Young Kennel Club National Camp

Today Amy and I are setting off to YKC national training camp, Amy has been a member of the YKC for the past 7 years and attended Camp for 4 years as a trainee. In 2006 I was invited to train Obedience which was a great opportunity and a real pleasure, although imense hard work training 4 hours a day for 5 days! this year both Amy and I have been invited back to train Flyball along with our friends Jo Hicks and Sarah Walker.
We leave home this afternoon and set up camp at Melton Mowbray, tomorrow all the YKC members arrive and from Sunday onwards the training and FUN begins. I'll be back home on Monday evening so I'll update the blog with pictures and info then.

Chilterns Flyball 20th July 2008

What a fantastic day, this is only the 2nd time these 4 dogs ahave raced together, Ronny has a new inexperienced handler in Nigel and Amy is now patnering Maisy leaving Jo and I spare to run our inexperienced dogs Keisha and Dylan, and of course not forgetting our fantastic helpers on the day Sheila (Jo's mum) as boxloader and Luke and Alice assisting in the ring.
Raicng started well, we were seeded 3rd and were first up against the second seed "Demon Pawz" we had a clean sweep beating them 3-0 and came out with a best ever time of 19.97 seconds - we were all very excited we had smashed our PB and gone under 20 seconds. next we were against the "Monday Niters" seeded 6th and again a clean sweep 3-0 with a fastest time of 20.05 all was going really well as we went into the luchtime break. After lunch we raced "Molten Marvels" seeded 5th and again we won 3-0 this time with a fastest time of 20 seconds dead. next up was the "Molten Metals" seeded 1st, we were now pushing our crossovers with tired dogs and Maisy had a light in the first race, but Amy adjusted her position on the line and we won the next 3 races. this left it all up to the last race against the "Knights" seeded 4th, all day they had been running at around the same times as us so we knew going into the ring this race was for 1st and 2nd place. we did our best but lost all but one race, on this occasion the Knights were too good for us, but I'm sure we'll meet them again in the future and hopefully we'll have more experience. Our dogs were brilliant, and they went home very happy with a 2nd place rosette and an extra helping of dinner.

Saturday 19th July

This morning Amy and I took the dogs to the training paddock for an exercise and a game, in between showers we even managed some obedience training! Tomorrow we have another flyball competition with our friends the Mali's at the Chilterns Show near Bicester our dogs seem to be in tip top condition at the moment and hopefully we can continue to improve on last weeks score,more pictures and comments tomorrow night, hopefully with some good news.

Agility Training

We took Maisy to agility training last night - when we got there she was so excited it took 4 attempts to get her to concentrate enough so I had even a little control!! after which she worked quite nicely and her weaves are at last starting to come together.. you never know a clear round might one day be a possibility!!

She is very fast and I find it very difficult to get my directional comands out in time, or I panic and give them too soon so she makes a turn before the jump instead of after!! I'm very lucky to have an understanding trainer in Clare, she is very patient with us and always has some good advice - I guess i just need to listen (a bit like Maisy)

Fawsley Hall

We're just letting the dogs have a lazy day today after yesterdays competition, so I decided to meet up with my sister Sara for a walk with Summer and her dog Smartie who just happens to be Summers Brother (Darian Wheels on Fire) - actually Smartie belongs to Alice my neice but she was busy doing other things..we like to meet at Fawsley Hall as it's halfway between our homes and the dogs always have a really fun time. Today there were lots of sheep around but neither Smartie nor Summer took any notice as they were far too busy playing games having who can eat the most sheep poo competitions!! I think Summer won.... after a lovely walk they had a nice cold drink out of Smarties pink bowl..he definitely has gender issues as you can see from his pink harness.

Rotherham Flyball Comp

We've just got back into the house after a VERY long day. we set of at 6am this morning and after a 2hour drive arrived at the Rotherham venue. even though Ronny and Maisy are seasoned flyball dogs, Dylan and Keisha are onlyjust beginning and today was the first time we had competed with the four dogs together.
In the first set of races Dylan and Keisha really suprised us and we had a perfect score winning 3 out of 3 races and a new time of 20.57. In the next set of races it all went to pot and the greeness of the dogs showed through, it was a set back and we lost that set of races. we then broke for lunch and took the time to evaluate the dogs and decided we just needed to give them a bit more space to build on their confidence.
This tac tic seemed to work and our fabulous dogs went on to work their socks off and won the remaining 3 races with a new fastest time of 20.38.
I must add that we had the services of a brilliant new boxloader -Sheila, and a very special ball girl and video technician Tully, without who's help we would not have achieved such a brilliant place - we were joint 1st with 2 other teams, in that situation it goes down to fastes overall time, we came 2nd overall!! what a fantastic day with great dogs and great company.

Bad Weather

What a horrible day - even the collies don't want to go out! obedience and flyball training have been cancelled tonight so we'll have to think of something else to stimulate them. Luckily we had a flyball training session last night with our friends the Mali's - we have a competition in Rotherham on Saturday, it will mean an early start but it promises to be a good day. We run in the Brickyard Bandits flyball team so we'll keep you posted on how we do. Maisy was in the Leamington Royals team with Ronny (Mali) until recently, their fastest time was 19.04 seconds, one day the Bandits hope to beat that.. so wish us luck.