Shelters

I'm looking for a new shelter for trials. There seems to be three popular styles - the Coolaroo type with poles that you dismantle; the uTents that use a beach umbrella as a support; and the First-up styles that fold up concertina fashion. None seem perfect, so its a trade off between cost, weight, and ease of assembly.

Gaiting

We had a bit of a hiccup with our gaiting this week. Dusty started jumping up to nip me on the arm (if I was lucky). So we have gone back to do the basic training which I sort of skipped, because she seemed to gait really nicely after our choose-to-heel work and related games.

My training partner suggested that I was encouraging the jumping by starting off with a little leap myself, and by rushing turns, so I first sorted out what I was doing with the help of a bunch of keys tied to the leash and a video camera.

Then we worked on 'off', calling Dusty to jump up and petting her, and then rewarding 'off' with a treat. After a couple of days of practicing this with myself and the neighbours, she was reluctant to jump up even when asked. Dusty is one to cut to the chase, and she learned fairly quickly that 'off' got liver and jumping up just got her hair mussed.

Finally - and this is perhaps where I should have started - we followed Sue Ailsby's guidelines to Conformation Gaiting and are working towards my arm out to the side being the cue to gait beside me, looking ahead.

FCI World Championships

Guy Blanke's site is a great resource - being able to watch the videos, with side-by-side comparisons of the placegetters, while looking at a map of the course is a useful aid to improving your own handling.

Greg Derrett won the Individual Large Dog Agility, but blew the Jumping course as his dog entered the weave poles with the first pole on its right shoulder. Looking at the course and the run the mistake is understandable - in attempting to bring JT around his body for a straighter approach to the poles, he pushed her too far and around to the far side of the poles. He actually seems indecisive as to how to handle the approach, and may have even made contact with JT - she seems to stumble.

The Puppy Puzzle

I am currently reading Another Piece of the Puzzle: Puppy Development edited by Pat Hastings and Erin Ann Rouse. It is a collection of articles by well known breeders and trainers such as Brenda Aloff and Karen Pryor.

The chapter Picking Your Agility Puppy could just as usefully be titled Picking Agility for your Puppy; Dusty came first, and I'll now decide whether agility is an activity we'll do together. In evaluating a puppy for agility, Elizabeth Barrett looks at structure first, then temperament.

Structure:

• Overall Balance: height, length, depth of body, and length of leg are in proportion, and puppy walks steadily and stops 'four square'.
• Front Assembly: good shoulder angulation; strong, straight parallel front legs; tight cat feet and barely sloping pasterns will assist in sharp turns and shock absorbtion.
• Rear Assembly: well proportioned with moderate angulation that will provide both propulsion and stability.
• Back: too long and it will be susceptible to stress, too short and it will lack flexion.

Temperament:

• noise tolerance
• confidence
• social attraction
• toy interest.

Red Terras

Deb and I, and the Girls

Dusty and Jenna

Rosie has a chat to Deb ...

... about the course challenges.

Open Agility (ANKC)

This is my drawing of the opening sequence of the Saturday morning Open Agility course. There seemed to be as many ways of handling it as there were dogs running. I started with Thommo on my left and handled 1-2-3 with the Serpentine movement that Greg Derret teaches. This gave a nice line to the weave pole entry. An outstretched arm would send him out to 7, and 7-8 required a nicely timed and positioned front cross.

ACT Trials

We went down to Canberra last weekend for two trials: the ACT Companion Dog Club on the Saturday, and the Belconnen Dog Obedience Club on the Sunday. It was the Labour Day weekend so we had some travelling time, Floriade was in full swing, and Deb was bringing Rosie and Jenna, and Sophie, up from Melbourne so we had plenty of reasons for the trip.

Thommo was in one of his moods where he won't do the weave poles. He sees the poles, stops running, brings his head up and walks down the opposite side of the line of poles from me. He did the poles perfectly for the first couple of years we competed, then developed problems in trial situations. I handled the problem badly, trying to follow everyone's (different) advice, and now he'll have days where he does them beautifully, and days where he refuses to attempt them.

So I decided that the weekend runs would be about my handling, not his running. We had some great courses on which to do this. I particularly liked Murray's Open Agility on the Saturday morning, one of three nested courses, with appropriately interesting challenges at each level.