My JDM Boy!

At the first regular trial back for 2007 Cypher went clear on the Masters jumping course to finish off his JDM title.

He is now Nahrof Quick Change ADX JDM ADO JDO SPD GD at the tender age of 2 years and 3 months old. He is possibly the youngest dog in Western Australia to gain this title. He went from Novice Jumping through to Masters complete in around 8 months of trialling time. Is he a great dog? Absolutely but who has taught me the most about training? The Raven. I believe she was 5 and a half years old when she gained her JDM, it took us that long….wait….it took *me* that long to get a handle on not only how to handle her but to teach her that bars mean something! Without her I’m not so sure I’d be capable of training dogs to reach their JDM so early in their trialling careers.

To top it all off he went clear on Masters Agility as well with a very nice run that ended up with a third place out of 13 qualifiers! He is deceptive with his times though, as I run him he feels like we’re not going anywhere near the speed of some faster dogs and yet when the cards are given out, so far in Masters Agility, all his clear rounds have resulted in top 4 finishes! 4 more cards to go for that title.

Raven had relatively good night although no passes, in Masters Agility I completely did a magic trick on her for her seesaw and as a result we had one of most spectacular fly offs ever (seriously I don’t think the board had even started tipping before she flew through the air with the greatest of ease). It happens when your handler completely blocks it by doing an untidy front cross in front of it too close and the dog goes flying up it thinking it’s a dogwalk and said handler doesn’t think to yell wait just yells “Seesaw” when the dog is already at just about the end of it! Raven must have thought as it dropped out from underneath ‘Seesaw? YOU RECKON??? Could have warned me a bit earlier slow arse!!” So my fault there but it was a nice run apart from that! In Open Agility again handler had slow arse disease (I swear she’s gotten waaaaay faster over the break) and didn’t direct her clearly, Raven went where? I went oh crap you’re pointing the wrong way and yelled Come, Raven came (very nicely pulling off the correct jump) and we copped a refusal on what was otherwise a nice run. Stoooopid handler! Masters Jumping I think I had just started to get more on the ball with my handling and commands and she drops a bar so we left, she had run very nicely apart from that! I’m hoping that I’m more rapidly up to par with next weekend’s trial!

Another success tonight was that I finished of Rumour’s (Sheltie) ADM title with a clear run in Masters Agility. So that was good news, we’ll concentrate on her Open Titles now I think and her games ones. So not a bad night at all, although stinky hot!