Desert Rat

                                                            

Maisie's powers of water divination are quite special. Today we walked over land near where I was working - somewhere we'd never been before - and suddenly Maisie set off galloping like her tail was on fire. After about 500 yards she suddenly disappeared into thin air!! I was a little worried as it was basically a flat field and she shouldn't have been able to disappear, so legged it after her to see where she'd gone. I found her merrily splish-splashing around in a very small but deep (about 4') drainage hole that had been dug in the lowest point of the field. How did she know it was there?! Amazing Mouse Powers. She'd be very handy in a desert.

Good Big Boy!

Just had an ace little 10-minute training session with Tim on this lovely spring evening. Set all jumps at full height this time and did various things - some twisty-turny, some blasty, some close work, some long sendaways/recalls - and he didn't duck under once!!! Last couple of sessions he's managed about 80% success, even with varying jump heights, but this time 100% Big Boy Jumps! He seems to be getting his striding and shape in the air much better, what a good lad - and so happy and pleased with himself. The next step is to improve on his jumping before the obstacles which most attract his eyes down - he's not too bad going into weaves, A-frame and dogwalk, but the seesaw and tunnels, especially the cloth tunnel, he very often charges under to get to. A plank on the ground will have to do instead of a seesaw, and will bodge up a quick-assembly tunnel to add to our little bag of portable gear. We have a Plan ...

Lincoln

The show was huge - 10 rings - and it felt a bit too big. Camping was quite spread out and with the rings being in different sections of the showground, you could go the whole weekend without seeing people you knew were there somewhere! And they struggled a lot for helpers and so those who do ended up doing more than was pleasurable. Ho hum.
Maisie did some nice runs and some random amusing bits - TUNNEL! What tunnel? The one 2' from your head! Ummm, I see no tunnel! Maisie, tunnel, the GREEN one! Ah, you never said it was green. Mouse logic: it's green therefore it doesn't exist! OK Maisie but please go through it just for me? Oh, OK then, why didn't you just say?! Canters on OK round the rest of the course till we get to the green tunnel for the second time - and repeat!.. teehee. Then in another class it started with a straight line - jump-jump-jump-tunnel straight ahead, exiting to the right - so Maisie thought that was too boring and bogged off to the wrong end of the tunnel - now that we probably would fail to do if trying! She's a poppet and all errors were no doubt mine really :o) She managed a couple of respectable clears from the w/e anyway though so did many others so no places this time. A huge positive is that she coped brilliantly with the Red Arrows practicing overhead and enjoyed the game of mugging me for happyairoplanecheese each time they appeared. 
Ran Tim in the anysize classes. Some positives - he focused pretty well and did some super distance work - I'm able to send him on, especially to tunnels, and cut corners to the point of being able to stroll leisurely into position to meet him sometimes. He did weaves for the first time in competition in sequence after other course elements - one set after approaching from a tunnel over a jump then I front-crossed before the weave entry and he did them paw-perfect, and the other lot after a fast galloping stretch - that time he missed one pole, but made a really decent attempt to adjust his speed. Out of 4 runs he only bogged off slightly once and that was just for a quick howdy to someone he knows, so quite pleased with his focus. He also did consistent waits and contacts. A couple of the courses, though basically "flowing" courses had some rather tricky angles and they caught us out - all good experience though. However, I really don't want to run him in anysize again. It hopefully helped his confidence in the big show environment, but I don't want him habitually belting round recklessly over small jumps (the largest you could jump was 35cm). So from now on it's big boy jumps or nowt! & it may well be nowt for quite a while ......... but we'll get there one day.
& Billy made a doggy friend!! In the tiny form of Pheobe the Yorkie - he not only sniffed and wagged his tail but actually did a small playbow!!! Verrrry cute, she's just adorable.
& the sun mostly shone and cake happened and then we came home.

Bathing & Jumping

It's that time of year when Maisie likes to take her daily dip in the horse trough :o) & the other day Billy had his annual bath - in the human bath at home, of course, with warm water, shampoo and fluffy towels.


HATS show at the weekend - gloriously sunny, shame to be indoors really! Maisie ran nicely - clears in both classes. I think she's actually working away a little better - maybe I've changed handling a bit from running Tim? And Tim did some nice stuff in the pre-comp classes - unusually, there was a tyre in the Agility and unfortunately it was set at medium, like the jumps, and poor Tim was confused and tried to fly over it!!! Thankfully no harm done and next run I, and others with baby large dogs, asked the Judge and adjusted the tyre to large - Tim flew through it with no loss of confidence, good boy, pheew, lesson learnt. He just ducked round a jump but otherwise nice run. He ran a nice clear in the Jumping in 17 seconds which was "only" fast enough for 5th place! Some other very fast young dogs played too. I lost us a couple of seconds with a scruffy wide turn, so he was up there on time again really. With the lovely spring eves we're doing 5 minutes of training quite often and it seems to be suiting him. He's jumping large easily but can still duck under when the jump spacing is tighter, so we're working on that. This weekend at Lincoln he is running in Anysize at medium, and it will be interesting to see how that goes ... It's going to be a big 10-ring show! I'm reluctant to do much more competing not at full height as he gets in the ring and runs differently to how he does in training - faster and flatter - and I don't want that to become habitual coz that may just lead to running under large jumps again. So I guess we'll just keep up the training and hoping that his jumping confidence gradually grows and that "muscle memory" thing happens ... He's come a long way already as he limbo-ed under small jumps when we started!! Everything else is great - super weaves, etc. and whilst very forwrad-going he does really try to listen/watch and be a Good Boy and we're gradually learning together.

Easter Bunnies

It was last easter that Tim joined the family so it's almost a year (easter being a little earlier) he has been here. And what a smashing young man he's grown into:

He had a couple of runs at Dog Vegas this weekend. I knew he wasn't really ready so it was just to dip a toe in the deep waters of KC shows!!! The boy did OK in a way ... Ran under a lot of jumps, had a brief snog with someone ringside, and picked up an obstacle number in his gob! But he also did some great startline waits, solid contacts and, most amusingly, got a perfect weave entry and did 12 fabby weaves in a course where he otherwise ran under all but 2 jumps, lol! Not a disaster by any means - he's only just done a bit of jumping at full height in training, so we just need to do more work on that before trying it again in the exciting atmosphere of an open show, and nothing more entered for a few weeks anyway. He's doing ever so well generally and he mostly went in the right direction horizontally, if not quite vertically! Most importantly, he's a lovely, funny, cheeky, happy, sweet, young ginger man, and I'm very proud of him.
So it was up to the super Mouse to bring home the rosettes again! She got an 8th in an agility class - rewarded with another ace rosette with a spaceship on it, yay!!! Plus another couple of lovely clears on challenging courses, and another with just a pole down in a really nice run. Unfortunately a certain Judge judged contacts in a rather interfering way, leaning in right next to us on the A-frame, spooking Maisie off and potentially undoing lots of work on making her feel OK about Other People being at a reasonable distance from her on her contacts. Ho hum, what a thoughtless Elf.
She's a fluffy superstar and generally she really enjoyed this weekend and was back to joyful jumping after a couple of ever so slightly "off" weeks. Sticking to just one or two runs per day seems to be the way to go with her, to keep her happyfluffyzoomy levels up through a show :o)

& Billy, well, he was the bestest agility groupie and tent-warmer and general company as usual :0)
At a worrying time for the human members of our family, there's no better therapy than the company of three super-fit, deliriously happy dogs. xxx