SONIC THE BORDER COLLIE

On our way

2012-02-12T16:16:00.001+08:00

Where oh where does the time go. I think this is the longest I've had between posts since I started this blog. Sometimes I wonder if perhaps I need to learn to say NO...lol.

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Post wash - too cute!

Sonic and I had our very first trial of the year last weekend. We didn't get a lot of preparation in because it's been too hot to do a lot of training and of course I've been pretty busy. We just had the two runs that night with our first being Masters Jumping. He started off really fresh, driving hard and it was all going OK until I pushed ahead to get in front so I could do a front cross. When I came out of the cross and tried to run on I had my weight too far forward and couldn't get my legs going. So I fell right on over! Poor Sonic didn't know what was going on poor bugger. I tried to finish the run off as best as we could after I'd picked myself up off the ground. Mainly because I didn't want to stop Sonic from having some fun. It made me realise that it's not only Sonic who needs to get fit! We had Masters Agility next and I wasn't real sure how we'd go plus I was pretty sore from stacking it. But thankfully we had a lovely clear run (with our first competition WEEEEE Saw) coming in with third place from quite a few quallies. Not bad for a dog who is nowhere near competition condition (and a very unfit handler holding him back). I tell you what I was sore for days after falling over!

Cassie and I are having heaps of fun and we love her to bits. Training her is a very interesting experience and she challenges me all the time. She is certainly one determined little cookie. Although I don't know if that's to do with me being a lot pickier in what I want behaviour wise these days. Even with Cassie being only 7 months old there is already things that I notice are better/stronger behaviours than what Sonic does. We seem to go in "blocks" of success. For a couple of weeks everything will be awesome and its success after success. Then we hit a tough couple of weeks where she'll go back to bunking off with toys instead of bringing them back and losing focus during the sessions. Last week was the first week of term at ACWA for 2012 and I could not get her brain in the game no matter what I did whereas the week before she was totally into it. Each time we go right back to basics and try to strengthen the behaviours so we can get to the good stuff again!

Well if it's good enough for a border collie...

All those food rewards hasn't helped Cassie's waistline. She turned into quite the little "pudding" so it's no more Smacko's for her and onto the carrot sticks! I may have to follow suit...

Over the last few weeks everything for the World Agility Open has been falling into place. I have secured my team dog in little Cody who is a 4 year old Jack Russell x. Cody belongs to Laura who is on the Scottish Team for WAO with her border collie Kadyn. Cody is one cool little dude and is currently only one win away from his championship. Laura has kindly offered for me to run Cody at a trial in Perth Scotland the weekend before WAO as part of getting to know him. It will be so exciting actually competing in another country and a way of getting over some of the nerves I will have before the big event. Our trip is becoming pretty big with a 17 day tour of Europe to get us started following by a trip to Aberdeen to meet Laura and Cody with some getting to know you time, then on to Belgium for WAO. Pretty awesome!

Happy New 2012

2012-01-03T11:42:00.001+08:00

Here we are again. Another year gone by, a new year commenced. I have a good feeling about 2012. 2011 definitely had it's fair share of dodgy moments.

A very wet and bedraggled papillon!

Cassie is six months old today. She's had a fun Christmas and was spoiled rotten. Clean Run certainly did very well out of me. Cassie is now slightly over 25cms at the shoulder and weighs in at a hefty 3.5kgs! I haven't done a lot with her over Christmas. We've really just been hanging out and doing stuff around the house. Cassie doesn't seem to mind as long as she's involved and particularly likes helping with gardening activities especially helping to pull weeds out. Immediate 2012 plans are continuing with jump bump grids, recallers course, rear end awareness and starting some running contact work. My running contact goals are pretty small right now. All I want is to get Cassie "running". Sounds easy doesn't it? However when your puppy's stride going flat out involves air "skips" it adds a bit of a challenge. With a bit of luck she may grow out of the skipping as I'm hoping it's a puppy thing.

Cassie on magpie patrol. Maggies are definitely NOT allowed in our backyard...

We did manage to get down the beach last week so being a special occasion with Cassie's very first trip I had to video it. We left her on lead to be safe which was a good decision seeing as she would have been off after every new dog that came past. She was a little concerned about the "wet stuff". She really wanted to go in and get the toy with the big dogs but once she realised she was wet she was less than impressed. I have no doubt that after a few more visits she'll be jumping in with the others.

At the end of every year I really enjoy taking the time to sit down and look at video footage of some of Sonic's runs from over the course of the year. I found some of my favourite ones and compiled them together for a "Highlights 2011". This time I've put in heaps of clips in slow motion just for a different perspective (even if it did highlight just how many late front crosses I managed to do...). Both Sonic and I have improved so much over the course of 2011. By the last couple of months we really started working as a team and it showed in the results with Sonic placing even in what I would consider being conservative runs. I have a feeling that 2012 will be our best year yet and I can't wait for the Nationals in NSW's in June.

My last bit of good news is I've accepted a spot on the Australian Team for the World Agility Open to be held in Belgium in May 2012. Colin and I are going to head to Europe early and do a bit of touring first but the main reason for the trip will be so I can take up my spot on the team, Competing internationally against people who I've been watching via live streams or DVD's for the last ten years is an opportunity too good to pass up. Just to be a part of it will be amazing. As I'll be competing in the 300 height Mel & Maureen have been kind enough to offer me some practice on their gorgeous little sheltie Cricket who is competing in the 300 height here. The biggest challenge for us now is fundraising and trying to get sponsors. We did make it into the local community newspapers in Perth so hopefully that will give us a little bit more visibility.

Christmas Here We Come!

2011-12-20T19:58:00.004+08:00

Finally time to update my blog. I seriously don't know where the time goes these days. I can't believe it's Christmas this weekend. Thankfully as of this Friday I'm on two weeks annual leave with absolutely no plans other than to spend some time doing things at home, hang out with the dogs and catching up with friends. And some much needed sleep will be nice too!

Cassie and I are having a ball. I'm really enjoying the Recallers course and I'm already seeing improvements in Cassie's responses. Even something as simple as increasing my rate of rewarding when she hits reinforcement zone has seen her now charging to me when she's out the back no matter what she's doing in her haste to hit "the spot". I had neglected Crate Games a bit with all the other things I've been trying to do with her so I've gone back to keep progressing with it. One of the things I love about Crate Games is that even after only making it to step three she has a solid start line which means I've been able to introduce Cassie to her first jump bumps. Watching her do jump bumps is one of the cutest things ever and she thinks its a hoot. The joy on her face is just priceless. And she's retrieving pretty consistently which is brilliant as it means I can start to progress some other things.

Up until now I hadn't been doing any real body awareness work with Cassie but after watching her first jump bumps back in slow motion I can see that she has little idea what to do with her body and legs. So I've started to do some perch work and rear end awareness exercises. Then I'm going to do the Salo Spider with her to encourage the use of her back end when she's jumping rather than just hurling herself over. She is pretty quick, I struggle to keep in front of her when we're doing restrained recalls so I'm really keen to make sure she develops a good jumping style. It certainly worked for Sonic.

Speaking of Sonic we had a nice end to the ANKC trialling year with Sonic having a couple of really lovely runs and clear rounds. So nice to have some consistency! We missed the very last trial of the year with me making a last minute trip to Adelaide to spend time with my family. Then the weekend just gone I competed at the World Agility Open Australian Team Try-outs in an attempt to get selected for the team to go to Belgium in May next year. We actually started off really well with three out of four clear runs in agility on the first night. So I was quietly optimistic. Unfortunately the second night didn't go as well as I'd hoped and we only had one clear round, DQing in the other two. So I pretty much accepted that I wouldn't be in the team for 2012. However it looks like I may be fortunate enough to get a spot in the 300 height category. Given that I now have a dog who will ultimately compete in 200 I still think it would be an amazing opportunity. So fingers crossed that it all pans out and I can go. But we'll see what transpires over the next week or so.

Adventures of Cassie

2011-11-23T20:32:00.007+08:00

It’s been an interesting week for me with dog training challenges and failures aplenty! I think it’s intentional from whatever power lies beyond to ensure that one stays humble and appreciates any small success that one may have and most definitely does not take anything for granted…. Cassie had been going great guns while I merrily patted myself on the back for job well done. Then last week came and my little star’s shining light dimmed somewhat as some of her behaviours went a little on the pear shaped side. Her retrieve went from glorious to her going to get her toy and then promptly departing to have a lovely game by herself (I was definitely not invited to join). Then after feeling smug that she was recalling pretty well it has become non existent should there be even the smallest distraction present. And responding to her name…she doesn’t know anyone called Cassie!

It's hard to stay clean when you live with border collies

Following my return to reality I’ve had to give this quite a bit of thought on how to proceed. I got a bit desperate with her retrieve so was rewarding her even if she stoped for a game by herself on the way back. Once I snapped out of that I now only reward if the toy comes directly to me minus any toy savaging however brief on the way. It does seem to be getting back on track and when we are playing with her around the house it is rare for her not to bring a toy back to keep the game going. I’m also diligently trying to do at least five to ten recalls a day at home mostly. Once I have her attention things don’t go too badly but if she’s got her nose in a plant its still touch and go. I’ve actually just enrolled in Susan Garrett’s latest Recallers e-Course. I wanted to do it before but it’s not cheap so I put it off. But now I have Cassie I think its going to be well worth the money. From what I’ve heard it is very good and let’s face it, it’s an investment in the future of any dogs that I have.

SDSB previously known as Sooper Dooper Squeaky Bear - holder of mysterious papillon attraction...

It has not all been bad though and we’re still having heaps of fun in between tearing my hair out. I shaped Cassie to get into a dog bed and then had her going from one dog bed to another. Then I put a jump bump (pool noodle) in between. To begin with she seemed to think that the pool noodle was a really big toy I had put down for her, but once she got the hang of going from dog bed to dog bed and over the jump bump as opposed to stealing it things have gone really well. I’d like to introduce further pool noodles but for that we need to go outside to the pen where there is more space and her focus out there is still a work in progress. Plus crate games are going well which is transitioning over very nicely to control positions. Then we just have the cute factor going on with her latest trick being jumping up on the lounge with us. She’s only just figured out in the last week that she can make it up there initially after working out that when Colin has the recliner out but diagonal to the ground she could use his legs as a ladder to come up for a cuddle. Now she joins us whenever the mood takes. She particularly likes to come up when she's on moth patrol as it give her a much better vantage point. And why not!

The mesmerising power of SDSB!

Sonic the star

2011-11-14T18:58:00.004+08:00

I'm pleased to report that Sonic and I just had one of our best trial days in a long time with three out of three Q's thank you very much! The icing on the cake being a very strong a second in Masters Jumping on a tricky course beating some of Perth's fastest and most exciting dogs who also went clear. I know Sonic has speed but it's been a lot of work to get him driving and stretching out on course and it felt fabulous. It was also fantastic to be able to run again now that my bad has recovered especially as there was a little bit of a sprint involved to get me where I needed to be. Sonic also had a lovely run in Masters Agility but with stopped contacts I don't expect to place in the top three however he still managed a respectable fifth with a lot of qualifiers in the 500 height. We got to finish the night off with a fun Masters Gamblers run and our third quallie for the evening.

We don't really have much on for the rest of the year. I've entered the World Agility Open tryouts but with Cassie joining us it's not a priority for me at the moment. I'm probably more looking forward to the ANKC Nationals in Sydney next year. So once Sonic has a nice long Christmas break filled with visits to the beach and relaxing I'll start putting some serious work into him (and myself I might add) as we work towards June.

Cassie the awesomest puppy in the world is going great guns. Every time she presents me with a training challenge we are able to overcome it by the next session just because she's so enthusiastic and will keep on trying. One thing that had been annoying the crap out of me though was her duck and bolt trick when I need to pick her up and put her in a crate or in her pen. She's such a party animal that she hates being taken away from the action. So I put up with it for a the last couple of weeks and made a poor effort of only using tug games when I needed to catch her. Of course she got wise to that one real quick and still wouldn't let me catch her. So on the weekend I had one of those moments where you smack yourself in the forehead with your hand while uttering "you idiot". Since then I wear pants with pockets at home at all times filled with Cassie's favourite treats on one side and her Super Doper Squeaky Bear (who shall from this point on be known as SDSB) in the other pocket. At random intervals when she's nearby I grab her collar and reward with either then let her go again. In one afternoon I changed her behaviour from suspicious to being quite happy to have her collar grabbed whenever I want to. In fact I think she's been coming over to visit more in case I do. We've also had lots of success with retrieve to hand including her SDSB outside in the garden. Now she gets the game she's off and running. Did I mention how awesome my puppy is :-)

It's Cassie Time

2011-11-10T18:49:00.002+08:00

Cassie has been with us for three weeks now and has totally ingrained herself into our lives. She's very cheeky but she's so damn cute I just want to spoil her rotten. She's become Sonic's little follower no doubt because he's the only one of my dogs who will play with her. I'm very impressed with how gentle Sonic is with her. She just hurls herself bodily at him but he's very controlled and lies down along side her when they're playing. When we're not laughing at her antics or playing with her I've been trying to fit in as many little training sessions as possible. Apart from the fact that I think she's gorgeous she is a blast to train. She just never gets sick of it and when I end our sessions she tries everything to get me to keep going with her. She has this an amazing attitude and energy that is going to make agility with her such a joy.

I have only small goals with her at the moment training wise. We're up to "Your Out Your In" with crate games. Crate games was a little challenging for us as Cassie's not a huge fan of going into her crate because she sees it as the place she goes when the fun stops. So I spent some time working on simply building value for her going into her crate. Once we established that things have progressed reasonably quickly. Other than that we're doing nose touches, control games, restrained recalls, reinforcement zone and go to games. The other thing high on my list is retrieve. She's become pretty reliable when retrieving one of her mid range favourite toys but if it's her super doper favourite squeaky bear then her only interest has been the grab and bolt manoeuvre. In saying that I'm pleased to say that in the fenced off training area she did bring it back this arvo so there is hope! I won't be trying it outside for a while though...think we need a bit more practice in a safe environment. The retrieve is so important to the training that I want to do with her that it will be top of our list for a while I'd say.

Here are some of her crazy antics over the last couple of weeks.

Back to Trialling

2011-11-01T09:42:00.003+08:00

It was great to get back into the ring last weekend at the Agility Club of WA trial. The weather was lovely and courses very enjoyable. Sonic was pretty happy to be out there again after a bit of a break thanks to my flu. I had great fun with him but it was a painful experience with my back still giving me trouble so running for me was challenging to say the least. We ended up with a nice Q in Masters Agility but unfortunately a bar down in Masters Jumping. We're back to night trials this weekend which I'm pleased about so hopefully we'll have some good ones to finish the year off.

Young Cassie is going really well. She came to last weekends trial and had a ball being cuddled by everyone and playing all day. She's such a confident little girl and nothing phases her at all. We've started doing assorted bits and pieces training wise. A lot of people keep telling me that little dogs aren't like border collies to train but I must say that so far I'm not finding it too different (other than trying not to step on her). Cassie has enthusiasm in bucket loads. She loves our inside training area and goes to the pet gate all the time hoping that we'll go in there to play. She is full on during our training sessions, is totally focused and is loving the shaping games. Her only naughty puppy thing so far is wanting to bunk off with the toy rather than bring it back and when outside absorbed in her surroundings isn't in a rush to come back when you call her. Most puppies I've encountered are exactly the same so can't blame that on being a little dog thing. All behaviours that I have no doubt I'll be able to sort out thanks to her willingness to learn.

Around the house she's settled in beautifully and the "pappy tantrums" (otherwise known as a PT) are becoming less frequent as she realises that they aren't going to work. Her and Sonic play very cute chasey games and it's a hoot watching her trying to catch Sonic when he's "it". When she arrived she was so white and clean however pretending to be a border collie has changed that and she now has more of a grey tinge after charging around the sandy bc racetrack with the others. The look kind of suits her though given that she's definitely more of a rough and tumble kind of girl.

Cassie Comes Home

2011-10-23T20:20:00.005+08:00

Well the youngster has now joined the family and is happily creating havoc in what was previously a very organised, calm and sensible household. She's itty-bitty with a larger than life personality who is capable of pappy tantrums a rottweiler would be proud of. The borders are a little bamboozled by this little creature and aren't all that sure what to do with her. Sonic has started playing with her and is pretty careful considering he looks like a giraffe in comparison when they are standing together.

Cassie loves all dogs, people, dive bombing Kenny and tugging. Her tugging fetish is indiscriminate and clothing, shoes, feet and toys are lavished with the same level of tugging ferocity. We've set up a puppy pen inside and outside to keep her safe and to give the other dogs a break from her ever present youthfulness.

I do love my border collies but this little girl is so sweet and so much fun I could easily become a papillon convert. Full of energy but snuggles into your arms when you give her a cuddle, then falls asleep on your lap when she's finished playing. It's hard not to fall in love.

Introducing Cassie

2011-10-15T03:04:00.008+08:00

The last couple of weeks have been pretty sucky as a general rule. That's because I've had the most heinous flu I can remember experiencing. Off work for a week, coughing so hard I pulled a muscle in my back, not being able to sleep for more than three hours each night before relaunching into yet another coughing frenzy. It has really been most unpleasant and it still hasn't quite left me yet.

There has however been a silver lining. Meet papillon Beauchiot Swedish Dreams otherwise known as Cassie the cutest puppy EVER. Cassie will be coming to join our family on Friday.

I'm extremely fortunate that Jacinta of Beauchiot Kennels in Victoria has allowed me to have this gorgeous little girl. It was incredibly hard for Jacinta to part with Cassie at all let alone sending her all the way to WA. But knowing that Cassie has all the makings of an awesome little agility dog and is going to have a wicked time over here with us helped make up her mind. Apart from the fact she'll be totally loved and spoiled rotten!

For many years Kriszty and I have mused about what it would be like to have a little dog to train and compete with in agility. Every year we get to watch super papillons like Puzzle from the UK and Masher from the USA competing at Worlds and they are just amazing. But being border collie "addicts" normally at a time when I'm ready for another puppy I'd be off to get another border collie. The way things have worked out is that the particular border collie lines that I want for my next puppy aren't available to me right now when I couldn't be more ready for a new puppy. So when I came across Cassie it actually felt like it was meant to be. Sometimes the cosmos aligns and you just know that the time is right.

All photo's of Cassie by Jacinta Baker

This is going to be such a massive new experience for me given that I've only ever owned border collies. Aside from the fact that she is just soooo small. Cassie was born on 3rd July so is currently 15 weeks of age. That is a good thing as I'm nervous enough about breaking her as it is let alone if she was only 8 weeks old! I went to Better Pets & Gardens today and went a bit nuts buying new stuff for her (as you do). To try and get an appreciation/perspective for how small she is I got Riot to model Cassie's new harness. As you can see it didn't cover much...

So we pick her up from the airport on Friday. This week is all about getting the house ready for her arrival and getting excited about all the fun I'm going to have with her :-)

Perth Royal Show 2011

2011-10-09T15:48:00.002+08:00

Another Perth Royal Show has been and gone. I had no great expectations this year after being away on holiday leading up to it and Sonic having minimal training but then sometimes as we all know that can work in your favour! The performance dog section was moved this year so that we were in front of the Show Dog Pavilion. I wasn't sure what to expect but the space was great and competing under a big marquee and lights certainly added to the sense of occasion. Lots of noise and show rides right next to us but Sonic has never been one to worry about those types of distractions when he's doing agility. Probably the only downside was the competitor area which was way too small. We spent most of the day trying not to trip over each other as we made our way to and from the ring and numbers were down this year with lots of our group heading over to the ADAA Grand Prix in NSW.

Overall we had a fun day. Sonic ran great and worked beautifully but it was one of those days were we got stung by little things. He did a super Masters Agility run but knocked number four jump wing and all, in Open Agility he got called on the seesaw, Open Jumping he couldn't get the distance (I was in good company for that one!) and in Masters Jumping I handled him kind of average which cost us any chance of qualifying.

October is a quiet month for trials so nothing until the GSDA on 15th October then we have another fortnight break until ACWA's trial. However plenty to work on and I need to get in some handling work with him to tidy things up. Sonic and I are trying out for the World Agility Open Australian Team in December and with full on European courses set to be used our handling needs to be spot in if we seriously want to think about hitting those top two spots!

Around the world in seventeen days

2011-09-29T18:46:00.008+08:00

Back from holiday, back to work, back to reality. Had such an awesome time overseas with absolutely no responsibility other than indulging myself. Very refreshing! It was full on as we made our way to four different holiday locations over seventeen days with eleven flights and one ferry ride to get us there. With my fabulous new Sony Cybershot camera (who knew you could get 16 mega pixel cameras now??) I proceeded to take many, many photos.

Paris was all about museums and famous landmarks.

We barely scratched the surface of beautiful Crete. On the list of places to go back to.

Stunning Santorini with views that take your breath away.

Tiny Kastelorizo was a breath of fresh air. Small, beautiful and charming. The perfect place to wind up our holiday.

The Perth Royal Show 2011 starts this weekend. I've only entered the individual events this year which will be just the one day for us. No teams event with Simone off traipsing around overseas on holiday...how rude!!! With Sonic having minimal training it should be an interesting day!

Guess who's FOUR

2011-08-15T20:34:00.004+08:00

Well I'm only eleven days late.... but it would be remiss of me to not put up a birthday post for my little banana on a big FOURTH birthday. That's right, FOUR whole years since Sonic came into this world which also means this blog has been going for almost four years. Phew!!

My handsome grown up man

I'm still really pleased with how he's going. He's running courses like a dream and I can finally say that we are working as a team. Unfortunately the last couple of trials have seen bars down which is a little perplexing. I've never had a dog who drops bars as a regular thing. It has only been two trials so I wouldn't say that that it's a serious issue just yet but certainly frustrating when that's all that is costing me clear rounds in masters classes. Interestingly he's generally knocking bars on a straight approach. Only a couple of weeks ago he went to extraordinary lengths to get himself over a jump when he'd misjudged his take off. So plan of action is some grids to see if I can balance him up. Then we'll see if the knocked bars resolve.

Ongoing agility training is still the same format for us. I'm currently teaching the Puppy Foundation Class at ACWA on Tuesday nights so after class we work full size contacts, weavers and some jump sequences. Then I do everything else at home which includes ongoing recall work and I'm still working on "The Sonic Project" which is for the most part going pretty well. I have some sessions where I want to rip my hair out in frustration or burst in to tears when I can't even get Sonic to tug with me in His Majesty Riot's presence. However perseverance/determination/stubbornness is the key and the next session is always better. I'm diligently videoing them all so I hope to post an installment when I get time to sit down and edit the footage to a viewable size.

It's more busy times over the next few weeks. I have a quick trip to Sydney for work and then we're off to Europe for a holiday. Can't wait our big trip but so much to do so little time...

Perth Agility

2011-07-31T14:40:00.006+08:00

The Sonic Project is going pretty well. We've progressed to me being able to recall Sonic to me when he's in the backyard with Riot which he would never have done before. If I let Murphy & Soda out as well I'm less successful but that is what we are working to next. I'm making the most of any opportunity that presents itself, for example last weekend we were out the front of the property gardening. It was such a nice day that we decided to let all the dogs out with us as well. Anytime they are all let outside of the backyard Sonic considers it to be "crazy" time so I worked on rewarding on the few occasions when he was lying down relaxed with the other dogs or when he came to me when I called him. After he'd settled down he would even come over and offer me tricks for a reward which made for a nice change from him spending every second watching Riot in case he did anything interesting.

I've had a couple of weeks off trialing which was a welcome relief. I love agility but sometimes you just need a break.... We had a single trial yesterday with Sonic just entered in both Masters classes. Although we didn't come away with any quallies I was really happy with what we did. Sonic uncharacteristically knocked two bars in agility and I unfortunately pulled him off a jump in jumping. Other than that he was spot on. Just goes to show that a training program of things like recalls and foundation work is far more beneficial than going to training and running sequences over and over again. I think Sonic's greatest improvement has come from me doing the recall work. Since I started working on that his response on course has improved out of sight.

The Sonic Experiment

2011-07-12T06:18:00.002+08:00

A few weeks ago I decided that I wasn't happy with certain aspects of Sonic's performance in the agility ring. At the moment he is handling like a dream and no one could dispute that he has an absolute ball while he is out there. But for some reason I'm not getting the speed that I know he is capable of. Every time we run clear in either Masters Agility or Masters Jumping when our states top agility dogs also go clear we are always about 2 seconds behind. For those who have seen Sonic running with my other dogs he is an extremely fast. Not surprising considering that he's built like a greyhound. With that in mind I decided that my immediate goal with Sonic is to transfer that amazing drive, power and speed that he possesses across to the agility ring. And so "The Sonic Experiment" was born!

Susan Garrett has really been my inspiration for this. Her incredible dog training skills and her amazing dogs who are a product of that make me want to be a better dog trainer. I've always admired her ability to look at a situation and come up with a plan of action to work through whatever issue she is facing with her dogs. So I've been studiously reviewing the situation that I currently have with Sonic. The boy has two main loves in life. Water is right up there at number two. If I walk anywhere near a hose or water bucket he turns into a screaming banshee. With that in mind I have already gotten to a point where I can ask him to perform most agility behaviours using water as a reward. His drive when doing agility definitely goes up a notch when I do this. It took a while to get him to focus on the task rather than the fact that I was about to throw some water for him but we got there. Then streets ahead at a big number one is Riot. If Sonic even has a remote inkling that he and Riot are going to go for a run together Sonic turns into a crazed beast producing bursts of speed to make you gasp. Sonic will not respond to either food, toys or his name in this situation. My challenge is to somehow to put myself into the picture when Riot is involved. Ultimately I want to transfer that speed to the agility ring by using running with Riot as a reward for agility and thus transferring the value of it.

The bonus that I had to get me started is that Riot doesn't feel the same as Sonic (not that Sonic cares!). Riot loves to run free but if I call him he is happy to come back and when I'm training him I have a hard time getting him to leave. He will always take food or come in for a toy when offered. So I decided to exploit that particular trait to my advantage. Obviously I have to bring Riot and Sonic together gently to begin with otherwise it's never going to work. So by putting Riot in a stationary position on a table has given me the opportunity to get Sonic started with Riot as a minimal distraction. Every day I do some work on this I get something different. Some days I have a little triumph and others I get depressed but it's been incredibly interesting so far. I hope that no matter what the end result I learn heaps from the experience.

Fire, rain and agility

2011-06-15T20:15:00.009+08:00

As part of preparing for next summers fire season we set fire to a good two thirds of our property recently. Living in an area that is predominately bush we have been rather nervous during the couple of summer periods since being here. The bush on the block was really thick and looked like it hadn't been burnt in at least 20 years. The controlled burn was carried out by a group of local volunteer fire brigade personnel of whom I have a very large respect for. These guys spent over five hours getting the job done on a Friday night in their own time. They also made sure to rescue any wildlife in the way and transfer them to area that wasn't being burnt. I didn't do anything particularly constructive other than wander round with my camera oohing and aahing as things went up in flames. I did take some very cool photos...

The downside is that the landscape is now rather charcoaled and the rabbits hate us but hopefully with the winter rains upon us we should see new life sprouting very soon.

We've also joined the solar power revolution and had solar panels installed before the government stops handing out rebates. It's actually spent more time raining than sunny since it was done though so it will be a little while before we really start to see the benefits. I'm definitely looking forward to much lower power bills over summer when the air conditioner is in full swing. It's kind of nice to be living in a more environmentally friendly way. With all the rain I'm happy to say that our water tank is finally full again.

We are smack bang in the middle of agility double header madness. There are enough trials for the next month or two to render even the most ardent agility enthusiast with exhaustion. There's a part of me that loves it and another part that is finding it increasingly difficult to keep up with everything so I'm going to start limiting the trials to fortnightly once I've made my way through the trials I've already entered. I've always felt that our agility competition year is too long and I think that we can over trial & train our dogs. I know of few other sports that run for an entire year. Most are seasonal allowing sports people time off to wind down and relax. Sonic loves his agility, don't get me wrong but to have any animal in peak condition for a whole year is an awfully big ask.

Trialling is going OK. We finally managed a quallie in Masters Agility at the Gosnells trial last weekend after a long drought. The courses recently have for the most part been really quite challenging with tight turns and off courses everywhere you look. Sonic is definitely reading my body better but I still see him asking questions and every time that happens we loose speed on course. I am still working on getting him to dig in and drive harder over small grids and sequences. Here is some of our recent weekend runs.

Gosnells Obedience Dog Club - Agility Trial 18/06/2011

Agility Club of WA - Agility Trial 12/06/2011

Celebrate Good Times!

2011-06-09T20:53:00.006+08:00

Two big reasons to celebrate this week. Firstly birthday time is upon us again with the Murphster turning fourteen years old.

Its ma burfday again!

He's doing really well for a grumpy old bugger. Although a bit unsteady on the old pins he still trots around the property with us each night and runs around playing chasey with Riot and Sonic in the backyard. If he wants something he barks at us until he gets it and he hates getting up early in the morning. I'm pretty sure he's having a pretty good time during this his twilight years.

The other reason for celebration was Sonic's win in Masters Jumping at the Northern Suburbs agility trial last weekend. We started the day with a really nice run in Masters Agility but he pulled out of the last weaver when I moved away (very uncharacteristic I must say...). Then we had a fantastic run to go clear in Masters Jumping. I was happy enough to have a run that felt so great and winning the class just made it that little bit sweeter.

With all the work we've been doing on recalls and Sonic's response to my verbal and physical cues I'm very happy to say that the fruits of my labours are starting to pay off. Training has seen him coming away from off course obstacles that he would otherwise have taken as soon as I've called him which is what I've been aiming for. Then his response to my handling over the weekend and some pretty tricky courses was well above what it's been for quite some time. We've got another couple of weekends of double headers coming up so lets see if we can keep the good times rolling!!

Livin on the edge

2011-05-24T18:00:00.002+08:00

Last Sunday was huge fun in the agility ring with Sonic and I managing two out of three quallies AND I didn't have to drive all the way to Geraldton! The class we didn't get a quallie in was my own very big LOSER fault when I pulled Sonic off a jump that I'm sure he would have taken if not for my meddling. It was almost a complete reversal from last weekend and even during runs where things went a bit wrong we still managed to qualify. It also included yet another opportunity for a slow motion moment in our video's from the trial courtesy of Sonic's over exuberant exit from a collapsible tunnel. There was a face plant, a roll and much gasping from spectators involved... That was after one of the most poorly timed pull throughs I may ever have done. Somehow though we still managed to come third out of about eight or nine quallies. Phew! I wasn't too worried that he was actually hurt. Stacking it is part of an average day for Sonic when he's racing around at home.

I do think that Sonic may need a few extra massages this week.

Old man Murphy has been in for a spot of surgery recently. He's had a wart above his eye for a while now which he managed to knock all the time. After getting the all clear from his regular "geriatric" vet checks and bloods we decided it was a safe risk for him have surgery to have it removed. As expected surgery was a complete success and he has recovered beautifully. Stitches come out this week and he should end up with a very manly scar above his eye which I'm sure will impress the other boys no end.

Daisy Peel hits Perth this coming weekend. Although I'm not doing the handling component as it's all Linda Mecklenberg stuff that I don't do I'm very much looking forward to the running contacts session. Quite a few people in Perth are now trying running contacts with their young dogs so I'm really interested in hearing what Daisy has to say and advise that she gives. That is definitely the upside of new training methods happening BEFORE you get your next young dog. You get the benefit of watching what does and doesn't work for everyone else first before you inadvertently screw your own dog up. I have to be honest I really have no idea about training running contacts at this stage of the game. I can't wait to see all these young dogs hit the ring when they are old enough. Just in case our WA dogs aren't fast enough, they are going to be out of sight as this new wave of running contacts start to come through!

Sometimes losing aint so bad!

2011-05-19T17:40:00.010+08:00

You'd think that after spending five hours in the car driving all the way to Geraldton, competing in nine classes over the course of the weekend, not managing to secure even one agility or jumping qualifying card and then driving five hours back to Perth might make a person slightly frustrated and annoyed. Nope, not me! Sonic was great and I had an incredibly fun time running him. His enthusiasm was contagious and he was full of gusto out on the courses. Massive kudos to the judges as all the courses over the weekend were thoroughly enjoyable being both challenging but achievable (well maybe not for me...). I do have one success to mention and that is that Sonic and I teamed up with Cathy and Snazzy to go clear with a first place in Excellent Strat Pairs.

The first run that Sonic and I had on Saturday was a super run but as he was going through the weavers they started wobbling and he literally got bounced out of the poles! It was like revenge of the weavers. With that sort of luck I had to wonder if perhaps we may be going to have "one of those weekends" and I quite possibly inadvertently jinxed us. To top it off in the last run of the day on Sunday I thought we'd finally gone clear only to realise that Sonic had knocked a bar!

So you have to wonder if sometimes things just aren't meant to be. But if all his runs are as much fun as what I experienced on the weekend then who cares :-)

A Modern Woman?

2011-05-10T19:58:00.008+08:00

Is the epitome of the modern woman working in the city by day donning makeup and heels while managing the statewide pharmacy application. Then by evening donning flannelette's and work boots while using power tools and lawn mowers, living a semi rural existence? Some may just call me mad...

After this evenings mowing the agility lawn is looking awesome. If only it would rain on a regular basis I could pack up the retic and start to use it. It's hard to imagine what regular rain even feels like anymore. Mind you I think I'd rather what we have than the cold, wet and windy conditions a lot of the cities over east are being pounded with of late.

Agility itself is cruising along right now. I had a feeling Sonic was sore last week but couldn't put my finger on anything in particular so I booked him in for some muscle therapy. We went to training on Tuesday and Wednesday to target some specific areas of agility that I think need the most work a lot of which don't involve equipment. On Wednesday we'd done a few flat work sessions and then I decided to fit in a couple of seesaws before finishing up for the night. After the second one Sonic started actually favouring a front leg so after a mild panic attack I comforted myself with the fact that he was already booked in to be looked at the next day. In the end it doesn't appear that he was lame but rather his muscles were so damn tight that he was suffering from overall muscle soreness. After the treatment he was a different dog and back to being happy and relaxed. I was pretty careful with him before heading down to Bunbury for a trial on Sunday and he was banned from all silly running around in the meantime. For some reason he has been mega over the top at home lately so being "quiet" has been quite a challenge. My main concern at the trial was making sure that he was completely warmed up before each event. And of course we have another visit scheduled this week for a follow up treatment.

At the end of the trial I was pretty happy. The only run I thought was "bad" was Masters Agility which was our first of the day. I was so distracted by him being warmed up properly I handled him rather poorly to say the least. I was hanging back and nowhere near where Sonic needed me to be for a decent run. Thankfully after that I pulled my socks up and he went clear in Open Agility and just a bar down in Masters Jumping. Open Jumping wasn't bad but he didn't get the distance challenge. He responded well to my handling so hopefully the recall work I'm doing with him is starting to pay off. At the moment everywhere we go we are working on those recalls!

This weekend is Geraldton so Kriszty and I are going to head up on Friday afternoon with Sonic, Terra and Shimmer. The only downside is that the World Agility Open is on and I really want to try and watch as much as I can. So the laptop will be coming and conveniently the hotel has free wireless internet...

GO TEAM AUSTRALIA!!

Dog training and venting

2011-04-25T13:57:00.004+08:00

The last few weeks have been CRAZY! It started with the Garden Show and a very full on two days at Perry Lakes. This year doing the dog training workshops with Better Pets & Gardens were so much more fun than just doing a meet and greet like last year. Unfortunately Riot was more than a little painful with Lexi coming in season at home. He was morose and depressed and really not particularly interested in performing. Thank goodness for his young son Remy who was full of enthusiasm and provided me with the perfect demo puppy to show members of the general public just how easy it is to train your dog (even ones who aren’t your own!). If all the planets align hopefully I will have my own pup there as my demo dog next year. Naturally she'll be perfect :-)

The Garden Show was closely followed by me doing the “Ask an Expert” radio segment on one of our most popular Perth radio stations Mix 94.5. I don’t actually listen to local radio, I’m a Triple J girl through and through, but it would seem that the majority of the people I know listen to 94.5 so I had loads of people tell me that they heard it. I really enjoyed the experience and it was fascinating to see the inside workings of a radio station. They were all very friendly and I was surprisingly not particularly nervous either. I think partly because after the Garden Show my brain was very much still in “general public dog problem” mode (how do I stop my dog barking/peeing in the house/chewing my furniture etc.). At the end of the day I just hope that the stuff that I’ve passed onto people has helped them work through their pet problems using the wonderful world of positive reinforcement.

All this was closely followed by Colin going into hospital for his mitral valve repair surgery. I had hoped that it would all work out so that I could still slot the State Agility Trial in but unfortunately it was not to be. For some reason Sonic and I have just not meant to have a good agility first half of the year!Colin’s surgery went really well but there were a few issues that came up post op. I was pretty upset to miss the States. I haven’t missed one since I started trialling in 1999 but these things happen and life goes on. The most important thing is that Colin is recovering well and the worst is behind us.

Finally yesterday I did get to head back into the trial ring. Sonic is pretty much back to his old pre-paralysis tick self. He is looking slim and sleek and is full of confidence and enthusiasm. I’m happy with how his agility is going and I absolutely love running him. The main thing I’d like to focus on improving right now is our team work on course. Our weakest skill is appearing when he works away from me where he is still coming off my body and taking off course jumps. Yesterday’s Masters Agility was a carbon copy of Masters Agility at Cloverdale where I was stationary and he was working away from me and then he drifted off to whatever jump was in front of him. When we do tight courses we don’t have a problem. So I’m thinking LOTS of recall work to strengthen his response to when I call his name on course and I’m too far away for my body position to have an impact. I’ve got a few trials coming up over the next few weekends so hopefully that will give us the opportunity to get it happening.

Now onto the depressing part of agility. We have received the results of the latest ANKC agility rule review…
Firstly I’d like to provide the dictionary meaning of Champion in case anyone is confused as to what the word is supposed to mean:
“someone or something, especially a person or animal, that has beaten all other competitors in a competition”.
It would seem the ANKC definition for agility champion is now “someone who manages to get around an agility course - doesn't matter if you beat any other competitors”. Apparently these days everyone should be a champion and nothing can be seen as sacred and left for people to have something to aspire to. Imagine if a racehorse was called a champion just for making a lap around the racecourse. There is a reason that Phar Lap was called a champion. Something to do with winning – a lot! And don’t even get me started on what’s been done to the seesaw, or as it shall now be referred to "the baby seesaw". Other than to say it’s an embarrassment for Australian agility and I can just imagine the elite agility nations laughing their arses off at us. If people can’t be bothered training their dogs to do agility as it was intended (like the rest of the world) then go and find another hobby like needlecraft and stop torturing those of us who actually want to achieve something in our sport. What a joke. Think I’ll be entered in a lot more ADAA trials in future. At least they take agility seriously.

Aahhhhh, I love to vent (and before anyone says anything, yes I did attend our states rule review meeting and WA didn't want any of this). What a shame it won't make any difference!

He's Back!

2011-04-03T16:23:00.003+08:00

Finally Sonic is back in the ring and it felt great. We both had a blast. So close to a clear round in Masters Agility but he did his drift off my arm thing and went over an off course jump. No amount of calling or moving my body seems to have any impact when that happens. Then he gave a very tricky Masters Jumping course a pretty good shot with me having to put my hand up for the stuff up. He missed the dog walk contact in Excellent Gamblers in his hurry which was rather naughty but all in all a pretty good day.

I would really have liked for Sonic to have had the opportunity run in another trial before the State Trial but no such luck. There is an ADAA trial on next weekend but Riot and I will be at the Garden Show doing dog training workshops. Riot hasn't done anything for a while so it will be fun for him to get out and do his Better Pets and Gardens thing again. His son Remy will be joining us as my demo puppy. Riot is just too well behaved and people think that they can't achieve the same thing with their own dogs. Plus I think Remy's owners could use a bit of help! From what I'm hearing Remy is quite the handful.

Love a Gamble!

2011-03-22T20:15:00.003+08:00

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!!

Birthday girl

2011-03-08T15:28:00.010+08:00

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.

Summer, summer go away

2011-02-21T20:10:00.008+08:00

Where do frogs hang out at our place when it's hot?

The dunny!

When disturbed he just launches himself into the bowl and swims off down the pipes (this is the man toilet in the shed I might add...). I may well have had a different reaction if I came across this scene in the house, and not just because of the frog.

His own private swimming pool. Lucky frog!

I'm so sick of this weather. Every week the weather forecasters tell us "possible shower", but it's all lies. Even with an air conditioner it just gets tedious when it's day after day. Hopefully we don't run out of water. No scheme water to rely on out here. Every night on the news another part of Australia is getting flooded but Perth can't even seem to manage a light shower.

Riot checking his emails

The agility lawn is well and truly ready for the new retic to be installed and to be mowed properly but it's too hot to do anything productive. So its just getting longer and longer. Looks pretty amazing though I have to say. It would be nice to actually start using it but the retic pipes are in the way and I have no doubt that I would fall over them.

When feeling that I'm not getting enough done I get to remind myself what it looked like in October last year...

This week and desperately needing a mow!

Sonic is starting to look more like himself every week. I've been doing lots of grid work with him at home and he is slowly getting back into condition. We are getting the feel for each other again which is awesome. We have an ADAA trial this Saturday night which will allow for some much needed ring practice before the Western Classic.

Look at my fur!

It's Puppy Time!

2011-02-06T13:26:00.004+08:00

I wanna get me a bundle of cuteness!

Puppies, puppies are everywhere. I'm totally jealous as I wait impatiently for my next bundle of fur. I've been resorting to kidnapping everyone else's littlies to play Its Yer Choice games and inhale the scent of gorgeous puppy. Even Riot has fathered a litter of puppies that I went to visit yesterday just before they head off to their new lives with their new families.

One of them, a little boy, was a real cheeky little thing. While his sister was happy playing in the grass he just wanted to stay with us and play his little heart out. Then every now again he'd go and dive bomb her, have a tussle and then he'd be back for more people time. If he wasn't already spoken for...

The podgy puppy returns

2011-01-30T16:10:00.003+08:00

We had our first trial for 2011 last Friday night. The podgy puppy did pretty well considering our lack of preparation. Both Masters courses required a reasonable amount of handling and between that and the knocked bars we didn't do so great. Luckily Open Agility was lovely and spread out so we were able to restore our confidence with an easy clear round. Was SO cool to have my boy back in the ring. Although he is out of condition and the weather was crap he thoroughly enjoyed himself as did I.

No more trials until the end of February when I plan on fitting in an ADAA trial before the Western Classic the weekend after. That gives us at least three weeks to get in shape by loosing some weight and getting fit...

Now I'm off to mow my agility lawn for the very first time!!

The tale of the podgy puppy

2011-01-20T16:44:00.014+08:00

The truth cannot be denied. Sonic is a tad on the tubby side....sorry Sonic, that's weight challenged to you.

What did you just call me???

Apparently even a normally weedy working border collie with a raging metabolism can put on weight if you overfeed them and then don't exercise them for six weeks.

Naaaah, all lies!

I could indeed quite comfortably eat my dinner off his lovely rounded backside.

Did someone say it's dinner time?

I mistakenly thought that after returning to normal exercise he would naturally return to a normal girth size but the excess around his middle is not disappearing quite as quickly as I thought it would. Mmmm, can't shift weight around the middle, sounds strikingly familiar. Weight Watchers here we come.

But look, my fur is growing back!

Our first trial for 2011 is in less than two weeks. I think we have some work to do.

But just look at my grass! Here is the grass on 7th January after we finished spreading the magic sand around.

And here it is as of today 20th January only 13 days later. Yeehah!

And it's all for me.

Summer dayz

2010-12-27T11:36:00.005+08:00

Another Christmas is behind us. Many hours spent cooking a magnificent roast dinner and about 10 minutes to eat the lot. Serving up took a little longer after Mum spotted a tiger snake legging it straight past our sliding doors via the back patio area. I don't know where it was going but it was in a real hurry to get there. I bought myself my own Christmas present this year in the form of a lovely new laptop which will be delivered on Thursday. Top of the range specs with a 1080 Hi-def screen, what more could a girl ask for. There was a tinge of sadness about celebrations this year being the first Christmas without my Dad.

I have two glorious weeks off work to enjoy. While the eastern states are ravaged by rain and storms we are sweltering through 40 degree days. Looking back ducted air conditioning was one of the best ideas we had in 2010 as we now sit in the house at a very comfortable 24 degrees. The dogs get all excited about going outside and then change their mind and want to come back in when they realise how unpleasant it is out there. I have the best intentions about getting some stuff done outside but I don't do manual labour in this heat so it's either going to have to cool down, or it won't get done...

The local Black Kite couple borrowing the bird path to cool down.

This morning was our first time down the beach for a while. It will be six weeks this weekend since Sonic vs the paralysis tick and the poor young boy has been going stir crazy with me restricting anything that could be considered over exertion. It was quite busy for this particular beach and plenty of "dickheads with dogs" around (otherwise known as people with out of control dogs not on lead) but luckily it was so nice in the water that every time I saw one coming we all went for a lovely swim. The only unpleasant moment was when Murphy sunk and I had to reinact a scene from Baywatch to rescue him. It was quite freaky. He was paddling away and then tried to shake his head, stopped paddling and just sunk like a stone. Luckily he was only half a metre behind me so I launched myself at him, scooped him back up to the surface and carried him back to shore. I think he was a bit shocked the poor bugger. No unchaperoned swimming for him anymore. They all had a blast swimming around though and it was great to be back down there.

Having some holiday time to pass with the crappy weather I've put together a "Highlights 2010" clip of my favourite agility runs with Sonic. It's interesting to be able to look back over the year that was in agility for us and remember the good, the bad and the if only moments. I knew that Sonic had improved a lot over the course of the year and that was brought home even more looking back at the clips. He had some nice runs in the early part of the year but they were just "nice". There wasn't the power or the energy that you start to see later on in the year. All the footage I've ended up using in the clip are from July until the last trial of the year that he did in early November.

I'm really looking forward to agility in 2011. As a three year old Sonic's best is still in front of him and I have no doubt that he will be up there with them as he grows in maturity and we grow as a team.

Land of the magic lawn

2010-12-19T19:45:00.005+08:00

This weekend has been the first one in a long time that we did not have any plans. Absolutely none at all. It was wonderful! I was able to fit in cleaning the house, doing some Christmas shopping and planting lawn all in one weekend without stress and crazy running around involved. Did I mention how wonderful it was?

Note magic sand to the top of the photo...

I've more or less finished planting grass for the time being. We had a truck load of sand delivered last weekend which is meant to be "special grass sand". If what the delivery man told us is true we should now enter into a grass growing bonanza period. I am still very determined that I will have an agility area to use by the middle of next year.

Revegetation area/dog exclusion zone

The sand was also purchased in a last ditch attempt to help save our poor sad looking back yard lawn. It did quite well last year but after a solid twelve months of being used as a race track by the dogs there are huge patches of dead grass and very little healthy green left. We've curbed the worst of the hooning because Murphy isn't allowed to run with the others while I'm outside anymore. The poor old bugger invariably gets cleaned up by someone so if I need to go outside which is what generally triggers the game, I bring him inside.

Orchard/bird exclusion zone

Colin has been busy setting up bird netting to protect our fruit trees this year from the local wildlife. Not a single piece of fruit was had last year after the birds helped themselves so Colin was determined to beat them to it. The apple trees are absolutely covered in fruit and the peach tree is looking pretty good too.

Apple tree

Passion fruit

Peaches

In between work and growing lawn I have been attempting to do some dog training. Riot is learning "sit pretty" and a few other bits and pieces for a bit of fun. As always he is such a quick learner when it comes to shaping and he really enjoys trying to figure out what it is that I want him to do. I haven't done much of anything with him for a while so it will no doubt do his brain some good. And it certainly won't hurt to work on my dog training skills.

It's hard being this good looking but someone has to do it!

Sonic's shaping is well, an interesting experience. He barks throughout each and every session. If I don't reward him immediately that he thinks he's done something clever he throws himself from a sit to a down and vise versa until he realises that I'm not going to give in. On the up side he is now offering a back up and a bow. I'm hoping that we can progress with something a little more exciting over the next couple of weeks. It's been about four weeks now since the paralysis tick incident so in another couple of weeks I'll start to exercise him properly and I'm sure he'll be very happy to have a trip down the beach. Now we just have to wait for his fur to grow back!

Maybe if I had some fur...

Road to recovery and chinese whispers

2010-12-12T10:50:00.005+08:00

My boy is finally getting back to normal. It took a good couple of weeks where although he was bright and happy, he was still sleeping a lot and a little on the quiet side. But then last weekend he just seemed to come back alive one afternoon and has been his old self ever since. Words can't describe how relieved I am that this horrible experience has turned out OK.

This last week has seen the commencement of our new training plan courtesy of Susan Garrett. Beginning with "Its Your Choice" games and also some shaping and hand targeting. One thing I realised quite embarrassingly is that Sonic has two shaped behaviours, one being sit and the other being down... Really quite pathetic when you think about it. Clearly I was just too "agility blinded" to do any more with him when he was a puppy. The IYC game is how I'm working through his frustration issues as he'll sit and then drop and if he doesn't get rewarded he'll start barking at me. What I'm trying to achieve is a more thoughtful dog who will continue to try other things if what he offers initially isn't earning the reward. So far we've managed a stand and a back up. Not much but it's only the beginning and I'm excited to see how it all goes.

The hardest thing with all of this is having the courage to stop doing all the stuff that you have been doing in the past. We are all very, very good at going to seminars and saying that's the way I'm going to do it now and then two weeks later it all seems too hard so you go right back to what you were doing before the seminar. I was chatting to Tracey last night who was part of the WA contingent at the SG seminar and she was telling me about what she's been working on with her young dog Taz since she returned. Tracey was saying that she's done hardly any equipment since and has been focusing on a few particular issues that Taz has and specifically tailoring her training for that. After seeing Taz run last night all I can say is WOW. Taz looked confident and probably the most full on I've ever seen her on course. That for me is incredibly inspirational to see someone make a decision with their dog training and then work so hard to achieve what they want. I know that Tracey will be the first to admit that she still has a long way to go but if that is what she's getting already then it will all be well worth it.

Grass in October

Grass now - ok not much but we're getting there!

I'm also please to announce that lovely little Hotnote Electric Dreams aka "Sage" finished her Agility Champion title fittingly at the last trial of the year last night. Sage is now the first official Agility Champion bred by Hotnote kennels. Sage is very closely related to my beautiful Soda and is the spitting image on the agility course. For me watching Sage is like watching Soda all over again. I run Sage's sister Lexi for Leanne Irvine who has the Hotnote prefix and if the pup I get from Lexi is anything like Sage and Soda I will very happy indeed.

Speaking of puppies there appears to have been an interesting Chinese whisper travelling around which has unfortunately caused some upset. Along the lines of I hate working border collies and would never have a working border collie puppy. Interesting considering I have a working bc who I love more than life itself. Anyone who knows me well knows that I have strong feelings and opinions on the importance of genetic testing and hip/elbow scoring of border collies when breeding. This bears absolutely no relation to whether I like a dog who is being bred from. At this point on my dog training path I would choose not to take on a pup who's parents have not had genetic testing and hip scoring done. This is a blanket statement which applies to show lined and working lined border collies however currently this testing is predominately done by show border collie breeders. When I am ready for my next working bc pup (another 2 - 3 years away yet!) because I absolutely want another one, it will definitely be something that influences my choice of where I get it from. The End.

Bad decisions and regrets

2010-11-25T19:34:00.007+08:00

I've decided that I don't like northern NSW anymore, I don't care how green and picturesque it is. I also hate paralysis ticks, particularly the little bastard that hitched a one way ride to WA attached to Sonic. Quite honestly I wish I'd never gone to the wet, humid, crappy place.

Last Saturday afternoon I noticed that Sonic was favouring a back leg about lunchtime. At the time I thought it may just have been because he had been overcompensating with his sore front shoulder from earlier in the week. As the afternoon went on he didn't seem "right" to me and his back end was definitely not as it should be. I did another tick check just in case because I knew there was the possibility that he had picked one up while we were away even though we had treated them as instructed before we left and regularly checked them while we were there. I still couldn't find anything so I just kept him inside with me to keep him quiet. A bit later I had a text message from Steve and Nicola and when I called they told me that Kyte had been taken to Murdoch Emergency Vet Centre after Nicola found two paralysis ticks on him. He had been showing similar symptoms to Sonic before they checked him and found the ticks. We still couldn't find any on Sonic but I just wasn't willing to risk it so off the Murdoch Sonic went too. By that time of the evening he was noticeably quiet so I was pretty sure that something serious was going down.

Sonic's recovery pen - otherwise known as the Taj Mahal

Once we got him to Murdoch they took him straight in and started treatment for paralysis tick. The vets were also unable to find a tick on him after an initial check but as his symptoms were the same as Kyte's they had to assume that was the cause. It was incredibly hard to leave without him but I knew that it was our only option if Sonic was to survive. By the time we got home I was exhausted but all I could think about was if he was going to be OK and if we'd gotten him to Murdoch in time. The vets had told me that no news was good news so when the phone rang in the morning my heart almost worked it's own way out of my chest. Sonic wasn't in good shape but he'd made it through the night. One of the vets had worked in NSW's so had seen many previous cases of paralysis tick in dogs so she was on top of the treatment required. They decided to shave him to see if that helped find the tick however the only obvious sign that was found was a lump and red mark on one of his front legs.

Somebody stole my fur!

Sunday sucked. Sonic had quite bad paralysis in his back end and no gag reflex so he was unable to eat. The vets were pretty confident that he wouldn't be coming home for a few days and were unsure how long it would take him to recover. I just had to wait and see if he got worse or better. Not a fun day at all.

Monday I had to go to work and eventually built up the courage to ring Murdoch and find out how he had gone through the night. I expected her to say that he would have to stay in longer but the vet was very happy to tell me that she had come in to find a very bright and happy boy who had even managed to eat a small amount. It was likely that he could come home that afternoon. I shed tears of relief after that phone call and my day became a whole lot better. I stopped on the way home from work to get him and he was a happy boy indeed when I went out the back to collect him. I was met with much squeaking of joy and licks.

So he has been home since and is going very well. The paralysis toxin stays in the body for at least two weeks so he has to stay quiet as there is the potential for heart failure which can be caused by over exertion. I also have to be careful of aspiration pneumonia so he's being hand fed to stop him from inhaling his food (literally). Now that he's feeling better keeping him quiet is challenging. He is full of beans and has resorted to laps of the house with toy to entertain himself. Not sure what he'll be like come this time next week. There will be no agility for Sonic until next year. I just can't take the risk that his body isn't ready for the sake of the two unimportant trials that remain. Although he'd probably go faster as with no fur he'll be super aerodynamic! His skinny little tail looks like it could take an eye out.

Great new too for Nicola with Kyte able to go home on Tuesday afternoon. They were lucky boys indeed.

The green green fields of NSW

2010-11-19T13:42:00.007+08:00

Jody, Tracey, me, "Lucky Phil" our waiter, Penny, Sue & Nicola attending our nightly dinner party

I have indeed returned from the mystical land of NSW where it rains daily and there are endless hills of lush green grass as far as the eye can see. My sneakers smell like a swamp from walking through water logged grass every day. It felt somewhat like a parallel universe coming from the rain starved city of Perth. You notice it even more in the plane over NSW which is very green and WA which is a decidedly brown colour.

The green machine - definately not recommended for four wheel driving

The resort where we stayed was lovely and couldn't have been more dog friendly. The dogs could stay in the rooms, run free on the property and sit with you in the restaurant while having dinner. The drive out there was unexpectedly challenging with a few kilometers of winding hillside dirt roads with hairpin corners and sheer drops off the side to navigate. We also encountered an array of wildlife including an echidna that apparently you should avoid, not because they are endangered but because they really wreck your car tyres if you run them over. I'm not sure that a Commodore wagon was the best choice of hire car and was filthy dirty by the time we made it to the resort. Luckily all the rain washed most of the dirt off as I was pretty sure I was going to have a hard time convincing the hire car company that it had never left a bitumen road.

We had originally booked into one of the rooms in the "bunkhouse" for the duration of our stay not realising quite what that entaled (picture a box with four bunk beds in it and you'd be close). Call me soft but dorm style accomodation which may have seemed quite acceptable when I was 15 on school camp, is not quite so much fun as a almost 40 year old. We swiftly moved to a much more comfortable resort room for the remainder of our stay.

2 x 2 Session with Susan

Sonic and Kyte travelled well although I think Kyte was a bit freaked out by his first plane ride. Sonic handled it like a seasoned performer given that this was his third time in the air. Up until now Sonic has never been a big fan of Kyte as Kyte is a very "I love everyone" type of individual and Sonic, well isn't. However in the face of "it's Kyte or your on your own", Sonic decided that Kyte was his very bestest friend in the whole world and gave him loves and licks at every opportunity. Other than Kyte chewing his way out of his soft crate on the last night of his stay to raid a bag of apples and museli bars the two boys were brilliantly well behaved and I think Sonic would love to always have four women fussing over him.

Sonic slumming it in the resort room

The Susan Garrett seminar was full on. The more I understand her methods the more I like them and I felt very inspired to become a significantly better dog trainer at the end of every day. I wrote copious pages of notes to try and suck up as much information as I could. Some aspects of the seminar were a little frustrating. I felt surprised that some of the people who I'd seen at the Lynda Orton Hill seminar back in February appeared no further along with their training than what they were then. I'm pretty sure that Susan was surprised too and unfortunately I think she adjusted the content to match the lowest skill level. At this point in time you have to wonder if seminars like these are better split into ability levels as it's not fair to have new people rushed in their learning but it's also not fair for those who are more experienced to be held back by novice trainers. I don't want to miss going to big name overseas agility trainers because the seminar content is the same every time you go because many of the participants don't bother to actually do the work in between the visits.

Horse riding in the green fields of Upper Monkerai NSW on my trusty steed "Princess"

I would also have loved to have delved into the nitty gritty of dog training so much deeper. We ultimately only spent half a day on contacts and realistically all of us from WA would have been happy to spend three days on the subject to really understand the information that had been presented to us. However I did still come away with a lot of things to work on with Sonic and a much better plan of action for when my new puppy eventually joins the house. There are things that I won't retrain Sonic to do at this stage but things like start lines can be significantly improved and I have a better idea on how I can work to improve his drive in between obstacles.

Nicola riding Brandy

I very much enjoyed our handling working spot. Sonic went sore in a shoulder on the Sunday so I thought for a while I wouldn't be able to work with him. Luckily one of the attendees was a vet and prescribed him a short course of an anti-inflammatory which worked immediately and Sonic has been fine since. I don't know that he felt 100% on the day and certainly didn't stretch out like he normally would however at no point did I feel that he was compromised. As always he worked his little heart out and seemed to really enjoy himself. We all got some really great information on improving rear crosses and getting tighter turns from our dogs.

More green fields

Really the next thing I have to do is sit down and actually plot a plan of action. Decide exactly what my goal is and then work out how to achieve it using the information that I have been provided. I'm convinced that we leave way to much to chance here at the moment and I firmly believe that it's not about if your dog happens to have "it", it's what you do with what they have that decides if your dog can be great.

Highs and lows

2010-11-06T14:01:00.008+08:00

It's been another very sad week for agility in WA. Tracey Wansbrough had to say farewell to Jake her best mate of 17 years and Jody Bronovich lost her beautiful Tivy unexpectedly at only four years of age. One a star of the past and one a star of the future who have both left very big holes in their owners hearts.

Trialling is still a mixed bag for Sonic and I. We can't seem to get a clear round to save ourselves. He's flying around courses and it's awesome to see him put his head down and drive hard towards tunnels. It's taken a lot of work but I can see the benefits starting to appear from all the reinforcement work I do at training. In a weird turn of events Sonic "flicked away" from me in both Masters Agility and Masters Jumping last Saturday night. Both times I presented him with a very obvious shoulder rotation around a corner and both times he's gone in the total opposite direction. I've never purposely trained anything even remotely close to that. I've even gone out of my way to never do that type of thing in open class for distance challenges but somehow it's snuck in from somewhere! I certainly have a pretty good idea what I'll be training this week...

This week is going to be very exciting with Sonic and I heading off to NSW for the Susan Garrett seminar. We fly out on Thursday to Sydney and then drive up to Upper Monkerai which is apparently 2 1/2 hours north. Friday will be a day to relax and enjoy the property where we are staying and then Saturday it all starts. The property itself looks amazing and Sonic is going to love it. Sonic and I have a working spot in the handling basics class which is quite fitting given our current state of play. It's all happening over 5 days. I love travelling away for seminars like this as there's nothing quite like immersing yourself in your hobby without the distractions of home. Sonic is such a good boy when we travel too which makes it all the more fun. Driving through Sydney should be interesting...hopefully the GPS behaves itself and doesn't send us on some random adventure!

I'm still obsessively grass planting pretty much every day. Every day I have to go out there to see if it's grown a little more. I'm very determined to have at least half the area usable by mid next year in time for my new puppy.

Reasons to like computer games!

2010-10-21T19:21:00.003+08:00

How do you entertain overseas family members who come to stay? Send them out to weed your new agility training area…

In actual fact I would never dream of asking my sister in law to spend her holiday weeding. My brother and his teenage sons incessant use of his X-Box drove her to it! Like me Lisa finds the mind numbing effects of computer games less than entertaining. The stupid thing drove me nuts too but I would have spent time weeding in preparation for grass planting whether an X-Box was involved or not. It was very fortuitous though as we ended up weeding a space that was more than twice the size of what I had already managed to do prior to their arrival. She was like a human weeding machine!

With the addition of reticulation courtesy of Colin and his magic box of plastic bits my agility area is starting to become a reality. Grass runner planting has commenced and every day after work I’m adding a bit more. We have an area at the back of our garden that is full of overgrown grass runners so I’m just pulling them up and transplanting. It takes time but it will save heaps of money. I did the same thing for the dog pen and that now has the most magnificent area of grass you could ever hope to see. It helps that we don’t have dogs in there yet, but every time I look at it I still feel proud that I contributed to its creation.

Since I last blogged Sonic and I have done another couple of trials. One of which was the games classes at the Royal Show. To make a change from the first weekend at the Royal Sonic and I were actually successful, as opposed to lots of near misses. We ended up winning the Excellent Snooker class and placed third in Excellent Gamblers, just 2 points away from first place. It was a good day, Sonic was focused and I handled him well which equalled great team work and success.

Last weekend saw the GSDA Western Challenge Agility Trial. I have good memories of this event as Soda won the Masters Jumping class (her specialty event) a couple of times back in her hey day. The special thing about this trial is that you get really beautiful jarrah wood trophies. It is rare these days to get any trophy at all let alone one that is made of proper wood and not cheap plastic! Back then it used to be run on the main arena at the Canine to give it an even greater sense of occasion.

Both the masters courses required lots of control with off course choices for dogs everywhere and plenty of tight turns required. All in all I thought Sonic and I made a pretty good job of both of them. In agility I shoulder pulled to bring Sonic inside the next jump in preparation for a rear cross. Unfortunately I pulled too hard and he interpreted it as a turn and then went back up the dog walk instead of ahead of me to the jump. The rest of the course was clear. In jumping I turned early for a tight front cross and Sonic quite rightly came off the jump completely. I’m happy that I tried to change my timing as it’s clear that I need to, I’m just going to have to accept that I may pull him off jumps from time to time if I get it wrong. I’d still rather that than being late all the time like I have been. After that happened he completely blew me off when I did a pull through and ended up heading into the wrong tunnel entry so I’m going to say that we both screwed up… The positives from the run was that he was turning brilliantly tight yet still driving out of the turns.

The Good the Bad and the Extremely Ugly

2010-09-30T14:44:00.003+08:00

Last weekend saw the whirlwind that is the Perth Royal Show descend with the usual series of "if only's" muttered after most classes that I ran with Sonic. I'm the first to admit that there is a lot to be happy about with his performances in general but still feel frustration when he blows me off on course. I absolutely have to take some of the blame. My inability to execute a front cross even remotely close to when I should be still eludes me. I will no doubt continue to suffer the consequences of Sonic doing off courses until I am blessed with far improved timing.

Sonic's speed is still climbing. Out of 18 qualifiers in the Masters Jumping class he came fourth which was even more impressive given that my handling wasn't anything to be smiling about and I got in his way more than once. He ran a fantastic Masters Agility course and if I hadn't gotten out of position over the end sequence of jumps I'm sure he would have gone clear. As it was I got behind him and then it turned into a big fat mess. I was pretty disappointed with that one after spending the first two thirds of the course demonstrating his wonderful independant contacts and some great focus.

I do seriously need to sort out my late front cross timing. What I'm doing is not working and even though I plan to move early it's not happening the way I want it to. I'm going to have to focus on rotating at least a stride further out than what I am now. Maybe that will minimise the lag time between my brain thinking "move" and my body actually doing it! It also has a lot to do with my paranoia of turning early and dumbing them down. The other weirdo thing that I need to work on with Sonic is the table. We blew Open Agility with him walking around the back of it again before he'd get on it. I've been racking my brain trying to figure out why his table performance has suddenly changed but I'm none the wiser at this stage. I spent a little time working on it after he ran around the table at the Gosnells trial but he still did it at the Royal. Luckily we rarely see the table in Masters but I don't want the times that I do to be a problem.

Some good news on my agility training area at home. We have planted our first grass runners and put in the first bits of reticulation to get it going. It's not a big area yet, it only gives me enough space for a set of weavers, an A-Frame or a couple of jumps, but it's a start and hopefully we'll keep chipping away until it's finished.

Over Enthusiasm?

2010-09-14T16:32:00.003+08:00

Just when I thought that Sonic's broken start lines were under control out emerges Mr Over Enthusiastic... Sonic really loves his agility now. His speed is going from strength to strength along with his growing confidence. Unfortunately joy for Sonic is appearing in the form of a lot of silly barking and any semblence of a start line stay floats away over the horizon never to be recovered. I think I was lulled into a false sense of "Sonic has really settled into his agility now" after having a few trials where he really didn't put a foot wrong and I thought I only had to deal with my inept handling. But apparently not. Dodgy handling is irrelevant if I can't actually get Sonic over the first jump because he's carrying on like a nut job! My withdrawing him because he wouldn't sit and stay at the start line was met with "good decision Karen" from ring side. I obviously wasn't the only one who thought my youngster needed to realise that acting like a nut job means NO agility for Sonic. And trying to tug on your leash as you are walked back to the car after being withdrawn in disgrace from the class for acting like a clown will definitely not work. Not quite sure how he's going to handle the Royal Show this year where the excitment level is doubled with big crowds and much smaller agility ring.

If he was perfect all the time I guess it would be boring...

Great dog - very average handler

2010-08-22T20:08:00.010+08:00

OK, its back to Sonic and agility now after boring everyone stupid with pictures of pretty flowers from my garden!

Sonic and I headed up for the Geraldton agility trials last weekend and had a really enjoyable time. We ran some very nice courses courtesy of Clive Makepeace and Jill Houston. We ended up with Q's and wins in Masters Agility, Open Agility and Novice Snooker. I actually thought all Sonic's runs were very solid. The only thing that prevented wins and Q's in Masters Jumping was yours truly with poor handling/bad timing. The things that young Sonic has to put up with... Sometimes you got it, sometimes you don't.

Today was a Dogs West Fundraiser. There was lots of sunshine out there but geez the wind was cold. The type that goes straight through you and your clothing. I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to run Sonic today. Yesterday afternoon I was about to give him a furry foot trim and noticed that one of his dew claws had split and half the nail was sticking out sideways. No doubt he'd done it during the day while doing his best impression of a dickhead charging about out the backyard, crushing my native plants. There was no way I could cut off the broken bit as it was right in the quick so I expected he would be visiting the vet today rather than agility trialling. But while we were out at dinner last night he must have knocked it off because the nail was gone by the time we got home. He appeared totally nonplussed about it so trialling we went.

First up was Masters Agility and I was all set and ready to go. While watching the dogs before me I had a sudden panic when I realised that during course walking I had somehow missed that there was a pull through between jumps 16 and 17. Not normally a big deal, Sonic knows pull throughs, but it was at one of the most critical points of the course and if you were in the wrong place you were fairly likely to put your dog back up the dog walk instead of into the tunnel. When I went up to the line I had no plan other than to just go with where Sonic landed after the pull through. As it happened we got through it. It was very messy and luck most definately played a hand but I'm not complaining! Even after stuffing around he still powered on and I want to make special mention of his dog walk too. He was miles ahead of me and just drove down into two on two off. Not quite as fast as when I'm in front but being consistent is really starting to pay off. The extra exciting thing is though that he ending up winning Masters Agility today which is the now the second week in a row. Not bad for a little fella who still has massive room for improvement.

Our big tragedy for the day was Masters Jumping. He ran an absolute cracker. It was fast and powerful but his mega stupid dodgy handler left him unsupported to go off and do a front cross and surprise, surprise he pulled off the jump *sigh*. Oh what a dork I am! He even did the most superb tight turn from a 180 after a jump. I guess Sonic will just have to hope that next week I pull my socks up or he may just give me the sack!

Spring is on its way

2010-08-17T19:46:00.011+08:00

While most of the Perth agility community headed down to Bunbury for an agility trial, I was at home doing housey things. Not because I didn't want to do the agility trial I just love being here and it doesn't happen very often.

When I was outside in the garden I noticed for the first time this year that all our native trees have started flowering. They are all probably very confused with the endless sunny winter days and no rain. I will not pretend to be even remotely green thumbed. At my house plants tend to either survive of their own good fortune, get trambled by dogs and die or just die anyway. I have noted that native plants are impresively resiliant. I have no idea what 99% of the plants are called but they all looked so amazing with the different colours and types that I went inside and got my camera out to take some photos.

Bottle brush...? Who cares, look at that awesome bee that I managed to get in the shot!

Pretty purple flower

Pretty pink spikey type flowers

Protea (?)

Bottle brush (maybe the first one wasn't a bottle brush) otherwise known as pretty yellow and red flower

A couple of black and white fluffy flowers otherwise known as border collies

and pink/red flowers to finish off!

I love this place.

Happy Birthday Sonic!

2010-08-04T20:11:00.001+08:00

What goes squawk, squawk, thump, squawk, squawk, thump?

A tree full of Barnaby's Black Cockatoo's having an afternoon feast perched in a banksia tree. If it wasn't for the amount of noise they made I could easily have thought it had started raining banskia cones. I definitely wouldn't recommend standing under one of the trees while they were up there without wearing some type of head protection.

Squawk, squawk...

stand clear.....thump!

Can you believe that my Little Man turned three years old today? I keep telling him he's a grown up now but I don't think he wants to grow up cause he's having so much fun being the baby of the house!

Happy birthday Sonic!

Finding some form

2010-08-01T19:35:00.004+08:00

I think I'm starting to get my enthusiasm back for agility training now. There was even one week when I went to training both nights! It has been really nice having a break. Work has just been so full on that taking the dogs for a run around the property instead of having to rush around to get out the door and off to training has been much better for me. I'm sure the break has been pretty good for Sonic but I have noticed a couple of little holes that have appeared at trials that need a bit of extra work. Particularly after I let him run through his dog walk contact at the Cloverdale trial he seemed to think that he didn't have to stop on them anymore. But we seem to have sorted that out again now.

Saturday Perth Training and Obedience Dog Club hosted a single trial. I started the day with a fantastic clear round in Masters Agility courtesy of Lexi. She had a really strong run including her "skying" the A-Frame which seems to have become her signature agility move. I have never made any attempt to train her flying over the A-Frame but for some reason no matter what speed she's going she just loves launching herself over the top. Sonic didn't do very well in the Masters Agility class. We had come straight from the Open Jumping class with a fairly nice run and I only had one dog to run before I had to do Masters. Even though I'd been tugging with him and playing some focus games he was completely unfocused when we got into the ring and his run was full of mistakes. It's not the first time I've found him to be really bad when we've had to go straight from one ring to another. I really don't know why and nothing I've tried seems to make any difference. Thankfully I can normally avoid having to do it and get to give him a break in the car between classes.

Sonic did however have one shining moment to finish the day in Masters Jumping with a really good run. He powered around most of the course and read my body beautifully. There were still a couple of spots where I would like to see him drive out a little harder but he is improving every week which is fantastic. He came in at second place behind one of our fastest dogs Diva. I'm thrilled with the way that he's handling courses at the moment. He is reading my body so well at the moment and I think it's all part of his confidence that the speed is slowly coming. Its so much fun running him when he's like that.

Coming to the end of an era

2010-07-24T18:31:00.005+08:00

We had very sad news today in the WA agility community with Kriszty's Jess passing away. Jess was a one in a million and will no doubt leave a massive hole in Kriszty's life. I've had the privilege of getting to know Jess pretty well over the years with Kriszty and I becoming great friends after travelling and competing together for quite some time. There are many wonderful memories for me with Jess and my own beautiful Soda going head to head in the agility ring especially through 2003 to 2005. We also competed side by side in our agility team "The Masters & the Apprentices" with countless wins over the years.

Agility has changed in Perth, especially in the last five years or so with our top group of dogs these days being more often than not, hand picked as puppies for their potential to be good agility dogs. They are then trained from puppies with a serious attention to detail and lots of help from attending agility seminars, agility literature, the internet and DVD's that we consume. I first started teaching myself and my dogs agility in 1998 and everyone that I met got involved in agility the same way. We wanted to provide our pet dogs with some extra stimulation and have some fun with them at the same time. Over those years I witnessed some really special dogs including Rod's Bundy, Tracey's Jake, Sam's Kal, Megan's Jestah, Ash's Bailey, Mel's Max, Frank's Harley, Richard's Della and of course Kriszty and Jess, just to name a few. All great pet dogs who shone in agility. Sadly we are coming to the end of an era as not many of these dogs are alive now. There is a part of me that really misses those days especially as I watch Murphy and Soda get older and more fragile.

Jess's health hadn't been good for a while and Kriszty knew that her days with Jess were probably nearing their end, but it still doesn't make the sense of sadness and loss any less. I think WA agility is shining a little less brightly tonight with her gone. Below is a tribute I put together after Jess competed in her last Royal Show last year. I think now is a good time to watch it again and remember what a wonderful dog she truly was. RIP Jess.

My wee sidekick

2010-07-05T21:11:00.003+08:00

Totally chuffed with Sonic's weekend performances. He just keeps increasing in speed and confidence with our teamwork on course getting better and better. I find that when I'm running him I have a big smile on my face. He only moved on one start line and I withdrew without running the course. Probably actually my fault as I didn't have him focused enough and I think the lights were on and no one was home. I did a massive lead out in Open Jumping and he held firm.

Sonic is getting really noisy on course. He barks on occasion but the squealing/squawking is increasing in volume and duration. Clearly relative to his confidence levels. As long as he's listening it doesn't bother me, in fact it just shows what a character he is.

Training will continue to focus on drive off the ground and out of corners as that is still where we lose time and I'm well aware of just what a powerful and fast little boy he is. My challenge is to get it out on the agility course.

The Murphster is going well. His balance is improving steadily. He can now look at me and walk at the same time without falling over. However he often goes sideways without warning. I need one of those bumper stickers that you see on young guys cars that says "Caution vehicle frequently sideways" to stick on his butt to warn people walking behind him. Most importantly Murphy is happy and bright and doesn't seem concerned.

The Youngster & The Geriatric

2010-06-27T09:59:00.003+08:00

Sonic has finished his Masters Agility title. Not bad for a young boy of not yet three years of age! Overall his runs over the last couple of weeks have been really good. His confidence is continuing to grow and he is reading my body extremely well. But I am still having an issue with his start lines. The first week that I kept going back and resetting him he steadily improved over the day when I think he realised that I meant it. Then at training during the week he was sitting there as still and straight as a little solder at attention. But yesterday at the trial he kept getting up again. I'll give it another few weeks before looking at plan b given that I'm trying to extinguish a behaviour which often then gets worse before it gets better. I'm just a bit worried that going back and resetting him could become rewarding in itself even though I'm being very unemotional about it. I had to blow three runs yesterday cause he just would not stay and I had to cross the start line to put him back into a stay. The next step if this doesn't work may be that I actually remove him from the ring completely if he gets up. I'm thinking it may have to be if the bottom moves he's back to the car with not so much as a 'hows your mother'.... He won't like it thats for sure, which is kind of the point I guess. We shall see.

Then last weekend the Murphster gave us a bit of a fright. I'd been at a trial all day and Colin had gone to the movies with his son. When Colin got home to let Murphy and Soda out Murphy kept collapsing. Colin rushed him to the vet and I left the trial to meet him there. All the worst scenarios were going through my head e.g. brain tumour, as I was driving there. When I arrived Murph looked really confused and was extremely unsteady on his feet. The vet gave him a good going over and diagnosed him with vestibulitis caused by a broken blood vessel in his ear. He told us it is very common in geriatric dogs. I had to cover Murphy's ears when the vet mentioned the word geriatric as I'd hate for Murph to think that the vet was referring to him. I'm fairly certain that Murphy doesn't think he's a geriatric just yet!

Apparently there is no treatment for vestibulitis, it just resolves itself over a couple of weeks and Murphy has definately improved since diagnosed. He spent the first couple of days with his head tilted to one side and regularly careering off on an angle only to collapse in a heap. Various household items have been at risk, namely the wine rack but some body blocking has protected both dog and valuables. One week on he is still very unsteady on the pins first thing in the morning but is generally pretty good. He is his normal happy bright self which is the main thing and I'm pretty sure he's been enjoying all the extra attention he's been getting.

Mr Enthusiastic

2010-06-15T18:02:00.004+08:00

The Agility Club of WA hosted their usual fantastic trial last weekend. To have a double header wrapped up by 3.30pm was pretty impressive to say the least. Its so nice to go to a trial that is run so efficiently with all the trimmings included. It was also one of the rare occasions when there were prizes for placing in classes. These days the most you often get is a ribbon or rosette with your Q card but ACWA had all sorts of dog toys, bowls, beds etc to pick from if you were in the top three. It certainly added a lot of fun to presentations.

I had a much improved trial compared with the weekend prior which started off with Lexi getting three Q's out of her first four runs and Sonic managing Q's in both of the mornings Masters events. In particular his first up run in Masters Agility was one of his best runs since he starting competing. He absolutely powered around the course and just to see how it would go I let him hit two on two off and then released him straight away. He was extremely amped and squawked and screamed the whole way round. In fact he did lots of that in all his runs over the day. Another sign of his continuing improvement was his fourth place behind three very fast dogs all of who ran through their contacts. He also beat a couple of fast dogs who normally place in front of him. So I'm feeling incredibly positive about the steady way he is growing as an agility dog and the team we are slowly becoming.

The down side to the day was his atrocious start lines again. I did quite a bit of reinforcement outside the ring but the problem is that once he gets in front of that first jump he just wants to go. I am excited that he is so keen but I'm going to have to blow a few trials trying to recover it. Unfortunately I can see no other way. The afternoon events also saw some really fluctuating focus from Sonic. He would start off great but then totally lose it halfway round the course, do a few wrong obstacles and then keep on going. We left the course on more than one occasion... I can only assume it is lack of maturity.

We have another double trial this weekend at Gosnells Dog Club. Sonic only has one more Q required for his Masters Agility title but I have a feeling most of his runs will be over before they've begun if I'm going to attempt to repair his start line! Either that or I'm going to have to invest in some super glue...

Birthday Celebrations

2010-06-11T08:27:00.007+08:00

Did someone say it's my Burfday??

It's time to celebrate the Murphsters birthday. On 9/6/2010 he turned a big thirteen years of age (or 68 in dog years). Murphy has a pretty laid back life these days. He still loves to go for a "run" with the other dogs but really is quite happy to trot along with me. Sleeping on his favourite bed is another popular past time and after a trot around the block in the evening it is always where you'll find him. His eye sight and hearing are definately not what they were but I'm fairly sure that there is plenty that he hears but chooses not to respond to. Unfortunately he does get knocked over every now and again by the sillier dog members of the house because if they are coming at him at full speed down the track he just can't get out of the way in time. He does of course enjoy the attention and cuddles afterwards when we rush over to make sure he's OK.

Out herding in 2002

Murphy was my very first border collie. Back in 1997 when I was ready to get a pup I saw an ad in the paper for an expected litter of chocolate and white border collies. I had always loved the colour so I contacted the breeder and went over to meet her dogs. As Leanne brought each of her dogs up to the house to meet me I was impressed how wonderfully happy and friendly each one was. I really liked Murphy's mum Rosie and the father, Clancy, was a well known dog from NSW. So I put my name down for a boy and went home hoping to hear some good news very soon. When I got the phone call that Rosie had given birth to six pups, five of which were boys, I went down and picked out Murphy. My method of choosing him was very scientific. He had a cute "thumbprint" mark on the middle of his head like his mother...

Murphy at two years of age

I started out with obedience first as soon as Murphy was old enough and joined a few different clubs around Perth. Not long after I discovered agility and began Murphy and mines education on teaching the equipment and putting it all together. Back then there was pretty much no instruction available. Everyone just figured it out for themselves as best as possible. No one had heard of a "two on two off" or even a "front cross". You pretty much ran a course and hoped for the best. It wasn't until a few years later, probably early 2000 that a few people started to take note of what was happening overseas and adopted some of those training methods and styles. I worked through to CDX in obedience with Murphy. I started training both Soda and Murphy for UD but as Soda just picked it up so quickly I decided to continue with her rather than try and train both of them.

National Agility Trial 2003 Melbourne, Victoria

Murphy loved his agility. Although he won many classes over the years he was never a speed demon like Soda. Everyone knew him as "Mr Consistency" as he would get clear round after clear round. He never won as much as Soda but he had twice as many Q cards in his collection. He was a brilliant teams dog and was on the winning team for all the big events including multiple Western Classics and Royal Shows. He was also selected on the State Team for the 2005 National Agility Trial. I ended up retiring him from agility after being on the winning Royal Show Agility Team in 2007. He had tried his heart out for me that day but I could see that although his mind was willing his body wasn't holding out so well. I still did a couple of Not For Competition jumping runs over the following year with him jumping a much lower height but they were kept to a minimum. I know he would love to have continued but his long term health and well being is the only thing that is important to me. He certainly had nothing left to prove, I knew how awesome he was.

Our first big Team win, "BC Bandits" Western Classic 2002
L-R Helen & Dee (RIP), me with Murphy & Soda, Rod & Bundy (RIP)

Murphy also sired a few litters of pups in his prime. One of which is Am Ch Borderfame Choc Chill (Sprint) who won extensively in the US breed show ring and then went on to be a prolific sire in the US. Sprint is stunning and was used as the foundation dog at Hot Shot Kennels.

Snoozing in the sun - VERY popular past time

Even in his twilight years Murphy is still my main man. I have no doubt that he would protect me with his life if he had to. Out of my three boys, Murphy, Riot and Sonic he is the only one who truly means business when push comes to shove. He is incredibly protective of his "pack" (even Riot who I'm sure he doesn't like all that much!) and if another dog tries to infiltrate and harass one of his pack he will deal with it very swiftly. The other two boys will stand there trying to look impressive with lots of posturing and posing but Murphy just goes over and "bang" it is dealt with, no mess, no fuss.

The gang 2005 (pre Sonic)

Hopefully with continued good health and a good lifestyle I will have him in my life for a few years to come.

Winter Blues

2010-06-08T16:46:00.002+08:00

Training is still a slack affair. I just can’t find it in me to get really motivated about it. You know I think it’s a bit of a middle of the year winter thing. I get home from work and it’s getting dark and cold. Being home with the fire going after taking a stroll (or in Sonic’s case a screaming kamikaze hoon) around the property is just a more appealing option. I have been doing some more Crate Games work though from the comfort of my living room. I want to use Crate Games extensively with my next pup so Sonic and I have been practicing to improve some of his behaviours (like start lines – see below). When I’ve actually made it to training I’ve been playing a little with doing some quick releases with Sonic on contacts but I don’t think he’s mature enough for me to do them at a trial yet. He’ll no doubt just think it means he can quick release them all the time!

I went to an agility trial at Northern Suburbs Dog Club in Carine on Sunday which this time last year was the scene of the Sonic vs scooter child incident. This year however we were up on the footy oval which thankfully isn’t next to the bike path… The trial itself only yielded one quallie card for us but I was actually really thrilled with his performances and the one Q definitely did not reflect how well Sonic ran for me. Sonic’s confidence continues to grow and it was purely bad luck that prevented us from qualifying in both Masters Agility rounds. One was most definitely my error and the other he just didn’t read my body properly, which is still really my fault. Just watching his runs back on video I can see how much more understanding he has developed and how much more certain he is about where he is going. Plus I also think I’m handling him a lot better. It’s taken quite a while but I feel like we are starting to gel as a team and as I move around the course it feels so much smoother and flowing which I have no doubt is helping immensely. I’ve been working hard to use running front crosses in stead of stationary ones where possible which makes the flow nice and continuous. The hardest part is not falling over my own feet, or the obstacle in front of me.

However don’t let the video footage fool you, his start lines right now are BAAAD. He ran a fantastic clear round in a Master Jumping course only after he had broken his start line and gone flying over the first two obstacles. At which point I promptly stopped him and took him back to the start again. As I was walking out to position I could see that he was teetering on a knife’s edge as to whether his butt was going to stay put or not (which obviously it didn’t). In more than one class I had to go back and tell him to sit after he stood up in anticipation of being released. After I went back and made him sit in one class he then proceeded to bark at me while I walked back out to position. Can’t fault his enthusiasm but I hate not being able to put my dog on the line and being able to walk out WITHOUT worrying that he’s going to break. At training he is a perfect angel (naturally) so other than trying to break it at training to make it stronger I guess I’m going to have to persevere with not letting him get away with it by going back and resetting him when we are at trials. I’ve never had a dog that wouldn’t stay on his start line before! It’s so stupid, I’ve taught all these complex behaviours but can’t get my dog to stay…..go figure.

Down on the Ranch

2010-06-03T19:16:00.006+08:00

Driveway to Heaven - there is a house up there somewhere!

The delights of an evening stroll. Who needs agility!

I've decided its time to stop all this crazy running around that I seem to find myself doing an aweful lot of and spend some time enjoying the beautiful property that we live on. The last couple of months have been non-stop. Between hours spent writing up a selection criteria as part of an application for a new job, preparing for the Agility Nationals, stressing out/preparing for the interview for the new job, workshops and articles for Better Pets, agility training, plus a very full work schedule. I have to say that I am really well and truly over it.

VERY happy boys

So this week, other than teaching my agility class on Tuesday night, I've been spending my evenings at home and it's been great. The property has gone green since we got our first rain, there are birds everywhere and with snakes back to hibernation land the dogs are able to really have some fun here. They certainly sleep very well at night.

"Rabbit Highway"

I love that when I get home from work I can just open the back gate and let them go for it. The boys use the firebreak as their own personal racetrack. Murphy and Soda are happy these days just to potter along at their own pace. There are always new smells near the "rabbit highway" that runs straight across the back of our property under the fence and through the grass trees. I love that the days of having to put the dogs in the car and drive somewhere to exercise them all the while worrying about whether there was going to be other dogs around and potential altercations are behind us. Everytime I start walking around the property I just exhale.

My future agility training area - just add grass

Boys on the run

Riot's new ad for the Sids for Kids campaign has hit the our TV screens on Channel 9. I actually managed to be watching when it was on for a change and I think it looks great. Riot looks fantastic and Shannon is stunning. My cameo did indeed make it to the finished product of the full ad. Not sure I needed to take up as much time as I did though and way closer up than I had in mind...Next time if I get asked if I could jump in for a quick shot I may not be quite so keen to say OK! I much prefer standing behind the camera while Riot does all the work.

Should be enough wood to get us through winter......now where's that damn chain saw?

More lovely Q's

2010-05-20T19:38:00.004+08:00

Last weekend saw our first mad dash to Geraldton for the year to complete two days of agility trialling. Entries were a little bit lower than normal as quite a few of the regulars were overseas watching and competing in the IFCS Agility Worlds in the UK which meant I had to get up there a little earlier to make the first event. Sonic, Lexi and I left Perth at 5am and with a pretty good run on the highway made it to Geraldton by 10am. The course was in the middle of being set up when we arrived so we didn't have much time to do anything other than stretch our legs and get the dogs toileted.

I didn't hold up much hope for our first class (Open Agility) and was expecting it to be a bit rough, however I couldn't have been more wrong. Sonic ate the course up, handled the distance challenge like a pro and ended up not only going clear, but taking out first place. The rest of the weekend followed a similar theme with a total of six clear rounds out of nine starts. Sonic is starting to get confident reading my body and it's making a huge difference. My favourite run of the weekend was a Masters Jumping run on the first day. He moved out beautifully and on some parts of the course was really powering on. There is still room for improvement but he is definately getting closer. Agility on the whole is good. His contacts and weavers are solid but he's not moving out between his obstacles as much as I'd like. Although I can see that his confidence is growing I can also see that he is still cautious in between obstacles and isn't really driving out between turns. There are moments when he does but it's not consistent.

But even being my normal overly critical self I have to say that Sonic was fantastic. It is so great to have reached a point where we are having some really solid performances and starting to find that groove where we are reading each other successfully on course. And he was really trying his little butt off for me and having a fab time in the process. It's hard to ask for more than that. On the training agenda for the next couple of weeks will be continuing with the revision of Crate Games. I'm working on Stage 3 which includes doing collar grabs and the dog coming out and going into the crate. Seems to be going well and Sonic is getting really amped up when I grab his collar. It was something he really didn't like before. I'll also keep working on him driving out of turns because that is still what costs us the most time. I was watching some of the IFCS Worlds and you see the dogs just hit the ground after an obstacle and they power straight off. Most definately something that I aspire to having Sonic do!

Riot has also had to contribute to the household over the last week filming a commercial for the Sids for Kids Red Nose Day annual campaign which is 25th June 2010. Better Pets & Gardens are sponsoring Sids and Kids as part of Red Nose Day so Riot teamed up with Shannon MacGuire who is the Sids and Kids ambassador for this year with her gorgeous son Marley. Shannon is totally stunning and both her and Riot made for some beautiful footage. Riot was a good boy and was as compliant as ever. There were no great training demands on him other than to look handsome but I had to chuckle when he was trying to offer behaviours to the sound boom as it hovered overhead. He obviously thought it was a target stick and managed a well timed paw wave so hopefully it will make it to the final cut of the ad. I even make a brief cameo as I stroll through the BP&G store....

Agility Nationals WA 2010

2010-05-04T20:37:00.006+08:00

Oooops.... (photo by Robyn Evans)

I think all of the WA agility community has released a collective sigh of relief. The 2010 National Agility trial is complete. Peace has been restored.

The ANWA organising committee did a spectacular job. I know they copped a really hard time over how the different heights were going to work but to their credit it all worked amazingly over the four days. Having separate heights for a National was long overdue. Now we just have to hope that future states take on the challenge and continue to make it even bigger and better. The Dogs West grounds looked brilliant with all of us parking around the edge of the rings which gave it a real carnival atmosphere.

Sonic was brilliant. Never did I think that he had the maturity to compete for four days solid and give me everything he had in every run. I have been frustrated by his inconsistent focus so I tried to improve our transitions when I was preparing him for our turn in the ring. I did the usual routine where I get him out of the car get him relaxed, build up to a game of tug followed by focus games but this time instead of walking into the ring and then losing him when I get to the start line I tried really hard to keep the connection going by talking to him with his “rev up” words. It means pretty much ignoring the judge until the very last minute but so be it. He did glance around a couple of time but they were more quick flicks and then back to me rather than gazing into the distance and me having to call him to get his attention back. I will continue to work on it though to try and get him not looking back at all.

Another awesome picture by Robyn Evans

His contact behaviours were spot on every time, straight down to two on two off, no creeping or stopping in the colour. I didn’t hold him in position but released as soon as he hit position. Ever since his contacts got broken at ADAA where the judges chase the dogs down the dog walk to check the colour, then proofed them (thanks Simone!) at training, they have been absolutely rock solid. I can’t wait until I can do early releases to help improve our course times but right now I just don’t think he’s ready. It’s certainly not worth wrecking his contacts at this early stage of his career. After the first two days of perfect contacts and no reinforcement I did take him to the practice ring and give him a couple of belts over them with high value rewards just in case I wore them out!

In the end Sonic came second in Novice Gamblers, seventh in Novice Snooker (all dogs that placed higher than him were competing at the last Nationals almost two years ago, some in Novice Snooker…), second in Novice Strategic Pairs (no thanks to me and some seriously dodgy handling) AND the big one, made the Masters Jumping final!!! Considering the calibre of the dogs in Masters Jumping I thought that it was a pretty special achievement for a baby dog. Masters Jumping was the very last final on the last day. I was a little nervous but didn’t feel any pressure as I had no expectations of grandeur, rather I just wanted to see how he’d cope. The ring was totally surrounded by onlookers and the atmosphere was very different to a normal trial. I did my set up routine and got really great focus from him. Sonic got up from his sit position when I led out but didn’t actually break so I didn’t go back to him to reset. It was naughty but he was so keen. We made it to obstacle 18 which was a broad jump without error, but unfortunately I think his legs were going quicker than his brain was so he hit it good and proper. Then he knocked the second last jump. Other than that it was a great run with his speed building as we went. I actually didn’t handle jump 4 to 6 the best. I used a rear cross when a front would have tightened him up a lot more. It probably cost me at least a second, maybe more. In the end the winning time was 27.64sec and an awesome run from Julies and Mac’s Disco Diva, with Sonic coming in at 30.23. Taking into considering my sloppy handling and his stumble it was a super achievement. Once Sonic matures and I am able to get him powering out of his turns and tightening up more I have no doubt that he will be a force to be reaconed with.

When he was good he was very, very good and when he was bad.......

2010-04-25T11:15:00.008+08:00

Agility trialling mayhem in Perth continues with the State Trial won and run with some seriously awesome agility on display by my fellow competitors. I managed to qualify Lexi in the Masters Agility State final which I was very pleased with but I couldn't quite get it together with Sonic. We had some very close calls but managed to be thwarted between bad timing on my behalf or not being able to get him focused and having an absolute disaster.

This weekend we had our first group of eastern state competitors join us in Perth as we build up to next weekends Nationals. It was great to say hi and catch up with those that we haven't seen since the 2007 Nationals in Victoria. There was some great runs on some pretty challenging courses. Sonic and Lexi both started very badly and not a brain cell could be seen functioning for the first couple of runs. I didn't even complete the Masters Agility course with Sonic. They did settle in though and Sonic even managed a fifth place in Masters Jumping. I was impressed with the placing, firstly because it would be enough to get him a run in a National final, the fact that we had a lot of eastern staters running so the class was bigger than normal and it was a far from perfect run. He was driving nicely around the course but was wide and almost ran past a couple of obstacles that would have cost us time. His afternoon Masters Jumping run was actually much better but he unfortunately missed a jump which was a bit of a shame.

Then on Sunday we had a really good day with Sonic going three out of four clear! That finished off his Open Agility title and gave us our fifth Masters Jumping leg, and fourth Masters Agility leg. His runs were very solid. I thought I handled him probably better than I have in a while too which kinda helps. I was very happy with his contacts and weavers but I do find his lack of focus at the start line frustrating. Mind you he is in good company with his siblings with regard to that annoying habit! One thing I also noticed was he tends to decelerate into tunnels. He's driving out, just not in. I shall add it to the list.... Overall I was really chuffed with him. He is such a cool little boy and I'm having a ball with him.

I have to make note of two special things on the weekend. Firstly, Lexi did the most stunning Masters Jumping run. She was absolutely flying and I couldn't have been prouder of her efforts. She is well and truly back to the great way she was running last year before she went on maternity leave. I'm thinking that a puppy from her could be just what I need as my next agility dog.... :-)

Secondly, Sonic's big sister Secret got her Novice Agility title with a really nice run on Sunday. She even controlled herself when there was a magical, mythical fast kelpie running in the next ring. Congratulations Kriszty and Secret!

So now its time for the Nationals. Good luck to everyone involved.

Super Lexi's awesome run on the weekend!

State Agility Trial 2010

2010-04-20T16:09:00.002+08:00

Video of Sonic from the State Trial 2010.

Progress - Just In Time?

2010-04-13T15:56:00.004+08:00

Last weekends ADAA trial was good. For the first time in a while I felt really positive about Sonic’s performances. ADAA have created their own NFC (Not for Competition) entry that waaay surpasses our own WA created ANKC NFC entry. You basically enter the class as normal but when you go up to the start line you let the judge know if you want to run as NFC. You can pick any class you want on the night. It’s up to you whether you run the set course or do your own thing for the duration of the standard course time. You can also take a toy into the ring to reward your dog, as long as the toy isn’t thrown. How awesome is that!

So my plan with Sonic for the night was to pick a couple of agility classes to run as NFC. I wanted to run them as if we were competing but if he performed a contact particularly well or drove hard through his weavers I wanted to be able to reward him with his toy. Or on the other extreme, if he didn’t hold a contact I wanted to be able to put him back on. I’d actually been working through some distraction training and proofing on the contacts the couple of weeks before so it ended up being all about me being able to reward his performances.

The brilliant thing that happened is that you could see his confidence grow every time he got his toy for doing great weavers or hitting a great contact. I’ve taught him to tug while still in two on two off position so that came in really handy as well. His runs still need a lot of work and handling skills are a work in progress but he was confident, fast and happy so I’m pretty pleased with the outcome. I also thought that I handled him better than I have in ages. With our State trial this weekend and the Nationals two weeks away it gives me some small semblance of hope that they will go OK….

Sonic and Axl also had their first attempt at running an ADAA teams event together. Mmmmmmm, was an interesting experience! Simone ran the course with Axl first and he was great, powering around with a perfect clear run. While Axl was running Sonic was getting more and more wound up. I couldn’t get him to sit at all and when Axl came past to do a couple of obstacles Sonic wanted to go and chase him off. Somehow I managed to get him back and then it was time for our half of the course…. Well, he may have been with me in body but definitely not in mind. Somehow I managed to get him around the course clear after about five almost-off-courses. Poor Simone having to watch, it would have been horrible! Axl and Sonic are entered in Novice Strategic Pairs at the Nationals so the moral of that story is that Simone and I need to get Axl and Sonic used to working close together otherwise that may not be very pretty or fun experience. Both are highly charged “get dat damn utha dog offa my course” kind of boys.

We have a massive few weeks of trialling ahead. I'm really looking forward to getting on with it all. It feels like the last Nationals was forever ago. You spend so much time getting your dogs and yourself prepared for these things that now I just want to do it!

The Elusive Q Card

2010-03-28T10:22:00.008+08:00

I've been having a bit of a play with the blog. I just wasn't inspired by the template I picked after the New Year. Every time I checked it out it seemed to be lacking something. I did go briefly to green but apparently that wasn't met with great joy by some of my blog readers....

You have no idea how hard this photo was to get...

Agility, agility, agility. Been lots of it lately. Training has been positive and for the first time in ages I've been coming away feeling like I've achieved something good. I jumped Sonic on 600 last week with ADAA on the weekend and I thought he handled it really well. Certainly it seems to make him think about his jumps a lot more. He only knocked one bar at the ADAA trial where as last time he knocked at least one in each run. There had also been some great little sequences set up where I was able to challenge some of the handling that needs to improve.

The last couple of trials, both ANKC and ADAA have delivered me a few qualifying cards. The old Q card had been somewhat sparse on the ground for a while. Sonic managed to get his very first Snooker and Gamblers passes at a rarely seen Games Trial hosted by Gosnells Dog Club. Most clubs in Perth seem to have an aversion to running Games trials so if I'm lucky Sonic may achieve his games titles by the time he's about ten. Not that I'm a huge games fan. More often than not I find that I may have a great opening sequence and then right at the very end I blow it. So it seems a lot of hard work for very little. I do think they are a great opportunity to fine tune skills though. Then the ADAA trial I went to on Friday night provided us with another two Q cards which means that he now has achieved his very first ADAA title.

The fact that we got Q cards makes it seem that we must of had some good runs but there was some rather naught stuff going on through the process. Not so much at the Games Trial but at ADAA some of Sonic's runs were nothing to celebrate. It all started when Lloyd high tailed it along side us to check Sonic's down side dog walk contact. Sonic just powered on through it and then all subsequent AF and Dog Walk contacts from then on quick releasing every time. I tried to use Gamblers to get them back but failed dismally. With Nationals four weeks away it's a little disturbing. His focus for the first three or four runs was pretty good but the last couple were atrocious. He was either screaming at the dog running before him and then completely unfocused or if I could keep him with me at the start line he then vagued out in the middle of the course. Sonic also got up or shuffled his skinny little butt at almost every start line. I do have to accept some blame doing my usual late front crosses for some crappy turns AND I should have put him back on every single contact that he blew me off on. I am definitely guilty due to my desperation to get some Q's. Boy do we both have some stuff to work on... My plan this week will be to break his contacts as much as possible to try and reinforce some good ones.

Last weekend saw the last of the Better Pets and Gardens dog training workshops. They seemed to be very well received and most attendees were dead keen to get home and try some of the things that I showed them. It does surprise me how little the average person understands about why their dogs do what they do. All kudos to those that came to the workshops to try and improve the relationship that they have with their dogs but I have to wonder about how the hell they got where they were in the first place. Especially with the amount of information available with the click of a button over the internet these days. People seem to think that you have to be a dog trainer to have a well behaved dog. There was certainly a lot of surprised faces when I showed them how simple stuff could be as long as you used something that is reinforcing to your dog. Sonic and Riot were my assistants and showed everyone how easy it is to teach your dog to work to earn rewards instead of working to avoid punishment.

Twelve Months On

2010-03-08T19:07:00.009+08:00

As of the Western Classic weekend it was officially twelve months since I started trialling with Sonic! It has been a very interesting first year of our competition journey and although we've come such a long way, we have a loooong way still yet to go. I'm loving the fact that he is getting confident and powerful around the course but it is like we are two individuals when we are out there. It always feels like I'm on a knifes edge every run that we do and the run could go either way. I need to work really hard on us being a team and getting a much better feel for him. I'm still really happy with all three of his contact performances but his weavers have slowed down again. At the Classic and on the weekend at the teams event he wasn't pushing forward like he has been. So for the next month I'm going to focus very much on handling, handling, handling with a small splash of weaving thrown in to see if I can bring back the drive. At the seminar Lynda talked about working on your weaknesses and not over doing the things that you are stronger at so that is what I shall dutifully do!

It's been an incredibly busy couple of weeks since I returned from Melbourne. Last weekend I did my first ever dog training workshops for Better Pets & Gardens which was really fun. I actually feel really lucky to have the opportunity to try and get across positive dog training methods to the Average Joe. Most people just don't know anything about the philosophy of reinforcement builds behaviour and after both sessions I got fantastic feedback from the attendees. Hopefully they will go away and try some of the things that I told them about and their dogs will certainly be better off for it. A few people mentioned some of the other methods they'd been told to try on their dogs and it seriously made me cringe. I have two more workshops to do this weekend. Sonic and Riot were my very capable and well behaved assistants who managed to provide some very enthusiastic demo's showing how much enthusiasm and joy you get from positively trained dogs.

And how can I not mention, it was Soda's THIRTENTH birthday last Friday! I cannot believe another twelve months have past again in my old girls life. Soda is still as gorgeous as ever and celebrated in style hosting her own birthday party for one in my walk in robe while I was at work where I had inadvertently left my dog training backpack on the floor. By the time I got home she had thoughfully removed every dog single training halter and harness from the backpack in her treasure hunt to find her special birthday present (treat bag FULL of liver treats) that she no doubt thought I had left specially for her. Firstly I stumbled across empty butter menthol wrappers, followed by the training gear, then the clicker that was attached to the treat bag which was nestled amongst Colin's shoes, and some dog treat wrappers. But where was magical treat bag? It took a bit of searching but I eventually found it, very empty, tucked up in the back of Riot's crate. What a lovely birthday surprise!

Soda - thirteen years young

The Lessons That We Learn

2010-02-24T09:10:00.006+08:00

So here I am, home again after another interstate seminar. There is nothing quite like travelling away from home to do dog stuff. You get to leave everything else about your life at home (in my case for my partner to deal with...) while I go off and spend three days totally indulging in my favourite past time. Does it get much better than that?

No major dramas occured. Sonic and I made it to the airport in plenty of time. He seemed relatively relaxed when I left him at frieght. Perth Airport is undergoing long overdue upgrades so was a bit crazy checking in but other than that no problem. The weather forecast was for 34 degrees in Melbourne as opposed to the 45 degrees we had last year leaving me slightly less stressed. I do tend to get a little stressed/emotional anyway just because I worry about my dog being OK.

The plane ride was somewhat bumpy but we landed safely and after what felt like a long wait for my luggage it was off to collect the rental car. As per normal I'd booked the cheapest car available on the internet which was an itty bitty manual Hyundi Getz. I find these are a good option as they have the hatch back so with the seats folded down you can fit the dogs flight crate in no problems and did I mention - they are really cheap! I was secretly hoping for an ugrade to a Corolla or Ford Focus (like I got last year) though as they are a little nicer to drive. When I got to the rental company it was utter chaos. People everywhere, customers arguing with the staff. I just wanted to get the car and get the hell out of there so I could collect Sonic. When I finally got to the counter and the lady finished all my paperwork she tells me that all they have left available was a Ford XR6. For those that aren't into cars its a sported up version of the Falcon. In other words big, roomy, automatic and goes really fast. All I could think of was "I can't wait to tell Simone!". For Simone's benefit and so I can tease her, here is a photo. Did I mention that it was black and shiney with alloys and a spoiler. BTW lovely to drive, lots of buttons to press, but not as gutsy as my Commodore SV6... Having been provided with this lovely car at the same price as for the Getz I spent the weekend smiling.

No scary GPS dramas this year. I'd decided that saving money by avoiding using the tollways was a waste of time and effort so the I set the GPS up to send me on the most straight forward route. It did once send me around the block on the edge of the CBD but it looked like the way it was trying to send me had been cut off due to road works. I couldn't really swear at the GPS for that. All I had to do was follow the signs back onto the main motorway and all was well. Staying in Somers again was a delight with the usual walks down the beach for a swim. No koalas this year though. My uncle was telling me that they haven't seen nearly as many this year as they normally do.

Then we had the whole reason for the trip, the seminar. Lynda was fantastic, so enthusiastic and passionate about dog training and passing all that she could onto us. I only audited at the Susan Garrett seminar in 2005 so this time around with a working spot I was able to experience first hand how much of a clutz you turn into when you have someone you would love to impress standing there watching you attempt to train your dog. I knew I would learn heaps, and I did. Greg Derrett has always said to us that in Australia we need to get someone out to do some training seminars as he was seeing pieces missing from our dogs performances. Now I can totally understand why he has been telling us that.

Everything that they do at Say Yes dog training in Canada is for a reason. They leave nothing to chance. All the foundation skills that they introduce to their dogs have a purpose and is a building block for something else. Everything they do is planned. They NEVER get their dogs out and stand around, it's all about deciding what you are going to do BEFORE you get your dogs out, then bring them out motivated and ready to go, train and then back to their crate. Their dogs are NEVER trained unless they are motivated first. If your dog is distracted or not motivated then you get that BEFORE you start. We also worked a lot on the transitions between food and toy being smooth and seamless. No fumbling in pockets. Lynda talked a lot about dog training being about problem solving. You train your dog for short periods then you assess. If it's good you move on, if it's not good you work on your weaknesses. You certainly NEVER continue or move on when all you had was crap. The really stupid thing is that none of the above is hard to do. I just need to change my old habits. When I get to training I need to set up what I want to do first and not get my dog out until that's done. It's not really that hard but I think with most of us it's just easier to do what you've always done.

My other exciting news is that while I was away my future agility training area was cleared ready to start it's transformation from bushy scrub with dead banksia's everywhere to eventually lots of grass and some new eucalypts that we are going to plant. I took some photo's this morning so I can record it's humble beginnings. It's not huge but definately big enough for contacts and jump sequences.

On the road again

2010-02-18T20:53:00.005+08:00

After a tumultuous month Sonic and I finally got back into the agility ring. Great news, we managed a clear in Masters Agility. It was a more open course than we usually see but still had some interesting traps with the lines that the obstacles put the dogs on being not the line they had to do. I even managed to do at least one front cross at the right time...

It wasn't the perfect run but was definitely solid. I won't however talk about the Open Agility run we did. TOTAL disaster. I couldn't even bring myself to watch the whole thing back.

Tonight I'm packing for mine and Sonic's trip to Melbourne and the Lynda Orton-Hill seminar. I can't wait!

Trialling 2010

2010-01-23T12:52:00.004+08:00

A new year of trialling has begun again. We started the year off with a fun teams event hosted by Cloverdale Canine Compainions followed by a midweek jumping trial hosted by the Agility Club of WA.

Dog performance wise, pretty happy with both Sonic and Lexi. Lexi's attempts being particularly impressive seeing as she'd only been back in training for three weeks after an eight month break. Her skill level is great, but she needs to shed another kilo before I'm going to be able to knock much time off runs. When she is back in shape I will start to get her revved right up before we go into the ring. I have to admit that I was surprised by just how strong all her behaviours are and she has understood the concept of the 2 x 2 weaver entries extremely well.

Sonic also had some very strong runs. He is definately getting more and more powerful around the course and only missed a Q run with a dropped bar in the Masters Jumping class. Unfortunately I think I handled him dreadfully and once again out of the seven or so front crosses that I did from the four runs, I'd say that at least five were late. Because he's getting faster I'm so busy standing there calling him round like a dickhead that I'm not pushing to get into the right position early enough and then I'm rotating far too late. So instead of getting a nice tight turn I end up with really wide ones instead. Sonic was about three seconds behind the first placed dog in Masters Jumping and I reacon that I could have knocked off at least two of those if I'd managed to get tighter turns. I'm not sure why I'm so incapable of front crossing at the correct moment but I'm determined that I'm going to get it right eventually!

One thing that I am very happy about is his weaving. When I first started trying to build more speed by high level reinforcment using his toy, I didn't think anything was really happening. But then suddenly (or so it seems) he has knocked about half a second off his performance. I still want to get more drive out of his turns so given then the rewarding with his toy worked so well for the weavers I'll keep on working on it and hopefully over time more drive will come.

We only get one night of training this week with Australia Day on Tuesday. I'm sure the dogs will enjoy a swim down the beach instead anyway. Then we have a trial on Friday night hosted by the Rottie Club. For this trial I have entered Sonic in Not For Competition in the Excellent and Open Classes. I want to give him more opportunity to stretch out and build confidence away from the more technical Masters courses. It's all part of the bigger plan...

Summer Holidays

2010-01-07T12:07:00.014+08:00

Mmmmmm, yummy spoooooon.

Sonic say spoon clean now!

I love being on holidays. Getting up whenever you feel like it. Going down the beach every couple of days. Doing some work around the house then having a nana nap in the afternoon. Relaxing with the dogs. Reading lots of books.... Aaahhh the list goes on.

Can we come in pleeeeease?

One of our local inhabitants.

Then there is reality which starts again next Monday when I have to go back to work. I shall continue to dream for the lotto life!

A Noodle peering through the bushes.

In between enjoying myself I have also managed to fit in some quality agility training with young Lexi. Lexi is a funny little dog. She looks quite comical at the moment as all her coat has dropped out following her last litter of pups. She has these odd tufts of fur that stick out from different spots on her body. One thing that I have realised since she has come to live with us is that she has NO self/impulse control. If the cat moves she has to round it up. If a dog runs past her she has to chase it and nip it. If a person jogs past on the beach she runs after them and tries to nip them... Obsessing over Kenny was driving me nuts (not to mention poor Kenny) and telling her off was doing nothing. So I decided it was time to pull out some training skills and actually reinforce her for doing something good. It's amazing how lazy you get when all your other dogs are so well behaved. So we whipped out a mat and taught her the go to your mat game. Lexi is very food driven so it has taken no time at all to redirect her "lets round up the cat game" to going to her mat and lying there waiting for a treat. Now whenever we go and sit down she happily takes herself to the mat. Sooo much nicer than telling her off all the time, plus it actually works...

Pleeeeease let me round up the cat?

We have also commenced our 2 x 2 training. It's been twelve months now since I taught Sonic 2 x 2's so I had to whip out the DVD for a refresher on how quickly to add the next sets, move closer etc. Our first couple of attempts were pretty feeble so I was a little concerned that she wasn't going to get it. Lexi has never been taught any shaping so she has no real concept of offering behaviours. But after the first couple of goes the penny dropped and she has been moving forward very nicely. At this stage we are up to two sets about seven feet apart. She is managing some great angles into the entry so I'm hoping if all goes well in another week or so I should be able to transfer across to the straight poles. Other than that I've just been doing some figure eight work to build some jumping fitness with a few rear crosses thrown in being one of her weaker skills. Then just some two on two off work on a down plank. To be honest her skill level appears pretty good. I'll be very interested to see how she goes at proper training next week.

Throw the ball, throw the ball, throw the ball!!!

Riot doing his best Zoolander impression.

Sonic does not approve of me training other dogs. Apparently he is the only one who should have agility privileges in this house. After a session with Lexi yesterday I got him out to do a couple of minutes of figure eight work and he was flying! It was like he was trying to show me that he is much better so I should only be training him! I can imagine he will be very excited about going back to training next week. I'm pleased that he's had a really good break. I think it's been very good for him.

Huey, Duey and Louie

2009 Looking Back

2009-12-31T13:58:00.001+08:00

And so we come to the end of 2009. There were many, many great things about 2009 but the loss of Angel earlier this month has certainly put a lot of them into perspective and changed a small part of everyone in our house.

We are slowly putting our mark on our fantastic new property. The dogs are definately so much happier living with all this space. There is no longer the pressure to keep them entertained all the time as they get so much from just being here. I think there is a new calmness to all of them.

I'll have loads to work on starting as soon as the New Year is here. Lexi is coming to stay with me for the next six months or so. We thought it would be really great to get her ready for the Nationals in 2010. She was doing so well at agility before she headed back off on maternity leave and it seemed a shame to call it quits on her agility career just yet. Having her living with us will make it much easier for me to straighten out a few of her little training issues that were bugging me when I was trialling her before. Plus I can get her really fit really quickly. I'm totally unfit right now and Sonic's fitness isn't great either so I plan on doing a couple of days of normal agility training plus a couple of nights a week down the beach jogging. Murphy and Soda won't be able to come as this won't be the usual relaxed weekend paddle, I mean running up and down the beach and getting some serious exercise. From past experience I'm well aware that it's not just the dogs that need to get fit. Running Nationals requires a lot of energy and you need to be at your peak to get through them successfully. It will be the first year in a while that I expect to be running two competitive dogs with about ten runs on each day of the Nationals.

As to Sonic's first year of agility trialling, I'm pretty happy. There has without a doubt been lots of ups and downs. He went through the levels extremely quickly. Looking back my only regret is that I probably should have just left him in Excellent until the end of the year. But on the other hand he was managing the Excellent courses really well so until you put them into Masters, you don't really know how they are going to cope. His actual performance of obstacles is going really well and he is completing the dog walk, A-frame and weavers at a very competitive speed. He has dropped over half a second on his weaver performance in the last month alone. I'm also happy with his see-saw in that he is getting really confident however I'm not sure that I truly like the performance so we'll work on that in the New Year. The biggest issue I have is Sonic's ground speed which is by far our weakest area. I do think he'll speed up between his obstacles when his confidence grows but I know that we will need to do a fair bit of work on improving his drive between obstacles when we get back to training. With the speed of some of Perth's top dogs I need to get Sonic driving out of his corners and turns much harder.

Once 2010 is with us all eyes turn to the Agility Nationals which are being held in Perth between 29th April and 2nd May. I'm really looking forward to it and for Sonic to compete at that level for the first time. I don't have huge aspirations in that he's going to be winning any finals. I think that is way too much to ask of a two and a half year old and it is just going to be too early in his agility career to be competitive with some of Australia's top dogs. It always been apparent that all the dogs from his litter are going to be late maturers in many ways. We really need much more time to develop our team work and general skills before seriously being able to hit it with the big guns. I would think that in 2012 he will be a force to be reaconed with. Doesn't mean we're not going to give it a red hot go though. It is also great to catch up with some of the interstaters that I only normally see at Nationals and I love watching dogs from all around Australia coming together to pit their skills against each other. One not so bad things about not making finals is being able to watch the other dogs without the stress of your own runs coming up. Obviously I'd still rather make finals though...

I put together some footage of some of Sonic's runs over the year, spanning Novice right through to when he first got into the Masters class. I love being able to look back on his first runs through to now and see how much he has grown and developed in the last ten months. But now it's time to say goodbye to 2009 and bring on 2010!

Moving On

2009-12-22T11:18:00.005+08:00

Angel - One of my favourite photos showing the joy she felt for life

There are so many things I miss about Angel. Most are only little things. The silly growling noise that Angel made when she impatiently waited for her dinner. Her favourite spot under the patio when it was treat time before I went to work. Always the first to bark when she heard me open the gate when I got home from work. If she thought a trip in the car was coming up she'd whinge and shriek in excitement. Obsessively chasing her father down the beach. Now all cherished memories.

I never would have thought that a house of four dogs would feel empty, but without her it does. I have lots of regrets and if onlys. The night we lost her it felt like the world transpired against us so that I wasn't able to protect and save her like I wanted to be able to. But with that comes the things that I know I could give her while she was with me, hopefully in some way making up for her first two years of hell. If I still lived at my old house I feel certain that she would still be with us but she loved our new house with all it's space so much and I will always smile when I remember her belting up the driveway in hot pursuit of the other dogs. Out of all my dogs I think that Sonic has missed her the most. They used to play a lot and he was very quiet for the first couple of days after she'd gone.

Agility has played a very secondary role since then. I finally loaded up Sonic's last two trials of 2009.

The first one is from ACWA's midweek trial. Sonic was totally HYPER. It was a lot more low key trial being that it was midweek and only two rings running instead of the normal four. I'd say that it felt like a normal training night for him so added to his extra enthusiasm as he is still a lot more confident at training than at a trial. He had a clear run in Masters Agility but it wasn't one of our greatest runs. The three almost off courses cost us a lot in time.... Open Agility was a lovely course and he was able to really run on. Unfortunately he went off course on the second obstacle after crossing behind me (BAD Sonic) however he was flying around, squealling as he went. Quite frankly I'd rather he run full on and make mistakes as opposed to slow and clear. It is really exciting that he is getting much more confident on the equipment.

The Doberman Club trial ended up being our last trial of the year. Once again a clear round alluded us but on the up side his obstacle performance is getting much faster on a consistent basis and he is really up and happy when in the ring. So we are still looking for an improvement in our team work on course and the handler skills but it is being a very enjoyable journey as we attempt to get there.

Angel

2009-12-13T20:31:00.005+08:00

This afternoon I lost my little Angel.

I felt guilty after a weekend of commitments so rather than go to the agility trial tonight I decided to treat the dogs to a trip down the beach. It has been so hot all weekend it seemed the best place to be. All the dogs jumped in the car very excited at the prospect of going out. It only took fifteen minutes to get to the beach, but when I opened the back of the ute, Angel was lying down and appeared to be convulsing. I grabbed her out to see what was wrong but she was clearly struggling. We put her on Colin's lap in the front and drove to Murdoch as fast as we could. As we got closer I knew we were losing her. When we got to Murdoch we rushed her straight in but she was already blue. They tried desperately to revive her but were unable.

We've brought her home so we can bury her on the property. Tomorrow I'm going to find somewhere special just for her.

She was such a gorgeous girl. She came to me as a two year old with lots of problems after starting out as a show dog, living in kennels. She was literally scared of her own shadow. In the last seven years she had blossomed into such a lovely girl. She always carried the mental scars that had developed from those first two years, but as soon as she trusted you she was your friend for life. She did a little bit of agility which helped to build her confidence and reminded me of a ballerina as she danced around the course. But first and foremost she was our pet who loved nothing more than a cuddle and to play with the other dogs.

We will miss her so much.

RIP Angel
8/01/2000 - 13/12/2009

ADAA

2009-12-07T23:10:00.001+08:00

Sonic & I competed in our second ADAA trial on Saturday night and once again enjoyed some lovely courses, this time courtesy of Nat Kirkwood and Tracey Harrison-Hill. I entered him in eight events for the evening but decided to withdraw him from one of the Regular Open A Jumping classes as I felt it required too much interference from me with all the changes of direction. There was absolutely nothing wrong with the course, just not what I want him running until I feel his confidence grows. All the other courses where very open and flowing with changes of direction where I could be in front, that allowed me to easily redirect him without stopping his forward momentum to do it. His rear crosses, if on a tight angle, are a bit dodgy so I’m inclined to avoid those until I can do a lot more skill work on them. They surficed for Novice and Excellent, but not really adequate for tight Masters courses.

Sonic ran on beautifully for most runs and showed me some lovely shortening of stride when asked to corner tight. His weavers were strong and I made the most of getting in front to help encourage him to drive forward. He popped out of one set when Nat came up behind him and he caught her out the corner of his eye. Obviously he wasn’t focused enough on his job at the time. I just brought him back around and redid them without any drama. In that particular run I wasn’t able to get very far in front and I did think he was slower through the weavers so clearly getting him to drive through his weavers when I’m behind him is something that we need to continue working on to improve. Other than that the main problem was dropped bars. A few of those came down when he was trying to bounce jump and just didn’t quite reach far enough. I never train him on anything other than 500mm so I have to take some responsibility for it.

I have to say I do really enjoy handling an ADAA course. They are generally much more naturally open and flowing than a lot of what we see in ANKC. So often a Masters ANKC course includes a lot of pulling and pushing to get your dog around as opposed to natural bends that simply require a well placed front cross or serpentine. Speaking of serpentines I made a big botch of one in the last class that I ran Sonic in. I got him to come around onto the jump without any problems but Sonic continued on straight past me to go to a tunnel. By the time I got him to turn back he had put himself back behind the bar and back jumped it. At the time I thought that Sonic had missed my cue, but when I watched the video back I can clearly see that my cue for him to turn after the serpentine was soooo late that he had every right to think that his next obstacle was the tunnel in front of him, not the one to our right. Very BAD handler! He did some cracking weavers on the run home though so was far from a complete disaster.

We have a midweek trial this week for ACWA. They are valiantly trying to help raise funds for the National Agility Trial that is being held in Perth in 2010. It will feel weird going to a trial after work instead of training but I am looking forward to it. Then this weekend is going to be very busy. We have our two last ANKC agility trials for the year on Saturday and Sunday night and then Riot has in store appearances at the new Better Pets and Gardens store in Myaree on both those days. Riot hasn’t done any in stores for a while so will have to dust off his backpack and spruce him up to mingle with his adoring public!

Mmmmm...

2009-12-03T19:00:00.002+08:00

What can I say about mine and Sonic’s “attempt” at agility at last weekend’s trial? Cause it was a bit of a disaster to say the least. I finally forced myself to watch the video a couple of nights ago. I spent the first viewing cringing constantly. After I’d settled down from the initial visual trauma I was actually able to find some positive aspects from our runs. Firstly I think his weavers are getting faster. Secondly, he does have stretches on a course when he is really driving hard. Thirdly, the speed on four out of the six contact obstacles was pretty good.

So where are we going wrong at this point in time? He is as a general rule, training OK. I’ve been working pretty hard on improving his weaver entries and increasing his speed on the dog walk. I’ve had varying success with both. I’m being very picky with what performance I reward on his dog walk in that unless it’s fast we try again. If he gives me a good one he gets a high value reward. His weaver entries seem to fluctuate. His weakest side is near side entries where if he’s on a diagonal line he will often go into the second entry. Then I’ve been racing him through them to build some speed, which I think is working. One thing I do want to try is restrained recalls through the weavers.

I’ve been attempting to do a fair amount of jump drill work to build on our handling skills. He does have a pretty sound understanding of all the handling manoeuvres but as the sequences have gotten harder he has definitely struggled more and we make a lot more mistakes. I suspect that would be mainly attributed to more choice of obstacles and far less margin for error.

So, the million dollar question, how do we manage all this to get Sonic through this stage as unscathed as possible? The last thing I want to do is upset him and turn him off agility. One of the things I love about him is his love for agility and the joy in him when we are working together. I have contemplated pulling out of the Masters classes for a while. I have already entered the few remaining trials for this year, plus one is an ADAA event where he is only eligible for the less complicated classes so I will finish the year off as is. But next year perhaps entering Excellent and Open classes in the Not for Competition category may be the way to go until I can see that he is getting around a whole course full of confidence. Then put him back into Masters when he’s ready.

I think back to my first two dogs, Murphy and Soda. Both were very successful agility dogs, Soda in particular. I had no idea what I was doing so their training was pretty average and our poorly trained contacts haunted me their entire careers. It took me over a year to title both of them in Novice and another year and a half to get their Excellent titles. By the time they made it to Masters both were confident in the ring and we had a pretty good understanding of each other. In fact it wasn’t until Soda was five that she started winning on a regular basis. Poor Sonic made it to Masters within four months of entering his first trial. I thought because he had done it so easily that he would adapt to Masters really quickly, but that’s not the case at all. He is the youngest dog in the Masters class by about six months. I’m starting to believe that a dogs maturity plays a really big part in being a successful agility dog and we are so far from that right now it’s not even a blip on the horizon. I thought that as he ran in more Masters classes he would gain confidence but that is definitely not happening and clearly I made a wrong choice in what was best for him. So time to try something new!

To China and Back Again

2009-11-16T20:58:00.004+08:00

I swear I blink and I missed my holiday. After a day back at work it feels like I never left! However I do have some amazing memories that will stay with me and we had a fantastic time. China was like being on a different universe with the difference in culture. The comparison to living on 5 acres of land as opposed to the incredible high density housing that surrounded us in Shenzen and Chengdu (which has a population of over 11 million people) was extreme to say the least. It was pretty cool going out to these fantastic restaurants for dinner and being where there are hundreds of shops open late every night but on the down side I don’t enjoy not being able to see the sun through the haze of smog that covers the entire city and beyond. I could never live there. The traffic was insane with those ridiculous bikes with the little engines on them that you can’t hear absolutely everywhere. The first time you knew that they were close was when you were just about to get hit by one. I will certainly never moan about Perth traffic again. It was funny tonight that on TV the Today Tonight program was talking about how rude/inconsiderate Perth drivers are these days. I felt like calling them and telling them to go to China for a different perspective... My brother is the exact opposite though. He has lived in China for about ten years now and could never move back to Perth and the quiet life.

Two hours out of Chengdu and the smog doesn't get any better

Naturally I missed all of my furry family. There was a certain small enjoyment had in having no dependants for a couple of weeks but then I got to a point where I missed having a wet nose in my face waking me up in the morning. By the time we got home I couldn’t wait to go and pick them all up. Colin and I needed some padding to help cope with five over excited border collies bouncing off us in pure unrestrained joy but it was so great to have them back again. Kenny was a little more controlled but I was still met with a happy meow when I called his name to let him know I'd come to get him.

At the Panda Sanctuary

Last Saturday night was a trial run by the West Coast Rottweiler Club. I entered Sonic but I knew that our runs could be a bit dodgy with Sonic having been in kennels for the couple of weeks beforehand. As it happened it wasn’t all bad. Our first run was Masters Agility and his best run of the night. He was a little unsure of himself and a touch sticky on his contacts, but overall a solid run. He was only three seconds behind first place so considering that I stopped him on all his contacts it was a very good effort. In Open Jumping he was going well and made a really hard weaver entry but then popped out after the fourth pole. Masters Jumping was a really challenging course that I managed to get lost on. After coming around a corner I just could not pick the line that I needed. I actually managed to save us from a refusal and kept going but unfortunately he didn’t push out to a jump further on so we still managed to get a refusal. Open Agility was our last run and also our weakest. I felt that he was unfocused and a little tired so I just tried to make the best of it and keep him happy. He really hasn’t done a lot of agility lately so I think he is probably a bit agility unfit and lacks some confidence on the equipment.

The break I’ve had however has left me feeling fresh and ready to get some enthusiasm back into my agility. Tonight after work Sonic and I did some circle work out the back and then did some weaver entries. Both of us were revved up and had some real fun mucking around. I haven’t enjoyed it that much in ages.

The Old, Frail, Infirm and Just Plain Uncoordinated...

2009-10-29T20:28:00.014+08:00

So we know that the Noodle is deaf as a post and now it would appear that Kenneth the Karate Kat is as blind as a bat. He probably lost his sight a while ago but because we’d been in the same house for five years he knew exactly where everything was. Now Kenny’s in a new house things aren’t quite so easy for him. Mind you it is remarkable how well an animal can get around without having any sight. Our first tip off was a few too many bumps into the coffee table, an inability to find his way back into the house if we let him go for a walk outside and consistently running into his dinner bowl at dinner time. It's still hard to come to terms with the fact that my beautiful animals are getting old.

Ahhh, when they were but babes 1997....Murphy (14 weeks) & Kenny (18 months)

Then we have the uncoordinated members of the household. Sonic, who has no excuse, (other than being young and hyperactive and never looks where he’s going) slammed into a plastic rubbish bin at training last week. I ducked/braced/grimaced for him prior to impact but it didn’t help. He kind of ricocheted back off it and as per usual form, kept right on going. Riot, who has a penchant for walking backwards and not looking where he’s going, reversed into the patio support. Unfortunately for him, they are metal and I suspect a rather large headache followed. He was quite dazed afterwards. Not to be left out, Noodle bounced backwards (as she likes to do, much to my ongoing distress) and straight into the very same metal patio support, very hard. You rarely hear her so much as wince, but she cried while her front leg dangled uselessly underneath her. I had a major freak out moment but after carrying her inside and icing her shoulder, she seemed to be OK. Then lastly, the poor Murphster (the most uncoordinated of the lot) copped it. Not his fault, his body just doesn’t quite work the way it used to. Following another incident of not looking where he’s going, Sonic ran straight into the poor old bugger who happened to be standing in front of another metal patio post. Murph’s legs went straight out from underneath him and straight into the pole. He was Ok though, just a little sore. I’ve been contemplating taping old pillows around the posts so they’re padded like football goal posts seeing as my dogs don't want to look after themselves.

Murphy ( at 5 months of age) with his best mate "da Noodle" Soda (at 7 months of age) 1997

Agility right now is pretty quiet for us. I’ve only been to two trials since the Royal. I guess it’s a combination of being busy at the new house, being too hot or just because it’s coming to the end of the year and both Sonic and I could use a break. We have actually managed two Masters Jumping passes since he moved into the class in July. Sonic has had some really nice runs with only small errors to big disasters that were pretty rubbish from start to end. Of late our biggest break down is he isn’t reading my positional cues AT ALL... I can be standing completely stationary on course, next to the obstacle that I want to turn him onto, and he has just blasted straight past me. About three or four strides later he stops and looks at me with a “what are you doing over there” expression. I do think that if he spent more time paying attention and less giving me a mouthful of cheek, it might be working out a bit better! Masters Agility has been pretty much more of the same. Open has been a little more successful with a few passes in Agility and Jumping. Both titles shouldn’t be too far away. His contacts have been pretty good though since the Royal which I’m very happy with.

He is still my beautiful boy even with the grey eye lashes! (Murphy 2009)

So, what is the plan? The rest of this year will be a wind down for us. I go overseas on holiday at the end of this week which means I miss four trials while I’m away. Then I think there are only a few trials left to take us to the end of the year. I will probably enter them but my focus will be on confidence with him in the ring rather than worrying overly much on high level skills. He will then have about five to six weeks of no agility at all. So I would say that at the end of January it will be time to bring him back in with all eyes on preparation for the Nationals in Perth at the end of April 2010. I have to say that I am VERY glad we get six months in Masters before the Nationals. At this point we certainly need all the experience we can get!

Noodle relaxing at home in the sun 2009.

I have also been lucky enough to secure a working spot at the Lynda Orton-Hill seminar in Victoria next year. I missed the last one and I was extremely keen to make it this time round. This seminar for me will be all about improving my skills as a dog trainer. Lynda is doing some handling workshops as well but given that seminars aren’t cheap I think that focusing on dog training is the most important thing for me. In general most seminars that are organised do tend to be more handling related so it will be brilliant to just focus on how to improve my understanding of how to get the best from my dogs. In particular building contact behaviours and building drive around the course. I have SOOOO many questions to ask!

Kenny's house. Is anyone game enough to tell him it's a dog crate???

Being on 5 acres of bush does bring a few concerns about snakes. We've done what we can to make the backyard as snake proof as possible for all the dogs. Thank goodness so far we've not seen any sign of the slithery creepy suckers however our friendly neighbourhood bob-tails are a regular fixture. Appartently not to be thwarted by five border collies they make a daily pilgramige into our backyard. Angel is the only one who pays any attention to them at all with some serious attempts at rounding them up. The bob-tails don't seem to care.

A local enjoying the sun.

Now I have to show off about my NEW CAR. It is lovely and will shortly be transformed into a dog transportation vehicle. The hardest thing is controlling the lead foot...

Beauuuutiful...so shiney and new.

Sonic's first Royal Show

2009-09-29T18:34:00.002+08:00

It's been another crazy few weeks since my last post. We have now all settled into the new digs and my new internet connection is finally up and running. The dogs seem extremely happy and play endless catch me if you can games up and down our nice long rural driveway. Even Kenny the Karate Cat seems impressed with his new surroundings. I thought he'd be slinking around for weeks, hiding in dark corners, but by the first evening he was wandering around checking things out. Sonic is loving it. Every night he is curled up on his favourite lounge in front of the fire by 7pm. No more hyperactive puppy still trying to convince someone to play with him at 9pm at night!

Last weekend brought us to the 2009 Perth Royal Show. I was pretty undecided about entering this year. It can be such a pain with the yearly circus involved getting cars in and out, loading and unloading, not to mention the expense. On the plus side I always love the opportunity to watch all the other dogs competing and there is no way to replicate that type of environment. Its a small space that we have for the event, the ring ropes are always lined with masses of people with show bags, stuffed toys and it's very noisey. Bottom line is, if they can cope in that environment, they should be able to cope anywhere!

I entered Sonic in six runs over two days which kicked off with Teams Jumping, Teams Agility, then both Open Classes and both Masters Classes. We actually had quite a few agility bloopers between the two of us. Sonic managed to not hold a dog walk contact all weekend, fell off the side of the see saw, crept forward on more than one start line and missed one weaver entry. I managed to come up with some mediocre handle manouvres including a failed attempt at a serpentine that I thought I could make and didn't... However, even with all that STILL managed to get five clear rounds out of six!

My favourite class of the weekend was most definately the Masters Jumping class both to compete in and watch. The course was designed by Des Coyles from South Australia and was a nice change of pace from some of the very technical courses we have been seeing here of late. It was open and flowing but still plenty of things that could go wrong. One thing for certain was it was going to be FAST. The 600 height went first which meant seeing Domino run it. And run it he did. It was incredible to watch and I feel confident in saying that there wouldn't have been a dog in Australia that could have gotten around that course faster. It was truly jaw dropping to watch. The top 10 dogs were all within 2 seconds of each other. I am pleased to say that Sonic came in in seventh place behind Domino, Sage and Bryn, closely followed by Diva, Cuba and Smudge. All very fast dogs and I'm mighty pleased that Sonic at the tender age of 2 years old was up there with some of Perth's fastest dogs.

For the third year running, our team "The Masters & The Apprentices" took out the Jumping Teams competition. We also came second in the Agility Teams. The team this year was made up of Kriszty & Jess (who came out for a final run before "official" retirement), Simone & Cypher and me with Sonic and Riot. Terra was meant to be in the team but unfortunately has hurt her toe so Kriszty made the sensible decision to withdraw her. It meant a bit more stress for me because I had no idea how Riot was going to go. As it happened Riot did the most amazing Jumping run and although not quite as spiffy, I managed to get him round the agility run reasonabley unscathed.

I suppose I may enter again next year :-)

What is tired?

2009-09-12T19:32:00.005+08:00

What do you get after a rather silly two year old border collie spends an afternoon on five acres of bush?

A very tired, silly border collie.

And what does that mean?

A VERY peaceful evening...

The "official" move-in day for me and the dogs (and Kenny) to Wellard is Monday. Everything is more or less packed up and ready to go. I did enter a trial tomorrow but with the double today at Gosnells and a lot still to get ready for Monday's move I've decided to give it a miss. Plus I really want to sleep in tomorrow cause I'm very tired!

Today's trial at Gosnells was interesting. All the Masters courses were quite tricky and I'm quite happy to admit, a bit too hard for Sonic at this stage. Even though he understands my body cues pretty well, there is so much choice available he isn't responding nearly as well as I'd like. As per normal our runs tended to get better as the day progressed. His first run is consistenty awful, but I think it's because he's so over excited that his brain and body are not working as one and he certainly isn't listening to me! Even though his Masters runs aren't particularly impressive at the moment he is having a blast and I think they are great experience for him. The day however did provide one saving grace with a really nice big flowing Open Agility class with a very doable distance challenge with no layering involved (hooray). With all the complicated handling required in the Masters classes it was a great opportunity to let Sonic stretch out and kick up his heels. He flew around the course full of confidence and presented me with our first win in open company beating a couple of our very competitive border collies. It was quite a surprise and a very pleasant one at that!

I've been giving a bit of thought on how to help get Sonic up to Masters standard. I don't believe that running him in Masters is doing him any harm because he's having a ball everytime he's out there. I don't think that running him back at Excellent level is going to achieve anything as doing easier courses won't help him develop stronger skills. I just need to help him not get so overwhelmed by all the choices on course and focus on where I'm telling him to go. So I think grids, grids and more grids will be on the training agenda. I'm going to copy down the courses from today so I can set bits of them up at training over the next few weeks. Now I just have to hope that spring decides to finally bless us with it's presence and this awful, crappy winter weather to go away!!

Sonic the feral bush dog

2009-08-24T19:47:00.007+08:00

The process of moving down to the new house has begun. Colin has pretty much settled in now and I'll join him when the new fences go up. Its amazing being down there. There is so much space, there are birds everywhere and it's so peaceful.

The older dogs ran around a lot to begin with but by Sunday were happy to lie around the house while Colin and I unpacked boxes. NOT Sonic. Sonic is fairly calm these days around my house. He occasionally gets a bit hyper when he's running around with Riot, but generally he's happy to chill.

NOT at the new house. From the second he gets out of the car he's off and running. Nothing stops him and should anyone get in his way he simply launches himself straight over the top irrespective of what is in front of him (looking where your going is overrated anyway...) Landing on his feet is optional. I spend most of my time calling his name in exasperation as he comes flying past from any direction looking like he's going to break his neck (or someone elses) at any moment. But he does not care one hoot and I must admit that he bounces well for one so slight. So far his only apparent injury is a graze under his elbow and a chunk of fur removed where he bounced off a timber railing on one of the garden paths (Angel and I thoughtlessly got in his way).

I didn't train at all last week because of the impending move. The weather was also pretty appalling and the Dogs West grounds a lake. I wasn't too concerned about missing some training cause Sonic has been going pretty well.

We had a fundraising trial on Sunday morning and it was a fairly unpleasant day. We were lucky enough to miss most of the rain but there was an extremely cold wind blowing that went straight through you. The bottom oval was still looking like a lake so the trial was moved to the top oval. It was less sodden but because the grass is so much thinner some parts were like a skating rink. I lost count of how many competitors went arse over. Sonic's first run was Open Jumping on one of the worst parts of the ground and with the angles being quite tight I gave up trying to get Sonic around. He was clearly uncomfortable with the footing so I let him pick his own course. Masters Agility was better with Sonic getting through the hardest bits and then going past the middle of a serpentine AGAIN! Guess what I'll be working on this week. Open Agility was a text book run for a nice clear round. Masters Jumping was interesting. He missed my pull through cue and continued on to the wrong end of a tunnel early on. After that I revved him up and he handled the rest of it like a pro. It was a weird day. I wasn't really feeling 100% into it and Sonic felt a bit off. However looking back at the video we both look a lot better than I felt out there. We have a weekend off now which will good. We still have so much to do at the new house, plus get my house ready to move out of.

So my latest training list is, weavers, serpentines and start lines (little bugger was shifting the butt on the weekend. Just when you think you have something sorted...).

Weaver wobbles

2009-08-19T06:21:00.003+08:00

Last weekend saw our last trip to Geraldton for the year for two days of agility trialing. It was another early morning as Kriszty, Terra, Sonic and I hit the Brand Highway to try and make the first agility class by 11am. Masters Agility, which was our first event of the day appeared "interesting" on the walk through but unfortunately not in a good way. Obstacles were on angles that beared no logic and I was somewhat concerned about Sonic's first foray into the Masters Agility class. Sonic also seemed unusually quiet which I thought wasn't a good sign, but as he'd been in the car since 5.15am not that surprising. As it happened Sonic didn't do too badly but although moving out at a reasonable speed he seemed unfocused and wasn't reading my body as well as he normally would. He also seemed really unbalanced in the weavers and missed both entries on his first attempt as well as banging into a weaver on one run through.

The Masters & Open Jumping classes saw a different judge and thankfully a big improvement in the course design. Sonic had a bit of a break and seemed a bit brighter in the afternoon. I also spent some extra time warming him up to see if I could get him more focused and settled. I'm not sure if that was what helped or not but his Masters Jumping run was fantastic and if not for my poor position on the second last jump, would have been his first clear round in Masters Jumping. Time wise he was about 2 seconds off the class winner who incidently was Kriszty and Terra. Open was a really nice course also but the distance challenge involved layering so I chose to run over the line. This time Sonic was all set to nail the weaver entry but slipped as he went into them which clearly worried him so he stopped and we had to reattempt. Other than that it was a strong run.

That night we all headed off to bed nice and early and I did not hear a peep out of Sonic from 8.30pm through to 5.30am. Clearly he needed a good night sleep! We got to the trialling grounds early enough to take them for a nice walk and give them time to settle. First up again was Masters, followed by Open Agility. Sonic was "up" to say the least and after squawking like a crazy thing at the dog before us was ready and rearing to go. It was a pretty good run with our biggest problem being weavers AGAIN. Sonic totally missed the entry and took another couple of attempts to get going. Next up was Open Agility where we finally achieved our first and only clear round of the weekend. It was a good run with a tricky weaver entry, that although not perfect, we got through.

After agility it was the Masters & Open Jumping classes. We had our judge back who had an affinity for angles that should never be seen on an agility field so I was unsure how the young fella would handle things. Sonic was still nice and fresh, sitting in the car anxiously waiting his go. I was really interested to see how Sonic handled the course as there was a couple of places where he would need to go from flat out to tight turn very quickly. As it happened it was a great run. The weirdest thing was that for the second time we missed the second last jump! Unfortunately I thought he'd committed to the serpentine cue but at the last minute he went straight past. The last event of the weekend was Open Jumping and I think it was the best run of the two days. Sadly he knocked a bar.

On reflection of all the runs the biggest weakness that we had was definately the weavers. When he wasn't missing the entry he seemed unbalanced and struggled to get any rhythm. Kriszty was teasing me that Sonic hasn't been through the novice dog crappy weaver stage yet that most young dogs seem to go through so perhaps this is our time. Clearly I need to do some work with him on the weavers to help build his confidence back up. They have never been his strongest obstacle so guess I'll have to work on changing that. The only other thing that stood out for me was that he was a little unsure of following my body around the course. I could feel him as he landed after a jump shifting all over the place. I really look forward to the day when he can just check in with me briefly and know where it is that he needs to be. But I guess that's just part of the journey that we're on.

This weekend we are back to trialling at the Canine Grounds for the first time in a month. I haven't made it to training all week as Colin and I are mid move to the new house. I took all the dogs down the the property last night and they had a great time running around through the bush. They were all pretty excited. I think they are going to be pretty happy when I finally move down there for good.

Happy Birthday

2009-08-04T18:05:00.004+08:00

Sonic is two years old today. It seems like only yesterday that I was excitedly waiting to hear if Sally had given birth. Sonic however still shows no desire to act his age, prefering to behave more like a six month old! I'm very much looking forward to what the next twelve months brings and I know that I'm going to have a whole heap of fun with him.

Photo by Star Creations (thanks Mike!)

Masters agility here we come!

2009-07-26T14:01:00.002+08:00

I am very please to announce that Sonic achieved his last leg of Excellent Agility at the GSDA Agility trial yesterday afternoon. We started the day with a run in Masters Jumping and I was thrilled with it. He powered around the course full of confidence and the only reason he didn't go clear was me! He's been running a bit wide of my shoulder lately so I pulled my shoulder round further than normal after a rear cross. He was being so responsive that all I managed to do was pull him too far and off the jump I needed him to take. I also managed to complete ALL my front crosses LATE! One in particular cost me quite a wide turn. I really have to keep on top of those and work very hard on getting my timing right to start my turn when he's taking off for the jump, NOT when he's landed.... BAD handler.

His Excellent Agility run was fantastic. His dog walk was the fastest he's done in a trial so far. I timed him from the video at 1.97secs which is right up with our best dogs. He couldn't even hold his two on two off on the end. He did stop however (just without his back legs touching the walk) and I was happy to let him go. The weaver entry was tough and he totally nailed it. It was a great run to finish off his title.

I am just so proud of him. At the tender age of 1 year and 23 months he has made it up to the big boys class. We have a long way to go but each week I see him improve a little bit more as his behaviours strengthen and grow. I can't wait for the day when I can let him run through his contacts and really see what he's got in the tank but the bigger picture is too important to me. I have no doubt that the wait will be worth it.

Rain rain go away

2009-07-22T20:40:00.003+08:00

Another trip to Geraldton was had last weekend with some positive runs and interesting learning curves involved for both Sonic and I. We had two Victorian judges in Ray Ashman and Trevor Moore alternating the Agility and Jumping classes over the two days. I really enjoyed all the courses that were set. They were challenging but not unreasonable and once again it was great to compete under some different judges. It was also Sonic’s very first attempt at Masters Jumping.

I was on the road at 5.30am on the Saturday morning, and after collecting Kriszty and Terra, arrived in Geraldton at the agility trial grounds about 10.30am. We had a pretty good run on the road and we were all feeling ready to go after getting out of the car and stretching our legs. Sonic’s agility runs on Saturday were really focused and confident and saw us achieve our only clear round for the weekend in the Excellent Agility class. On Sunday Sonic was a little distracted and although his runs weren’t bad by any stretch, he just wasn’t quite as with it as he was on Saturday. It was a shame as the Open distance challenges were very reasonable for a change instead of the “Gamble” that we often see from some of our local judges.

Just to be different Sonic’s jumping runs were better on Sunday than they were on Saturday. His Masters runs were really fun and the mistakes purely due to inexperience. Now that there are so many more jumps, naturally there are many more choices. We need to work on our grids and I need to help Sonic to understand what my body is telling him to a much finer degree. Masters means team work with a capital “T” and it takes more than 5 months of competing to develop a team with your dog on an agility course!

The other achievement for the weekend was definite reduction in Sonic’s bum sliding. I think I only saw him have one start line fidget in eight classes. Fingers crossed we have managed to eliminate that little problem.

Training of late has been a scaled down affair. I don’t know whether everyone needs a break or it’s too wet and cold for the usual suspects to want to leave the comfort of their homes. Either way with not many bodies at training means that not a lot of equipment gets put up so it is a bit restrictive on what you can work on. I’m still getting as much grid work in as possible but I’d really like to continue working on improving our contact performances too. I am sooooo looking forward to moving in to our new 5 acre property and having my own equipment to knock myself out on at home whenever I want!

Things on my radar for the next couple of months are building on his motivation so I fully intend to spend quite a bit more time doing small grids with high level reinforcement with a toy. I think it’s a tool that I'm underutilising and seeing as I have such a toy driven dog, it is important that I incorporate it to a higher degree when I’m rewarding a performance. Especially with the contacts and weavers. Then I would hope to see some more drive off the ground over a period of time as the value of the toy is transferred to those pieces of equipment. Well that’s the plan anyway... Now I just have to hope it stops raining long enough for the training grounds to dry out and to get a decent night of training in!

Finding some motivation

2009-07-05T18:25:00.005+08:00

Well I have to admit I was a bit of whimp again this week. Tuesday was wet and yuck so my motivation to head to training was nil to zero. So the lounge won yet again... Wednesday night was cold but it was seriously time to get off my lazy butt and I headed down to at least get some agility training done. I spent most of my time working on the see saw as well as some basic grid work. I wanted to do some dog walk training but everyone wanted to pack up early so I didn't quite have time to get to it. We also spent some valuable time reinforcing startlines!

Today I went to a trial hosted by Cloverdale Canine Companions. We had a beautiful day for it and as usual for Cloverdale, the trial was well run and finished in good time. Our last few trials have been double headers so the day felt like it was over very quickly, although we had the rare addition of a games event in Snooker. I only entered the Excellent classes plus his first ever Novice Snooker class. It was an interesting day. We didn't manage any clear rounds, but once again I was really pleased with his efforts. Sonic gave me some nice drive off the ground and he looked quite confident and comfortable on all the courses. The mistakes were only minor and really just part of us getting more familiar with each other on course. I think in the future I will start to enter the Open classes. Unfortunately most of our judges love to set up layering in Open and I refuse to layer, however even if I don't like the Open challenge and run over the line to complete it, it's still an extra run under his belt that I think will only benefit him.

Now for some extra special news. We have finally purchased our very own five acre property. It has a gorgeous house on it with a really nice backyard for the dogs. The only thing that we will have to do is clear some area for my training patch as the rest of the property is bush. It's very private, with not a neighbour in site. The dogs are going to LOVE it (as will we)!

What an Excellent boy

2009-06-28T18:20:00.003+08:00

It's been a very quiet couple of weeks for us in agility. My post last weekend about my cat probably an obvious clue! The weather has been pretty horrible here in Perth. In past years bad weather hasn't been enough to deter me from training, but this last week the decision between warm lounge vs oval and rain was an easy one. Sonic has been working pretty hard this year so having a week off from agility for him certainly isn't a bad thing anyway.

It was Gosnells Dog Clubs turn on the weekend to run a double header and I entered Sonic in all four Excellent level classes. The weather was crap with wind and rain all day. It really was quite unpleasant. Sonic and I had an OK day but the morning saw some serious arse creeping going on. However I was weak and I let it go (hanging my head in shame). The afternoon I had a bit of a think about what damage I was doing and I decided that it was time to blow runs if necessary to put a stop to it. Our first event was jumping with Sonic running the course really well, but unfortunately had one bar down. Next up we had agility with a course that was not the easiest I've seen, but Sonic actually handled it really well. I wasn't thrilled with his contacts and independance on his dog walk is something that I really want to do some work on. Unless I'm in front he is slowing down quite a lot. The refusal that he got on course however was entirely my fault. I put in a front cross before the weavers and didn't realise until it was too late I was almost on top of them when I turned. I doubt he would even have seen them let alone found the entry!

The afternoon saw our performances improve somewhat (no start line creep in jumping) with a really nice run in jumping giving us a clear round and the last leg of his Excellent Jumping title. Not a bad effort for a dog who is not quite 23 months of age. I still don't think he's ready for Masters though... Agility was also a better run in my opinion, but he did a BIG start line creep and I ended up having to go back to him four times before he stayed put. Obviously after the first time I went back to him I DQ'd us, but as it happened he did an off course. So even more pleased that I bit the bullet and didn't let him get away with blowing his criteria on the start line. His contacts were better and I felt it was the best see saw he's done so far in a competition.

So my immediate decision is what to enter him in for the next few trials. I'll be leaving him in Excellent Jumping next weekends trial. After that is Geraldton so I may put him into the Masters class to see how he fares. If he doesn't handle it well then I will do some Not For Competition runs back in Excellent until I think he's mature enough. I'm really not sure whether to run him in Masters and just let him grow in confidence with experience or if leaving him at the same level will encourage the confidence. I shall have to ponder some more.

A big thanks to Kriszty for filling in as videographer extrordanaire for the day. Colin was unable to come to the trial so it was great to still be able to get Sonic's runs on tape.

Kenny the karate kat

2009-06-22T20:42:00.015+08:00

Hello. My name is Kenny. To people who don't know me I'm a cute and fluffy kitty cat.

I live in a house with five border collies. People who don't know me feel sorry for me. Imagine a poor little kitty cat having to put up with so many big scary dogs!

If only they knew.....WOAHA HA HA HA HA HA

In my spare time I enjoy eating, sleeping and torturing border collies. Especially when I'm really pissed off. If my human is being rude and dares to give me my dinner late, I indiscriminately bash the closest one. I love the way that they scatter like frightened rabbits when they see me coming.

OH THE POWER!

Tonight my mean and nasty human has kicked my big fat furry butt off the lounge chair. She said something about her arm going to sleep. Damn useless woman. The lounge chair arm rest is my favourite spot in winter and you need a crow bar to detach my backside from it. Normally it's the only reason that I have anything to do with my human (unless she's giving me my dinner of course). But when it's cold I pretend I actually like her by snuggling up real close so I can leech as much body warmth from her as possible. I pretend that we're bonding. Humans are so stupid!

No problem. Didn't want to sit there anyway. My human has these lovely warm beds all over the house for me. The flea bags think they are for them but that just couldn't be possible. Everyone knows it's all about me. I'll have to whip out my special intimidation skills and drive the flea bags away.

Ha, the old brown one! He's normally off like a shot when he sees me coming.

Damn it! He's not moving.

Mmmmm. That ones not moving either. Grrrrrr!

What's going on!!!! The flea bags must fear me...

Well I'm definately not getting up there. The human calls that the "dogs" lounge. I call it the local slum. I can smell the big show-off flea bag from here. I could be on TV too if I wanted!

Blast, that young and annoying whipersnapper's not moving either. Why are my powers eluding me???

Fine. I'll let this one with the silly red pyjamas share with me. But I'm letting EVERYONE know that I'm not happy about this and I'm staying in the furthest possible corner in case I get flea bag germs!

Just wait evil flea bags. There will be retribution for this. Tomorrow, when it's not as cold and I'm not so desperate, you'd better RUN.

Finding our horsepower

2009-06-14T19:53:00.005+08:00

The Agility Club of WA held it's double header today. We were back at the Dog's West grounds so that was a relief after last weeks distractions at Northern Suburbs. Children zipping around on scooters were no where to be seen! Sonic had some nice runs today but we only ended up with the one qualifying card.

First up we had Excellent Jumping which was a fairly reasonable course but had a couple of fairly "challenging" angles and a couple of nasty traps. Sonic made a pretty good fist of it but came unstuck at the second of the two traps, going over a jump instead of straight into a tunnel. Next up was an Excellent Agility course which was a nice open flowing course. Sonic handled it really well other than thinking the dog walk was the see saw, but unfortunately knocked a couple of bars in his haste.

The afternoon saw another tricky Excellent Jumping course with tough off entry tunnels and more tight lines. This was by far our crappiest run of the day but I did rush him into the ring after clashing with Lexi in Masters Agility. I didn't feel that he was near focused enough and to me it showed in this performance. Lastly we had our second Excellent Agility run. This was again a really nice flowing course and finally Sonic and I managed our first clear run of the day.

I came away feeling really positive about his performances today. He is definitely getting more drive off the ground and I thought he was noticeably faster in a couple of his classes. Fortunately this hasn't had any detrimental affect to his skill level (other than the arse creeping on the start line...) He is generally reading my body very well and is always tight around his corners. Sonic is also getting even more vocal as he goes around the course so quite clearly he is really enjoying himself. I still feel that he has lots more speed in him but I've always been slightly paranoid that although he is extremely high drive you never are guaranteed that the drive they have for general stuff will translate into the agility ring. I was reading Susan Garrett's blog yesterday and she actually writes about speed in your young dog. Part of her article says;

"You shouldn't want your novice dogs to be frantically grabbing obstacles, squirreling around like mad. The power and the speed will come, but the time spent working on the finesse will pay off down the road. It is far easier to teach collection and thoughtfulness to your young dog before they realize they are equipped with a 400 horsepower engine and a set of Pireili tires– then after!".

It is always a relief to me to hear someone of her calibre say that. It reassures my faith in the path I've taken with Sonic. For those of you who haven't been to Susan blog, I recommend a read.

Sonic and the Scooter Child

2009-06-07T19:06:00.008+08:00

Sonic and I had a fairly quiet time at training this last week. With the ADAA three day trial last weekend I think most people were too exhausted to head out to training and stayed home to rest instead. I managed to do one night of see saw work with Sonic and the rest of it was spent doing jump grid work. I had hoped to work more on his other contacts but unfortunately it didn't happen. I have to admit though it was nice to have a couple of early training nights. However after this weekends trials we definitely need to work on them this week...

Saturday was a double trial run by the Sheltie Club at the Canine grounds. It was magnificent weather so I was looking forward to a really nice day. Sadly it wasn't quite as good a day as I had hoped for. Sonic and I started with an Excellent Jumping run. The course was quite tight and I was interested to see how Sonic handled being able to stretch out and then collect up for a couple of tight turns. As it happened he ran really well but was unlucky to have a bar down when I front crossed (very badly I might add) on his line to get him round to an off tunnel entry. There was some bottom sliding on his start line too that needs to be addressed. I'm glad he's keen but I need to nip that stuff in the bud now. It was slack of me to not jump on him about it then and there and I'm going to have to at future trials otherwise I'm going to have crap start lines. Nothing worse than not being able to trust your dog to stay put when you lead out. The sneaky little bugger must think that I don't notice. Next up was an Excellent Agility run. This run was a bit average with Sonic managing a massive fly off on the see saw and a very average dog walk performance. His weavers on the other hand were great as was his A-Frame. I really felt the course was too hard for Excellent level. It was nested from a Masters course and in one particular part the Masters dogs really struggled to get through so it was no surprise that most of the Excellent level dogs couldn't manage. In the afternoon Sonic and I had a fantastic Excellent Jumping run for a clear round and a pretty good Excellent Agility run where I front crossed him onto a A-Frame on a ridiculous angle and needless to say he couldn't hold on and went flying off the side! The upside was that he didn't fly off the see saw.

Today was another double header, this time at Northern Suburbs Dog Club. More amazing weather was on the agenda and I was hoping for a slightly more successful day. But, it certainly wasn't looking good after the first run. Unlike most of our other trials, Northern Suburbs run their trials at a huge sporting complex in Carine. On any given weekend the place turns into sporting grand central with every sport imaginable being held on the grounds. It is also the local dog walking, child playing, bike riding and general exercising area for all the surrounding suburbs. Sonic's first run was on the closest side to one of the main walking paths and just as we were about to start there was a few loud bangs and then a child went whizzing past on a scooter. This was a little too much for Sonic's senses to handle so after the fourth jump he could go no further. With hackles up Mr Reactive started alarm barking and staring off after the scooter child. The best I could do was collect the youngster and depart the ring. Shortly after we ran Excellent Agility. Luckily the ring was further away from the path and I was able to keep him focused and calm with a nice clear round to follow.

Lunchtime saw me, frankfurters, clicker and Sonic standing by the path and some serious "look at that games" were happening with any oncoming scooter children (of which there were many). Sonic has a serious love of frankfurters so scooter children were soon forgotten. The afternoon trial was on the other side of the grassed area so although we had spectators sitting on the ground watching there was no moving objects. Sonic lapped up a really nice Excellent Jumping course with an easy clear round. Shortly after was the Excellent Agility and although I believed that we went clear, the judge gave us a penalty for a jump that she said was taken the wrong way. I am pretty positive that we did it correctly but the judges decision wins so no qually card for us. As much as it's annoying I'm in no rush to title him so I'm not really worried that we didn't get the card. However he is now sitting on four Excellent Jumping cards so if he titles at this weekends double header we may be doing Opens for a while. Sonic is not even remotely ready to tackle a Masters course.

Some other fun stuff last week was one of Riot's new commercials debuting on TV. Better Pets and Gardens had a three day "Riot" sale. Kathy their promotions manager is quite chuffed that Riot is called Riot. It has certainly helped them develop some catchy phrases for their advertising campaigns. I'm really looking forward to seeing what else they have come up with from all the footage that we got on the day of filming. Nothing like enjoying seeing the fruits of your labour.

ADAA comes to WA

2009-06-01T20:23:00.003+08:00

This weeks training was a very focused and single minded event. I let go of any thoughts on running sequences and aimed myself and Sonic squarely at double box grids and see saw practice. I thought it went pretty well myself. I chocked up the see saw and revved the boy up for the bang game. He was growling and shrieking while throwing himself over it so I think it went pretty well. It's still going to take time for him to really get the hang of it (as seen in his agility run on the weekend) so we will spend another couple of weeks focusing on getting it right. The double box is getting really solid too and the work he did at the ADAA trial on the weekend showed that he's getting much better at reading my body and sticking tighter to me.

This leads me on to WA's first ADAA experience. Three days worth of trialing was set up although I made a decision to only compete on one day. It was nothing to do with not wanting to compete and a whole lot to do with not enough hours in the day to keep up with my current life demands. I just couldn't face three days of not seeing my house during daylight hours.

So I went along on the middle of the three days. I'd entered a full days worth of events with Sonic with the intention of scratching from anything that I thought would be not right for him. But thanks to some extremely enjoyable courses set by Cathy and Mal I competed in everything but an Open Snooker class that I felt was too hard for Sonic's experience level. Sonic did have some weaver entry issues over the day, knocked a few bars (that I'm assuming was due to them being higher than he's used to) and flew off the see saw but I was really chuffed with his dog walk and a-frame and he handled beautifully. I took a different tack when getting him ready for each class by revving him right up with a tug toy. This seemed to work really well and he definately felt more focused and was driving harder around the course. He was quite vocal too so I'm assuming he was feeling pretty good about the whole thing. All in all it was a great day with all the people that I spoke to very positive about it. I have no doubt that we will see more ADAA in WA in the future.

Sonic and mines week of training will be once again focused on the see saw. It's obviously still not up to scratch until such time as he stops flying off the end of it... Although I have to say that I'd rather he powers up it and flys off rather than trit trotting up it waiting for it to tip. I'm going to move back to some of GD's other grids now. I feel like we've flogged the double box grid up to a pretty good standard so we'll do some revision on the next DVD's worth. Plus I think I'll have to do some weaver work as it was quite uncharacteristic for him to miss that many entries on the weekend. It's always something!

It's winter

2009-05-25T20:14:00.003+08:00

Another weekend and another trial. Winter has finally arrived in Perth. It was a bit like summer to winter in 24 hours. Friday and Saturday was wet, windy and generally very unpleasant after weeks and weeks of mid to high 20's. I'm sure my garden enjoyed all the rain though. Sunday however was a magnificent winters day with beautiful afternoon warming sun on the skin. My favourite trialling weather. The trial was OK for us. Sonic got his first Excellent Agility qualifyer after a really nice run. We started the afternoon with the Excellent Jumping class. Sonic managed the first half well but unfortunately ran straight across my body to take the off course tunnel entry. Not something I was expecting but that's the joys of a novice dog for you.... As it happens he knocked the last jump after attempting to bounce from the jump before. Good on him for giving it a red hot go but he didn't get high enough out of the bounce and went straight through the bar.

Next up was Open Jumping. It was a lovely open course with lots of space between obstacles. We didn't manage a particularly good run this time round. He missed the weaver entry and then couldn't find the tunnel entry. Once again all baby dog mistakes.

Then we were onto our best class of the day. It was pretty much straight after his Open run which I think actually worked in our favour as a bit of a warm up. He handled the course really well. There was a perfect set up for him to take an off course jump but we've been working pretty hard on fixing that issue and he came around with my shoulder like a pro. His dog walk and AFrame was nicely done. His see saw was so-so. Most definately still on the list of "needs a lot of work". After his Geraldton weaver melt down he looked confident through the weavers which was a relief.

So overall I was pleased with the days events. I'm hoping that I will start to see a bit more drive off the ground from him as he gets more experience in the ring. I've had the joy of experiencing what he's capable of at some of our training sessions but I just can't seem to get him to reproduce it regularly in a trial. As everyone keeps reminding me he is just a baby, but if I want to be truly competitive with him here in Perth then I need to start seeing the power that I know is in him. I'll certainly keep breaking things down with him and keep up a nice high reinforcement rate. I also think I've neglected some of the little things, for example, speed onto the table. Something I never work on at training and I noticed that from the AFrame to the table in the agility course he was really quite slow. All those things are costing time on course and with some of the speed demons we have over here you just can't afford to throw that kind of time away. Ahhh, more things to add to my "needs a lot of work" list!

Road Trip

2009-05-19T19:27:00.004+08:00

Sonic has now been on his first road trip for a competition following a weekend of agility at Geraldton. I feel like we had a successful weekend away but the success was definately not due to lots of qualifying cards coming our way... Sadly we managed not one single clear round thanks to a combination of bar knocking, missed weavers, see saw overzealousness and off courses.

Thankfully there were loads of positives after the weekend, not least that he travelled really well and coped without any problems in an unfamiliar environment, running over unfamiliar equipment and competing straight after spending about six hours in the car. The weavers were quite an issue and I think he only managed to do a whole set at the first attempt twice in eight events. Geraldton still have stick in the ground weavers that move around quite a lot after a couple of dogs have been through them and it is not uncommon for even the experienced masters dogs to have problems so I wasn't overly concerned. I have no doubt that those issues will resolve with time and experience.

A couple of the jumping courses were really tight with jumps all on top of each other. Keeping him close to me after he's taken an obstacle is one of the weaknesses I'm still trying to conquer so I wasn't in the least surprised when he swung away from my shoulder and took the off course jumps. We had a couple of lovely runs on an excellent agility and excellent jumping course but unfortunately bars came down. His contacts are still holding up extremely well in competitions and his dog walk is staying nice and fast which is great to see.

We have quite a few competitions coming up over May and June including our first ADAA weekend of competitions. So lots to practice and work towards. I still need to do a heap of work on the see saw but it will still be double box grid work first on the list to try and strengthen this peeling away from me problem. If we can't handle tight excellent courses then there will be no hope for us in masters!

So here are a selection of runs from the weekend.

Drills and skills

2009-05-09T11:47:00.010+08:00

Sonic - he's a happy boy

Sonic displaying his Riot-worshipping skills

Didn't I just see this handsome face on the Garden Gurus??

Soda showing her new shaved eye punk look

Battered and bruised after surgery, but doing OK - Poor Noodle!

It's another weekend free of agility trials for me and Sonic and I'm enjoying some more time to catch up on other things. There is a trial down in Bunbury tomorrow but with the long trip to Geraldton the following weekend I elected to give it a miss. I've always really enjoyed the Bunbury trials but I'm so busy at work right now that I'm feeling rather possesive of my free time. A trip to Bunbury is a 5am to 7pm day with the 2 hour drive to get there so it makes for a very long day.

Last Thursday "The Noodle" went under the knife to have a lump in her eye removed. When we first discovered it she was on antibiotics for four weeks. They helped the inflammation go down but unfortunately the lump was still there so the vet thought it best to remove it. Soda is in great health so I felt really confident that she could handle surgery. She had bloods done and all her levels where within the normal range which was pretty good for a twelve year old. But then she's always been a tough little nut. She wasn't real happy for the first couple of days post surgery but she seems back to her normal self now. We head to the vet for a check up tomorrow so she can make sure that everything is healing as it should.

The last couple of weeks of training has been good. True to my word the double box grid has reappeared as the most important part of our evenings training. I've also put a much greater emphasis on reving Sonic up and making it super FUN! Not that it's not normally fun, but it can get a bit regimented in my quest to get his behaviours exactly how I want them. So far I've worked back through the four front cross exercises and I've been thrilled with how he's done them. It's very satisfying for me as a trainer seeing how well he understood them and how easily he did them as I haven't done any double box training in at least six months. By running faster with him he hasn't even looked like not coming around with my shoulder and doing a wrong jump. I think I do often spend time standing around on course for him as we're going around a turn so it was interesting to see the difference when I complete a front cross and then get going immediately I've turned. Something I must get into the habit of doing ALL the time.

I've been doing some contact work with him as well but it has taken a back seat to our handling work. His contacts are going well. If I rev him up too much he sometimes goes too fast to be able to hold his A-Frame which is quite funny. I've tried to include the stride regulator on the down ramp of the dog walk again to help maintain it but it's not always easy when you're training with lots of other people as I have to keep taking it down when I've finished my run. I thought I might do some weaver training in the backyard this weekend as I've been neglecting those of late. The see saw is still a work in progress but I'm happy that he's got the idea and is picking up the verbal cue. He's still not as confident as I'd like and he does it much better when he doesn't realise it's the see saw until the last minute...

Next week I'll move on to some different double box exercises. I'm determined to focus on drill work again for quite some time. It's so easy to get side tracked into running courses or sequences all the the time because that is what most people want to do and it's what gets set up at training week in week out.

I was musing to myself the other day about how any athlete/sportsperson who reaches greatness, focus on drill type work more than anything else in their quest to be amazing in their given sport. Where I train we tend to set up what we would see at a competition every week and just run our dogs over it again and again. We may call them sequences but they'll end up being 20 odd obstacles worth, which lets be honest, is a full course. For some reason drill work is something that most people do only if nothing else is set up. We've actually just had a big name American agility person here to do a seminar so there is a little more motivation than normal to work on improving the little things. That normally only lasts for about two weeks though until everyone gets bored with it and goes back to what they were doing before (no, I absolutely did not go to big name American's seminar!) Not surprisingly the dogs performances tend to stay the same. I rarely look at a dog and handler combo and think that they've improved. It's just the same performance from training to a trial.

So I will strive to follow my own path and stick to what I believe in. Maybe it will work, maybe it won't but I have faith that Sonic and I have the potential to get there.

The real start of the journey

2009-04-27T20:04:00.007+08:00

It's been a fortnight of trialling madness. I'm actually quite relieved that next weekend is a weekend away from the golden fields of agility. We were hit with temps over 25 degrees for both days this weekend which saw sensible investments in cool coats paying dividends. Sonic and I had some strong moments in the ring but I've also found plenty of gaps that need work. We ran in the Excellent Jumping class for the first time and managed two out of three passes.

I'm not really feeling up to deciphering every run that we did. I'm too tired. However the thing that stood out the most was probably that we need to do a lot more double box grid work. A couple of times he didn't come around with my shoulder which, if I remember correctly has been something that has been a weakness for a while. It just so happened that a couple of the courses that we ran showed that weakness up. He flicked away from me once too which mortified me a little but then that whole run was a disaster. All his start lines held up, his contacts were great (although a slower dog walk than at the States). All weavers were present and accounted for (except once when I didn't get him focused enough before we started and he went straight past the lot of them...) and no knocked bars.

I was talking to some friends over the weekend about the relationship that you have with your dog when your running agility. That feeling that you get when your dog knows exactly where your going and you know exactly where your dog is going. It's smooth, it's quick and it feels great. I'm actually there with Lexi at the moment, who is a dog that I run for a friend. I only have her twice a week to train and then on weekends when we have trials. It's taken a long time for us to get that feeling as she disappears from time to time to have puppies or when she comes in season. It does have a huge impact not having a dog with you all the time and it's a credit to Lexi that she's doing so well. This last weekend we've had round after round when her runs have been text book. I can remember a time when nothing I did with Lexi worked and every run was hit and miss. I guess that's a bit where I feel I'm at with Sonic right now. He's my baby and it's all new. We haven't figured each other out yet and we're not really comfortable with each other when we're going around the ring. Some bits feel OK and others feel messy and disjointed. Knowing how far Lexi had come has really helped me to look forward to the time that Sonic and I hit our straps and have that ultimate team combination going. As the courses get harder it feels like the reality of the trial ring has just started and my experience with Lexi has definitely served as a reminder to be patient while we're getting there.

Anyway, here are some of Sonic and mines better attempts over the course of the weekend.

Ode to da very cool puppy

2009-04-20T21:06:00.003+08:00

Being that I'm so proud of my lovely little boy and I think he's the most awesomest dog ever (not including my four other fine furkids of course), I put together clips of highlights of Sonic's passes on the fun journey to get his Novice Agility and Novice Jumping titles.

Here tis. Hope you enjoy watching as much as I enjoy running him.

State Agility Trial 2009

2009-04-19T19:05:00.007+08:00

This weekends State Agility trial definately had it's highs and lows for me and Sonic. The young fella has been going so well I did have pretty high expectations on having a successful States. I felt that if we had good clear runs we could very easily take out both Novice classes. Then we have reality...hahaha!

Our week prior at training was pretty good. The only groan moment being when for the first time Sonic ran up the dog walk and quite clearly thought it was the see saw. I immediately wanted to throw myself on the ground and bash my fists against it while screaming "PLEEEASE put the slats back on the dog walk". So my training strategy with the States imminent was that I didn't do the see saw all week while I worked on building his confidence up again on the dog walk. When training a novice dog for ANKC agility you have to expect that the dog walk/see saw issue will rear it's ugly head (that is if you want a fast dog walk), but it doesn't mean I have to be happy about it. However, we shall grit our teeth and work through it.

Now, back to the States. Friday night was the first lot of heats with the first seven dogs going through to the final on Saturday afternoon. My first event with Sonic was Novice Jumping and a fairly tricky course set by Mel Rhoden, but nothing that I thought would be a big problem. Unfortunately we did have problems which started before we started with Sonic getting up and coming with me when I went to leave him on the start line. I attempted to fix it but it was really just a big mess. He seemed rather overwhelmed by the occasion. So I tried to reassure him and we doddled around to see if I could give him some confidence back.

Next up was Novice Agility with a very nice course built by Jill Housten. I wasn't sure what was going to happen after our Jumping debacle, I was really just hoping that I could recover Sonic's confidence. But I needn't have worried as he ran a flawless course with his fastest dog walk yet in a competition. That gave us first place and a berth in the Novice Agility final on Saturday.

Saturday morning was day two and the second lot of heats with the top seven dogs also going through to the finals in the afternoon. First up again for me was Novice Jumping and I was looking for that clear round that would take us to a finals berth. Unfortunately it was not to be. The course was spread out with a long run up the back followed by a long run back to the other side. To control him into an off entry tunnel I needed to be where I had no hope of getting and I lost him into the off course. Looking back at the video I'm not sure how I could have cued him to let him know I needed him to slow down and pull off. I had to run up the first line to get the spread that was on a very hard angle for them to see if you didn't push them out to it. There was just no way I could get back. If I had a slower dog it wouldn't have been a problem but he was going like the clappers (which I'm not complaining about). He was quite clearly feeling confident and there'se nothing wrong with that!

Our last event from the heats was Novice Agility and as we had already qualified for the final I decided to push him a little to see if his behaviours would hold up. It was another lovely Novice Agility course, this time built by Judy Tsakalos. Once again it was a cracker of a run with a dog walk that was even faster than the day before, however unfortunately he dropped a bar following a front cross that I did. It would seem he is no longer a dropped bar virgin...

So my boy was in the Novice Agility final and I'm happy to admit was quite nervous! Mel Rhoden had built us a nice course but it was quite tight. I knew that if he went clear he should be fast enough to win so rather than push him I went for a calm, steady round that would be most likely to get me the clear that I wanted. Like the awesome dog that he is he worked beautifully and clear is what he gave me. It was the quietest round he'd run all weekend but it was clear and that's all I wanted and it was enough to claim first place and State Novice Agility winner for 2009. Whooohooo.

Congratulations to all the winners over the weekend. There was certainly many great rounds, the highlight for me being some scorching runs in the finals of Masters Jumping. Awesome stuff.

I'd like to say that the excitment of the States was enough for one weekend however I had more excitment (not the good sort though) when I got home. I had left both Soda and Angel home as it's not much fun being stuck in a car all day. I left the dog door open so they could go inside or outside as they pleased. Unfortunately it would appear that Soda couldn't wait for me to get home and give her dinner, so instead found and proceeded to inhale almost all of Colin and mines Easter egg stash (foil and all in some cases). We worked out that she would have eaten about 700g so after a panicked phone call to Kriszty and then Murdoch Vet Emergency Centre she was bundled into the car and taken to Murdoch for treatment. The vet told me that for a dog of her weight more than 100g is toxic so Soda had well and truly consumed the mother load. Following a dose of washing crystals, a massive vomit of chocolate (including wrappers), a dose of charcoal AND a large bill, Soda and I returned home. She looked briefly upset by the experience but by morning was back to her normal self, standing in the hallway at 7am this morning with her "where the hell is my breakfast" expression... Go Soda. Obviously I am grateful that it ended well. Quite clearly it could easily have killed her.

We have three trials coming up this weekend with Sonic in his first Excellent Jumping classes. Although he finished his Novice Agility title off at the States I am more than happy for him to stay in Novice for this weekend. And more time to train this damn see saw!

I thought I saw an easter bunny...

2009-04-10T11:39:00.004+08:00

This week has been a "challenging" training week. Now that I am running Sonic on more difficult sequences we are both making a lot more mistakes. That could be quite depressing except that I know we are actually getting better...if that makes sense!! A couple of months ago if there was a particularly hard challenge in a sequence I would get to that bit, stop and reward Sonic, then continue, effectively bypassing the hard bit. Now we include the challenges (which we often stuff up) in our run, working through it and ultimately I think our skills are getting better. It can be somewhat demoralising though when you never actually make it through a sequence without making a mistake (or five)!

We've also been hitting the see saw pretty hard. Now that the Excellent Agility class is imminent and I would like to start doing the Open Agility class we really need to build on his understanding. I had been getting fly offs at least once a training session but I think he is starting to connect the verbal cue to the actual obstacle in front of him. It's just that sometimes, although he hears me, by the time he's put the anchors on he's flying off the end. I did see an improvement this week though so hopefully by the end of this month it will be solid enough for competitions. On another positive note, I think I may be on the way to having restored/fixed Sonic's dog walk. He had some good speed going down the ramp all this week. I will keep doing the remedial work for another month or so but hopefully the worst is behind us.

This next week is some time off for me. Easter is always a good excuse to tack some annual leave days onto the end and actually have a proper break from work. I have nothing much planned other than shopping (to find myself a nice new High Def Camcorder), relaxing and eating lots of easter eggs. Shouldn't be too taxing...

Now time for Sonic's first "official" agility photo's from last weeks Cloverdale trial. Courtesy of Tim Abidin and his fancy camera! Thanks Tim :-)

Wild eyed boy

2009-04-04T19:55:00.003+08:00

Today was a good day. Sonic had his first trial in a month since the Western Classic at Cloverdales 30th Anniversary Agility Trial. The young fella went clear in both agility and jumping classes taking out first place in both. Once again his agility was lovely. There is nothing he could have done that could have made me happier and his jumping round was the best one so far. We also ran in the Open Jumping class but I didn't really place myself very well so unfortunately he went into the wrong end of the tunnel. I thought the rest of the run was very solid though.

The last month of training has been a little less full on than the lead up to the Classic. Now that he has all the equipment down pat training sessions are more about building up his skill level (apart from his dog walk which I broke when I was proofing him and I still haven't gotten it back to where it was again...). His runs today showed me that he is really getting confident with the handling system I'm using. He is seeing the line that I'm setting him on and off he goes. He is still much faster in training but I have no doubt that with time and confidence the speed will come. We were actually having this conversation today about the speed of dogs when they start out compared to later on and whether it matters how fast they are when they start. I'm a big believer that the most important thing is to get the skill first, for example a dog that learns how to judge and execute it's jumps really well. I'm not worried about speed to begin with, just the skill itself. Once the dog has the skill then the speed should come and the dog should be able to handle the speed because the skill has already been built. All the speed in the world won't help you if your dog smacks down bars or goes off course because it doesn't understand how to turn.

Next up on the trialling calendar is the State Agility Trial. Although Sonic finished his Jumping Dog title today, the entries have closed for the State Trial so we can stay in Novice for it. There are two qualifying rounds and a final so with a bit of luck we'll get three more rounds in novice before having to move up to the Excellent Classes. It's not actually Excellent that I'm worried about, but I really don't want him in Masters too quickly. Plus I really enjoy Novice. The courses are normally really nice and it's great to give your dog the opportunity to stretch out around a course without having twists and turns every second. So heads down and bums up for the next two weeks of training. It would be great to do well at the State Trial. With a bit of luck I can fix his dog walk before then too!

Riot's world

2009-03-29T19:51:00.003+08:00

Never again will I hassle Riot about not trying hard enough or be disappointed with him not being the agility dog that I'd hoped for. Yesterday we spent twelve hours filming the new commercial for BP&G's and he worked his butt off all day. I made sure we were more prepared this year after our previous experiences. I was very clear with the advertising agency beforehand what I required from them to make sure that Riot wasn't pushed excessively or silly demands made on him. They can get a little caught up in getting the perfect shot regardless of what they are asking the dog to do. These guys were pretty good and they all treated Riot with a lot of respect and genuine affection. Everyone lavished him with attention and most referred to him by name as opposed to "the dog" (which always annoys me...).

We spent the first couple of hours filming in front of a green screen. So there was Riot sitting on his mark in front of this massive green background, a huge lighting screen in front with lights, a camera, a photographer and another ten other people running around and he just did his thing. I don't know of many dogs who could have dealt with all that for ten minutes let alone all day. He had the odd moment where you could see that he had had enough and zoned out into his own little world. So I'd take him out and give him a break and he would come back ready to go. The director said to me that he kept forgetting that Riot was a dog with all the things he was doing and coping with!

Everyone seemed thrilled with what they got from the day. Some of the stuff I saw on the monitor looked amazing. Unfortunately when I was working with Riot during filming I couldn't see the monitor so you couldn't appreciate just what they are capturing. This time round they attempted to get lots of different footage to use over the whole year for various advertising campaigns.

I'm really glad that Riot has found his niche. Agility's not his his forte and I get that but it's great that he's found something that he seems to really enjoy. Mind you I don't know many border collies who don't want to be the centre of attention! Hopefully we'll see the fruits of his labour in a month or so when the new commercials hit the screen.

Photo opportunity

2009-03-27T17:15:00.006+09:00

Lucky Riot spent this morning at Debbie Hyde's grooming salon in Midland getting a makeover in preparation for tomorrows commercial shoot with Better Pets and Gardens. I have to say that thanks to Deb my normally scuffy, curly coated, grubby boy has been transformed into a clean, shiney coated handsome man. Just like having a new dog! Now the pressure is on to keep him that way for at least the next 24 hours. Sonic may need to be otherwise entertained...

Naturally I had to get some photo's of Riot while looking so ravishing. Then I got inspired enough to capture some of the other furkids giving me their best expressions.

Miss Noodle in her favourite snoozin' spot

It wasn't me... Yeah sure Sonic

My little B girl - Angel...

...who really hates her photo being taken

Murphy - my grumpy old man. He's 11 going on 100

Riot showing how good you can look after a bit of spit and polish

Who's really just a big dork at heart

Pre spit and polish

If all else fails - suck on your blankie. It will always make you feel better!

Lights, camera, action?

2009-03-20T18:55:00.001+09:00

I have now experienced my first time in front of the camera filming three episodes worth of TV for Channel Nine’s “Garden Gurus”. It was something that I accidentally fell into thanks to Riot’s association with Better Pets & Gardens as the company’s mascot. Most of the filming was actually of Riot but the main presenter interviewed me as to my thoughts on dogs digging in the backyard. I actually didn’t have a lot to say in the end. When I was first asked to do it I thought it was a great opportunity to get the positive reinforcement word out to the general public. I get sick of watching all these other “dog gurus” on TV who give very little attention to advising people to actually reward their dog for doing the right thing. As it happened it was so flowery and based around selling product for Better Pets and Gardens that it wasn’t really an appropriate forum for my passionate ramblings on dog training. I did have a couple of disagreements with them regarding some of the content that they were spouting. Just cause you read something on the internet doesn’t mean it’s the most appropriate way of doing something (or works for that matter…) and I was a bit disappointed that they got their information from the internet in the first place when they had asked me to be on the show as a dog trainer. I obviously wrongly assumed that they’d ask me! My dogs didn’t learn what they know by themselves.

Riot was great for the duration of the day. As usual he worked his arse off and even surprised me with some of the things he was willing to have a go at. Twice I told them that I doubted he would do something when he was actually more than happy to oblige the masses. It bodes well for the new commercial that we are filming next Friday. He did crack the shits at me a couple of times and I received the “talk to the paw, lady” expression when he’d had enough of having a heap of ridiculous dog coats taken on and off of him. I do think he revels in the attention though and when I had to get him to run into shot to be with Trevor I had to hold him back in his haste to get in there. It’s nice to do some stuff with Riot in any case. Since I pulled him from the agility ring due to his apparent disregard for the sport he has kind of languished in the background. The tricks that I’m teaching him for the commercial means that every day we hang out and do some work together. He can frustrate the hell out of me but ultimately he just needs to get there in his own time and when he does it’s always worth waiting for.

For anyone who’s interested in watching my appearances on the “Garden Gurus” the shows will be aired on Channel Nine, Saturday 28th March (puppy episode which I don’t think I’m in – Riot’s 9 week old son got all the attention in that one), Saturday 11th April (which should feature my in depth interview (well three sentences anyway) with Trevor on digging…) and Saturday 2nd May (which is on dog fashion and has an unimpressed Riot parading a variety of mostly unattractive dog jackets). Unfortunately I don’t think I’ll be giving up my day job anytime soon!

Now on to what young Sonic and I have been up to of late. The last couple of weeks I have taken it pretty easy with him. I’ve mainly been focusing on breaking all of his performances down and rewarding after a couple of well executed obstacles rather than trying to do whole sequences. I’ve been providing him with lots of high level reinforcement on contacts and even whipped out a tin of sardines as big reward after one dog walk that he did. He’d never had sardines before but the way he scoffed them down, almost choking in the process leads me to believe that he quite enjoyed the experience. He’s now doing the full height seesaw however we’ve already had quite a few fly offs. These don’t appear to bother him in the slightest. I’ve been giving him a loud seesaw then bang command with the hope that after a few fly offs he will start to understand that seesaw means that it’s going to tip. It doesn’t appear to have affected his confidence in belting up the dog walk, which was one of my concerns. I’m still convinced that the “bang game” is one of the better ways to teach the seesaw. My version is a combination of what Rob Mickalski and Susan Garrett do. I love that it turns the potentially scary drop of the seesaw into a game for them and ultimately they love the fact that the seesaw bangs down rather than worry about it. Plus you are teaching them to control their bodies as it happens instead of clinging on and hoping for the best!

The Western Classic - continued

2009-03-14T14:23:00.003+09:00

Last Sunday night was Agility and Jumping Teams, which wrapped up the Classic for 2009. Our team “The Masters & The Apprentices” was made up of Kriszty with Jess and Terra and myself with Riot, Lexi and Sonic as Reserve. Our other regular team member Simone with Cypher was over in Canberra winning everything at the BC Nationals!

The jumping course was lovely and flowing although quite tight with a couple of off course traps. With Sonic running as the reserve there was no pressure on us and he ran a stunning clear round that was tight, controlled and hard to fault in any way. Certainly a much better run than Saturday in the Novice Jumping class.

Agility was another matter entirely though… It was the total opposite of the jumping course in that although not particularly technical it was spread over the entire ring with close to maximum distance between each obstacle. Not a hard course by any means, just a damn long way to run! Sonic managed most of it however in between some of the bigger gaps he was a bit lost and I have to say my handling of it was sloppy and inaccurate. The positives were that his contacts were solid. He missed his first weave entry from the A-Frame but picked them up again no worries on the second attempt.

I now have another month before he is entered in any more trials so it gives me a bit of time to improve some of our skills in a few different areas. Firstly our circle work needs to be revisited. I was mainly concerned about our inside circles and the effect it’s having on rear crosses however last night showed that our outside circle work could also improve. He was drifting all over the place in between the agility obstacles, which shouldn’t happen if his circle work was better. We also need to continue working on our entries into the weavers from different obstacles. He’s never done weaves from an A-Frame before and last night it showed. Another issue was he started going from a sit to a down on the start line. He has done it before in training but I’ve always gone back and reset him. Although he’s not actually breaking forward he is breaking criteria going from a sit to a down so we will do some start line revision.

On a more positive note his jump work over the weekend was flawless. I can’t say 100% if he’s just a natural or if the Susan Salo grids have played some part. Perhaps it’s a combination of both. Whatever it is it’s a great relief, as bar knocking seems to plague many working border collies here in Perth. Over the next month I also need to finish off teaching the see saw so I can have the choice of entering Open classes with him.

In the end our Jumping team placed second but the agility team was a bit of a disaster. Between Kriszty and me, we managed to make a pretty big mess (except for Jess who was a star as usual). Lexi decided that the judge was scary and spent the entire agility run having an anxiety attack about it. She is normally Miss Casual about everything. I had to DQ us and take her over to the judge to say hello. Go figure!

What a super young Sonic

2009-03-08T12:14:00.006+09:00

Last night was the individual agility classes at the Western Classic for 2009. We had three interstate judges who had come over plus Richard Barville our local representative. It was pretty warm initally but cooled down somewhat when the sun finally went down.

My first class for the evening was Novice Agility with Sonic. Michael Vigor from South Australia built a lovely course which was basically a figure of eight (hooray!!). After walking it I felt pretty happy that Sonic should manage it easily. The lack of anything particularly technical also meant I could concentrate on keeping criteria for contacts and getting a good weaver entry. I hung around to help keep Sonic relaxed and had the chance to watch most of the dogs before me. Unfortunately most made a bit of a mess of it which diminished my confidence a little... When I got to the start line I made myself stop thinking about it and focus on the job at hand.

First up we had a line of five jumps and into a flexi tunnel. I was a little concerned about such a long row of jumps in that he may rush and knock a bar. I led out a little less than what I could have done to get him to steady up a bit. I shouldn't have worried as his timing and striding between were perfect. The flexi tunnel took as around the first corner then over another jump then the broad then over the A-Frame. His AF was great, nice and fast with a stopped two on two off plus a tail wag to show me how much he was enjoying himself. Then onto the table for our five second count. I held him for another second after Michael said "go" just for safe keeping. Then onto the dog walk which although not as fast as he's done was solid with another lovely two on two off. I held his position for about a second and then we crossed back through the middle of the figure eight, over a jump and into a flexi tunnel, onto the weavers and the run home. He powered out of the tunnel quite fast and actually hit the weavers pretty hard. His wonderful understanding of collect then weave fast kicked in and for a novice dog it was pretty impressive. A great advertisment for Susan Garrett's 2 x 2 method. Then we had two jumps to finish. I don't think there is anything that Sonic could have done better for his first run. I just couldn't fault him on attitude or understanding of his job.

Later on we had Novice Jumping and quite a tricky course. It required quite a bit of handling to get around although the up side being that it was much more open than last week so the dogs could stretch out and get some speed up. It started with three jumps on a hard diagonal and onto a tyre (same as the masters jumping course) then a pull through into a tunnel. Sonic handled this without any problems however I had to sprint to catch up after my pull through. Then it was straight out onto a three jump serpentine. Once again Sonic handled this no problem. The tricky bit came up next in that the last of the serpentine and the following three jumps were in a diagonal line which required a pull through after they'd gone over the serpentine to straighten them up for the next two jumps. I didn't quite manage this as well as I'd like and although we got through it, it wasn't pretty. In saying that the last jump in that line was a flick away for us due to my bad position and he didn't take the jump. So all kudos to Sonic that he understands my handling system. I had to pull him back and continue. We avoided getting a refusal as he didn't actually go past the jump. Then it was another pull through then across a broad jump into a tunnel and two jumps home for another clear round. One other note to self moment was his last exit out of the tunnel. I forgot to give him a big enough cue and he came flying out like the clappers not realising that I'd turned. We lost at least two seconds there.

So naturally I'm really happy with our night. You put so many hours of work into them and to have it pay off on the night was a great feeling. Sonic is loving every minute of it and feels like he is getting faster with every competition. The other thing that impresses me is that he is really concentrating and trying so hard for me. And you can't ask for more than that.