Training

The last week or so has been pretty busy, Bridget went for Myotherapy last week and everything is as it should be, she loves a massage! Heidi is booked in for next week.

Yesterday was Heidi's 10th Birthday, I have no idea where that time has gone, she certainly doesn't act like a 10 year old!! Still loves her Agility and any kind of training for that matter.

Today the dogs have been in the building again training as the weather been rubbish has meant the field is still very wet. We have work mostly on our dog walk training, they were all really good, Chaos is still a bit cheeky and self releases but he is getting better. Brenda learned a plank today and Kody did some ladder work.

The rest of this week will be spent getting ready for the last of our winter shows on Saturday. Rosettes and trophies are all sorted, ring boxes packed, prize hampers made, slowly getting there with it!!!

Bridget

Today I stepped out of my comfort zone and became a student for the morning and loved it. I took Bridget on a training day with Sian Illingworth to help build her confidence in new places as she is struggling with it at the moment. Bridget was awesome, she worked for the full 2 hours and enjoyed herself! I think it will be baby steps with her in terms of shows and might be a while before we attempt to run full courses in the ring but positive experiences like this one should all help. Video of her training is below :)

 

Reviving The Blog

I stopped blogging about my dogs training as I didn't have the time anymore but looking back on it a few nights ago I realised what a good source of memories it was and really made me smile so ive decided to attempt to do it again.

So since the last post in 2016 a fair bit has happened...ill do a quick catch up! 

Heidi and Chaos both won into Grade 5 in 2017, Chaos competed at the Belgian Shepherd World Championships in May 2017 for team GB, Bridget got Best Of Breed at Windsor Champ show in June 2016 and qualified and competed at Crufts 2017 before we hung up our showing hat. Sadly we also lost Brian back in June 2017 after a short spell of illness. Kody has now fully retired from Agility, Heidi is still loving Agility at 10 years old! We have our own AstroTurf indoor building for training now too, its not massive (20m x 7m) but big enough to train short sequences and single jump exercises and weaves.

This morning I took all of the dogs over to the building to do some training. Its been a while since they have worked on skills. We picked cone wraps as our training for today. Brenda and Kody have not done it before so they leaned how to wrap a cone in both directions. Chaos is a cone pro so it was just a bit of fun for him. Bridget has limited enthusiasm for it so we have to keep it short and sweet and Heidi has far too much! We worked on their pull through skills today though and got there in the end, will carry on tomorrow.

We also started to work on their weave entries, Chaos and Heidi are needing to do more difficult entries now and although we have done it before they are a little rusty! 

Video clip below of Brenda weaving, I taught her about 3 years ago but haven't done it since. She hadn't forgotten!!!

Crufts 2016!

We had a super long journey up to Crufts. We travelled up on the Friday but there was an accident closing the motorway meaning we had to take the scenic route, all in all it took us 6 hours to get to my mum and dads hose. Thankfully the jounrey to Crufts on Saturday morning was smooth and we arrived within 45 mins.

We were nice and early so I took Bridget for a walk around the shops, she loved it, she loved meeting people and dogs, getting free food samples from the food stands, she just took it all in her stride, for a 10 month old puppy I was shocked at how confident she was!

We didn't go in the ring until late afternoon so it had already been a long day. Bridget stood nicely, no real fidgeting or anything and it was going well...until we had to move, then her tail shot up in the air! I knew at this point we couldnt win with her tail like that but was more than pleased to come away with 3rd place. For such a young dog to be so happy and confident in that environment was brilliant, and at least she was happy and didn't have her tail clamped between her legs. So for next year we need to work on the tail. I plan to take a break from showing her until the end of summer now so she can concentrate on learning some Agility and shows take up most of our weekends anyway.  She is in season now so at least that will be out of the way too.

This weekend is our first camping show of the season, im taking Heidi, Chaos and Brian (to keep him away from Bridget) and we are off to Adams at Catton Hall. Lets hope its better weather than last year!

Thank you to Sami Bull for taking the lovely picture of Bridget at the top :)

2016 so far...

I was determined to keep our blog up to date a bit more this year, so far I've failed miserably! At the start of February I took Bridget to a companion show a few miles away to get in a bit of Crufts practice in. She was a good girl, each class had a different Judge so she got to have several different people go over her which is all good experience. In the Pedigree puppy class she got 3rd out of 6 puppies, in the Pedigree open class she was 2nd out of 16 dogs and in the Best Short Coated dog she was 2nd again out of about 14 dogs! She was such a good girl, loved meeting people and she stands really well. We are still having a battle with her tail, she keeps it lovely and low when she stands but when she moves its up and curly! I'm still training it but im not sure if will be sorted by Crufts as its not only 2 weeks away.

Yesterday I went to RVA show up in Cambridgeshire. It was really nice to be back at a show again and im looking forward to the start of the season. Heidi had a couple of nice runs with either a pole or a naughty tunnel but she also had a couple of naughty runs with broken waits! I think she will always be the same! Chaos did well, the G4-5 courses were quite tricky but he managed a 6th in the Jumping and we got all the way around the Agility but he ran past the last jump! He really wasn't keen on being indoors but h did get better as the day went on, im hoping once we get outside he will be a bit more relaxed as his winter training has gone so well and he is so confident in the field.