September 6th Dog Training

A dodgy day by the weather as it has been for the last few days. We were mega lucky to get our Dog Sports Games Day done without Rain last Sunday, Monday was touch and go, Tuesday was very up and down however, Kelly and I managed to get in a bit of training, with Jake doing very well. He is at the stage where he will decide whether or not he should do three hurdles in a row or just run around the last one or the second to last one. This is about normal after four intensive weeks of training for agility where he has hardly missed a beat in spite of three good sessions per week. He is learning that he can make decisions and that is not necessarily a bad thing.

Wednesday is the day that Hilary and Jay, Judy and Tui and Me and Chan practice for our upcoming teams event at NZDAC Fly. I always look forward to it. However taking priority is the Flygility Tournament planned for the Raceway at Paradise Valley this weekend. It will probably be the only opportunity to get a bit of leg work for the dogs before next Sunday, so a bunch of us, including Chris and Louise started at Beginners level and worked our way to Advanced with weaves, it was great. Becki-boo is good at Seniors level as long as there are no weaves. I am not convinced she will ever cope with weaves in Flygility. I might be wrong but I wonder if I will have the time to put in to make it happen. Chan does a great weave, although he does struggle when he is competing against someone in the next lane which is a pity, but last Tournament at Tokoroa, he actually competitively weaved. If I got the poor dog out to more competitions it would help immensely, he is definitely under campaigned, but my priority is as always, training other people.

Both Chris' dogs are performing to level, which is Intermediate at present. Both Hilary's dogs are performing to Seniors without weaves, and coping with open weaves in an Advanced set. Louise's Riley did Advanced with regular weaves today with her off course. In a nutshell he did his first free weaving in a course and completed the whole thing to perfection. Her face was radiant. Judy's two, Lazer and Tui both worked all the way to Advanced looking very comfortable and with a good pace.

So weather permitting we should have a bonny day next Sunday and bring home some ribbons and dog food between us. However, the weather forecast for the weekend is pretty grim, I do hope they are wrong because we really want to give our first day at the Stock Car grounds a good trial, we will need to use it a lot in the future so we need to know it is workable and the Stock Car people need to see us in action as well.

The big act of course for our Club is transporting all the gear to the Grounds and back at the end of the day, it is actually so much easier to have the gear right where you need it. Back in the bad old days when I started Flygility in Rotorua, we were not allowed to hold tournaments on Kennel Club Grounds because Flygility sanctioned jumping 12 month old dogs and I had to transport gear to various District Council Reserves to hold Tournaments, so this coming weekend definitely brings back 10 year old memories. I hope it doesn't happen too often, I am getting too old for this stuff.

Tomorrow is my social agility class in the morning plus picking up the Trailer being borrowed from George and Carolyn Mear for the transporting. Fortunately Hilary and Chris are keen to help on Friday with some transporting so we can set up our courses, and no doubt our club will pull together to make it all work on Sunday. At least we now have 13 very committed Flygiliteers willing to pull their weight. The Club committee is also tops at supporting Sports Days and never sayes no to the purchase of extra gear or any organisational needs. The Raffle to pay for the Grounds use for the day is looking spectacular with donations from club members. We have a sports umbrella, a back pack, dog toys galore, dog treats galore, a gorgeous handmade pottery border collie, a border collie coffee mug and all sorts of bits and bobs. Masterpet have donated a great prize as well and their packs of biscuits are so welcome to make prizes for the winners of the races. The ribbons are ready, so it is all go.

Don't know how much blogging I will get done in the next couple of days, but it is something I try to do each day as a bit of a diary. However, farm work, orchard work, housework, and my caregiving stuff does need time as well...... not to mention food prep, I just love cooking so it takes a bit of time.

Raewyn Saville 5-9-2012