In the bleak midwinter

The last few days have brought the first snow of winter - very brrrrrrrrr but also very pretty!
Saturday was an unusual day - had just got back from a lovely romp with the dogs and we'd got cozy and settled in for the rest of the day when there was a knock at the door. I opened it to the lovely surprise of my mate Steph who I've not seen for about 3 years. Only Steph could open conversation after all that time with a bizarre question like: "Want to come skiing?"!!! "Errr, OK!" I said ... So she has all this gear loaded up and off we set - I got to drive her brand-new Landy TDi - verrrry sexy (& also comfortably scruffy inside aleady, lol!) The skiing was quite mad but fab fun - I'm fairly bad at downhill skiing but at telemark (cross-country) well ... I didn't quite spend all of the time on my backside! Boots three sizes too big didn't exactly help either, lol! Someone told us it was -8c out - thought it felt a bit nippy!! Anyway, that was Saturday's adventure! :o)
Then on Sunday we had NAWS. Set off on sheet ice and arrived on the venue on sheet ice. Really didn't think many would be nuts anough to go but actually there was quite a respectable turnout! Car parking duty involved finding a flattish bit on the approach road and waving people to slow down and wind their windows down, then yelling as they passed that they had to keep going once they got into the yard or they'd not get up the slope! Meanwhile a lovely couple were bashing their way through frozen grit to try to defrost the yard a little. We only had one car get 'stuck' - pretty good really! The judges put up some nice courses. Tim did some lovely bits in both - he did superb waits (good boy!) and in the agility he did an amazing confident send to the finish both runs - wow!! Unfortunately on his second run I backed off a bit too soon when sending him to a tunnel - was trying to get ahead to pick him up after - and he came with (at!) me - I tried to block him but the boy was shifting ... we ended up in a heap! Damn muscle strain wrecked again. Owwww. Still had Maisie to run but just couldn't run so had to take it steady and used the opportunity to reinforce her contacts - she did lovely 2o20 on the A-scale for the first time at a show in yonks. Anyway she still finished 7th and 8th in her classes, good Mouse :o)
I was quite lucky on the journey home - very glad to be in the Landy though, but poor Jules (who'd been judging) had a nightmare journey on the frozen motorway. I do hope everyone else got home safe and sound.
Here are obligatory happy dogs in snow piccies :o)

Stop Shouting!!

Why do so many competitors SHOUT at their dogs? Stoooopid too-late things like "I TOLD YOU TO GO RIGHT", "NO!/BAD!" to a dog that's missed its contact, etc, or "I SAID 'TUNNEL!' and how often do these people praise or encourage? Saw one recently where a lady was yelling at an inexperienced dog to go through the cloth tunnel, but then when it eventually did, with the aid of the Judge, not a word of praise, she just finished the round and stomped out. & why have these things gone wrong in the first place - is it ever the dog's fault? No, of course it's not! The dog that didn't turn right, or ran past a jump, or took an off-course jump - didn't do it to be "naughty" - it did it because the handler either didn't communicate what they wanted clearly enough - they made the error in the timing of their command, or the clarity of their body language, or they haven't trained the manouevre well enough. & we all do these things, some of us pretty often LOL! But if we have any decency we tell the dog how fabulous it's been anyway for trying to follow our bumbling directions. And these same handlers come out and tell their friends how the dog did this and that, and what a numpty the dog is - sorry, YOU are the numpty, dear handler!!!
Is it ever OK to shout? Well in some situations I'd say yes - e.g. sometimes to quickly interrupt something like a dangerous behaviour, or raising your voice in a positive way e.g. to really reinforce your body language when you're trying to pull the dog off an obstacle? But the instant they respond you make sure you praise them to the skies!
Sorry, not sure where that rant came from but it's just something I've been noticing a lot lately - not just observations from a particular show at all.

The show we went to this weekend was Agility Nuts - one we've not been to before and perhaps a bit far to go very often (Notts). It was a good day out though, and though I went alone, met up with a few familar faces and got chatting with nice new people too. In the Agility class there was a bit of a problem in that there was obviously the most fabulous smell ever on the arena floor - right next to the (12) weave entry. Dog after dog set off well, turned the corner, nose down, stuck!!! Never seen anything like it. Having watched all this happening I went in with Maisie determined to really drive her past but the same thing happened ... Shame really as she ran the rest of the course beautifully, but we finished on 5R (weaves) plus time faults(!) as it took yonks to unglue her nose from the ground without handling!! The scarey thing was that over halfway through the class she was actually in the lead even on that bad score! (They have these ace computerised live scoreboards, really good fun.) Loads of other dogs stopped and then were either bodily removed from the ring, or eventually carried on but later in the course gnashed off back for another sniff, or got E'd/faulted in other ways as it was quite a tricky course too. Very surreal carry-on! In the end Miss Mouse finished 6th.
I'd also entered Tim 'NFC' just in the Agility (and it was his 18-month "birthday" ahhhh) but I didn't want him to have the negative experience of going into the ring and sniffing, so I asked the Judge whether it would be OK to start him after the weaves (which were near the start and I was going to just by-pass them anyway as he's not weaving yet) - and so did and he ran ever so well and even managed quite a tricky turn left across a box, which many dogs had missed. I thought "pre-curving" and it worked! :o)
In the Jumping Maisie did another smashing run but her inept handler pulled her into a backjump from a pull-through. Sorry, Mouse - I AM THE NUMPTY!! ;o) (& Maisie loves me anyway coz she's a very generous girl, LOL!)
& then there was a take-your-own-line class right at the end of the day, which I almost didn't stay for but then did, and spent most of the afternoon scribing in a freezing draught. It was dark when the class came around and though I walked Maisie round for ages before going in, she wouldn't poo .......... till she got just before the second-last jump and just decided she had gotta go!! Ooooops!!!!!!!!! So then we came home :o)

Wyre

Miss Mouse relaxing after a hard day's agility-ing

Another muddy day at Myerscough! We had some super courses. First up was the 1-2 Starter's Challenge thingy - great course, very Maisie, some tricky angles and traps. Maisie absolutely flew - fantastic time - think she'd have been third ... except she flew not only round the course but off both the dogwalk and A-scale contacts, ooops!!! She was a total wildchild - looked me in the eyes and launched, I had to giggle :o) Next up was 1-3 comb jumping which I'd not really planned to run but as she was so giddy, for once I thought it might be good to work some steam off her and the course was weird enough that we might do OK! Sadly we were E'd at the fourth obstance - a reeeeally tricky wrong end of the tunnel thing, oooops. I retired us gracefully as my torn thigh muscle suggested that it was on borrowed time, so saved it for the last agility class. Another super course. To my surprise, Maisie even boogied round a pinwheel at a reasonable rate and she absolutely attacked the rest of the course! I did work the contacts very slowly and carefully though and in the event we went clear but just out of the places. On the last line of the course it went jump - long jump - jump - and gosh did she take off - I glanced back and saw her just put in one stride after the long jump (on some days she could've put 3+ strides in there) and take off for the final jump miles ahead, and I totally thought she couldn't make it and would crash through, but she sailed over it!!! Gosh, I've never ever seen her throw her heart over something so mightily. What an amazing little Mouse :o)

NAWS Nov

It was a VERY soggy day & the ginger thingy got his first rosettes!!! First a errrrmm clear-ish round in the jumping, then a sooooper one in the agility - actually we did throw in a bit of a twirl before the last jump, but the rest of it was very fluent. His contacts were brill!!! I left him on them, went off for a stroll around, then went back and told him how marvellous he was before releasing, so wasn't at all going for time, but taking that into account his time did look very respectable. What an exciting boy!! And his new fellow ginger baby buddy, Mac, came second in the class, awww!
Maisie had a good day too - clears in both classes, though there seemed to be an outbreak of clearrounditis, so not in the places this time. Her agility runs were funny - did a safe-ish clear first run and made sure she got her contacts, but there was a bit where you were on a fast run down a straight line of jumps to the finish, but had to pull them off and left over a jump at 90-degrees, pull round the wing, and then back into the run for the finish. First run I signalled the left and she just stopped dead (from a fair pace) and gave me a Paddington-hard-stare! Bless her, she then hopped over the jump from her standstill and so wasn't faulted. I was debating whether to do her second run but really wanted to try again to handle that bit better for her, so she was flying down the line again and I made a huge exaggerated left-turn and kept running myself around the corner to try to drive her on into a wide turn, but she stopped dead again!! It could've been because they were jumping towards the side of the dogwalk? But really I think she'd just so locked onto the straight line she couldn't quite believe I was pulling her off it. The look on her face really made me chortle, LOL! Being a dreadful handler I gave her her own way and spun her round and just did the fly down the straight line to a happy eliminated finish :o)

Billy was disgusted at the weather and wouldn't get out of the car till lunchtime and even then tippytoed carefully around the puddles down the lane then got back in the car and hrrrmpphed. Such a delicate little flower but he's my hero anyway.