Agility,  Dylan,  Photos,  Rio,  Videos

Easter at Duncombe Park

Five runs a day on not-so-flat ground has killed me, I am going to have to get my running shoes on and do some training this summer as well. When I am not flailing around behind Dylan, I can actually handle him well. This was as much a surprise to me as to Dyl! As I am finally beginning to accept and admit that Dylan doesn’t really have a wait anymore, on a few courses I really struggled to get to where I needed to be.

This was our first Grade 6 show outdoors and at fitness, and although Dylan and I were flagging by Sunday afternoon, we generally did much better than I expected. Our training held up, we both have the skills we need to handle the courses, and when we got it right we were getting top-10 placings. I expected us to be outclassed, or at least out of touch in terms of speed, but surprisingly we really weren’t. Our major weak point was contact speed, which may be down to the rubber contacts and Dylan’s cautious nature when faced with something new. I don’t think he feels completely comfortable or confident on the surface yet, but we have no where to train on rubber contact equipment so I will have to hope it improves as we go. His Aframe and Seesaw were fine by the end of the weekend, but the dogwalk still needs a lot of work.

G6-7 Agility, Hare'n'Hounds Easter 2012We also had one big weakness, called Taking Off Early for the Last Obstacle. From watching the videos, this is my fault; when I slow down on the second to last obstacle (a contact or weaves) and then accelerate, Dylan takes off early. He can get away with this on a single jump perhaps, but unfortunately he crashed through the second part of the spread on our first run of the weekend, and then again on our final run of the weekend he had a fairly horrendous tyre crash. I will post a video of his tyre crash later this week, when I can bring myself to watch it again.

The courses all weekend were generally challenging, particularly on Friday. We had a fair split of 4-7, 5-7, 6-7 and Open classes, but barring the C1-7’s, the others definitely erred more towards G7 than G4/5. Lots of push-outs, obstacle avoidance, and required independent contacts in the course designs all weekend. Is that this year’s trend?

I think we generally either went clear or got E’d, with two 5F runs that I can remember. I trained all the 1-7 classes and held Dylan’s contacts, as they were very straightforward up-down courses where we were unlikely to get places anyway. We got one rosette on Friday, a 6th in the G5-7 Jumping, a really tough course for 4-7 and despite a dither at the beginning Dylan ran it really well. I think we could have been faster; I’d just walked out of another ring and then straight on to the line for this class, and at the third tunnel (obstacle 12) I had to choose between speaking and breathing, so we ran the rest of the course with minimal vocal commands (or forward motion, because there was also an option between running and dying of exhaustion).

G5-7 Jumping Hare'n'Hounds Easter 2012Saturday was marginally more successful, a 13th in the Garry Smith’s very nice G4-7 Agility and then an unexpected 10th in the G6-7 Agility. I thought the agility was a very easy course so I held Dylan’s Aframe contact whilst I got into position, but apparently there weren’t many clears. I can only assume everyone else thought it was easy and trained it as well! There was a particularly evil G6-7 Jumping on Saturday which was at least fun to watch, even if Dylan and I got E’d immediately.

Sunday we had no clears at all, oops! We had a really super run in the G6-7 Agility in Ring 1, Dylan didn’t come through for the pull-thru at 3 so I took him back, but he ran the rest of the course perfectly. That one was a bit frustrating! The very final class of the weekend had a really difficult pull-thru at the start, I wasn’t sure I could get there, but I’m very pleased that I did and I’m even more pleased with how I handled it. Unfortunately I then attempted to fall over a jump so we got E’d. Nobody’s perfect.

Rio had a good weekend. She’s Miss Sociable at shows, she really adores Cat and Tracy so they get regular face washes but she’s happy to sit and snuggle anyone given the opportunity. She was also very polite with all the dogs, although she was a little bemused by the 15 week Bernese puppy who desperately wanted to play. Considering the Bernie was already as big as she is, I can see why she was puzzled! We played lots of games around the rings, mainly a game called Sitting Calmly, which Rio is very good at. She showed some interest for the first time this weekend and watched a few dogs run, but it was very relaxed and she got lots of praise. On Sunday, as she’d done so well, I took a tuggy and we tugged ringside for a while, which she loved. I don’t foresee any problems with her wanting to engage and play ringside so this isn’t really a priority to work on, but it’s nice to know she will if asked. I’m more concerned with keeping her non-reactive to the other dogs working, and so far so good.