Wednesday, 2 May 2012
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!
Tuesday, 1 May 2012
Some more pictures from my walks
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| Beautiful Tidal Wave proving she can sit and wait ..... |
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| In the distance you can see Andy to the right of the tree, with a little blob behind him (Kizzle), a bigger blob in front (Murphy) and to the left of the tree and bushes a little red blob (Pop in her Hurtta coat). Becky must have been bhined the bushes! |
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| The lovely house we pass on our walk each day |
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| The Naughty Niamh in the mud, her favourite place! |
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| Closer shot of Niamh, you can see the flood water behind her in the distance |
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| The last bit of dry ground before we go into wading rather than walking mode! |
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| Kick my toy or I will shout at you! |
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| Last warning, I'm building up to a big bark here! |
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| That's it, lost control of my mouth ..... |
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| The result of Naughty Niamh's mud games |
Monday, 30 April 2012
A pictorial account of the south-east drought
The drought we are currently suffering in our part of the country.
Having been for a lovely pub lunch with friends yesterday we got home and took our two groups of dogs for their separate walks. I distinctly remember saying to Andy that I was going to do a shortish walk as my girls had been on a huge walk the day before. However, this wasn't to be as I decided we would wade through the floods for fun. We got right to the end of the floods but couldn't get through as it was too deep. The water had already gone over the top of my wellies. We had to about turn and wade all the way back. So, our quick walk turned out to be 2.5 hours! Still, it made for a peaceful evening!
Having been for a lovely pub lunch with friends yesterday we got home and took our two groups of dogs for their separate walks. I distinctly remember saying to Andy that I was going to do a shortish walk as my girls had been on a huge walk the day before. However, this wasn't to be as I decided we would wade through the floods for fun. We got right to the end of the floods but couldn't get through as it was too deep. The water had already gone over the top of my wellies. We had to about turn and wade all the way back. So, our quick walk turned out to be 2.5 hours! Still, it made for a peaceful evening!
So fed up with this drought!
Friday, 27 April 2012
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.
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.
Monday, 23 April 2012
Happy twelfth birthday to our little 'Tri-Pawd' Becky
Happy birthday to our dear little Becky who is twelve today. She is so much happier than this time last year when although she had four legs she was in so much pain. Now she is smiling every day and back to her old happy-go-lucky self.
The hair on her operation site is really growing back thick and fast and I think once a bit of top coat comes through it will be hard to tell that she is in fact a 'Tri-Pawd'!
The hair on her operation site is really growing back thick and fast and I think once a bit of top coat comes through it will be hard to tell that she is in fact a 'Tri-Pawd'!
Friday, 20 April 2012
Spring garden and strange sighting
It has been so wet and I think we have quite a bit more rain to come. We were booked into Wallingford for one day this weekend by I don't much like Newbury in the rain so have decided to stay home. We've been quite busy this week so I'm really looking forward to lighting the fire and catching up with some t.v. with a glass of wine. Shortly off to walk the dogs so hopefully they will be nice and tired and will chill out by the fire too!
Managed to get some pictures of the garden to cheer the blog up. The garden is loving the current spell of wet weather and I think it shows.
For a couple of weeks now a little Blue Tit has been visiting our garden and we noticed it has an extra long beak. We have sent a picture to this organisation as they like to keep track of weird things like this.
Here is a picture of our little feathered friend and some of the garden:
Managed to get some pictures of the garden to cheer the blog up. The garden is loving the current spell of wet weather and I think it shows.
For a couple of weeks now a little Blue Tit has been visiting our garden and we noticed it has an extra long beak. We have sent a picture to this organisation as they like to keep track of weird things like this.
Here is a picture of our little feathered friend and some of the garden:
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