Mad Mutts - Acremead

Both dogs were on the Rockets today with Smartie, Jamie, Piper and Perry. There was quite a lot of swapping dogs in and out but Nat only ended up running Elliot for one and a half races because the rest of the time there was only ever one of my two running :) I was really really pleased with both dogs today. Elliot, had one wobble in our second race when we had moved from the blue lane into the red lane and missed out the first two jumps before he realised he was supposed to go over the jumps in this lane this time bless him. Other than that he was brill, box turns were sooooooooooo much better than last comp, he needs to try and get his back legs up a little bit more but hey, that will come :) He also did an amazing turn around after getting a light, has he ran to get his tuggy I managed to grab him, turn him around and let him go!!! As for Jembear, she only ran in the blue lane, just doing warm ups in the red lane and we had NO running across to the other lane :D We had one moment when she came of the box that she thought about it but I managed to call her back in and she manged to just get over the first jump but that was it, the rest of the time she was really really focused!! :D She also had a little bit of a confusion moment when she came through the gate and dropped her ball and so she went to go and pick it up but everyone was shouting at her (we all thought she was going to go back up the lane chasing!) and so she ended up just standing right in the way looking very confused as to what to do but it was fine because Nat still let elliot go and he just ran round her bless her, luckily I managed to get her before jamie was released! I still need to improve my change overs as I kept being late, however I did manage a 0.00 start time with Jem :) I will leave Nat to fill you in on times etc but we finished fourth :D

Contacts again!!

Jemma:
We did some work on her contacts today and where I was tellnig her to stop, me being ahead of her/continuing to run and by the end she was doing some nice contacts :) We also did some work on our weaves, our entrances definately need work, she doesn't slow down enough to allow herself to make it back through the second gap if she at a dodgy angle. We then did some pull throughs which she did nicely when I got it right :) Started off a bad lesson with the course going horribly wrong, finished with a nice course and it all going nicely (apart from the weave angle still - definately something to work on!!)

Elliot:
We did some jumping with him and he was a good boy, didnt go under any today, I learnt as well that he is not the same as jem, if i move away from a jump move he has taken it he comes too whereas jem would take the jump and then come, he just needs a little more encouragement at the moment to build up his confidence. We worked on ten weaves and he is soooo much better!! just need to work on the entrance and pole 5-6 (I think) as he likes to always miss this one, does the rest though, i think his striding just gets out so he has to miss one to get back in (if that makes sense). Then, for the final 5 mins we started training contacts again :) We are training him with stop contacts because I feel he is too literal to do target training, he sees target and thinks "touch target with nose" he doesn't think "touch target with nose with two feet on and two feet off the contact" so we shall see how we go :)

My homework with both dogs is to teach them left and right as I noticed Easter weekend a few occasions where these verbal commands would have come in handy!!

Flyball!!!

Elliot:
Well I can't really say much about him as Nat ran him because we were running the teams for next weekend and both my two are on the same team as I am only going one day (My dissertation is due in in two weeks!!). From what I saw though, after a few dodgy box turns he then sorted himself out (after taking himself off to do one from close up!!) - I will make sure at the comp that he does a close up one when warming up!!

Jemma:
Hmmm, well!! We only had the one lane set up this week so I gradually moved her back so she started closer and closer to the other dogs and then she was going from with in them. She did really well, with only one really wide run up to the lane as she was looking at smartie!! Then, on our last run - same place as before she launched at smartie as we went past and bit my knee instead!! I took her out and made her lie down, although she didn't seem that bothered!! When I let her go I was running between her and the other dogs to act as a barrier and try and focus her but I think I am going to have to rethink this now!!! At the comp she is mainly going to just be doing warm ups, perhaps with the odd run in the red (I think!!) lane depending on how she is behaving!! Either way I shall be letting her go from closer to the start gate, not too close but so that she is not standing with the rest of our dogs!! Wish us Luck!!!

Training with Gail :)

Our lesson today was with Gail because Lesley has fractured her elbow :( (the sad face is for Lesley fracturing her elbow, not for us having Gail!!)

Jemma:
The contacts she did were nice today, although I let her go a little early on the seesaw (naughty mummy!!) We worked on her weaves a little, and decided that once she is in them and on her way she will carry on if I run on, so I need to work on getting her them first time and her finding her rhythm quicker so that I can move on and she doesn't come out at the end because she is wondering what I am doing just waiting around!! We also worked on her jumping quite a lot, on her getting used to me getting close to her and pushing her over the edges of the jump when back crossing rather than leaving her to take the middle of it with lots of space and room and then end up doing a huge arc. She really didn't like this at the start and would knock the poles down all over the place but at the end she was much better :) Still lots of us to work, all just fine tuning for both me and her!!

Elliot:
We started with our weaves and he did six really nicely from a long start and at quite a speed, we then pushed them up to eight (the first of the six was a bit wibbly wobbly) and he tried them all all the time, once he was in he would (except for once or twice) go to the end, he was just picky about where he went in. We then did some complicated jumping with him and he started going under the poles on the corners so we took him back out to long straight jumps and he was fine, as with Jem he doesn't like me encroching on his space but he also struggles with the short strides between jumps. We worked on his jump-tunnel starts and discovered it is his distance from the jump that affects whether he goes under or over it - the further away he is the more likely he is to go over it - we shall work on this, gradually getting him closer because at the momment he needs to be a distance away that you would rarely get in competition. We then went back and finished on some weaves and a little course - on guiding him to the first weave pole he did them all beautifully, dont think it will be long before he is doing them in a course on his own :) However, he again got worried about the course because it was a bit twisty, we got over this though by me being really encouraging and excited all the way round and he only went under one jump (it was a different colour to the others and had to go down to small for him to see it!!)!! Am looking forward to continuing to work with him and see him grow and develop into a cracking little dog :)

We are back to flyball on sunday ready for our competition next weekend :)

More photos

Some evidence Elliot can also weave!!

These photos were all taken for me by Abbi (foofoothesnoo@hotmail.co.uk)