It's been too long

Apologies, blogger's, I've been far too busy to sit down and write about my mundane little life with the woofs.
Work has taken me to the 4 corners of the UK recently, I sometimes feel that I'm a part-timer at home, Marie probably would say that I was!
Work has been turmoil recently, lot's and lot's of people have been made redundant, but- touch wood- I am safe, I daren't think of what would happen should I lose the job, a) for the money,but as I actually enjoy it so much I struggle to think what could I do should it go tit's up!
What about the dogs?
Draco has started to be trained up, but this has frankly been a struggle, due to lack of training facilities for a dog of his age and my ability to actually get to train him, but I'm on holiday for a week or two, so we'll make huge in-roads into the essentials. He's come in now, to develop the bond and to get him to chill and mature a little bit.
I have a new addition, - nugget Blossom's pup, he'll be mine to do agility with and Marie's to show ! He is a little noisy live wire and he'll be great fun in the future!


Puck has been difficult of late, just a bit too mad - even more so than usual- so we're considering 'nut-removal" - watch this space!he went to a david Munning training day and we thoroughly enjoyed it- I whole-heartedlty recommend David as a trainer, gave me loads to think about and to work on- and improve my own training.

Ruby has been busy, she went to the supadog final in October ( directly after having a season) she did well, coming home with a bit of crystal, but naughtily popped off the side of the see-saw ( 2nd last obstacle) but she did as well as I hoped, so I was happy with her.
All is now geared up towards Olympia and I truly feel we are ( for once) ready for the final and in tune with each other, I'm beginning to get my enthusiasm for the sport back again, and I am very much looking forward to getting back on track with Ruby next year and challenging for more CC's etc- she has learned the contacts and is fired up to win! and Win and win again !!
Olympia now looms large and we go on Monday, her first time there, my 4th, all other times with Amber the aussie, and everytime I've been there I've always wanted to have Ruby there, now she has the chance to show me and the world what she can do !
We had her last competitive event last weekend and did well with 3 wins from 3 classes- I can't ask for more now- can I? needless to say I am excited and looking forward to it, marie will be with me for once - so the support will be most welcome, and i'll tell you all about it when I get back!

LOST in Ireland

Well here i sit in a hotel bar in cork Airport having missed my flight back to the UK, long story , but i had a 2 hour drive in a gutless hire car from Waterford where I had been lecturing the previous evening, got up at 06.45, left hotel at 07.15 ( no breakfast as it was too early) and proceeded, listening to an RTE radio programme with a couple of eejits called "colm and jim-jim" prattling inanities to each other. Now when I had arrived in Cork i had driven through an area called Douglas- and thought it funny to have found another place named after my family ( huge fan of my family name Douglas- so this was interesting to me) any way traffic report came on the radio mentioning south side ring road in Cork around Douglas! An 8 car pile up had occurred and i was headed directly into it! Any way have missed my flight so I'm catching up with stuff such as this blog, missed having to travel directly up to peterborough for an evening meeting there! No flight back till tomorrow, so in for a boring day in a hotel!

No blog for a wee while as I've been a tad too busy for it, not done much agility in the meantime.
Puck seems to have turned a bit of a corner ( helps not to have any bitches in season)and just as our season ends he starts to work very well and is coming into his own. At a funday event recently he beat ruby in a jumping course by 0.2 of a second- and took what I would describe as the slow route! And this week at a mini competition night we had up at The FC headquarters, nice to have Suzie josty and Barry James come up with us- very welcome new input to what we do. Anyway we set up a judge (Nick Josty) and a timer etc, Ruby ran the first course very nicely, but was a tad too neat and knocked a pole down, but was timed at 28.2 secs.
Puck came up , all fired up and very excited that there were some new black and white doggies there, off he set powering round the course, finished with me trailing behind him- and no destruction in his wake- and Nick was clapping- he'd gone clear- but no one told me the time! When I looked I nearly choked - His time was 25.02!! 3 seconds quicker than Ruby!! now i know he's fast and powerful, but maybe, just maybe we're turning a corner, he's worked magnificently recently, so with all the things I have planned for the winter we'll see, maybe now is the time for him to get the snip, it's only this year he's been bothered by sex, but it disrupted him greatly.
Ruby has the Supadog final this weekend, now this event I hoped to get to this year- one of my objectives! So fingers crossed she'll do well.
Draco has started to be trained and at the moment he is a bouncing, gangly fool, but he'll also be going to Golden valley to be trained as from next weekend.
isn't it funny how the plans you lay down for your pups go arigh as they grow up- I'd intended on training Draco on the lead, the same as Puck, but Draco is much more sensitive and has to be off the lead so lots and lots of hard work ahead.

Blossom about to drop her puppies, she's now trying to work out why she's not so nimble and as full of energy, she's slowed down a lot and has ( relatively) lots of goodness for the pups to feed on when they decide to come and see us. Marie said she felt the pups inside bloss this mornign so hopefully the pitter patter of tiny feet soon- And in a few weeks a cacophony of little noisy shelties.
Well hope I haven't bored the pants off you, and hope to catch up soon!

Pedigree pairs final 2008

Thought I'd share our triumph at Stoneleigh on Sunday, winning the pedigree pairs final- our first pairs final !
The first two runs are from the singles warm up event- Ruby finished 2nd- by 1/100th of a second ( manual timing)

Summer ?? holiday

We set off earlier this month on our trek around the country to go to Peterborough, Ipswich and Chester for the dog shows there- I reckon we had about 2 full days without any rain, and the wind was appalling all the time. It was like running in the Autumn/winter, with lots and lots of mud.
It wasn't a great time away as far as the agility was concerned, we had a couple of good runs, with lots and lots of bad runs. KC festival was a mixed bag, blew out in the qualifiers for the British Open and won the other run we had for the day! (Typical Ruby). Blossom our sheltie was away on a bonking holiday, but also whilst we were away our Smooth Collie Beryl came into season. Puck was dramatically affected by this. He has shown in the past a bit of interest in the girls- but never excessively so. But he was behaving like a sex mad maniac whilst we were away. What I always liked about Puck was that he wasn't sex mad, but here we were at the start of our holiday with a dog who wasn't focused on the job. I worked out why he was so bad, earlier in the year we lost our Alpha male dog Io- I believe having him there kept Puck's desires in check, so I have now to deal with Puck as the Alpha male dog in our household.

His behaviour in the ring manifests as missed weaves and a love for tunnels- invariably the wrong end. He ended up at the end of our holiday with one clear round to his name!! A good one it was though, coming second in the EO qualifier at the KC festival.

On the Saturday at the festival I judged and I enjoyed this- especially the 6 and 7 smalls and mediums. Though found the presentations frustrating- announcements for them were made so poorly that hardly anybody turned up for them- and I do try my very best to get to presentations.

DIN started well- champ jumping- finishing 2nd! Then the wheels fell off the week, E'd in the champ agility at the end of the round, and subsequently many more E's the rest of the week- Ruby's worst sequence of events- ever!

DD wasn't much better- but we stopped the rot slightly with a 6-7 agility win, her A frame started to go off the rails , and in two jumping courses she inexplicably missed jumps out on the course- so video's in the next round or two!

Pucks weaves are in the process of being retrained now I'm home (grass cut yesterday) to many runs being destroyed by his impetuosity and poor wait!

For him I'm putting this season down as a learning experience- not much more than this that I can do !

A week or two off now ( thank dog) I have the pairs final with Tom next week his dog panic has finally gone grade 6 with the 3rd jumping win coming at DD- well done to them.
Saw all of the pups ( except Qui) when we were away and I must say I am so very proud of the way they have all grown up, all very striking kelpies in their own way.

SUNNY SCUNNY

It took us over 6 hours to get to this fab show, marie was judging and I was scriming so I new we would be well looked after and would have a fabulous lunch as well.
One week on after molli/brie went and as far as i know she has settled in as if she has always been there, Andrea must be photo mad as she's taken literally hundreds of pics of brie, and she looks great in them- what is it about seeing the trees for the woods? In these pics she looks great- at home she was another red and tan kelpie ( in a nice sense). I'm so happy she has found a fantastic and loving home- so now all the litter have their respective homes, I love to see them all and to see the "pairings" ie Bel and Kaiser look spits of each other and Flash and Qui are similar, Draco stands out as being hairy- though it's all fallen out, come winter ( and hormones) it'll be back as hairy as ever. It's fun to take them to the big open spaces at shows and let them off the lead- they aren't as bad as Puck and Tink at coming back to you, but Ruby prefers to run with them ( Draco & Bel as they don't try to bite chunks out of her and aren't faster than her - yet!) 

Weather at scunny was fab- nor blistering hot but just right, the runs started badly ( we had 4 runs a day- not used to this many- but grateful for them anyway. First up was the EO combined 6-7 , it was an intentionally trappy course - far, far too trappy IMO jump traps, tunnel traps, wrong side of tunnels, jumps etc, I've stated before that I like to see handler and dog enjoy the course and not go around nagging and roaring, in 6-7 the pairing will make their own mistakes and you don't need a trappy course to test the partnership. I have found this yoer a prevalence of pull throughs in course design for 6-7 and though I can do them- rather well i think, I confess to being bored by them as they are coming up again and again- surely our judges can come up with more innovative course designs? Maybe this is why I enjoyed Amanda Rogers and Andy Hudsons champ courses this year ( I'll reserve judgement on John Gilberts design at NH) Their courses showed thought and flair and I got my teeth into them., any way both puck and Ruby  cocked up on the first tunnel trap! Ruby following my flicked out hand puck just seeing a tunnel at the end of the dog walk!
Puck weekend did not get any better- his best and only non- E was in a lovely grade 6 jumping with a 2 jump recall !! it was the last run of the weekend and I think he could tell that all was not well in the dad-puck relationship so he tried his very best and only had one plastic pole down.
I also ran Tom's dog panic, both jumping runs were unlucky, but resulted in E's- she need's one more win to go grade 6 , but she (for once) saved the best run for her agility, coming 6th in grade 5 agility, her contacts are very slow (especially the A frame), but I'd actually done a wee bit of training with her earlier in the week and it paid off as her contacts were a bit quicker and more confident than before and she enjoyed herself, which is the most important factor!
Ruby's Saturday did get better with a third in the agility and 2x 1sts in the jumping! Sunday continued in the same vein with 2 x 2nd's and a third- so from 8 runs 6 trophies, she is such a good girl just now, but with a missed dog walk in one of the courses it'll be back to a bit of training for her!
I may look into getting her seen by a chiropracter thingummygig as I've mentioned before her lack of a "right" turn- whereas her left turns are very flexible, I noticed it on the weekend where I could watch her turning over the jumps ( one course) and It occurred to me whilst watching her that I'll get her looked at.

I've never been one for this sort of thing, but when people say it has improved their dog I think it must be worth a try- just a bit worried about the over-dramatisation people attribute top this ie after seeing the chiropracter you hear people say " oh- the spine was horrendously out of alignement " etc But will get her checked out just the same - think there will be one at KC Fest DIN etc.

A six hour journey home on Sunday and I'm still recovering!
Big hols coming soon- so no blog for a while KC Fest , DIN and Dashin Dogs! Should be fun, I'm judging at the KC fest so all you small / medium 6-7 handlers out there as I've stated here your jumping course will have NO pull throughs but it'll be a runners course for the dogs to have a great time!