Zaz and Itz training April 2010 and stuff

Another month has flown by. It has been a good month result-wise for all the OBay shelties. Zen started out the 2010 season well by winning the first Championship class of the year and insuring her spot at Crufts 2011. We have been away from the champ classes for about a year and it was nice to be back. Unfortunately no video or photos; I need to get back in the habit of videoing. Zen winning the first champ so early in the year meant that I could pull out of all the other champ classes for the year, save my money and concentrate on other classes with Zen. It also means less travelling which will be good as we should be in our new home next month!

Our new house is called "Old House Cottage" and it is just what we were looking for. Even better it is only 4 miles from Dennis' office so no increase in commuting time for him and he can still come home for lunch! It has more land than our current house but it is set up differently. It also has an established kitchen garden and room for the chickens that I have been wanting for a long time!

We can get into our new house on 7th of May. It is a great house and we are so excited to get in and start work. It needs some work and we will hopefully be doing things like adding a detached garage, removing trees and setting up my agility yard as soon as we can. This is a must-do as I have the Zitzy puppies to train!



Zen followed up her Champ win with a lovely win at the new UKA Masters Tournament. The best part of this win.....a £100 check from Mr. Derrett. Ahhh it was nice to finally take money from him instead of handing it over! The idea of this new Masters is to get people to really GO for the win and I like that they are trying something new. For the first tournament they picked a great judge as Andy really puts much thought into designing his courses. I would like to see more courses like that as I do get tired of pull through followed by straight lines followed by pull through. Variety is the spice of agility though and I am trying to LOVE all the courses I run this year. One of my New Years resolutions was not to complain about any courses I run. So feel free to slap me if you hear me doing it!



Zen is not the only OBay doing well so early in the season. Her children are starting to bring in some agility results! So far Ziga has qualified for the small Olympia Semi-Finals, Zev has won into Grade 6 and Zeki has won into Grade 4. Hopefully I will get some videos or photos of the pups as the season goes on but to start here is a photo of Zeki and Nancy at Easter Celebration yesterday. She followed up this win with another 1st and 2nd today.



Zaz and Itzy training is going along well. They are now 16 months old so they can compete in Nursery (no weaves or see-saw) and Steeplechase (only jumps and tunnels) at UKA. I had planned for their first show to be tomorrow but the weather had other ideas. I just heard that the showgrounds have been awful and muddy and we were advised not to take the trip out to Tewksbury. I am disappointed but I am glad that we found out in advance as I would not have shown the pups in that condition. It looks like their first UKA show will be on Friday if the weather is kind to us.

My goals for this session were to see how they could do their running contacts into a wall (fence) with jumps off to the side and to work on the see-saw. I was very pleased with both pups. Itzy's see-saw is really improving at home but still needs work in new places. Zaz's see-saw is generally very good but she needs work on running to the end even if I hold back; so this is what we worked on with her. As for my consistency in Zaz's startline; well don't judge me too hard! haha I think her moving forward while I turn my back is totally genetic as mum Zen does it and so does brother Ziga. I swear it has nothing to do with my inconsistent training and I am sticking to that story!