Raven, Cypher & Spryte - An Agility Blog: perth royal

Saturday, October 20, 2007

Trialling, chemotherapy, training updates

It's been a while since I posted, went back to work this week which may have something to do with it but more than likely it's other obsessions that have taken over. Forgot to add in about the Royal - Raven, who has attended the show every year since 2002 (FIVE years) and has never pulled a clean run, actually managed a clean run this year in the Master Gamblers class and managed to win it as well. I'm not sure what this says about our agility career as a whole (the fact that this is the first year she's been called 'chemodog') but I'm glad she can add the Royal Show to her list of wins finally. And look! Photographic evidence!

Cypher recently grabbed a 1st place in his first Excellent Snooker debut last Saturday, Raven finished the day off nicely with a 2nd place in Masters Snooker for her first leg in there. Today we had the GSDA trial and Cypher was a star and picked up a 2nd place in Masters Jumping and a quallie in Open Agility. I stuffed his run in Masters Agility by not really letting him see a jump till the last microsecond, hence he pulled that bar and in Open Jumping I completely misjudged the opening line and caused him to have a refusal on a bar. So Cy himself was virtually perfect dog today, handler was far from it!
Raven took 3rd in Open Agility today and also had FHS in both Masters Agility and Jumping. FHS? (Flawed Handler Syndrome). In Masters Agility I for some reason thought I was safe to take my eye off my dog for a nano second....HAHAHAHA!!! Raven was convinced weave poles had to be done twice in this course and before I could get the 'Come' out she had slipped into the first gap of the weaves. It was a definite ARGH moment. In Masters Jumping I got lost. Getting lost on a course has to be really high up there on the list of the top ten mistakes handlers make that just make them want to kick themselves across the conveniently provided grounds. What made it worse was that roughly ten dogs before I had run Cypher perfectly on the same course without missing a beat! So with FHS afflicting her handler Raven decided she'd do the weaves quicker in Open Jumping if she just went straight into the 2nd gap...I figured payback's a bitch...then I realised she probably has no clue I stuffed up the other two courses but I like to anthropomorphise! As they say there's always another trial so we head off again tomorrow to Rockingham Dog Club.
Spryte is now doing 12 weavers straight (set on bases used in competition). She turns 15 months tomorrow. She does them but not always perfectly obviously so we'll keep repeating, repeating and then repeating more! We are still working one jump most of the time during the week, although she has done some grid work now. I train her on 500 plus even though she'll be jumping 400 in competition. Given that all the signs all point to her being a little speed demon I see no harm in teaching her a strong foundation, perhaps more than required, in jumping. A Frames are coming along - I do two sessions on this a week (at club). She's missing maybe 3 out of a 12 runs of the a frame. And never more than twice in a row when she does. We are working on running a frames using reward placement, I bounce the food off the bottom of the a frame and she's hitting the colour no worries. I'm simply going to rely on muscle memory here for now. I may change to a four on the floor with her later. Dogwalk, well she hasn't been on a plank for a while as I work her targetting. She's a body swinger in that she likes to see my face when she performs a behaviour that she knows gets rewarded. Thus she runs out to the target and puts her front two paws on it and swings sideways so she can see where the treats are coming from. She's hitting the target very confidently but that is just useless for a when it gets transferred to a dogwalk plank. We're working on this by using some channeling via the small green wire flower bed border fencing. This fencing is in an archway shape and comes to just below my knees and just sticks into the ground. Perfect height for Spryte. I set the channel up and put target on the ground at the end of it. Hence she can't swing around unless she does a full 180. I also release her from behind to hit the contact/target as I lean over the top to feed her as soon as she gets in the right position. The most we've put together is a couple of jumps. Or a jump and a tunnel. I haven't taught her the collapsible tunnel yet - need to get onto that. As always we work our starts every day, she still has a long way to go with her waits in terms of me proofing them. We also do a few table sessions each week. When I say 'sessions' I'm talking 5 minutes here and there no more than 10 minutes max. Not that she's not keen to carry on but I always stop with her when she's showing me the best behaviours. It means I can keep that enthusiasm and drive happening each time she comes out. Something I really must get onto though is the bringing the toy back thing. She's a girl who likes to chew toys, so whilst she'll happily play tug with me if it's a thrown toy reward she loves nothing more than doing a victory lap round the back yard with the toy in her mouth and then settling down to have a good chew on it. That's no fun at all! I never had to teach Cy this so I better not assume it will all click with her one day, I'm going to have to deliberately shape it.
So that's the agility dogs update. Chemo dog? Well she's doing well - she had her last Doxorubicin treatment (the most lethal drug) on Tuesday (her WBC's had recovered from 1.5 to 4.5) and she has one more Cytoxan to go on Tues Oct 30th. Then that will be the end of her chemo cycle, what happens from there I don't know. I guess we'll meet with Ken and he'll let us know how we proceed. I've heard of dogs being on maintenance chemo - which is a lot more spaced out (once every month or 2 or 3 months). And I've heard of dogs who simply just carry on their lives without going back unless they drop out of remission. I hope we fit into the latter category.
We'll see...stay tuned.
My parents have been married for 34 years yesterday, my mum informed me that *my* father had forgotten. Hence I think they went out to dinner tonight. Flowers may have been involved. I did briefly consider ringing Dad and giving him a heads up. But I'm not that nice ;-) 34 years is a goodly number....I don't think they're bored with each other yet *g*
My other obsession lately (and there has only been one other) is the TV show Smallville. I've been looking for something to fulfill the Buffy/Angel vacuum for some time. And whilst I love shows like House, NCIS, CSI, Stargate Atlantis, Battlestar Galactica, Desperate Housewives, Scrubs and Criminal Intent nothing seemed to be filling that void. Smallville has fixed all that! Just spent the holidays watching Seasons 1 through to 6. That's 22 episodes times 6. And thanks to the hallowed 'torrents' I'm watching Season 7 eps a day after they screen in the US. I have no inkling of what the world was like *before* the Internet. I'm not that young either - I was at school during this inconceivable period but it's all a blur now. I digress - Smallville - great show. I have a perfectly logical explanation for why I didn't switch onto it before now. I thought Clark Kent just looked like a nancy boy who was far too pretty to get the superhero job done with any kind of credibility. And he was all that in Seasons 1 and some of 2, but then the actor and the character improved, got a bit rougher, a bit tougher and a bit more worldly wise. And now I cannot get enough of Smallville, I'm viewing previously watched eps, reading the stories online, speculating on forums, checking out the episode stills and screencaps, seeking out Youtube clips made by fans, I'm even getting the magazines. It's all good though, there are worse things to spend one's time, money and thoughts on. I'm sure it'll dissipate after a while. Every series has to end somewhere. I'm hoping we get a Season 8 out of them before they pull the pin. For now I'm content to just enjoy the eps as they come out. That and Reaper....this show hasn't screened in Australia yet - but keep an eye out for it, it's very quirky and will have you laughing.
Righto time for bed.

Sunday, September 30, 2007

Perth Royal 2007

Well the Royal Show started yesterday here in Perth. For those of you who don’t know the Royal is probably one of the bigger events on the calendar. It is one of the big three I suppose, up there with the State Titles and the Western Classic. It is a massive agricultural show that also has lots of side show alley rides, hundreds of show bags and lots and lots of exhibits. There is every kind of event from show jumping to dressage, sheep shearing, pig diving, to wood chopping, cat shows, cows, pigeons, poultry, sheep dog trialling and so on. In the agility trialling end of things there is a teams event every year – in Agility and in Jumping plus the usual Individual Classes and this year they have decided to include two of the games events; Gamblers and Strategic Pairs. Back in May I had been positive and felt sure that Raven would see another Royal and indeed she has! Yesterday was the Teams event – Cypher was in one team called the Master and Apprentices and Raven was in another called Could Be Brilliant. They got four runs each – two of agility and two of jumping. One of the attractions of the Royal event is that only one ring is run so you are really able to watch everyone else run unlike most trials when you usually have to be somewhere with a dog most of the time. It’s certainly one of the nicer things. Every year though it seems there are a lot more drawbacks for those competing. This year the RAS (Royal Agricultural Society) decreed that no one was permitted to bring their own shade (be it cabanas, umbrellas or whatever) as an extra marquee would be available for competitors. Well there was an extra marquee and still there was not enough room – we had people and dogs parked in the sun as well as those in the new marquee having to vacate to the back of it once noon passed due to the sun shining directly into it. They were all squished up in a very narrow area at the back between the marquee and the fence. We also had more restrictions placed on the unloading and offloading of cars meaning we needed to go up to an opposite gate to the agility area in order to be able to drive in and unload. These two things combined with the substandard equipment always brought out for the Royal tends to leach all the excitement and fun out of an event which should be and could be one of the biggest drawcards at the show and showcase to best effect for the public the absolute blast the dogs and handlers can have on an agility course. I think though I will always go to the Royal – as much as Raven turns up her feral meter whenever we run (I am yet to have a decent start line at the Royal with her and this is after 5 years mind you) I can see she absolutely loves the cheers and clapping of the spectators and laps up the attention from them. She’s an absolute rocket to try and handle and I often fall short of her demands on course I must admit. Whilst she is a super fast dog at most times, at Royal time she seems to step up a gear or three and unfortunately my handling and getting info to her in an expedient manner seems to be quite lacking. So we go without any expectations except for one – that we will have the best fun. Yesterday she certainly more than fulfilled that one. She had a few bars down and a few off courses but for the most part she handled well for me apart from one laps of attention in a jumping round where she thought she’d prove how well she could keep the jumps up by doing about 6 extra ones with me standing there waiting for her to figure out that we actually were not going the way she had just so gracefully indicated. She came back and we got back on course. No matter as our team had already bombed anyway so I wasn’t the least bit concerned. Cypher’s team did very well – we won the Jumping event being the only team without any DQs. Cy had one fault in each round as he dropped one bar (oddly enough the exact same bar both courses). His team mates pulled off 2 clear rounds plus a couple of rounds with just one or two faults each. In Agility he again had one fault in each round – got called for a pretty close a frame contact (think that’s like only the second or third in his career) and in the second round he fell off the middle of the dog walk. Yes the flat plank middle bit! Unbelievable really but may have had something to do with the fact that I had given the command to ‘contact’ a bit early, a bit loudly and a bit too close to him. We think he may have just glanced at me to see where I was and he mis-stepped the plank. Landed on his feet so no dramas but of course it incurred a fault. However he did well in that he didn’t DQ at all. A couple of team mates did so we were pretty much out of the running I believe. So all in all not a bad effort and lots of fun to run. Took Spryte with us and she had her first taste of the atmosphere at the Royal. I did a bit of target training work with her in the breaks. She was quite curious about the crowds and the people, especially the little people her size however when I put the target down she didn’t hesitate and went straight to it. I worked her for a five to ten minute session then put her away again. Photos below are from yesterday. Tomorrow we go back for the individual classes.