Can we do a hat trick?

Time flies when you are having fun and already it is June.

The early part of my agility season was clouded by Rhyme not being right. Mostly he appeared sound except for 2 cases of right front leg lameness. One for a day on the Wednesday before Scunthorpe Champ and one for 2 days for the Wednesday and Thursday before the Performance weekend. In between for all intents and purposes he appeared sound. 

Not only did I miss running in these shows but we could not start our fitness and training programme that I had planned. Well I could have done mine it was just I had lost the motivation. I did continue with keeping my weight down but did not loose anymore.

After several physio sessions,a chiro treatment and some swimming we are looking like being on the right track to start working on fitness. I was also lucky in that although I am not officially part of the Agility Team GB I do help out a lot which meant that Maria Johnson kindly spent some time on him and pointed us in the right direction to getting sorted.

My chiro Christine East thought the time was right to see how he was and get in the ring at the SKC show. The result was that we made the final even though we were both a bit rusty and we had not done any of the training I had planned. 

Goal 1 of the year - get to a champ final met :)

This weekend we had Nottingham champ show and with the Agility Team GB training day on the Monday after to prepare for I still did not have much time to get moving forward with my training programme for us. (Again I possibly could have squeezed in some running!).

I was running first in the Champ Agility with a large course that totally confirmed that doing some running training is a definite on my list. Thank you Peter and Tricia Elms for giving me the motivation I need for that. TBH Alan Short's Cruft's singles on Sunday would also have been done a lot better if my footwork skills were better. So no Crufts single points for us

We did however deliver a clear for our Crufts Team the Scunthorpe Hustlers and so did all the others meaning the goal/dream of competing at Crufts again has been achieved.

So next weekend is Hinckley show I wonder if we can make a hat trick of goals achieved. 

The choices are : 
1. Make another championship final which would continue me towards my new goal of achieving 50% of champ finals this year.

2. A clear in top 10 of Olympia qualifier

3. A clear in top 10% of Crufts singles (actually we may have done this week as there were other 300 dogs in the class so 30th place would have given us that)

Other things I am working on around shows is doing all the classes I have entered. I often just focus on the 'important' ones and miss the tannoy announcements for the others as my brain isn't focussed enough on them. Next year when I have Pikachu to run I will need my wits about me to get her classes in too. The other one is embracing the number of foot steps I do at a show as I am working on 10k a day average in a belief that it assists me with keeping my weight down :)

Pikachu Bascis

Well Pikachu came into our lives when there was a massive gap left in our hearts when we lost Oddjob. 


Oddjob was our lovely pug who came into our lives and sadly left far too soon. He introduced to us the joys of small dogs. He was funny and cuddly and enjoyed attention.

Pikachu is half pug by blood but probably only 1/10 pug in body and mind. The rest of her is terrier or possibly even part BC by now.

The tiny, cute little puppy has developed into a full on 7 month old who wants to be running, climbing, playing and learning.

We now are realising that she is probably going to be an agility dog.

There are certain basics that we like our agility dog to have -

• the right conformation for their body to cope with the physical challenges the sport of agility presents to them 
• the want to play and learn
• understanding of reinforcement

The understanding of reinforcement is important. If they understand and want the reward enough when you are teaching them something new they know they have got it right because they are rewarded for it. 

If they do not understand or want the reward given then a skill can not be created by positive reinforcement.

Learn to earn is a phrase used to explain a relationship where the handler sets the scene to help the dog want to earn rewards. 

In Pikachu's case she loves food and she loves treats and she wants to work to find out a way of earning them.

We love crate games as a way of helping our dogs to understand and build self control. If you stay in the crate when the door is open then you will get a reward at the back of the crate. If you come out of the crate then no reward. Easy to do and easy to understand. Then we up the challenges.

Below are some clips of various training I have been doing with Pikachu they vary from crate training, it's your choice, ready steady go to putting her harness or a coat on.

She has a great attitude with loads of enthusiasm and genuinely tries to work out what I want from her. I am looking forward to building on these foundations and seeing what a great agility dog she is going to be.


I regularly liken trying to put her coat or harness on as wrestling with a greased pig. I looked at some footage of greased hog wrestling and decided the hog was not as happy about it as Pikachu is with any interaction so haven't included a clip of that. 

Spending time teaching her the behaviour I would like when coat or harness needs to go on/off.

Don't judge me

Well after a few years in agility as an instructor and competitor I have decided to add judging to my agility experiences.

Mark has always judged and I spent many years either scriming for him, helping manage the ring party, looking after kids and dogs, helping our club members etc etc.

We no longer run a club and Mark had less appointments for a couple of years and so I found myself at shows with some spare time.

Rhyme is now Grade 7 (did I mention has had his first champ class already) so at non champ shows I have less focus on running a dog.

I judged at Scunthorpe unknowing that I should have taken the practical judges exam having taken a rules & regs course many moons ago when it first came in. The powers that be let me know that if I wanted to judge again I should really take the new practical judges course too.

Luckily Jackie Gardener was running a weekend seminar at Worcester just up the road from where an old friend of ours lives. I decided to do the rules and regulations again too but as Mark has judged loads he didn't need to do that part. He is going to apply to be a champ judge once he has sorted out his records of which shows he has judged at to display his experience. If you know of a show he judged at please email me the show and date so we can find the schedule.

Mark dropped me off and went to our friends for the day. It was a great course. I was glad that I chose to do it. My own agility focus had been on understanding courses and picking up on trends early in order to help my students get the most out of their dogs at shows. Now the boot was on the other foot and I needed to think about how my courses can test the dog's training.

There are many things to consider. The main one is obviously safety. Another one is can I actually judge what I have set out for the number of dogs in the class. Having to run the length of the dog walk for a 30 dog class may be doable but if the class is over 100 that is not going to happen despite my fitness drive at the moment. 

I could go on but if you are wanting to know about these things from your own perspective then I would strongly advise going on a course even if you may not be wanting to judge.

I do already have 2 appointments lined up and am a reserve judge too. With hindsight being a reserve judge is going to be really challenging if I get called up. I may design a few courses just to be on the safe side

If you think you'd like to enter a class I am judging  -

Agility Nuts 2 April and Thames (schedule isn't out yet).


I have one other local appointment to be confirmed so quite happy with that for my first year of judging.

Having so much experience as a competitor and instructor one thing that I hope my courses will do is develop dogs with simple "tests' in my courses. Sometimes the level of complexity was too much for what I wanted my young dogs to have to cope with. 

On the other hand I don't think they had enough experience of some of the lesser used pieces of equipment in the beginning. Now at Champ they are having to deal with complex sequences along with suddenly having to cope with the wall, the well , cloth tunnel and tyre. As these are considered valid pieces of equipment I think it is important that they are used. 

When we first moved here I found the roundabout at Newark a challenge and potentially it was dangerous. Anyone attending Nottingham Show will know the now I mean. Now with practice it is a doddle even though I am on alert as I know other people may find it difficult and I need to watch them too. 

Other friends will have experienced this.

Likewise I think some of the obstacles need to be practiced much more than they currently are to ensure the dogs do know how to negotiate them properly. 

The more practiced they are the less likely an accident will happen.

With that thought in mind please try to get your club to put their tyre and/or cloth tunnel out to build your dog's understanding of them just in case they are in any of my courses ;)

Measuring and goal setting

We had an interesting weekend of measuring.

In goal setting measuring is sometimes the hardest thing to do. Without a starting measure or idea of what you want the finishing measure to be then it is hard to know if you have reached your target.

I had some ideas of the times of the top dogs on contacts etc which I used last year to time Rhyme in order to see if we would be competitive in the Championship classes. Last weekend I a real chance to see how we 'measured up" in his first Championship class.

We achieved one of my main goals for this year already by getting a clear in the jumping round. This then helped me set my next goal and gave me a figure of 2 seconds to work on over the course as a whole as we were 2 seconds off the top dogs.

I am greatly encouraged by that as 2 seconds is not really a lot and can be broken down into manageable pieces.

For me one of the reasons I am off the pace is that my fitness can be improved. Before Christmas myself and my neighbour got together to help each other lose weight. We meet once a week for a weigh in and to exercise. We are making good progress. I am confident that this will help with my agility times and watching my weight can be easily measured.

Mark and I will be looking at some of the other tests available to check and the assess  any improvements to our fitness once we get another spare weekend. I will report back on that.

Meanwhile something else we looked at was measuring our dogs height. This weekend we are both doing the judges practical. I am also doing the new rules and regs exam on Saturday. Mark is looking to be a Champ judge once he's jumped through the hoops and I'm just wanting to add judging to my agility experiences. I have 3 appointments booked for this year (provided I pass of course). We also thought that it may be good to become measurers.

Having a relatively quiet day lined up we decided to practice measuring our own dogs. We measured first thing before breakfast, midday and after they had been fed in the afternoon.

Pickachu - 320, 328, 320

Moog - 545, 560, 551

Rhyme - 528, 540,550

Devo - 523, 533, 515

Torro - 545,552, 551

Kodi - 491, 491, 496

Quite surprising results including that some were smaller straight after their food. The main thing to us that it is not an exact science.

Being able to stand to be measured is quite important especially the smaller wiggly ones like Pikachu. we do not want her to be stressed about agility and so I spent some time teaching her that the measure was a fun place to be. 

Also I think we may stick to running our own dogs, judging, training and our other commitments for now and maybe come back to measuring next year :)

Be more Pikachu

Well Pikachu is nearly 6 months now and it seems like she has been with us forever.

She is always happy and always ready to get into mischief. Of course she doesn't know that climbing on the table is mischief, she doesn't know that getting under the gate is mischief, she doesn't know that climbing on agility equipment she hasn't been taught to do is mischief OR does she?

I often admire her positive and can do attitude and being so excited about the smallest things. Then I realised that these are traits I do luckily share.

My positive,if a little naive thoughts, about the changes the KC are making.

When something has to be done then I do usually find a way to get it done.

I even still get excited about many things like Rhyme's first Champ class coming up this weekend, doing the judges course, competing at Crufts, training in a new environment with Rhyme, having new customers etc etc. Yes when it comes down to it I am more Pikachu than I first thought :) 

Here's a few clips of how she is doing with some little training sessions we did this afternoon.

Training session various

Pikachu training sit wait to a toy

Pikachu down with treats

Pikachu learning to help with putting her harness on

Jump

By coincidence the song Jump was playing on the radio as I start writing todays blog.

Like everyone in the agility community my head is spinning with the press release about jump heights.

Kennel Club Press Release

I personally think it is a great step forward and a great way to get data for research to understand the impact of jump heights without completely changing things in a way there would be no way of going back from. Rather than the research being confined to a few scientists, everyone in the agility community will get first hand experiences - judges, competitors, and show organisers 

Judges - in some organisation elsewhere in the world of agility judges are key in making the rules. They are the people who watch agility more critically than most. To judge a class of dogs of the same measured height category competing for the same prize over the same course at different jumps heights will really help identify how lower jumps changes a courses dynamics. There will be some that understand these things that may even feel a challenge to produce a course that evens out the jump height in some way. I'm not an experience judge yet so it won't be me ;) There is a worry that lower jumps creating more speed would mean the dogs are hitting other obstacles quicker too and could cause more risk of injury. Judging the different options would illustrate if that is in fact the case and give opportunity to consider how course design might need to change if lower jumps become the norm. 

Show organisers - wow, good luck is all I can say except that we may be underestimating these smart people who took going to 7 grades in their stride, organise changes to venues to cope with weather at the drop of the hat etc etc and really are the unsung heroes of agility. Without you there would be no agility competition so whilst quietly confident that you will make the best of this I also hope it isn't too challenging.

Competitors - What fun this is going to be in looking at shows to enter, what classes to enter - so much choice. What a gamble if looking for wins to move up. If you know the class is split do you do lower height as you can go faster or the standard height as there may not be so many dogs to compete against. A minefield - game of minesweepers anyone? Strategy is going to be a key mental skill or maybe lady luck will just be busier. 

There will be a call for people to be honest and as many have mentioned there may not be "fairness". IMO agility can never be looked at as all things being equal - dogs and people are all of different shape and personality. Not to mention age and sex, so no matter what rules changes there are, in a competition there will always be winners and losers. If you can not accept that then agility is never going to be a happy place for you to compete in. The top dogs and handlers will still get to the top.

Dogs - Really this is the most important category. This is really GREAT news for our dogs and their long term competitiveness. Not to mention their length of time being able to compete.

Moog is going to have a great start to agility being able to gain confidence at shows first at any size, then at the lower height and then move up to standard height as he progresses. 

Even though our dogs are allowed to compete at 18 months many dogs get fitter and stronger as they mature and reach peak at 4 to 7 years old. So it makes sense to allow them the easier task of jumping lower until they move up the grades. It is a formula followed in the horse world where higher jumps and more complex hurdles are only introduced as the horse wins up through their 'grades'.

Pikachu was tiny as a pup but has grown into her large personality to the extent that she might even end up as medium. A medium dog with Jack Russell legs and a Pug body would possibly have a short competition time as weight to height would worry me. We did not get her as an agility dog but she has her own agenda! With this new looking schedule then we will be able compete at  the lower height. We are competitive people deep down so just running at Anysize may not have given us the motivation to train her the same etc. This is all a lot of ifs as she is only 6 months but illustrates to me the differences this rule could make to her. 

I am sure there are a lot of handlers with dogs like her that are now going to be able to enjoy competing more with dogs that weren't a perfect fit height wise before.

So as Van Halen says - Jump

Getting Things Done

Well hello again :)

So much to be able to blog about too. Just need to remember to do it.

We decided our webpage wasn't the window we wanted it to be and there was no joy in trying to keep it up dated, with Twitter and Facebook being so handy and quick for keeping things current.

I used to get a lot from blogging and looking back it create a good place for me to take stock of things around me, to fine tune my thoughts along with my training and sometimes just to have a good old boast.

Todays blog is the latter I'm afraid. It is also a little cryptic which I personally hate in a blog but sometimes that is just the way things are best to be.

My boast is that I am very proud of my husband.

Now many of you know that anyway, it's not news and most people are pleased with their partners. It doesn't hurt though to value the good things in your life.

He is not generally known for his patience. He is however well known for always looking for improvements (and I can confirm he is ALWAYS looking for improvement in everything).

Occasionally in order to make an improvement patience and perseverance and continually assessing things are the only way forward.

So yes, sometimes it is difficult when one of his projects takes up our weekend, interrupts our holiday and giving up seems the easy path. Then something happens that makes it all worthwhile and in a way that will probably just pass by without a stir and only we know how long it's taken. And thats a good thing.

Hopefully this improvement will move things forward and will not need further time and patience. 

I know there will be other projects that will spill over to our time in order to be done the best way and it makes me proud.