Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Love a Gamble!

Just for something different here is a video of my big fluffy boy Riot doing a Masters Gamblers run last weekend. I only enter Riot in games these days (and even then it's only occasionally) because I would like to eventually finish off all his Masters titles of which he just has Gamblers and Snooker to go. Riot isn't a big fan of agility however if I only do it every now and again he seems to enjoy himself well enough. He gets trained maybe once a month just to keep his paw/eye coordination in tact and so his contact behaviours don't disintegrate completely. I don't normally video games runs because they are hard to follow however luckily for me Mike kindly videoed this particular run and Kriszty uploaded to You Tube.

As it happens I'm extremely glad that they did because Riot was such a legend! The Gamble challenge was pretty hard with dogs having to come out of a tunnel and do a massive push out to a jump rather than the jump that was directly in front of them. Many of our seasoned Open and Gamblers dogs couldn't do the Gamble but with a simple "out" command from me Riot happily obliged and changed direction in the blink of an eye. What a star! Not just a pretty face is this boy :-)



It was also a small consolation with all the problems I'm having getting Sonic back in the ring and into the same condition he was at the end of last year. He's finally gotten the all clear from the physio. She discovered that he was quite sore through his back which is no doubt why he didn't seem to be using his back end properly since he's been back in training. Then last week he ripped a nail off his outside front toe which required a trip to the vet and antibiotics. So, fingers crossed he can do some training tomorrow even if not on the contacts and with a bit of luck he'll be back in the ring by early April and even better ready for the State Trial in mid April!!

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Birthday girl


Beautiful Noodle

I have to start this post by paying tribute to my beautiful Soda-Pop who turned 14 years old on Saturday 5th March. Her priorities in life haven't changed since her last birthday and still revolve around eating, sleeping and eating. Right now all I do is enjoy every day that we still have her with us.


Soda's two favourite spots.....kitchen


and lounge.

The weekend saw another Western Classic come and go. Hard to believe that it was Sonic's very first agility trial two years ago. The overall weekend was pretty good. Sonic managed a fourth in Masters Agility, second in Open Jumping and third in Excellent Gamblers. He also did a stella run in Masters Jumping but knocked a bar. He is running pretty well but a couple of seconds off the speeds that he was hitting towards the end of last year. Considering what he's been through it's great to see that he is on his way back. I'm attempting lots of core strengthening work with him to help get him back into agility shape.

Unfortunately the last night was not so good for the teams events and he DQ'd in agility which basically cost us the event. I went to turn him and the little bugger shortend stride and even turned his head, but then proceeded to head straight over the wrong jump. I was so disappointed and the words I used at the time would not be considered lady like but such is life and such is agility...

On the positive side Lexi was a total legend all weekend. Second in Masters Jumping and clear in both teams events. Things haven't always been easy with Lexi given that she's not mine and has been in out of agility over the four years I've been training her to have babies but when she's hot, she's hot and the over weekend she was a superstar.