reach, but we need something out of reach to aim for. We’ll see what happens!