Training

I had a good clear up in the agility area yesterday, mainly removing dead twigs etc. from the oak trees and the weeping willow. It's back breaking and rather tedious but it looks a lot better now. I was aided by five little doglets and hindered by one! Kizzy is a nightmare, she constantly brings her ball to me and drops it right in the middle of pile of twigs and stuff that I've raked up and then barks at me to throw it. She brings it back so quickly and so it's a race to get stuff raked and into the wheelbarrow before she gets back. The others are content to run around with their toys in their mouths just chasing and playing.

Zeki makes me laugh so much. When she was younger I did a lot of work with her to stop her chasing things and this meant she wasn't allowed to chase a broom or the rake which she dearly loves to do. She hasn't forgotten this training and to stop herself from chasing the rake she takes her frisbee under the nearest fir tree or shrub and kills it. It's hilarious as all you can hear is her shaking and killing her toy amongst dead leaves and debris under a bush. I must film it one day as it's so funny. Niamh spends most of her time hiding behind the oak tree waiting to pounce and shake her ball at whoever comes running past. Poppy races around with Kizzy and Becky and Murphy just bounce around watching the others. All good fun.

Anyway, Andy set me up a pattern with some of the things I want to work on. At last the equipment is back out. It's been under cover for many weeks due to the bad weather. Since we've been here this has been the first winter that I've been unable to train all the way through. There is one area of ground that has been particularly hard hit. It's covered more with moss than grass due to the oak tree roots and lack of light and hasn't coped at all well with the snow, rain and freezing temperatures but at last it has started to firm up and gradually show some growth.


Obviously I want to work on collapsible tunnels and so far so good. We will have to wait and see what happens when we come across one in the ring. I am very lucky to be able to practise this sort of thing at home. The collapsible tunnel often causes problems with young dogs as you see when you judge lower grade classes and it's a hard thing to resolve when you can't practise it. We are very guilty at our club of not using the collapsible tunnel enough. We tend not to use it because we like to train lots of different sequences and it's not practical to keep turning the collapsible tunnel as it has to be pegged. We must make more effort to use it and the tyre and the long jump (the last two tend not to get used because we have different height dogs in the classes.)

We also worked on push throughs (coming along) and the dreaded cross behind the weaves. We made some good progress on this and I want to continue this as it is something I am not good at with any of my dogs. I am also working on it with NN.

Once I have done my main chore today which is to stock up the caravan (oh and a load of stuff for Andy in the office) then I will go and do some more training with Zeki and also some with Niamh as we didn't have class last night as Leah has gone away to Shaun and Tace's wedding. I hope they have a wonderful day and will be very happy together.

Meantime here are some pictures from our lovely evening walk yesterday. It was glorious but very cold!

Racing each other

Kizzy & Zeki (above) and Poppy (below) munching on the yellow sprouting broccoli, their favourite snack!

Little Pops with Zeki's ears in the corner (she gets in everywhere!)

Zeki

Poppy

The Naughty Niamh

Oops, don't seem to have taken any individual shots of Andy's three!