Love a Gamble!

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

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



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

Birthday girl

Beautiful Noodle

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


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


and lounge.

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

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

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

Summer, summer go away

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!

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

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

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

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.