A new look and other stuff

I decided to have a bit of change and have chosen a new template for the blog. Not sure if I like it yet so I might go back to the original one or choose another! What do others think?

I'm actually supposed to be doing some work right now but Andy has gone out to a site visit and I was fed up with spreadsheets and figures so I thought I'd do a blog update! Don't tell him!

Naughty Niamh and her foot!

Not doing much training at the moment, just some clicker work with Niamh. Until her cut pad has healed I'm not even walking her. The trouble with Niamh is that she never walks calmly anywhere, if I keep her on a lead she pulls and that's not good and if I let her off she can't help but charge about everywhere.

This morning when I got up and went into the kitchen she was giving me some very strange looks and then rabbit running round the kitchen and throwing herself into different beds. She has a huge build up of excess energy. She is so funny when she gets like this but I couldn't laugh too much as I don't want her charging about. I had to calm her down, which took some doing and then I did some clicker work with her to try to use up a bit of the energy surge. Even with that I have to be careful as she throws herself into different positions trying to make me click and treat her.

The cut is healing quite well but last night she had a sneaky lick of it whilst I was watching something on the t.v. She is such a Naughty Niamh. If she keeps doing this she'll have to wear a hood. I hate putting those things on my dogs but I will if I have to.

Sexy Kizzle to be measured on Sunday

Kizzy is fully in season but hasn't yet started to pester poor Murphy. That will come some time next week I suspect. At that point we will separate them, not because we worry about Murphy doing anything but because he gets worn out from Kizzy's "attentions" ..........

Tomorrow Kizzy is going to the vet to be micro-chipped prior to being measured on Sunday. We're going off to a measuring session in Bexley which is only about 45 minutes away so quite local really. I think it's much easier to do this than try to get her measured at a show. I did this with Niamh and found it quite stressful.

Sheep herding!

On Saturday we're off sheep herding. Kizzy and Niamh are booked in but it seems more likely that I'll be taking Poppy unless Niamh's foot has really healed well. I don't want to risk it opening again. Although it's still three weeks to Crufts I would really like to get some training in the week before we go as I'm unable to do anything at the moment.

Training Day

Last Sunday Leah and I went to a Dawn Weaver training day. It was very interesting, more so because neither of us worked our own dogs. Leah trained Murphy and I had Stihl. To begin with Stihl kept running back to Leah but we resolved this very quickly by filling my pockets with cheese. After that she stayed with me and we had great fun. She is a lovely dog to run; she reminds me very much of Abbey (probably more so than any other dog I've run). She is very light and responsive which is fantastic; the downside (as it was with Abbey) is that timing and positioning with rear crosses is critical. More often than not I got it wrong but we did make some progress. Thank you Jay for letting me run your lovely dog. I almost suit a kelpie but not quite!

Leah enjoyed the session with Murphy. Some of the sequences he did really well and others were very challenging for him as in this weave entry shown below.

We had to handle the sequence from the top side of the pair of jumps and it was tough. You had to push your dog out of the collapsible tunnel to go round the back of #2; stay top side and push over #3 and send to the weaves. It was made tougher by the fact that you started with your dog on the run, i.e. no recall start was permitted. This is something Dawn does a lot of. Every sequence was done running with our dogs.

Tuesday Training

Tonight will be busy for me because Andy might not get back to training in time to help. He has a physio appointment early evening. If he does get back then I will run Stihl again (Jay is still poorly.) Obviously Niamh won't be training nor Kizzy. Murphy will be training with Leah though. We're going to use Mand's pattern that she posted on her blog. It looks really interesting. Tonight we'll probably break it down into different sequences and maybe end up with a whole course; haven't quite decided yet. Thanks Mand!