fannygott.com
fannygott.com

September 2008

Video from world cup practice

I’ve spent the whole day watching all the teams practice one last time before world championships start tomorrow. I have three favourites, one in each height. The best small dog I’ve seen today is the Russian sheltie called Adrenalina. I always get so happy watching that dog, it’s so amazingly fast. It might be turning a bit wide, but I really hope they do well this weekend. My favourite medium dog is a blue merle border collie from England. A really nice, fast, tight turning dog that has a good chance of winning if all goes well. In the big dog division, Susan Garrett and Encore were just outstanding. A great combination of speed, tight turns and amazing skills. A lot of big dogs look fast and great, but Encore was just in a class of her own, I think.

The Norwegian team looked really good in practice. They have speed and pretty good consistency. I think some of them could do well. I’ve made a video with short clips from todays training, mostly Sweden, England, USA, Switzerland and Canada. I ran out of batteries after the Canadian team, so unfortunatly no Norway or Russia.

Missy’s dogwalk

Before I went to Helsinki yesterday, I made a video of Missy’s running dogwalk. We havn’t been training dogwalks for a month, but when I get back home, I’ll start the “real” training. I also timed it and it’s pretty consistent at 1.25s when she’s going straight.

It’s been a hectic month and I have hardly been at home at all. We went away for two weeks after the trial, hunting and teaching, and a friend of mine stayed at our place and took care of my dogs. They were fine, but I think Shejpa really missed me. Missy just ran out the door to say hi to Thomas when I opened it to say hi to her when we got home. I look forward to having more time at home in october (even though I have three weekends of teaching away from home) and I look forward to visiting the puppies again.

A great day at the trial!

Our debut weekend is over and I have to say that I’m pleased. Yesterday was really not a good day for me and Shejpa. I think I was a bit overly excited and I wanted to qualify too much. She was eliminated in all three runs due to refusals. Good contacts though. Missy did a great run in jumpers, but jumped the side of the wheel and was eliminated since I kept running. She didn’t knock any bars! Pavlov was yesterdays superstar. It was his debut and Thomas first agility run ever. They had no faults coming to the last jump, but Pavlov ran beside it and Thomas had to take him back and around. You need three qualifying runs in each class to move to the next level. A qualifying run in the easisest class is any run with less than 5,99 faults. Pavlov had 5 faults and got his first qualifying run!

Today was my day. Missy made a qualifying run in jumpers, with five faults in the weave poles. Shejpa did the same thing in both jumpers and standard and she won her standard run. They were both faster than all the other dogs in their class even with refusals at the weave poles. That Missy pops out at the second pole is something that I’m not surprised by. That has really been a problem for us and she is just now starting to do it well in training. For Shejpa to do it was a much bigger surprise, but I think it was my fault. I tried to help her and handle her into the weave poles and she is not used to it. I don’t think it will be a problem in the future when we both get mor experience in trials. She is usually very good in training on all kinds of weave poles.

This means that all of our three dogs have managed to qualify once in jumpers and that Shejpa (who was the only one entered in standard) also has done a qualifying run in standard. We’re now off to the mountains for two weeks of hunting with Pax and Pi. Shejpa and Missy are staying at home with a friend of ours and Pavlov will be with Nina in Umeå.

One day left…

This weekend will be Shejpa’s debut in agility. She’s entered in three classes (jumpers, standard and open jumpers (unofficial)) on Saturday and jumpers + standard on Sunday. Both Missy and Pavlov (Thomas’ border collie) are entered in jumpers both days. Shejpa did her last training session today, I think she needs to rest in order to be at her best on Saturday. Missy, on the other hand, needs a lot of training to keep cool and I will do some more double box with her tomorrow.

We focused on discriminating between dogwalk and seesaw in todays session with Shejpa. She is very inexperienced and did her first full seesaw just yesterday. I will definatly need to help her by using my decel to get her to weight shift on the seesaw, but we will try it and then go back and perfect her performance for the rest of this fall. No more trials until January, since I work a lot. Shejpas dogwalks look great, she is turning nicely, but she might turn into me instead of going straight if I get to far behind. She is also sometimes not as good on a new dogwalk the first time, so we need some element of luck on Saturday. I really look forward to the trial, I havn’t ran any of my dogs in a trial for almost 1,5 years.

Here is a video from today

And here is a video from yesterday showing some of her first seesaws. She was a lot better in the session before, then I went to get the camera and she was a bit tired for this session. Looks ok for the first time, I guess: