Well last night we went to training with just Secret and I decided to ask Tom to set up a novice jumping course, as I wanted to see what we still needed to work on. He set up a nice little course, with a few turns in it and I lined her up and set her at it. She was quite keen, barking on the start line, which for her is a very good sign. Much to my surprise, she managed the course really well with no issues, even with a rear cross (we haven't done much work on rear crosses). She was probably at 3/4 speed, she definitely slows down when she is not sure what I want/where she is supposed to be going, but she powered on the straight stretch home. She had a couple of run offs but was able to be called back, so all in all a successful session!
Mike and I were on tenterhooks waiting for a real estate agent to call..we had put in an offer on a house we liked in Greenwood (the suburb next to Warwick). We heard from him later that night, there had been another offer. We increased our offer and crossed our fingers..and first thing this morning we heard it had been accepted!
Its a really nice little house, small, but immaculately renovated with a nice back garden and best of all the back gate leads straight onto the park/oval! That was the selling point for me, as it means I can literally step out of my back gate and have a very large grassed area to train in, and the suburb is only about 15 minutes from the city with very easy access onto the freeway both north and south. The house is very pretty, with a white picket fence and a lovely front garden full with flowers (eek might have to do some gardening!)
I will try and post some pictures on friday..
...ready for action !
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Friday, June 19, 2009
Weekend
The first trial back after the Macksville weekend was a double- header run by ACWA. It felt like a bit of an anticlimax, the jumps looked tiny in comparison to the ADAA heights (not that I'm complaining!) and on the 1st run I managed to jump Terra into an upright-ouch. Poor dog, she is SUCH a good girl, even though I created an impossible angle for her she tried anyway, and took the whole jump out. I hate stuffing up my dog! We continued after checking she was alright, and had a really nice run with her holding all her contacts until released, and keeping all her bars up. The next run was masters jumping, and it was a slightly challenging course but again she ran really well to win both her height (500) and the class overall. I am going to attempt to post that run if I can remember how to do it!
She also ran clear in both her classes in the afternoon to win them both..Masters Jumping I was again happy with, however in agility she self-released from EVERY contact which I was not happy with! Will have to start going back to address this issue as I don't want her releasing without my command- history has shown this does lead to earlier releases, resulting in a missed A Frame contact at Macksville, the first in her trialling career.
As for Secret..she went to training last night with Jess (who came along to have some fun on 400!) and technically was reasonable, doing a jumping exercise with front crosses, rear crosses and starting to learn pull throughs. However she was running off frequently between sequences and sometimes mid sequence, which I find very frustrating!
On the positive side she seemed to pick up the different crosses and exercises very quickly and while her speed wasn't the fastest, she certainly still turned it on in the straight lines..off to training again tonight.
She also ran clear in both her classes in the afternoon to win them both..Masters Jumping I was again happy with, however in agility she self-released from EVERY contact which I was not happy with! Will have to start going back to address this issue as I don't want her releasing without my command- history has shown this does lead to earlier releases, resulting in a missed A Frame contact at Macksville, the first in her trialling career.
As for Secret..she went to training last night with Jess (who came along to have some fun on 400!) and technically was reasonable, doing a jumping exercise with front crosses, rear crosses and starting to learn pull throughs. However she was running off frequently between sequences and sometimes mid sequence, which I find very frustrating!
On the positive side she seemed to pick up the different crosses and exercises very quickly and while her speed wasn't the fastest, she certainly still turned it on in the straight lines..off to training again tonight.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Macksville Weekend
Well Terra and I are back from Macksville after a very enjoyable weekend.
Results wise it was mixed but we had lots of fun and everyone was really friendly.
We arrived on friday after a VERY stressful flight- we had originally booked to fly from Perth to Sydney and then from Sydney to Coffs but when we checked in (at 6am after dropping Terra) we were told that we would miss our connection to Coffs as the plane was running late so we had to fly from Perth-Melb, then Melb- Sydney and then Sydney to Coffs! Now my stress levels are always high when I fly dogs and this just about shot them through the roof! I enquired about Terra, already checked in with tags to say she was flying to Sydney only to be reassured that she would come with us. I asked whether the check in attendant could ring to confirm and he rang and spoke to ? somebody who said that was fine. Then when I got on the plane I asked the flight attendant to check whether she was on (which I always do) and he said 'there is no dog on this plane'. To which I snapped and said 'well she is SUPPOSED to be on the plane so go and find her'! 20mins later he comes back, says he found her, she was ready to be loaded on the plane to sydney (!!) but was now on the correct plane. I wasnt very happy and said so, to which the attendant replied 'you would have caught up with her in sydney'- uh, no, she would have missed the connection! So it was a very long 12 hours to finally get to Coffs harbour and a VERY relieved me to finally get Terra out of her crate.
We picked up the rental car and drove to the accommodation, had dinner and basically crashed. The next day we drove to the show grounds to have a look around before the competition started that afternoon. The grounds were very different to what we are used to in WA- it looked like it was used for pony club and due to all the rain it was VERY muddy and chopped up. I was very concerned about running Terra on the grounds, especially jumping 650 and made the decision to pull her out of all the runs she didnt need except for the warm up. We were able to get some practice equipment out and ran the dogs over the dog walk with cleats (didnt phase any of them), as well as the hanging tire. The WA'ers were a bit concerned about the change in weave pole spacing, but luckily this didnt seem to worry any of the dogs. After a brief look around Macksville we headed back to start the competition!
The first course of the event was the World Dog Qualifier, heat one (of two). The course was fairly straight forward, with a hard weave entry catching out most of the dogs. Terra felt fairly cautious and was running quite slowly for her so she had lots of time to get into the weavers and finished the course clear to win the event for the big dogs (this event was split into toy/mini and midi/maxi ). I cant remember exactly which order the other events were run in, but we ran in an open and had a bar down as they were back to 650, and went clear in advanced jumping and advanced agility to win both classes. The snooker course was nearly impossible to sucicide (although Tom with Brynn gave it a very good go!) and I played it fairly carefully with 2 7's (dog walk) and a 5 (A frame) to win that class. The qualifying classes for the World Agility Championships on saturday were snooker and advanced jumping.
The sunday the weather looked very ominious but didnt rain which was very lucky as the ground definitely would not have coped. Terra ran in several events- including gamblers (didnt get the gamble) and advanced agility (dropped bar, wouldnt wait on her DW contact). She was increasingly feral at this stage and didnt wait on any of her contacts, barking her head off at the start line. The last event was the WDG qualifier and although she had a fault it was enough to get her over the line as one of the 4 dogs qualified for the WDGs in sydney later in october. This is going to be a very large televised event with agility, dock diving, frisbee and flyball and sounds similar to the event they have in the US. It will be lots of fun and we are thrilled to be invited to compete!
Monday we pottered around Coffs, enjoying the beautiful scenery now the competition was over, and thankfully the flight back was uneventful.
Secret was staying with a friend and I will pick her up tonight, back to start training again tommorow..
Results wise it was mixed but we had lots of fun and everyone was really friendly.
We arrived on friday after a VERY stressful flight- we had originally booked to fly from Perth to Sydney and then from Sydney to Coffs but when we checked in (at 6am after dropping Terra) we were told that we would miss our connection to Coffs as the plane was running late so we had to fly from Perth-Melb, then Melb- Sydney and then Sydney to Coffs! Now my stress levels are always high when I fly dogs and this just about shot them through the roof! I enquired about Terra, already checked in with tags to say she was flying to Sydney only to be reassured that she would come with us. I asked whether the check in attendant could ring to confirm and he rang and spoke to ? somebody who said that was fine. Then when I got on the plane I asked the flight attendant to check whether she was on (which I always do) and he said 'there is no dog on this plane'. To which I snapped and said 'well she is SUPPOSED to be on the plane so go and find her'! 20mins later he comes back, says he found her, she was ready to be loaded on the plane to sydney (!!) but was now on the correct plane. I wasnt very happy and said so, to which the attendant replied 'you would have caught up with her in sydney'- uh, no, she would have missed the connection! So it was a very long 12 hours to finally get to Coffs harbour and a VERY relieved me to finally get Terra out of her crate.
We picked up the rental car and drove to the accommodation, had dinner and basically crashed. The next day we drove to the show grounds to have a look around before the competition started that afternoon. The grounds were very different to what we are used to in WA- it looked like it was used for pony club and due to all the rain it was VERY muddy and chopped up. I was very concerned about running Terra on the grounds, especially jumping 650 and made the decision to pull her out of all the runs she didnt need except for the warm up. We were able to get some practice equipment out and ran the dogs over the dog walk with cleats (didnt phase any of them), as well as the hanging tire. The WA'ers were a bit concerned about the change in weave pole spacing, but luckily this didnt seem to worry any of the dogs. After a brief look around Macksville we headed back to start the competition!
The first course of the event was the World Dog Qualifier, heat one (of two). The course was fairly straight forward, with a hard weave entry catching out most of the dogs. Terra felt fairly cautious and was running quite slowly for her so she had lots of time to get into the weavers and finished the course clear to win the event for the big dogs (this event was split into toy/mini and midi/maxi ). I cant remember exactly which order the other events were run in, but we ran in an open and had a bar down as they were back to 650, and went clear in advanced jumping and advanced agility to win both classes. The snooker course was nearly impossible to sucicide (although Tom with Brynn gave it a very good go!) and I played it fairly carefully with 2 7's (dog walk) and a 5 (A frame) to win that class. The qualifying classes for the World Agility Championships on saturday were snooker and advanced jumping.
The sunday the weather looked very ominious but didnt rain which was very lucky as the ground definitely would not have coped. Terra ran in several events- including gamblers (didnt get the gamble) and advanced agility (dropped bar, wouldnt wait on her DW contact). She was increasingly feral at this stage and didnt wait on any of her contacts, barking her head off at the start line. The last event was the WDG qualifier and although she had a fault it was enough to get her over the line as one of the 4 dogs qualified for the WDGs in sydney later in october. This is going to be a very large televised event with agility, dock diving, frisbee and flyball and sounds similar to the event they have in the US. It will be lots of fun and we are thrilled to be invited to compete!
Monday we pottered around Coffs, enjoying the beautiful scenery now the competition was over, and thankfully the flight back was uneventful.
Secret was staying with a friend and I will pick her up tonight, back to start training again tommorow..
Monday, June 1, 2009
ADAA weekend
Just got home from a busy and fun weekend, where WA tried ADAA for the first time. Thanks to Sue having hurt her back I had an extra dog to run so between the 3 dogs (Terra Jess and Dan) I had between 50-60 runs over the 3 days! We all had a good time, the weather held up without the threatened rain/storms and most dogs gained at least their first ADAA title. Terra tried extremely hard for me all weekend and despite the fact she was jumping 650 which is 15cm higher than she normally jumps, managed to get enough clear rounds to get both her AAD and SAAD titles which I was very happy about. She struggled a fair bit on the 650 jumps and I wouldnt like to have to always run her at that height as I think her conformation is not suited to it. This puts us into the advanced class for the big ADAA trial next weekend at Mackisville, which is going to be interesting as doing a hard course on that height will be very challenging for us both. I have always thought of Terra as a 'good dog' but the amount of effort she was putting into keeping her bars up today in particular was a real extra effort on her behalf and I was so proud of her, she really tried as hard as she could which is as much as you can ask of any dog!
Jess had great fun running 400, a height that is much better suited to her now she's starting to slow down a bit, and I had fun running Dan, a very honest dog who also tried very hard this weekend, to get his AAD.
Secret went to training on Friday night and again had a mixed session..some lovely short sequences, particularly when jumping in a straight line. She's still inclined to back right off her jumps when she is turning, so I will need to work on that. She also had her running off silly times, and cannot cope with watching Terra or any other fast dog run, so still lots to work on..
Jess had great fun running 400, a height that is much better suited to her now she's starting to slow down a bit, and I had fun running Dan, a very honest dog who also tried very hard this weekend, to get his AAD.
Secret went to training on Friday night and again had a mixed session..some lovely short sequences, particularly when jumping in a straight line. She's still inclined to back right off her jumps when she is turning, so I will need to work on that. She also had her running off silly times, and cannot cope with watching Terra or any other fast dog run, so still lots to work on..
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