For my first three runs of the day I had nobody available to film the runs so you will have to put up with me telling you about them rather than watching them!!
Elliot:
For both his agility runs I used them to practice his wait as he is no where near ready to do them in competition yet, as he can't even do them in training!!
First one we just did tyre then jump - as soon as I let go of his collar he shot off, so I put him back and then went just past the tyre without him moving at all :)
Next one he did the same thing again as soon as I let go of him so back he went, then again, I got past the wind of the first jump without him moving at all so we did a funny concotion of four jumps :)
Jumping:
This is on the video, but it started tyre, 6 weaves so I thought I would give them a go to see where we are - he did tyre and then as soon as I said weave looked for a tunnel and went in that instead!! However I sat him in front of them and tried again, OK he missed the entrance but then did the rest so I was really happy with that and carried on :) I then turned miles to early and had arms doing god knows what so he came inside a jump, then again (twice) I was dithering about and ended up sending him under the jump before the cloth tunnel!!
All in all for him I think it was a pretty productive day :)
Jemma:
Agility Combined:
This was her only run not on video (which I think is a good job!!) - I am however going to be honest and admit to being really bad - she missed her dog walk contact but by the time I realised (it was early!!) we had gone on two jumps!! She then knocked the pole before the weaves because I tried to tighten her up too much, then she decided to only do 10 weaves instead of 12 and to finish off went in the tunnel instead of over the last jump, like I said I think it is a good job this one wasn't on vid!!
Jumping Graded:
Our old problem of jump down after the tunnel - she completely mistimed it and came up almost underneath it!! She then knocked another pole and I lost the plot so she missed one out towards the end - she did however do some nice weaves :)
Agility Graded:
She had slow contacts on this, and at one point nearly went the wrong way, also got in her way before the see-saw because only just remembered I was going to front cross!! However she did the rest nicely and finished 6th :D with a time of 32.68, with the winner having a time of 30.11 - I am really pleased with this for our first KC open (excluding the one a year ago when she couldn't weave!) and that there are clear things we can work on.
Again, all in all I was pleased with her day, her weaves have improved so much since this time last year, they just need a little bit of fine tuning now! Sadly I think her contacts have got slightly worse but I think that is due to me being confusing and inconsistent!!!
The link to the vid of them both is below :) I am not sure why but there appears to be an issue with uploading it to my blog and for some reason it has a black box around it on youtube but if you go to full screen you can see it clearly!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8p6QuK96gI
Sunday, 21 March 2010
Friday, 19 March 2010
Possibly a break through!!
Jemma:
Well we had the team course from crufts set up for us and it went erm well ok i guess!! We had a bit of trouble with the weaves first time but in my favour I did apparently walk/run the course I right - there is a first time for everything!! :P I was pleased with her speed though - she seemed to be really powering forward :) Lesley did take a video of our last run of the course which I have posted below, there was just one pole down because I moved slightly too early, however on watching it back I think she could have done with tightening up after jump two and I needed to watch her after jump three as she looks at the jump rather than the see - saw to start with.
Elliot:
Well, yet again we spent most of the lesson doing weaves, and consequently we spent at least the first 15mins of the lesson tearing our hair out as he would get it once and then despite us changing nothing he would then get it wrong like 10 times. After much watching and contemplating we then decided that he thought it was coming out between the last two poles was the important thing and so he went to just running down all the poles and through the last two. Anyway out break through was that when doing it right we said very quietly as he was doing it "good boy" and this seemed to be the encouragment he needed - it needed to be said quietly and calmy otherwise he picked up speed and lost concentration but once we started this he only got it wrong about three times so it really seemed to help his understanding of what it was he was getting rewarded for! Fingers crossed we are getting there!!!
Well we had the team course from crufts set up for us and it went erm well ok i guess!! We had a bit of trouble with the weaves first time but in my favour I did apparently walk/run the course I right - there is a first time for everything!! :P I was pleased with her speed though - she seemed to be really powering forward :) Lesley did take a video of our last run of the course which I have posted below, there was just one pole down because I moved slightly too early, however on watching it back I think she could have done with tightening up after jump two and I needed to watch her after jump three as she looks at the jump rather than the see - saw to start with.
Elliot:
Well, yet again we spent most of the lesson doing weaves, and consequently we spent at least the first 15mins of the lesson tearing our hair out as he would get it once and then despite us changing nothing he would then get it wrong like 10 times. After much watching and contemplating we then decided that he thought it was coming out between the last two poles was the important thing and so he went to just running down all the poles and through the last two. Anyway out break through was that when doing it right we said very quietly as he was doing it "good boy" and this seemed to be the encouragment he needed - it needed to be said quietly and calmy otherwise he picked up speed and lost concentration but once we started this he only got it wrong about three times so it really seemed to help his understanding of what it was he was getting rewarded for! Fingers crossed we are getting there!!!
Saturday, 13 March 2010
Just Elliot this week!!!
Jemma has been signed off work for at least a week and on metacam for at least four days as she has done something to her back leg again!! We are not sure exactly what as she doesn't really give much indication of what hurts, all we know is that she cannot extend her back right leg at all!! :(
This meant it was just Elliot that went to agility this week. His jumping was really nice, we had some trouble with him going under a jump on a tight corner, so I just had to alter my handling to push him out just a tiny bit so he could see the jump earlier. Hmm, we then spent most of the rest of the lesson doing weaves!! Well, he did 8 weaves twice beautifully, nice and fast with a nice movement, however that was it, he then couldn't do it again!!! We dropped it to five, still couldn't do it, after probably at least 20 times we took it down to three and then he finally did these on the third attempt so we left it at that!!! We ran out of time to try our contacts!!
I have since done one session at home with Elliot on the weaves (for the first time since before Christmas which proabably explains why he is struggling!!) - I just had four and was determined to get them right 5times in a row (optimistic I know!). After it not going too well to start with I decided to change tactics and use fish treats instead of a toy and to have my friend rewarding him instead of me, because after studying him carefully I decided he was watchin me for his toy being thrown and trying to run to go get it instead of thinking about what he is doing! As soon as I changed to fish he did the five right in a row straight off!! think this will be the way forward!!!
This meant it was just Elliot that went to agility this week. His jumping was really nice, we had some trouble with him going under a jump on a tight corner, so I just had to alter my handling to push him out just a tiny bit so he could see the jump earlier. Hmm, we then spent most of the rest of the lesson doing weaves!! Well, he did 8 weaves twice beautifully, nice and fast with a nice movement, however that was it, he then couldn't do it again!!! We dropped it to five, still couldn't do it, after probably at least 20 times we took it down to three and then he finally did these on the third attempt so we left it at that!!! We ran out of time to try our contacts!!
I have since done one session at home with Elliot on the weaves (for the first time since before Christmas which proabably explains why he is struggling!!) - I just had four and was determined to get them right 5times in a row (optimistic I know!). After it not going too well to start with I decided to change tactics and use fish treats instead of a toy and to have my friend rewarding him instead of me, because after studying him carefully I decided he was watchin me for his toy being thrown and trying to run to go get it instead of thinking about what he is doing! As soon as I changed to fish he did the five right in a row straight off!! think this will be the way forward!!!
Sunday, 7 March 2010
Flyball
Elliot
He took the place of Smartie in the Rockets as she was lame and he isn't going to be there at easter which is when the teams first competition is. Well, what can I say, it was like he was born to do flyball. He had no issues with change overs at all and had beautiful box turns, so much better than the last time he did full runs (at the competition in october!!). Nat has a video of all the turns of his team - i shall post a link when it is online, i can't wait to watch it again!!
Jemma
Well, bless her she had the right hand lane to herself. It was netted for her too. The first full run she did she decided to run round the netting at the box end across to the other lane, Nat just happened to be standing between the two lanes at this time and grabbed her, well, this gave her the shock of her life, especially as nat then picked her up!!! Nat then put her back in front of the box and didn't let her go until she was looking at the box and not me (she is a wimp and wanted to get back to her mummy cuz she had been shouted at by Nat!!), anyway she then did a lovely box turn and came back to me. After that she didn't go out of the lane and although she spent her whole way up looking at the other lane she did actually notice the box before she ran into it and actually did her usually lovely box turn :) I got Nick to record her time for me because I have never really been able to get a time for her doing it properly as she normally prats around a bit - he got her at 4.9/5.0 which i was a bit disappointed with but then have to remember she still wasn't concentrating fully, and as Nat reminded me I was letting her go from less than 10ft from the start gate so this would make her time slower, also it was her last two runs that we recorded and so she was a bit tired!! We shall see what she gets next week - we are going to try
and get single times for them all so will be good to compare her and elliot!!
Here is a link to the vid of Elliots box turn, he is number 3 :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlsGnYo2ap4
He took the place of Smartie in the Rockets as she was lame and he isn't going to be there at easter which is when the teams first competition is. Well, what can I say, it was like he was born to do flyball. He had no issues with change overs at all and had beautiful box turns, so much better than the last time he did full runs (at the competition in october!!). Nat has a video of all the turns of his team - i shall post a link when it is online, i can't wait to watch it again!!
Jemma
Well, bless her she had the right hand lane to herself. It was netted for her too. The first full run she did she decided to run round the netting at the box end across to the other lane, Nat just happened to be standing between the two lanes at this time and grabbed her, well, this gave her the shock of her life, especially as nat then picked her up!!! Nat then put her back in front of the box and didn't let her go until she was looking at the box and not me (she is a wimp and wanted to get back to her mummy cuz she had been shouted at by Nat!!), anyway she then did a lovely box turn and came back to me. After that she didn't go out of the lane and although she spent her whole way up looking at the other lane she did actually notice the box before she ran into it and actually did her usually lovely box turn :) I got Nick to record her time for me because I have never really been able to get a time for her doing it properly as she normally prats around a bit - he got her at 4.9/5.0 which i was a bit disappointed with but then have to remember she still wasn't concentrating fully, and as Nat reminded me I was letting her go from less than 10ft from the start gate so this would make her time slower, also it was her last two runs that we recorded and so she was a bit tired!! We shall see what she gets next week - we are going to try
and get single times for them all so will be good to compare her and elliot!!
Here is a link to the vid of Elliots box turn, he is number 3 :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlsGnYo2ap4
Friday, 5 March 2010
Just Jemma!
Elliot had another fit this morning so missed out on his agility training and I left him at home with my flatmate to sleep.
Today Lesley set out a nice "easy" grade 1-2 course for us to work on. Well needless to say it didn't go quite to plan!! Although Lesley has now pointed out something else I do wrong - I forget that Jem only just measures into large and therefore that she needs more help doing the corners so that I let her go a little bit wider than I would perhaps like but this means she keeps the pole up because it gives her the room she needs to get over it! She also did some lovely weave entrances - we need to work on her looking for them when I say weave rather than looking at me and forgetting where she is going - just had a thought, maybe next time I will try not saying anything at all, although then I need to be careful, because when it is a short stride from the jump before - hmm, I am sure Lesley will sort me out lol!! Her contacts were OK, oddly they are much better and faster when I run the course as if I was in a competition, so running properly rather than just dawdling!! All in all was quite pleased with her and felt I had improved by the end of the lesson too!!!
Today Lesley set out a nice "easy" grade 1-2 course for us to work on. Well needless to say it didn't go quite to plan!! Although Lesley has now pointed out something else I do wrong - I forget that Jem only just measures into large and therefore that she needs more help doing the corners so that I let her go a little bit wider than I would perhaps like but this means she keeps the pole up because it gives her the room she needs to get over it! She also did some lovely weave entrances - we need to work on her looking for them when I say weave rather than looking at me and forgetting where she is going - just had a thought, maybe next time I will try not saying anything at all, although then I need to be careful, because when it is a short stride from the jump before - hmm, I am sure Lesley will sort me out lol!! Her contacts were OK, oddly they are much better and faster when I run the course as if I was in a competition, so running properly rather than just dawdling!! All in all was quite pleased with her and felt I had improved by the end of the lesson too!!!
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