BC Puppy blog

For anyone interested in following both litters, when the time comes, you can see the BC Blog here.

USDAA - Adv Jumpers

Here is a qualifying, and what passes as a "good" run for Fada (minimal distraction/sniffing time)

Taking a break

Fada and Neat (BC) have BOTH been bred, so, we are done with agility till spring. It gives me time to think about what I really need to do with both girls when they get back to agility practice, hopefully mid winter.

My goal for each next year is to finally get an ExB Q with Fada, and a MACH point. Hopefully next year that will still take us to the AKC Invitational in December. After next year, I'm afraid all the young PPods out there will overtake us rather quickly! I would also like to qualify Neat for the USDAA Nationals, since I am going anyway. It would be nice if Fada is qualified to enter something there as well.

I really would like to get both girls in for lessons with Linda. I need help with both, in very different ways! Still not sure if I am keeping a Fada puppy this time. Depends on how many and what I think of them. While it would be fun to raise an Agility Pod from a pup, I also have a lot to do with the adults. The sensible thing IS to wait till her next litter, but how often are we sensible?

Dexter's Tour of Contacts, continued!

After the Flashpoint trial on Sunday, I took Dexter back up to Linda's. He was AWESOME!!! Fast Aframe and DW and a good teeter. not going as far on the board before pausing as I'd like, but he did it with a fair amount of confidence and was happy to perform it multiple times. I was so pleased.

Last night I took Dexter to one of Vicki Woods' classes at Flashpoint Agility in Marengo. I was for the most part, very happy with how he did. He was pretty fast on the jumps/tunnels, and I got to work on getting some front crosses in while he is running at that speed. At BRAG class, he does not run fast!! It's frustrating because I can't work on the skills we really need. Instead I'm dragging him along, doing FCs with ease because he is nowhere close to where I am.

It's so interesting to me that when Dexter is running fast it's much more difficult to do FCs than it is with Panic. Of course it makes sense, because with Panic I can get lateral distance. With Dexter, he would pull off of jumps due to being so green. So I have to run the whole path with him and then try to get ahead. It's tough!

Anyway, back to contacts. The course was set up perfectly for what I needed, A-frame was the first contact, followed by the dog walk and then lastly the teeter. The A-Frame, I think he refused once (although I think he was distracted, not not wanting to do it), and then he was fine. The DW he was fine right away. The teeter.... well he did it but not great. We did get to work on a teeter that was set very low and we got to work on it like a wobble board basically. So, improvement was made. I did convince him to do the teeter a few times but he wasn' happy with it. Gotta get him on more!!

Fada update

I've obviously not been NEARLY as dedicated as Lianne at keeping up the Blog. Last spring Fada had really slowed down and seemed to lose her enthusiasm for agility. She already had her AXJ, 2 legs on her OA, her PD1 and some Starters games legs. But she had lost all pizazz.

At first I blamed it on hormones, then just general lack of interest. After Susan Yates (owner of PPP, Luna)watched Fada in the breed ring and did massage work on her she suggested chiropractic. Fada has been seeing Dr. Karen Spracklen monthly since June and had a HUGE improvement. She has also been much more lively at home.

At a trial in August, we had several ugly runs, mainly due to Fada all of the sudden running with more speed and enthusiasm than I had become used to. Lianne posted a video of a very short Snooker run.



Obviously, I never expected Fada to start off flying like that and end up in the off course tunnel! She did manage to get her 2nd Adv. Jumpers leg that weekend though, and had many other good run. Our main problem now is back to teeter fears.

That, however, will have to wait for awhile. Fada is in season and being bred this week to a lovely boy from MI (but we won't hold that against him!) named "Ganadeiro." So keep your fingers crossed for Christmas puppies, then it's back to the agility ring for Fada in the spring!

Dexter's Vids from CABTC

Friday FAST: 1st place, 1st Q, 69pts


Friday JWW: 1st place, 1st Q


Friday STD: NQ


Saturday JWW: 2nd place, 2nd Q


Saturday Std: NQ


Sunday JWW: 1st place, 3rd Q


Sunday Std: NQ

Working on contacts

Dexter has begun his "Tour of Columbus" via contats... I am trying to get him on as many pieces of equipment as possible, to hopefully help him perform contacts at trials. So far, we have visited Wild Weavers and practiced on Linda's contacts. Dexter is getting better! He needs convincing a DW isn't a teeter first off. His A-Frame is pretty good. Actually, once he does them, they are both awesome. He is leaping the apex a lot on the aframe which is fun! The teeter however is our bugaboo. At Linda's I worked with the teeter in a stationary position to get him to run to the end again. You could see the tension melt off of his body when he realized it wasn't going to move. Once he was good with that I moved the support slightly so that it dropped a bit. Made him a little nervous but he worked through it!

Linda's and WW's are all rubberized. We are going to Flashpoint this week also (non-rubberized) and hope to get on Mary Klein's contacts at some point soon as well. Our next trial is Nov 7-8 and I really really really would love it if he doesn't get stressed by the contacts!

UCh Ketka Smooth Operator NAJ

The Dude has an agility title!!! I am so proud of my little boy. He ran his heart out in JWW this weekend! He was 3/3 in JWW with all 100's, 2 firsts and 1 second place. In FAST he got 1st and a Q as well!! In std, we were 0/3 :( But he was really weirded out by the contacts. He did well on everything else though, so I'm not too worried about it, just have to get him out and about on different pieces of equip. These were rubberized contacts too which may have affected him.

I was not very excited about running at 830 and 5pm every day and sitting in between! But such is the life of a Novice competitor I suppose. Well at least we're out of N JWW. I've got to send my move-up form in for the trial in Nov!!

I will post vids later. He's such a good boy :)

Woooohoooo for Diddle Dude!

Dude had Mary's class last night. It was AWESOME!!!! I don't know if he was trying to give me a confidence booster or what before the show this weekend, but if he was, it worked. He ran, FAST! Finally, he actually ran instead of trotting around. It was *fun*! And I wasn't out of breath at the end. I am usually huffing and puffing after running him because not only does it take forever (compared to Panic), but I have to cheerlead the whole way too! Well, no cheerleading necessary last night!! He did get excessive amounts of praise and cookies though :) I know I shouldn't expect this for the weekend... but if he did, it would be beyond awesome.

I have a lesson with Linda Mecklenburg on Thanksgiving day that just got scheduled, for Panic. I am really excited. I'm taking Panic to the nationals next year, and we really need to fine-tune our performance. I think we can shave a few sec's off of our times. Can't wait!