Of Updates and Heatwaves

Righto. Time for a blog update. Yes real life obviously did not stay this side of normal and I am a few days overdue. Lots of news to report it’s kind of daunting to think where I should start! The Western Classic perhaps? Well we had some rather spiffy courses to run and we had judges from Queensland,Tasmania and South Australia so a very national flavour in terms of course design.

Spryte – had her debut in her first official competition and the Novice Agility course by Barbara Murfet was a very nice first course for her. Absolutely nothing wrong with the course design or the dog who worked beautifully for me. I had a case of ‘Holy crap she’s really trialling for the first time’ nerves and completely forgot that this is a dog I have actually trained the table with properly. She got on the table and I froze. You know how when under pressure dogs revert back to default behaviours, humans have the same issue. Or at least this human does. I stood there not moving, freaking out that I had a ‘Raven’ on the table and of course blocked the next two obstacles very nicely from Spryte’s line of sight. Hence we had two lovely handler enabled refusals. But I was still extremely pleased with the way she worked. Her speed is coming on very nicely, literally in leaps and bounds and her obstacle performance is on it’s way to complete proficiency. Then Novice Jumping with Peter Hofto – also a cracker of a course, slightly more technical than the agility one. This required much more tighter handling in a couple of parts and this showed our weaknesses when I turned close on bars and she brought a couple down. Showed up very nicely exactly what things we should be working on.

Cypher – Picked this weekend to try out the zero percentage pass rate feeling. Nothing I could have done really. Masters Agility (Judge: Roger Green) he missed a dogwalk contact – I was completely stunned by this, as it would bring his grand total of missed dogwalk contacts in trialling to 2. Then I believe he took a bar down as well for good measure. I didn’t notice it much as I was still in aftershock from the missed DW! Open Jumping (Mr J Ryan judging) – one bar down. Open Agility (Judge:Roger Green) he decided the distance challenge wasn’t enough and decided to take his own obstacles moving laterally away from me. Plus took one bar down. I’d decided he must have been saving it for Masters Jumping (Mr J Ryan judging). We were three easy bars from home when he took the third last bar down. I admit I was a little frustrated when I asked if anyone wanted to swap their dog for Cypher. Ah well.

Raven – Masters Agility, cracker of a time and no off courses yet two bars down. Open Jumping – she had a great time in the distance challenge figuring that if I was moving away from her laterally she should just go through the bars instead of over them as that meant she returned to me much quicker. Think she had about 3 down by the time I stopped her, told her I wasn’t playing, thanked the judge and withdrew. Open Agility – fastest time on the night, one bar just tapped off the uprights. Think I was going to be surprised by this point if I actually pulled a clear round so I just laughed at Raven’s joy and berated the time keeper for telling me she had the quickest time by two seconds…I think she took some evil delight in informing me. Masters Jumping, I think we got through this with one bar down near the end. And that was that. Classic Individual Agility and Jumping trials over for another year! I had run Andrea’s Sheltie Rumour and both times we had one fault so I seriously was completely jinxed that night.

Sunday night was the Obedience. I did have Cy in CCD but was utterly bored out of my mind waiting till he came on at something like quarter to 11 that night so scratched him. Raven got into the UD ring at 9.30pm and we had a lovely practice round withdrawing halfway through the signals heelwork. It was only ever going to be a practice round since I hadn’t realised I’d entered her till a few days before and had done zippo training with her. So she got the seekback, did her own Raven Interpretation of the directed jumping which included far more reps of the jumps than just boring old two. Why go straight out to a box when you can have fun taking a jump on the way out? I’m sure she just thinks that exercise is a completely lame Novice jumping course. Nailed her articles so was pleased with that, did some nice slow pace heelwork in signals and then must have just been coiling herself tight during the slow pace because when I went back to normal pace she unsprung in a major way. So we withdrew thanking the judge for his patience and his good humour. I haven’t found a judge yet who has managed to supress a smile at her very evident enthusiasm for all ‘active’ tasks in UD. At this stage, gaining a UD may be off our short term goals to achieve. I’ve decided she needs some fairly intensive training for it and unless someone would like to offer to take her in and get it done I’m thinking I may just skip the UD getting part all together. Any offers? *vbg* She’ll work for anyone if she thinks they are good for treats….only comes with moderate to severe badly trained habits that I’m sure any competent trainer could overcome in five seconds and to make up for that she has about 10 times more enthusiasm than any Obedience dog needs. She’ll make you laugh I guarantee it.

Monday night was the teams event and I tried to keep my odds good by placing my three dogs in three separate teams. It worked fairly well finishing in the top four in both the Agility event and the Jumping event. Cypher’s team mostly had a good night. Cypher decided he can keep all the bars up, running clear in the Jumping and having only one fault in the Agility with an A frame contact. It was fairly close and I made a mental note to work contacts all week with him. His team finished 4th in the Agility. Spryte had a ball and we did parts of both courses very nicely and some parts not so nice. She did do something new to me though…all of a sudden she shot off to what she thought the next obstacle was without me even moving there. Then she came back in really quickly and I had to dodge her to avoid tripping on her. She’s definitely gaining in confidence with every run but I need to make sure that’s tempered with self control. It’s great that she is feeling confident and sassy enough to pick out obstacles to do as it indicates her drive to do obstacles is increasing but I need to be pairing that with handler focus as well. Her team The Spice Girls, consisting of two shelties (Rumour being one) and of her and Spice, Andrea’s young NZHD came third in the Jumping so we were very chuffed having two brand new baby dogs on that team! Raven – well she had a ball. Especially on the agility course, I was chicken with the table and didn’t move and she was pointing the wrong way and so jumped off the table one side, saw me going the other jumped on the table again and then ran to the next obstacle. I was laughing from that new little move and didn’t handle the rest of the course at all well and she realised I had stopped handling altogether on around her second circle lap of tunnels and jumps. She came back we finished the course and I couldn’t do anything except grin at her complete and utter enjoyment with not a care in the world. She redeemed our performance in jumping by running clear though. And that was the end of the Classic. At least I didn’t come home completely empty handed picking up a couple of placements with the teams. The courses were great too, I must try and get copies of them to practice at training.

So that brings us to this weekend just gone. Raven, Cypher, Nifty, Sue and myself left for Adelaide on Saturday and landed in 39 degree heat. Just yummy. Not. We’d actually had thunder and rain for a couple days during the week. It had cooled somewhat so of course we up and leave for heatwave temps again. The trip went smoothly till Avis lumped us with a Fiat van (unlike the Toyota HiAce we had ordered and rung up to confirm THREE times before we left)…the Fiat Van has a name – Sauna Box. A fully enclosed cargo section with metal on all four sides and no ventilation. We drove to nearest shady spot at West Beach five minutes down the road and then refused to move until Avis replaced it with a Hi Ace. There was a ‘mix up’ apparently sounding remarkably like a lack of communication to me but we didn’t mention it. 2 and a half hours after landing we had our Hi Ace and all was right with the world again. We headed off to Highway 1, a very nice and full of dog people from all over Australia, holiday park. We settled in, had fish and chips for dinner and generally chilled out in the air con. We headed over to SACA park Sunday around 10.30ish. Adelaide bears a striking resemblance to a red dust bowl currently having been in a drought situation for some time now; everywhere is dry, rock hard and dusty. SACA park was no different. Trailers, cars and tent cabana gazebo land with every piece of shade snapped up we wandered the grounds for a bit checking things out as you do. WA has it very sweet that’s all I will say on that, there is no doubt in my mind that our grounds are the best in the country, though I won’t state that categorically until I see QLD and Tassie.

So the teams event was under a huge marquee used for showing at 1pm. The first agility course was by NZ judge Lyn Sayers and had some challenging technical points in it combined with fast flowing extended segments. It was fun to run and Raven ended up with two refusals only and no DQ which was amazing really given all the DQs happening. Turns out she was saving the DQs for the second round! I handled the lead out badly on Ashley Roach’s (NSW) course, so we picked up a DQ at the beginning, then one about halfway through the course, another one when she went over a jump after the weavers having missed one and I’m not sure where the 4th one came from. She had a real issue with the weaves in the second round and it took three attempts to complete them. I had no idea where she was missing one but she kept coming out on the wrong side. Not like her at all and I do wonder if the stick in the ground poles are an issue for dogs when they have been shunted and pushed aside by previous dogs. A number of Agility Champion dogs had issues with them. C’est la vie as they say. Some great runs by a number of dogs, notable ones were Ronnie’s two Jak and Cricket, a nice run from Wendy and Hollie and a couple of other 1 fault runs that were still very nice to watch. South Australia won overall and that was great to see Danni, Wendy, Darren and Michelle go up and get their prizes.

The following day was Monday and a double Jumping single Agility trial was held at West Beach as part of the Pedigree Autumn International. It was hot still but not quite as hot as SACA had been. We managed to keep the dogs quite cool under the verandah of the clubrooms. Sue and Nifty had a good day taking home 3 first places (both MJs and an OJ and 1 fourth place in the AM OJ).

Raven picked up a second place in Open Jumping and a clear 7th place in Masters Jumping, we wasted a couple of seconds whilst Simone tried to think quicker (and clearly failed given her time!) She had two bars down in MA and I screwed her second MJ run up by pulling her off a jump – I blamed the heat frying my brain then. In Open Agility she took one bar down the same as in her second Open Jumping run. She told me it must have been the heat then too. The photographer got some good shots of her mad running dogwalk in OA where I just took off on her as she finished the weaves determined to beat her to the end of the dogwalk. Check out this page: http://www.inmotionphotography.net/coppermine/thumbnails.php?album=318&page=34

Photos 38 to 41.

Cypher was clear in four out of six runs which was much more than I was expecting given our zero percent pass rate the weekend before, the heat (he feels it quite a lot with his coat) and also his travel confinement for the previous two days. He picked up passes in the morning OA and OJ, and in the afternoon in OJ and MJ. Took the dogs to the beach afterwards, they had a swim and then we headed back to the holiday park. We enjoyed a leisurely lie in before flying home just after lunch yesterday.

So here we are at Wednesday. Last night when we got in I happened to be checking Raven’s lymph nodes out, like I usually do…every day much to her disgust. The right hand side one felt a little bit abnormal to me. So I checked in with Ken Wyatt today at Murdoch. He decided I wasn’t being paranoid this time, that there was a slight change which could quite well be an inflammatory response to her allergies playing up (she’s been very itchy on the same side of her face) or it could be ‘something else’. We refused to name it out loud. So he took a fine needle aspirate and told me to ring for the results tomorrow. That is the only change in her. He thoroughly checked her over, listening to her heart and checking all the usual areas. Apart from that one slightly changed node everything else is fine. Raven of course tells me nothing as her behaviour has been completely normal for her, running courses and generally acting like her feral self. Certainly not a typically refined and dignified 8 year old but more like a 3 year old on uppers, the heat seemed to have no effect on her at all…I was secretly hoping it may have given us just a little bit extra in the control department but no such luck. So now we wait. Till lunchtime tomorrow. I refuse to even think about any possible implications until then since there is absolutely nothing I can do right now. Although if it is something I think Adelaide will definitely have to come off our list of places to compete in as that is just too suspicious!

From just this trip alone I’ve decided that the Cool Champions Cool Coat is well worth the investment (I borrowed one Sunday off Sally – thankyou muchly!) and it actually worked. As in when I stuck my hand under the coat after it had been on Raven for a good 20 minutes it was definitely cooler than the outside of the coat. And she felt cool on her fur and skin to touch. I was pretty impressed. So I am looking at purchasing a couple but I am interested to see if anyone else would like to purchase one with me, if we order enough we can get a discount. If you do let me know via email – borderaussie@iinet.net.au.

Definitely a must have for hot weather trialling and we certainly do enough of that even in the evenings round here.

So that is it for now, I am going to update with some training stuff soon. Spryte’s progress with her contact training and Cypher’s jumping work. In the meantime some non dog related recommendations:

Go see Jumper with Hayden Christianson, who is improving with each movie he does. It’s a fast paced, high action, sci fi flick based in reality with some fantastic effects.

My other recommendation is this book: Spud by John Van de Ruit. It’s an absolute crack up and I haven’t laughed out loud as much reading a book since Gerald Durrell’s My Family and Other Animals.

Also for a good darkly comedic television series I have to vouch for Showtime’s Dexter, a thoroughly well written and delightfully black humour series about a serial killer with a moral code. This led me to Six Feet Under which is also rather addictive and out on DVD (five seasons) as it finished in 2005.