Catch Up
A weekend at home! I’ve never been so happy not to be doing anything at all. Kim’s had a bath after rolling in something really unpleasant this morning which meant I had a tan, white and green dog, and Mollie is baking outside. She seems to be enjoying herself though, so I’ll leave her to it. Dylan is hopefully following people around in case they throw something for him, which is very unlikely but he has unfounded optimism about these things. So I thought I’d get an update in.
Both Kim and Dylan are working their socks off in agility training sessions, which is excellent! Kim has the Dog Vegas Final in a couple of weeks, and Dylan has qualified for both the Intro Finals at BAA, and both of them have qualified in their Team Trios (Kim with Bailey and Pippa, Dylan with Inca and Lottie). Loads of practise on contacts with both dogs, must be faster, and also on pull-thrus (something I always neglect to train). We’ve done lots of work on odd-weaves as well recently as they seem to be coming back into fashion, we’ve bumped into them a couple of times at competitions. Thankfully both dogs are now pretty solid on that!
The British Flyball Championships start on Friday, and we have three teams going, so we’re also doing a lot of training there! Kim and Mollie both look great; Mollie is back running lead dog after her fantastic performance at Scarborough (the old lady ran 5.2’s over 13″ all day, up Mt.Everest) and Kim is pinning down the team as anchor. It’s not her best position and I would like to see her coming back faster, but we just haven’t had time to train for that specifically recently, and I know she’ll pick up in competition anyway. Their team is in Division 24, running on Friday.
Dylan’s team is running Saturday in Division 18, and he’s running either as third dog or anchor, which suits him very well. We are having a rather tragic problem called “Dylan has forgotten everything we’ve ever taught him about a swimmer’s turn” though, which is driving me crazy. He’s turning reasonably well; three paws on the box as an average. But the lazier he gets, the wider the turn becomes, as he pushes off on the flat which forces him to the side, rather than on the angled box which pushes him right back down the run. Of course, he picks the worst possible time to start messing about! Slight improvement made in the past week but not half as much as I’d like. After the Champs we aren’t flyballing again until Redcar (sadly!) but it will hopefully give us time to sort this little issue out.
Fingers crossed everything in the next three weeks pans out as planned!