Agility Training

Some interesting sessions this week; two, in fact!

Kim = Must. Support. Obstacles. Kim has changed her running style slightly during her injury and recovery time, and I need to be right there with her and supporting the obstacles before asking her to turn, otherwise she will turn too soon.

Kim also ran with Katie, which apparently made her lose all sense of self-preservation. She did the Aframe in two hits – one to hit the up-board and fly the apex, one to hit the down-contact and continue on her merry way. My heart stopped, I swear! But damn, she nailed both contacts and it was fast … but I’d prefer her not to try and kill me when we’re on course, so I think we’ll stick with our four-hit running contacts rather than encouraging anything else so crazy.

Dylan worked for 10mins on Tuesday, and his Aframe was excellent, straight off. Five-hits rather than Kim’s four, but I do ask him for the stop at the bottom. Smooth, fast, driven. Couldn’t ask for much more … well, I’d like him to do that in competition, but that may be too optimistic!

Tonight we also skipped over to Atomic Dog Training to see Nat, really as a bit of a test to see whether Dylan would react any differently in a completely new competition-like environment. The answer was generally no; he wasn’t quite as quick as he is when training indoors at our usual spot, but he was still relatively going. Nat and I had a chat about his contacts as she’s been through some similar things with Dyl’s sister Kai on the dogwalk. It was a little bit strange as we experimented with toys and handler positioning, as Kai and Dylan work in a very similar way!

Dylan’s contacts were good. Not perfect, not yet, but much, much better. If we could walk into a ring and I could be confident that his contacts would be like they were this evening, I’d feel we could at least challenge for some respectable Grade 3 placings. He’s around 4/5s off the winning times at the moment, but I know we lose more than that on his slow and steady contacts.

Flyball this weekend at Wickersley, and Dylan is running up with Barneys without either of his girls as backup, so fingers crossed! Kim is doing the opposite and standing down a team to give the Nights dogs a height-dog break, and Mollie is in with her for the lower jumps. The week after we’re at Otley both days! Kim has all Combined classes but again, the aim is just to get her up and running smoothly again. Dylan has some Graded 1-3’s and a few other mixes, but I’ll be happy if he gives me some nice drive-y contacts! He’s also got the Pedigree Pairs with Jet on Sunday, maybe we can manage 2 clears in the same Pairs class this time!