The WAO Experience

We had the most fantastic time in Belgium.  Compared with driving to Austria last year for the EO's the journey was pretty easy.   Our hotel was really nice, a bit oldy worldy but very comfortable and just under twenty minutes from the venue.  We had a chilled afternoon and met everyone in the restaurant for a meal in the evening.

On the Wednesday we had our first training session and I for one found it really helpful.  It was a well organised session and we had loads of time to cover all sorts of stuff.   It really made me feel positive about things and really up for the competition.

On Thursday we had the shorter and more formal training session and again this a good session with all positive vibes for me and Zeki and I think for everyone else too.  We had our team dinner on the Thursday evening and this was really good (even for us vegetarians!)    We also had our team photos taken in the sunshine at the hotel.   Thursday evening was also the opening ceremony and Zeki barked her way through most of it ... what a surprise.

 

Team England 400's

Team England Shelties

Team England

The venue itself was pretty spectacular and very large!  The walk from the outside rings to the main arena was quite a long way but it really wasn't a problem as the way the event is organised means that you know exactly where to be at what point.  There are three groups A,B, and C and all courses are walked and run in rotation.  It's a brilliant system which means you can watch all your team mates run and support each other.

Before we go on to the competition itself, here are some more pictures of Zeki  and her buddies:

Enjoying her antler

Exhausted

Room mates

Snoozing Herbie

Zeki and me

Zaz and Zeki

Herbie, Zaz and Zeki

The competition was just brilliant.  I loved nearly every single course that I ran with the exception of one which needed too many front crosses but even that was a challenge.  I didn't run clear on all of them but I am really glad that all the training we did prior to the event paid off in that I walked them with conviction and attacked them when I ran.  I can honestly say I didn't walk into a single ring and say to myself  "I can't do that".  Instead I just got on with committing the patterns to memory and then figuring out how I would handle them.  The training helped not only in handling terms but also in my ability to commit tricky courses to memory quickly.   My worst case was three courses to walk in a row but even that didn't throw me because once I'd walked them I knew we would be running them in the same rotation so I just concentrated on the first one and so on.  It really helped.

I made a bad choice in one course where I handled the weaves differently from most people in order to get up on the course, Zeki completed the weaves beautifully but I lost her over the wrong jump; in two other courses she ran brilliantly and I screwed up at the last but one jump.  A bit frustrating to say the least.  In our games classes we completed the snooker opening section successfully but then blew out in the closing section and similar in the gamblers.  We ran clear on three courses, one of our runs helping our team to get into the final.  All in all I was thrilled with Zeki and pretty happy with my own efforts.  We had the benefit of Tace helping with our dogs (and ourselves, if needed, thank you Tace!) and so they were really ready to run each class.  I also spent time warming myself up and found it really helped so I am going to make more effort on this front in my normal classes especially champ runs.   By the third day this was a necessity for me as my back had begun to seize up quite badly.  The ibuprofen and stretches kept me going!



The whole event was enhanced by our brilliant management team:  manager (Jo Rhodes); coach (Ant Clarke) and sports and canine massage therapist (Tace Allen-Hunt).

Of course I mustn't forget our team mascot Riley:

You can see all the course plans here.  Zeki and I competed in all of them and ran team agility on Friday.

Here are some videos taken by various friends, in no particular order.  Some are repeated but shown from different angles.



















The final video is a little compilation by Wendy Botto, thank you so much for doing this.  Also thanks to Bernadette, Lian and Colin for the other videos, much appreciated.

Zeki watching the final prizegiving, waiting for the people to tear past doing their lap of honour.  She loved that!

Sheltie Power

The closing ceremony was rather long but there is no way round this.  Several of our team got medals including clever little Tia (left above) with Marilyn.  Well done everyone and thanks for being great team mates and making it such a fantastic experience.  A really superb event and I feel really honoured to have been a part of it.

Final post before the WAO's in Belgium

We are almost ready to leave.   I am feeling really nervous but very excited at the prospect of setting off tomorrow morning.

We had our final training session at Leah's on Thursday night and at last we ran a tricky jumping course (from Scott Chamberlain, the US judge) clear on our first attempt!  Whooppee!   Below is the course plan, a good one to train on.

 On Saturday we got up early and headed off to Birmingham for Beacon Show where Zeki had a champ class.  Of course I desperately want to win that third ticket with Zeki but equally important to me was to run with positive mental attitude and run clear in a competitive environment prior to the WAO's.  I am glad to be able to say that we managed this.  Our first class was G1-7 jumping and it was a well thought out course which is very difficult for the judge when it crosses all the grades.  Normally I don't take jumping classes seriously but I made myself focus and we ran clear coming 3rd so that was a decent start to our day.

The champ classes were probably a little faster and flowing thatn is my ideal but I was determined to get into the final and we did this by running clear in both the jumping and the agility.  Our agility run was a little, shall we say, scary when I put in a cross which I didn't need and got myself into all sorts of trouble much to the amusement of everyone outside the ring.  However, I didn't give up and got out of difficulty to finish with a clear round.  

We were running late in the final at #16 so plenty of time for nerves.  I made myself work on warming up both myself and Zeki which made sure we were ready to run when it was our turn (this is something I really must focus on and implement when in Belgium) and also kept me occupied.  The course was a little trickier than the two qualifying rounds which was good.   I made a stupid stupid error in the little handling section after the weaves but managed to get through it, however it definitely cost me time and we came 3rd by just over a second.  That said I absolutely wouldn't want to suggest I could have won because the winning round by Jennifer Machon and her gorgeous little spaniel was sublime.  One of those rounds where you just think the dog is on rails and nothing is going to stop them.  I am just pleased that I was so close to the winning round with a bit of pilot error.  It makes me take stock and realise what a brilliant little dog I have in Zeki.  My job is to guide her better, she always gets things right if I give her the right information.  So, I drove home from Beacon happy that I had achieved my aim and run clear in my classes.  Sadly, I didn't stop to run my Crufts qualifier as I hadn't had a chance to walk the course and it was a typical Barrie James course, tricky with obstacle discrimination.  The sort of course I absolutely love.  The queue was enormous as everyone wanted to run once the champ final was over and I knew I had a long drive home.

I took Tidey with me to Beacon and we managed some really positive work around the rings getting her to focus on little tasks and her toy.  She managed really well and we didn't have too much screaming.

I decided not to go to Tunbridge Wells on Sunday as the show had moved indoors due to the wet ground conditions.  I am not good running on the sand at Ardingly as it's very uneven and wanted to go to Belgium with a positive feeling.

Tamzin stopped over Friday and Saturday night as she had a trade stand at Tunbridge Wells show and it was a bit cold and damp to camp (that rhymes :o) )  We had a good laugh and all made sure we put in multiple votes for Ashleigh and Pudsey in the BGT final on the Saturday night.  They won by a pretty huge margin and so deserved it.  Great to see a variety act going through to the Royal Variety Performance rather than yet another singer.  Well done to a fantastic team.

So, that's it for now.  Zeki is bathed and looks gorgeous and we are off tomorrow at about 9.30 am.  I don't think I will sleep much tonight.

When I get back I will report on the experience plus lots of other things to catch up with.  Bye for now!

Less than a week before we travel to Belgium!

I am both excited and nervous in equal quantities about the trip to Belgium and taking part in the WAO's.   We have trained on courses for a month now and so there isn't any more training to do.  Now it's about mental preparation and focusing on the task in hand.

We got together with a few friends on Saturday and trained over another course by the Danish judge Thomas Ammitzboll.  It was another good test.  After we had worked on that course, we removed the contact equipment and Leah added a couple of jumps, re-numbered and voila, we had a very difficult jumping course to work on.    Both courses proved really testing and highlighted areas to work on for future but importantly areas to be 'managed' for the WAO. Here are the two courses that we worked on.

I didn't run Niamh at all on Saturday so that I could concentrate on Zeki.  This proved worthwhile and thank you to Tracy for running Naughty Niamh who had a lovely time.  Here she is between runs looking cheeky and cute! I love her so much and it was great to see her running so well with someone else.  She looks gorgeous :o)

On Tuesday back at training we set up one more of Thomas's courses.  This time a straight jumping course.  When we had laid it out we were muttering that it was much easier than the courses we had worked on previously but then we thought perhaps we should run it before thinking like that.  This proved to be true as the course was subtly more difficult than it looks.  It was though, a little simpler than some of the stuff we have been working on and I think this was a good thing because although testing it proved to be confidence-building as it was just that little more achievable.  A really good course to train on.   After we had run it three times, Andy partially re-numbered and we worked on a second pattern.   This second pattern was a little trickier but I was really pleased to run it clear first time!  Yay at last I have run clear on a jumping course first hit!   Normally I run Niamh in the first class but this week I swapped Zeki into Niamh's class so that I had to hit the course untried with Zeki.  I'm really glad I did this as it is much more realistic.  I worked out by the end of the evening that I had run ten full courses (1-20) with my two dogs plus a half hour  puppy class with Tidey.  No wonder I slept well!

Here are the courses:

I have one more training session with Zeki before the WAO which is tonight at Leah's.  I hope I can keep running well with her.   I went to Vyne show on Monday purely to try to get some good runs under my belt but the weather wasn't nice and I found the ground very slippery.  This wasn't helped by the fact that I didn't have decent footwear for the conditions.  I have such trouble finding shoes that fit comfortably and tend to stick with my Salomons whatever the conditions.  As a result I was absolutely rubbish with both my dogs.

So, I have bought some new Salomon shoes and I think I will feel much more confident in wet conditions.   I am going to drag myself out of bed in the early hours on Saturday and go to Beacon show where I will run Zeki in a competition with PMA (positive mental attitude!)

I have lots of other things to blog about and will try to do this (to clear my mind) before we set off to the WAO's so watch this space!

More training for WAO

Last night we worked on an agility course by one of the WAO judges.  It was a really fun course with elements of difficulty and options for handling.   Yay, Zeki ran clear first time so I was very happy with that.  I need to achieve this same attack and success on a jumping course.  Am going to pack in as much training as possible before the event.  Working on these tricky courses for the past month has really helped me to prepare both mentally and physically.   Only two weeks to go now!

Not long to go until the WAO's

Yikes, not long to go now until the WAO's in May.  We are travelling out on Tuesday 15th May and then there are training sessions on the Wednesday and Thursday with competition three days Friday-Sunday.  Zeki is in nearly all of the events as we have recently been called to do the games classes.

I have been working on jumping courses and trying to get a better mind set when I step on the line.  I think it's coming but I'm not there yet.   We set up a good course on Tuesday night, again thanks to Greg Derret, it was a version of his masters jumping course from Easter Monday.  Once more it was different from the original because of the shape of our arena.  His course was designed to a square and we had to adapt to rectangular.  It was a good course which had plenty of handling but flowed for the dogs.

Still I didn't manage to go out and run clear first time round.  Zeki did a brilliant run but on my first attempt I lost her into the weaves # 11 instead of the tunnel #5.   I started again and she ran clear.  However, that is not going to be good enough.  I have to run a jumping course clear first time before I depart.   The course turned out to be a good training pattern as there were so many different ways of handling the weaves #11 through to tunnel #17.   We ran the course the way we thought we could run clear and fast and once we had done that then we tried different things.  Both Leah and myself found our final attempt at running the course to be our personal best attempts.  In both cases it wasn't the way we chose to run it first time.  So we took away from this not to be blinkered about how we handle certain sequences.  

Last night Leah set up a jumping course for me at her club.  It was very tricky and testing.  I was reasonably pleased with my performance in that I actually got round to #17 before going wrong.  This is further than I have been getting and it was an exceptionally tricky course.   We worked through our errors and on my final run we managed to go clear.  This is my best attempt at replicating the pattern we ran:

I am hoping to set up an extra training session at our school before the WAO in order to get some more practise in before we leave.  I am also hoping to get in two competitions before the event both with champ classes for Zeki which will be good practise plus of course I so want to win that third ticket!  We are booked at both Vyne and Beacon shows and subject to this wretched weather improving we will be there trying hard to give our best performance.

I got my tee-shirts back from Marilyn's mum who has made the most fantastic job of altering them.  They now fit me and no longer look like tent dresses!

Here is a link to the WAO magazine in which Zeki and I feature on page 54.

Final WAO training session and what I need to work on

On Sunday we trekked off to Gloucestershire for our final official WAO training session.  I have found these sessions really helpful as they have pushed me but also highlighted things I really need to work on.

Now all I need is for the weather to be a little kinder so that we can get outside and practise some of these things: sending Zeki onto an obstacle with me starting to pull away ready to run off in another direction; weaves into a solid obstacle e.g. side of a tunnel and more important that anything jumping courses period.  I always do better on agility courses and really need to find a way of getting the right focus for jumping courses.   My mind set is poor where jumping classes are concerned and I really need to work hard to change this attitude.  Possibly this is because jumping classes have never really had much importance in British agility, even with our current championship class it isn't always critical to do a first class jumping run and so I tend not to take attack jumping courses the same as I do agility courses.   Also, we rarely train over jumping courses because people want to train contacts and we tend to set up what the majority wants.  Perhaps we need to change this practise and once a month set up a tricky jumping course.  Anyway, all I know is that I have to change my attitude and fast.

So far I have used my new rubberised contacts just once, they have been wrapped up under their new covers since the day after I got them as we've had quite a lot of rain.  Typical April weather really but after the very warm, dry March I think we all thought summer had arrived!  Sadly not, although I am not truly sorry for all the rain because here in the south of England it is badly needed.

Colin Knight very kindly did some videoing at the weekend and here are a couple of Zeki's rounds as a result.  Thank you Colin.





We picked up our WAO clothing on Sunday.  Love the jacket but it was hilarious when I tried on my polo shirts.  They were like dresses on me.  Not far off knee length and miles too big in the body!  Oops.  Luckily Marilyn came to the rescue and took the shirts with her for her Mum to alter.  What a super star.  I honestly couldn't have run in those shirts as they were so huge.  It provided a good laugh and I wasn't the only one, was I Bernadette LOL!

Last night at training we set up this course which is a take on Greg Derrett's UKA Masters agility course from Easter Monday.   We had to adapt it because our school is rectangular whereas Greg's course was designed to a square.  I expect some things were made easier and others more difficult as a result.  All I know is that it was certainly testing but that I loved running it with both Niamh and Zeki.

It certainly tested two of the things I need to work on with La Beek: #4 to #5 where you had to commit the dog to #4 but be starting your move to get up the line and get into position for #6 and #17 weaves into the back of a rigid tunnel.   Niamh popped out at the tenth pole but did it after rewarding with her ball, Zeki was foot perfect, clever girl.   I also found I needed to handle the run up to the A-Frame differently for my two dogs.  With Niamh (who has a stopped A-Frame) I layered #9-10 to the seesaw, got right up beyond the seesaw to recall over #12 so I could push to the rigid tunnel and then peel away from the A-Frame, recalling over #16 and scooping to the weaves.  I did this with Zeki also and it worked well but I got a better running A-Frame if I didn't layer and actually worked the sequence slightly from behind.  This meant I had more acceleration approaching the A-Frame and the pull away wasn't so obvious to Zeki.  I love how this course made me think and how there were lots of ways of handling the various sequences within it.  In my view a perfect course and I just wish we saw more like this at our shows in G7.  Well done Mr Derrett I think you should judge more often .........

Exhausted by the end of the evening but really happy with how my girls ran this course.