OBay Shelties

January 2012

2012-01-23T17:28:00.009Z

December and January has flown by. I really wanted to do more blog posts but time got away from me. I also need to do more videoing of Giz-mo but I have forgotten how to edit video! My new little video camera is great for short clips of runs but I don't really know how to simply edit longer clips of training.

Here is an example. If you decide to watch ALL 5 minutes of it you may be bored silly. In addition you will see alot of my crocs and, while I love my crocs, that wasn't quite the point. Finally you will see a great video of Giz jumping into thin air. LOL I was trying out my new Gorilla-pod tripod for my video camera. I haven't quite figured out where to stand to get the entire session in the frame! It is hard to train and stay in one place as I have found out. I now have an increased appreciation for those who put out good little video clips while training their pups. And I am in awe of those who put out video after video of running contact training PLUS slow motion! My head explodes just thinking about doing that....

This video is slightly better as it was shorter and I was forced to stay in one position by the official upside down elephant-trick bowl.

Really both videos are pretty pitiful.....help!

Agility and training has taken a back seat this past month. We have spent time getting the chickens sorted and "Chicken-topia" is progressing. More chickens are planned as soon as we get a secure top/cover on their run and put up the new improved BIGGER chicken coop. I am so egg-cited about getting different breeds of chickens! So far these two girls (Wilma and Betty) are giving us one egg per day. I am not sure if it is one chicken laying everyday or they are taking turns.

Giz hasn't really done any true "agility" training. I did this little video of him 3 weeks ago and that is about the extent of his training. His cone/champagne bottle training as a puppy seems to have carried over to his wing wraps and I am pleased that he is working for a toy. He doesn't always feel the need to bring the toy back to me but he will happily tug once I catch him up. LOL

I wanted a smaller sheltie from this litter but Giz-mo has taken my request a little too far. He is all of 11" at 5 months old. I am hoping he will grow a little bigger; if he hit 13" I would be thrilled!

Zaz wonders if he is leaving yet?

Dennis and I have taken TWO non-doggy holidays this month. First we were off to Portugal to visit a friend. That was such great fun and I hope she comes to visit us in England also now! It is amazing how dogs can bring people together as I first met Connie when I fell in love with her sable sheltie Teller and wanted to use him to breed to Joy. That combination produced my darling Pax; the sheltie who was my sheltie soul-mate.

Then after being home for a few days we jetted off to Iceland hoping to see the Northern Lights. We had a great time but the Northern Lights were elusive and now we have to try again next year! We are thinking maybe Finland or Norway next year to try again.

My gorgeous Zen is now over 8 1/2 years old and I had to make the decision to spay her. She was obviously not going to have anymore pups and I wanted to spay her while she was still young and healthy. There was still a part of me that felt sad at doing the spay as it felt like the end of a journey for Zen and I. What an amazing girl she has been to have given me four litters of puppies. Thanks Zen-star and I look forward with joy to the next stage of our life together.

Update and Christmas 2011

2011-12-21T10:21:00.012Z

So Olympia 2011 has come and gone. Zaz and I were paired with Helen and Piaf in the morning pairs event. That was fun and we won the pairs! Zaz copes well with the large crowds and noise; maybe too well as she is slightly out of her mind with excitement!! Very similar to momma Zen at the same event!

Our evening final did not quite go to plan. As the winners of the semi-final in August, Zaz and I ran last. Our run was over at the first jump when Zaz knocked the first bar. At that point I would have liked to have left the ring but at Olympia we have to keep going. The run went from bad to worse and let's say it was not our best run ever! Never mind; I took the best dog home anyway.

I do slightly lose the will to live having to wait around for 6 hours between events. There is only so much shopping I can do in the Olympia village and I hate leaving Zaz alone in her crate. Maybe I am just getting jaded; Olympia does not excite me anymore. Or maybe I am just bah-humbug.

There is only one thing that can bring some Christmas spirit to me and that is Christmas Giz-mo! Damn he is cute!

So what is in store for OBay Shelties for the New year? I seem to continually find beautiful potential litters of puppies only to have missed pregnancies, litters of boys and oversized girls. Maybe 2012 will be my turn for a girl? I am not even choosy anymore; I will take any colour as long as she is small, pretty, smart and feisty with perfect ears. You know, basically Giz-mo without the boy bits.

In the meantime I have finally gotten my chickens! It is a new experience and I am enjoying learning about something new. So far we have gotten ONE egg from the girls and so it is one expensive egg! But the pleasure I get from looking out and seeing them pecking around is priceless. Right now we only have two but when our pen is complete I hope to get a few more. I am thinking 5 would be nice number.

This photo makes me laugh. Dennis bought me this tee-shirt when he went back to NY because I love marshmallow peeps! It is also appropriate considering my new love of chickens! This photo was taken on my birthday just chillin in front of the fire with my pups.

Happy Holidays to all!

Giz-mo The Dude

2011-12-01T16:36:00.005Z

So Giz-mo is still here with us at nearly 15 weeks old. He may be 10 years old before I decide if he is truly staying with us. I know some people do not understand why I would "not" keep Giz-mo but I really do think carefully about each and every dog I keep. I do not want to get into the situation where I have too many dogs; I have seen it done too many times.

If Giz-mo was a girl he would definitely be staying. He is adorable, smart and funny. So for now he is staying and I am treating him the same as all my other pups. The question will be whether I can handle keeping an intact dog along with intact bitches. Time will tell.

For now he gets along great with all three girls; they love him one minute and just tolerate him the next.

Giz-mo has been learning his little party tricks as well as just being socialized. I try to take him everywhere with me. A few week ago he took a ride with me on the train into London. I carried him in a little bag onto the train and he took it all in his stride. I am glad he was in the bag as the trains were so crowded and I would have been worried about any dog just on a lead.

The day before I did some training to get him used to the little bag. He is such a neat dog to clicker train; he can be so serious about his jobs!

I hope to get some videos of his training to date up. For some reason I am having difficulty being motivated to video him; I think have been fed up with how people are charging money to watch You-tube videos of them training their own dogs! Sigh...

FCI World Agility Championships Wrap-up

2011-11-14T14:24:00.011Z

So I had lots of emotions building up while waiting to learn if we won a medal. Once the realization hit, I ran down to get Zaz for our lap of honour. Now I wished I had brushed my hair ect as I look a little frazzled! Important things took preference; I needed to change the label on Zaz's harness to her special victory label! You can just about see it here in the photo; it is her name in gold with a gold union jack. Now I am wondering if it looks more bronze and maybe that is why we didn't win the gold! Also I have no idea who wrapped the flag about me but we must have a chat about their bow making abilities; that darn bow kept hitting me in the face when we jogged around. LOL

Then I worried about the lap of honour. Would I fall down or step on Zaz? Would I run too slow? Yes really these are the things going through my head! I got lots of hugs and congratulations from people I did not even know and that felt great. And it was so nice to have the team and other supporters down on the floor with us to celebrate. It made it special. I felt strange being the center of attention. Other than when I am running my dogs I really don't like being the center of attention and my shyness comes out. Thank goodness I had Zaz with me!

I love this photo of me and Zaz with Lesley and Dennis. I couldn't have done it without them! Zaz looked so cute in this photo as if she were trying to hide.

Wow I even got a hug from Greg but he ruined it by saying I shouldn't get used to it.

After the excitement we settled down to watch the large dog individual final. Unfortunately none of our large dogs went clear but it was an exciting final. Then, unbelievably, it was time to pack up and get ready for the closing ceremony and getting on the podium!

Our small team had expected to get a trophy for our 2nd place in team jumping and we thought they would be doing those presentations first. As it turned out they never presented them! It was so disappointing and our KC rep actually had to go up after the ceremony and ask for our trophy. We were handed an ugly trophy that did not even have any engraving on it; it could have been a trophy for anything no less for 2nd place at our World Championships!

So instead, after the boring gift exchange between countries and the even more boring Dog Dancing routine, they started right in with the individual placings. Guess who was called first? Yikes I was not ready and never even had a chance to close my jacket. You could see me in the photo and my mind is racing thinking how can I zip my jacket while holding this trophy and not lose Zaz as well?

Or maybe I was wondering why we didn't actually get a "MEDAL"? I love my trophy (well love is a strong world but if you knew what we got for winning the Silver team in Norway you would understand why this year was a little better) but really wanted a medal around my neck! I know that sounds silly but I loved receiving the medals when we won at the WAO. There is just something about having it put around your neck that makes it feel real.

I also wanted a good podium photo but I am cursed in that respect! In almost all the photos I appear to have a third arm! I have no idea why Dave hid behind the flag or why both managers did not come up to the podium. It felt lonely up there!

And then it was over! The closing ceremony is always anticlimactic and, well yes, boring. Do we not all look excited?

So we achieved this year's World Champ goal of an individual medal....now to decide what to do next year!

FCI World Agility Championships Individual Bronze Medal!

2011-11-07T08:39:00.008Z

I am finally sitting down to put together my thoughts on winning my first FCI Individual World Championship Medal. So many emotions go through your head on the day. I could not believe I had won an individual medal yet I knew Zaz would win. Does that makes sense?

The day started with the medium dogs running their individual agility run. Unfortunately we had only one dog that was in contention for a medal and that was Natasha and Dizzy. I watched all our medium dogs run but I cannot say that my mind was totally focused. All I could think about was getting our small individual course plan and getting out there! Sadly none of our medium dogs medaled but they all looked good. Luckily they had their team medal from yesterday to celebrate!

After the medium dogs ran we went back to the crating area to wait for our course to come out. I felt like jumping out of my skin while waiting and I think I asked our managers a hundred times "where was the course?"! Getting the course on paper, studying it and then watching the course being built is essential for me to feel confident once I get out to walk the course. Walking the course at the World Champs is like nothing else most of us have experienced. We have 8 minutes along with about 150 other people (handlers and coaches) to walk 20 obstacles. Most of the time you cannot see the next obstacle and you certainly cannot stop in one place as you will get knocked down by some enthusiastic European! If you do not have the course and your strategy in place before you go out there you are in trouble!

So we studied the course on paper, watched it being built from all angles and then realized that two numbers were in the wrong place according to the course plan on paper. The judge was told and he went out onto the course again to look at the two jumps in question. We watched as he kept moving the #6 to each side of the jump deciding what to do! Each time he changed it we starting walking it in our heads and then he would change it back again. Just a little excitement to get our Adrenalin going! The jump #11 was also changed to the other side of the jump from the original course design. This one he left changed. So from this course plan both #6 and #11 are on taken from the other sides.

Luckily, when it was finally decided, the change of direction for obstacle #6 was to my benefit. Originally my plan (in my head) was dogwalk, go-around #4, pivot, #5, go-around #6, pivot to #7. Pivots are the hardest maneuver for me as I can lose my perspective and two pivots in a row are definitely not ideal! Now, with the change, my plan was dogwalk, go-around #4 to #5, front cross #6, front cross #7. Although this required two front crosses the spacing was tight and I felt I could do them.

I was very lucky to have my friend and team-mate Nicky and my friend and trainer Lesley Olden to help me walk the course. I could not ask for better knowledge and experience. I specifically asked for Lesley to come in to help me rather than our team coach as she knows Zaz and I. I really appreciated our team coach allowing this, for although I value his opinion, he has never trained Zaz or I. Lesley knows how I handle and she knows our strengths and weaknesses. There were a few times that weekend when I could not decide how to handle a particular sequence. If it had been a normal everyday show I would have had no issue but it is so different when you are on "stage" and the result matters so much to you. It is amazing how little things what can make the difference in our decisions. On one course I was vacillating on how to handle the start and got many different options and suggestions from people I spoke to about it. Finally one guy said what I really knew: "Just go with your first thought". In that case he was correct and my first thought was right for Zaz and I.

Now in this Small Individual Agility course I had an area of concern before the see-saw. After some deliberation I thought I was sure about how to handle the sequence #8tunnel to #10 see-saw. I knew I wanted to be on the left side of the see-saw but was not sure which option to get there was best. I originally walked it as doing a front cross between the tunnel and the jump. I also considered a front cross after the #9 jump. The first way seemed to open up the back of #18 if I could not get my cross in correctly and be able to start moving off the cross. I thought I could do it and that was how I eventually walked the course. Lesley helped me with the possibilities but I know she was unsure with my decision.

After we walked the course and the first few small dogs started running Lesley came up to me and said "I don't think you should do that front cross and you should rear cross the see-saw". Now I had a few choices at that moment: panic and pull my hair out as I had not really walked that option, say thanks but I will stick to my original thought or trust Lesley's opinion and re-walk the course in my head. I decided to go with Lesley's opinion as I knew she wouldn't have said this to me this late in the game if she did not truly think it was the best option. She took a risk as well because if her idea failed she would feel awful for potentially losing us a chance at a medal. So this time I did NOT go with my first thoughts but changed my mind at a late stage.

As I was waiting for my turn to go I spent some time listening to my World Champ Agility playlist. I had a group of songs that meant something to me, made me smile or just gave me a boost. Some were songs that I associated with Zaz, some were old songs that cheered me up and some were picked up from other people's blogs. Three songs I picked up from other blogs were: "You Make my Dreams Come True" by Hall and Oates (from Christine), "Better Things" by the Kinks (from Dawn) and "This Pretty Face" by Amy Macdonald (from Karen). Songs that made me smile: "U Can't Touch This" by MC Hammer as it was our song for the World Champs in Norway when Zen won a Silver Team medal and "Crazy" by Gnarls Barkley because we are pretty crazy to do this agility stuff! Finally Zaz's song is "Hey, Soul Sister" by Train because, well, just because...

So here I am listening to my songs, doing my crazy warm-up routine and running this course over and over in my head. Jump Jump run like crazy, dog walk, out around, pivot jump front cross, front cross, send, hold back, run, rear cross see saw, front cross don't block the tunnel, front cross wall left left left up up up out around send and run, tunnel, push to jump, front cross weave, leave her and run to finish and celebrate. And this is what goes on in my head the entire time. If anyone spoke to me I cannot remember nor can I tell you how we got into the collecting ring!

Zaz ran the course exactly how I told her. She was a little star and for all she knew it was any normal run; naughty start-line and all.

I was only in 15th place going into this run so I knew there had to be some luck involved if we were to place in the top 3. I played with Zaz, gave her a big hug and kiss (although she hates that) and sadly needed to hand her over to Dennis to cool down so that I could watch my team-mate Dawn run. As I stood in the tunnel and watched Dawn I realized that we were still in the top 3. After watching Dawn I was unsure whether I should keep watching the last 8 dogs or if I should just walk away. My decision was made simply, when as I was watching Dawn, someone started talking to me and made a comment about "coming in 4th". This was something my brain did not need at that moment so I walked up into the stands to be with my team-mates and supporters.

I was now starting to be convinced that we would not place. It is amazing how easily someones comment can upset you at that important moment. For me it has hopefully made me a better person when I need to support someone else at an adrenalin charged event. A comment that would normally roll off your back or make you chuckle at any other time can really upset you at that moment.

I sat in the stands not wanting to watch yet wanting to watch. Amanda and Zoe kept trying to explain the scoring to me. I kept telling them "no no you are wrong I am 2 seconds behind and can't make that up". Bless them they kept trying and when the last dog ran they tried to congratulate me and I still didn't believe them! Look at my face in this photo; it makes me cry just seeing it again.

I will write more about our celebrations and the closing ceremony but will leave you with this: my happy photo!

FCI World Agility Championships Saturday

2011-10-31T16:33:00.008Z

Zaz and I would have only one run on Saturday: Small Team Jumping. The team jumping looked pretty straight forward which was not great for us being in the 10th position we were after team agility. We needed a difficult course that would knock some higher placed teams out. This is where luck plays a great part at the World Championships. The Large and Medium teams were placing in the top 3 even with faults but the small teams were needing to get all clears in order to place. I guess us small dogs are just too darn good!

The only real difficulty was the sequence #7-#8. If I had been running Zen I would have been in a panic that she would turn away from me into the #9 tunnel after #7. With Zaz I was more confident but still did alot of calling to be sure!

What a happy bunch we are waving to our supporters after our team jumping. I appreciated everyone who was there in the stands cheering us on. It meant so much to us that when we stepped into the arena and when we finished our run we could hear the cheering. You knew that everyone was running the course with you!

Our combined runs placed us 2nd in the Small Team Jumping. Even this only improved our placement from 10th to 8th overall. Compare this to the medium and large teams who had faults in all the top 3 placings; we would have been 2nd overall if we were medium or large! I know it is difficult to compare but I think it shows the strength of our small team. I felt slightly better when we were told that we would get a trophy and podium "time" for this 2nd place in jumping but that never materialized...That was very disappointing. Luckily our large team had also placed 2nd in their team jumping received trophies, rosettes and a visit to the podium.

At the end of the day on Saturday it was our Medium team who took a medal! It felt strange to me not being part of the medium team; a few times people forgot and kept asking me why I was not walking the medium courses. And poor Zaz was getting a complex from being called Zen all weekend! I did my part for the medium team by helping Amanda warm up and I ran each course with them from up in the stands! Oh and I tried to get in the photos; that is my hand in the top right holding the flag! LOL

I was so happy for the medium team but especially for Amanda. Both of us were previously on the Medium team and together won a Silver team medal in Norway. This year we were both running our young dogs for the first time but now in different heights. It felt strange not being on the team with her!

It was another long day and our big day was tomorrow. The tough thing about being at the World Champs is that we get there early and stay to the end to support all the team members no matter what height. This makes for a long day for both human and dog. This is why your support network is so important. Like having Dennis there to take the stress for me and to keep me calm and fed! Like having good teammates to be able to go over courses with. Like having Lesley there to help me walk courses knowing she knew our strengths and weaknesses.

This year the issues with the flooring caused the dogs to slip and fall; so we were very lucky this to have both human and dog chiropractor and physiotherapists. They were invaluable in keeping us all feeling good after walking on the cement floors and sitting in hard chairs all day. They even warmed up the dogs for us before we ran so that we could know they were ready. Thanks everyone!

Our supporters were great! Yet I would really like to see some of them work on their dress code. LOL Look at one of the Japanese supporters.

Even Ant and Lee wanted to recruit him to become a British supporter. Either that or they were looking for another seminar booking....

The Dutch were pretty cool also.

More to come!

FCI World Agility Championships 2011 Friday

2011-10-27T16:20:00.010+01:00

Friday was our first day of competition. I liked that the small dogs had two runs on the first day; it helped me get into the swing of the competition. First up for us was small individual jumping. We were not on first thing; we were second in the ring after the Large individual jumping. This was great as it gave us time to settle in on Friday morning.

I need to fully concentrate on the competition days. I have difficulty even going outside or going for something to eat. It is like I need to focus 110% on agility during those days and put myself into a little agility "bubble". Luckily Dennis is there to do the important things like take Zaz for a walk or get us something to eat. I even sit in the stands and watch the classes that I am not in and try and figure out how I would handle the course. Poor Nicky (my small team mate)had to listen to me as I would constantly babble on about "how would you handle this?" and "I would have trouble with that sequence" ect ect. And she would say "but you are not running this course"! LOL But for me it helped me focus on agility and trying to make quick decisions as we only get 8 minutes to walk a fairly complicated course.

Do I look confused about how to handle this course?

Our small jumping was a tight course. I was concerned about getting Zaz through the gap into the first rigid tunnel. As with most people I was also concerned about the weave poles running up to the side of the collapsed tunnel. To make matters worse the collapsed tunnel side was mirror-like shiny and I think this was the downfall of many great teams.

Before our run I had help from Amanda (my previous medium team-mate)in warming up. It looks silly but it really helps to focus and warm up and have a little laugh while doing it. I like this photo because the Chinese handlers look so happy next to us! It was China's first time competing at the World Champs and they did fantastic.

It was a strange set up at this sport arena. We had no team "room" to relax in and crate the dogs. We were all assigned spots in the hallway around the arena. Once it was near our turn we had to walk around to the other side of the arena where there was a small practice area where you can warm your dog up over a few jumps. When it is about 4 dogs before your turn you are escorted through this office area, down a corridor that ran under the main floor of the arena, up some stairs and then you popped up in the collecting area! It was slightly surreal coming up the stairs into the middle of the floor surrounded by people. It did add to the excitement and I couldn't help but getting more and more excited as I walked up those stairs!

The team coach was great as I just handed him Zaz, my water bottle and coat and was able to concentrate on remembering the course. Zaz, like momma Zen, likes to bark while in the collecting ring and in this situation it helps me to hand her to someone else for a few moments. Once we came up the stairs there was only one dog before us and one completing the course. There is not alot of time to watch and it is amazing how different the course looks from down at that level.

In this photo you can see the next team after us coming up through the stairs.

I know I look calm while waiting to run. What is really going on in my head is not so calm! First and foremost I am going over the course in my head. I try and remember the course based on turns and tight spots and I run through those turns in my head. Then I simply try to take in the whole experience; you will often see me bring my wrist up to adjust my bracelet. That bracelet says "Live in the Moment". I may never be there again and I want to keep that experience in me forever. The only way I can do that is by being there 100% with my dog. I am not one to chat with the coach because once I have Zaz by my side it is all about me and her. Once we get onto the floor I clap for Zaz and tell her how amazing she is and then laugh to myself knowing that our startline will be fairly fluid. LOL

I was happy with how we ran this course. I know Zaz was not running at her full speed but that was partly due to my over controlling her in those tight spots. We had a bobble before the weaves which cost us some time but overall I felt positive about the run. This run put us in 15th place which was a tough place to be in and I could only hope for a very difficult agility course on Sunday to help us move up in the placings.

I found this video on you-tube! Thanks to whoever posted it as I have yet to watch the official videos.

At the end of the first day we had our first team run. We had an amazing team as both Nicky and Indy and Dawn and Puzzle are so consistent AND fast; I couldn't have asked for a better team. I was disappointed to have made the only mistake out of all our 6 team runs over the weekend but that is agility for you. Anything can happen!

Here is our team in the collecting ring. Notice Dave,the team coach,is holding Zaz again. Bless him!

Again I found this video on youtube; music and all! It is obviously from someone in the UK but I don't know who!

So the first day of our World Champ 2011 experience was over. I knew there were things we could have done better but this was not the time to think about them. It was important to stay positive and focused. I was drained and all I could think about doing was getting Zaz out into the fresh air to stretch her legs, getting something to eat and getting myself to bed! I think we had fancy French Mc-Donalds that night to eat as we could walk there from the hotel. Ahhh nothing but the best for us athletes!

FCI World Agility Championships 2011 Part 2

2011-10-26T10:39:00.006+01:00

We arrived in France in no time and the most difficult part of the journey was finding the hotel! The hotel, while not fancy, was clean with good grass areas to walk the dogs.

The next day was our chance to practice on the equipment and on the surface at the venue. It was real eye opener as all the dogs were slipping on the "carpet". This was a surprise as it was a nice springy astroturf and the dogs do not usually slip this badly. Zaz was running well but I could see her slipping and then trying to slow down to compensate. She is a smart dog that has good self-preservation so I just let her run at whatever speed she was happy. We had 19 minutes and 30 seconds for our practice. Such a funny amount of time! It always seems like it will be too short but in reality it is a tremendous amount of time. I had planned to not do too much with Zaz and to concentrate on her self-control. Best laid plans and all that! I lost a little self-control when I realized she needed more time on the surface and did alot more than I had planned. Zaz came out of the practice session happy but tired with her tongue hanging out!

After the vet checks and measuring we all gathered for group photos. No matter how hard we try the GB team will never be organized for photos! Dennis had to yell at them and tell them "no talking, no looking at your dog" but to no avail! LOL Still one of our better attempts; here is the team with some of the supporters and management.

That afternoon we took a trip into the beautiful town of Arras for a nice French lunch followed by yummy french pastries.
Arras France

Checking out the Arras Chocolate shop!

I was feeling positive about our World Champ experience. All the issues with Zaz beforehand were forgotten and she was happy and sound after her practice. Now it was just up to our training and a little bit of luck.

I have debated with myself about whether to write on my blog about the one negative experience that happened to me while at the World Champs. I figure by putting it at the end of this post only so many people will bother to read this far. LOL Like I said in Part 1 I think that we are responsible for our own positive mental attitude. We cannot rely on others to say the right things for us all the time. Yet when you are in a team situation you really need to have and feel positive vibes from your team. I always loved that about the World Champs; we all put aside any personal issues and cheered and supported each other. Everyone on the team understands the pressure we all feel being on center stage and wanting to do well for ourselves, our dogs, our team and, yes, our country.

I struggle sometimes because I know I do not run fast enough or cannot move as quick as some of the young fit European handlers. At the World Champs that is really magnified as some of these handlers are crazy fit and fast! The night before our first day of competition someone made the statement in front of the entire team that I was "the oldest" on the team ha-ha-ha. This came out of the blue, and although it was meant in a light-hearted way, it really hit me hard. I just wanted to crawl away and go home at that point. What was supposed to be a fun relaxing night before our competition now felt like torture and I couldn't wait to leave and tried not to cry.

I got back to the hotel room and received this video message. Nothing could have cheered me up better; remembering I had Zen and Itz at home along with a gorgeous group of puppies. No matter what happened this weekend I knew I was blessed with a fantastic husband, amazing dogs and great friends cheering me on. Bring it on!

FCI World Championships 2011 Part 1

2011-10-24T13:44:00.006+01:00

It takes me awhile to get my thoughts together after a big event. There is a combination of euphoria and depression; I don't even watch the videos of our runs for a long time. The focus and energy taken up preparing both mentally and physically takes over your life on the run up to the event.

I have been exposed to the idea of "positive mental attitude" for most of my previous career (Chiropractor) and for most of my time in the dog world in obedience and then agility. I think it comes naturally to me now; to the level that when I hear people talking themselves down I need to stop myself from trying to help them. Everyone deals with pressure differently and some people actually feel better if they say negative things and then do better than they thought. This is not what I think is best but it is what helps them. That is all that matters, having something that works for you.

When I competed in the USA I would actually get tired of hearing the constant "positive mental attitude" banter. If,God forbid, you said something negative you were told off! Hmmm a kind of a backwards way of working on positivity I think. It became almost like a religious cult of positivity! So because of this I tend to keep my goals and mental preparation work to myself; it is how I deal with things and what works for me is personal.

For the first time before a major competition I had to actually work on "mental imagery". Imagining Zaz and I running courses: what I would do and how she would react, how we would approach the start line and how we would celebrate after finishing the last jump. I ran this over and over in my head because for the month before we went to France I could not train Zaz.....

I had taken a little week break with Zaz after our last Championship show. I expected to start training on the complicated European courses during the month before we left just to get our heads into those types of courses again. I thank God that I had spent the week in Denmark in July competing over European courses because that was one thing that made me feel confident and prepared.

To keep a long story short, I found Zaz mysteriously lame one day and assumed it was a soft tissue injury even though she had not had anything happen. I thought our World Champ experience was over before it began. But after all the worrying it turns out Zaz had a cut pad and I had missed it! How I missed it I will never know but thank God for Dennis who found it and the canine osteopath who went over Zaz thoroughly and convinced me that Zaz was OK to run. This is what her pad looked like 2 weeks after the start of her lameness. How deep the cut was when it occurred I will never know. I hope this will help others to make sure you check your dog's feet thoroughly! I really had to stop kicking myself for missing this one.

To make matters more "exciting" two nights before we left for France Zaz came back into the house after being let out for her last toilet and was carrying her back leg up! WTF? I just lay down with her crying thinking this is it; I am never doing agility again. Then we watched as her rear foot swelled up and realized she must have stepped on a wasp! Popped a anti-histamine in her mouth, carried her up onto the bed with us and fell asleep. She woke up at 1 am jumped off the bed sound as ever. OK now, I was thinking, this is all just to make me stronger!

We happened to watch the movie "Secretariat" (a true story about a racehorse that exceeded all expectations and won the triple crown of racing in the USA) that week and I kept saying to myself Zaz is like Secretariat and she will surprise us all!

On Wednesday we left the pups in the capable hands of Johanna and we off through the Eurotunnel for our French adventure. I was so excited because the last time I was at the FCI Worlds in France I was just a spectator and remember being AMAZED by Sylvia Trkman and La. Now I was there myself competing with Zaz at only 2 years of age; how fantastic is that?

Thanks to Dennis for driving us to France. How nice to take a trip to the World Championships that is only a 3 hour drive!

The Boyz: 8 weeks old and off to new adventures

2011-10-17T16:34:00.007+01:00

I am often asked if I get teary when the pups leave and people wonder how I can let them go. I find the most difficult part of raising pups is finding the right owners and, if I can get that right, the easy part is letting them go.

I like to watch people with their dogs; how they treat them when things go right and, more importantly, how they treat them when things go wrong. I like to feel that potential new owners don't think of the dogs as a means to an end but rather a team-mate to enjoy the journey with. I do NOT care if the potential owner is a world class handler or frequent winner; that means nothing to me. If a person has had success because they know how to motivate a dog and enjoy competing that is just a nice bonus.

I do worry about giving the right dog to the right person. I want the new owners to have a dog that they can enjoy. Thankfully most of the time it works out perfectly. I think this time it worked out well and I wish all my pups long and healthy lives with families that love them for who they are as individuals.

Meet the new members of Team OBay:

"Ezke" OBay Boyz Will Be Boyz

"Fuze" OBay The Boyz High Voltage

"Zanee" OBay The Boyz Magic

"Giz-Mo" OBay Boyz Toyz

Yes that is me in the photo! For now, Giz-mo will stay here. I am reserving the right to make my final decision in time as I should not really keep him. Unfortunately he is so freaking adorable that it will be hard to let him go. I have to be sensible as I am still waiting for a little girl to join the family.

Here is Giz-mo in his first official training session. Feel free to turn off the volume and just enjoy his little elephant! I wasn't expecting him to get it so quickly so just grabbed my I-phone to take this little video clip. I couldn't click and video so you have to hear my constant annoying "goooood boy". LOL

So we spend the next few days getting our house back in order. Cleaning floors, putting away the puppy pen, boxing up the gazillion puppy toys and generally just taking a breath and relaxing. Zen, Zaz and Itzy will now get more attention and I can enjoy Giz-mo's antics. He is a amazingly funny boy and he can make you laugh just by looking at you. So far he seems very bold and outgoing but I don't take that for granted and socialization is our focus for him over the next few weeks.

I miss the Boyz more than I thought I would and look forward to seeing them all again soon. In the meantime their new owners are already helping by sending photos and emails. This is greatly appreciated!

The Boyz: 7 weeks old

2011-10-13T14:03:00.005+01:00

My first litter of sheltie pups was in 1992. This leads people think I am "experienced" in breeding and raising litters. The truth is that everytime I raise a litter I learn something new. Also, because I don't breed often, it is actually a matter of trying to remember what to do! Thank goodness I keep records and have photos and videos to look back on. Even with all my records I like to get new ideas from others to try. Each litter is not the same and my knowledge increases (hopefully!) over time so that I can try new and different things.

For my next litter I will definitely go away again and have someone else watch them between 6.5 and 7 weeks. LOL

I was very lucky to have Johanna offer to come and watch the pups when I learned I could be on the British World Agility Team with Zaz. It would have been difficult to leave otherwise or Dennis would have had to stay home. Not only did it allow me to go the the World Champs, it also was great for the pups! They learned to interact with a new person, learned new tricks and went on many car trips.

After their first short car ride to pick Johanna up at the train station the pups got car sick. It was only a 5 minute ride but they were drooling already. I generally have trouble with all my pups with car sickness; so I just expected it.

Johanna had some good ideas to work with them eating some meals in the car with the car off and then with the car running. While I have taken all my pups on car rides I never thought to do this with the whole litter. Sometimes is it just the logistics of getting all the pups into the car without losing one!

So during the time I was away the pups took many short car rides as well as being fed in the car. It will be interesting to see if they are less car sick than previous litters or if they are the same.

The pups even took a trip to the beach!

I play many following/chasing me games with all my litters. Johanna used this foundation to get the pups used to following her out of the puppy pen into the garden or dog run. This was great to help improve their housebreaking as she could get all 4 pups out quickly instead of having to carry them out one or two at a time. Then she used the idea of "crate games" to get them used to following her back in and get them to put themselves back into the puppy pen. I have been amazed at how clean these pups have been in their puppy pen from an early age.

Zen is a great teacher at this age. She will now play with the pups and she really encourages them to play with toys. They often get overwhelmed as she likes to shove the toys into their faces.

I think Johanna was exhausted by the time she left. It is a full time job to take care of pups when you don't just leave them in a puppy pen all day. Luckily when the new owners appreciate the effort and can enjoy their well-adjusted pups it makes the long days all worth while.

Johanna was so busy training the pups that she missed their 7 week photos. So here they are at 7.5 weeks.

Spot

Little Blaze

Full Collar

Big Blaze

The Boyz: 6 weeks old

2011-10-04T12:09:00.009+01:00

Time is flying by and I still have so much I want to do with The Boyz. But I leave tomorrow for the FCI World Agility Championships in France and so have to turn the reigns over to Johanna. Since Johanna is the sooper-dooper Freestyle person I expect the boys will be dancing by the time I return!

This last week has been all about socialization and training. I am trying to get the boys out as much as possible. So far they have taken a car ride and visited Dennis at work and met some dogs that come here for training. We have had a few visitors but they definitely need to meet more people and get more handling; this is key for socialization.

The pups housebreaking has been going great; I cannot believe how clean they have been. I am also finding the boys very quick to learn; I spent one session clicker training them to spin and now they are like little black spinning tops!

The pups play very rough with each other and I am not sure if that is a boy thing or just how these pups are. They spend much of their time wresting, stalking and chasing each other. This is in addition to chewing everything and climbing on everything they can.

Chewing everything right now.

Climbing on everything. They scare me on the steps but I have to let them get on with it.

They even climb trees!

I try to get them outside as much as possible. I move their outside pen around so they can hear the traffic and trucks passing by. Of course when I am looking for noisy tractors they aren't around!

The pups are moved from room to room depending on what I am doing during the day. They spend alot of time free in the kitchen and I try to change the toys they play with. I spend as much time as possible encouraging them to tug and play with me as well. Sometimes all I can do is just watch them and laugh as they do the funniest things. This toy car is great as it speaks when they step on the buttons and if the car crashes into something. The pups find it quite fun!

Dennis plays a big role in raising the pups. He is the pup's best friend and they all love him.

It is Dennis' job to run around and tire the pups out! (I suggest you turn down the volume on this one!)

Spot

Little Blaze

Full Collar

Big Blaze

The Boyz: 5 weeks old

2011-09-29T08:10:00.007+01:00

At this age the pups remind me of spring lambs. They gallop and bounce. Well, let's face it, they gambol! I love that word.

Among all my boring video clips of puppies cavorting; this one cracked me up. Watch at 4 seconds into the video as Spot (front of screen) and Little Blaze (back right of screen) bounce at the same time!

Our mornings go like this now:

try and wake up before the pups

tippy-toe around as not to wake them

get to them before they spread poo around the pen, themselves and the toys

take them outside

watch them poo and pee

run around with them to make them tired

feed them

take them outside to watch them poo and pee

play with them

pray they go to sleep so that I can get dressed

Each pup is starting to show his own personality. I try to imagine them in their new homes but actually can only imagine them all staying here right now. They are so cute and make us laugh. I know that in another 3 weeks I will be ready to let them go but right now we are enjoying them to the fullest.

We had a little celebration for Zaz's Agility Championship over the weekend. It was a good puppy socialization party also! The next 3 weeks are all about trying to get the Boyz socialized and exposed to as much as possible. The puppy pen changes again and we add a solid crate bottom to start crate training. Next week we add the top to give them a feeling of a real crate. By 7.5 weeks we will add a second crate and the doors will go on be shut at night and for short naps during the day. Hopefully by the time they leave they will be accustomed to sleeping in their crates. I can't guarantee no screaming but at least it is a start!

I cannot believe the World Championships are next week. I am looking forward to them but sad to leave the pups. I know Johanna will look after them well but I also know they will change so much in those 5 days and I will miss it! I am hoping that when I return I will know whether I am keeping one of the Boyz....

Here they are at 5 weeks old:

Spot

Little Blaze

Full Collar

Big Blaze

The Boyz: Week 4

2011-09-25T16:28:00.006+01:00

Four weeks old is such an in-between age. No longer infants but not yet active for very long. They are cute though! Luckily they still give me time to do other things but I know this will change after 5 weeks.

The pups are getting trips outside now and love to climb on things, wrestle with each other, eat and sleep. The boys definitely seem to play-fight more than my girls have. Of course let's not forget pee and poo; I need more newspaper and paper towels.

Spot

Little Blaze

Full Collar

Big Blaze

At 4.5 weeks the puppy pen changes again and the pups get a nice comfy snuggle bed. I feel bad for them because Zen will not lay down for them anymore. If she feeds them she will stand to allow them to nurse while standing on their back legs for about 2 minutes and then she runs away from the sharp teeth! They also spend alot of time in the kitchen behind a baby gate so they have lots of room to run around (and pee and poo!)

The Boyz: Week 3

2011-09-17T08:37:00.003+01:00

The first 3 weeks is an easy time for me; there is not much to do other than observe the pups and handle them as much as possible. The pups are moved full time into the living room and we take little "day" trips into other rooms. Three weeks is an in-between time where I want to start playing with them but really they are still infants. I find my sheltie pups are slow maturing compared to some of the Border collie litters I have observed at the same ages.

This will give you an idea of what they do on their little outings.

This is what their puppy pen looks like at 3 weeks old. I try and change the pen around every week; adding toys and things to climb on. They love to climb on things at this age. So I add lots of musical toys to their pens for them to climb on and experience strange noises and movement. The baby toys hanging over them are simply to get them used to things moving over their heads.

My fancy puppy box is made by Dennis out of cardboard and I love its flexibility. He raised it up on a pallet so that there is a clear delineation between the box and the pen; this is useful for future housebreaking. We can cut it down or add ramps as needed and then throw it out after the pups are gone. The pups are funny at this age tumbling down the little ramp and amazing me when they can get back up it again. Dennis added some sandpaper pads to give the ramp some grip and the pups already know how to use it. I know the rumours will start about how I am teaching them their 2on/2off positions on the ramp already...but really we are going directly to running contacts so I must make the ramp longer....they keep hitting their heads on the pen when they run down full speed...(joking just joking)

The boyz are still like little guinea pigs. They are hard to photograph because they are so low to the ground and all my photos end up looking like big black blobs! Here are some of my better photos so you can meet "The BoyZ" at 3 weeks old.

SPOT: He is adorable and little but hard to photograph without making him look like a startled mouse.

Little Blaze:

Full Collar:

Big Blaze:

Zen is still an attentive mom at this age but teeth will be coming soon and that will be the end of her mothering love! Itzy is waiting to take over; she is so sweet and gentle with the pups. Itzy could make you cry with her sweetness!

Agility Champion Obay Itz Got Pizzazz "ZAZ"

2011-09-11T08:24:00.003+01:00

No fanfare, no laps of honour; just a hug from the judge and now my dog is an Agility Champion. Words can't describe how proud I am of my little Zaz.

At Prestbury Park on 4 Sept 2011 Zaz won the small Championship final, received her third Championship Certificate and became an Agility Champion.

Zen and her Boyz: two weeks old

2011-09-05T13:18:00.011+01:00

The first two weeks have gone quickly. Now Zen is totally in control and the best mom to her boyz. Zen makes it easy for us during the first few weeks. All I have to do is pick them up and cuddle them, do some neurological stimulation and weigh them to make sure they are gaining.

We take photos but basically they are just groups of puppies in different formations.

Once and awhile they do something cute.

Really 1 week old sheltie pups are not that pretty!

Little Blaze is the most handsome only because his eyes opened earlier and his ears are starting to drop sooner.

Spot is really kind of ugly right now but in a cute way.

Big Blaze and Full Collar.

They are starting to look around a little and once their ears open in a few days they will be much more active.

The pups were wormed for the first time. Yucky pink Drontal!

I have moved the pups from the spare bedroom into the living room now. The first two weeks are all about keeping Zen calm so that she can take care of her pups in peace. The next 6 weeks are about enjoying the pups and getting them used to everyday life. And maybe some training in there also....just maybe...

Let's Hear it for the Boyz: Zen x Carson pups 2011

2011-08-30T22:45:00.007+01:00

Zen's final litter of pups were born on Saturday 20 August. Introducing

"The Boyz"
In order of birth:

I am totally losing all creativity with puppy names so these 4 boyz are obviously named for their markings! All the Boyz are bi-factored tris as expected.

Sadly the whelping did not go as well as I would have liked. Zen was scanned at 28 days with six puppies and the scanner was absolutely correct. Zen went into labour Saturday night and all seemed good but I became worried when she was having strong contractions for longer than normal. I called the vet (of course on a Saturday and after hours!) and we brought Zen right in. After 2 oxytocin injections Zen was contracting stronger but the puppy still was not progressing; we could feel him high up. The vet was hinting for a c-section and I was almost resigned to it but worried to death about it. The vet left us alone with Zen in the waiting room and kept coming in to check to see if the pup progressed. She was extremely patient and understanding; she even lowered the lights in the waiting room to keep Zen calm.

After over 4 hours of being on the floor with Zen both at home and in the vet's waiting room I had to get up and sit down in a chair. Dennis got on the floor with Zen and he kept talking to her and encouraging her. Amazingly after a few minutes we checked and now could feel the puppy coming far enough down the canal to pull out. Unfortunately this puppy was already dead probably from being in the canal too long. He was a very large puppy but seemed perfect in every way...

After that puppy was born the other 5 puppies came in quick succession. Twice, after a strong contraction, we looked to find TWO puppies born at almost the exact same time. The final pup was born on his own and we ended up with 4 boys and one girl.

Our sadness at losing the first boy was softened by the fact that Zen did not need the c-section. But I was concerned that the girl puppy did not look good; she was not only very small but she was gasping for air. We did what we could for Zen and all the pups and then took them all home at 2 am. I slept with Zen and the pups so I could check on them all night. At 5 am I knew the girl pup was not going well; so I took her into bed with me on a heating pad to keep her warm and held her until she finally took her last breath. My last chance for a Zen girl and she was gone....

After a long night we now had 4 boys. I was hoping that things would get easier from that point on. They might be all boyz but they were adorable.

As you can see from the photo one puppy is much smaller than the others. "Spot" was smaller at birth but I was not overly concerned about that. I started becoming concerned on day 2 when he lost some weight while the others were gaining well.

I made the decision to supplement him as although he seemed to be nursing vigorously he obviously wasn't getting enough milk. After unsuccessfully trying a few bottle feeds; I gave up and started feeding him with a medicine dropper. He seemed to like this and he ate really well. I fed him every 2 hours for 3 days after which time he made up on his weight loss and started gaining! Thank God! At 1 week old he started refusing the medicine dropper as he was too full from Zen's milk; I could now rest easy and let Zen do the rest.

Here are the pups nursing at 9 days old; fat and healthy!

Some photos of the little guinea pigs!

Little Blaze 2 days old

Big Blaze 2 days old

Full Collar

Spot at 3 days old

I will have more photos once the pups open their eyes and start looking less like guinea pigs and more like puppies! The are so precious right now and I am grateful to have a healthy Zen and 4 happy boys.

Bored Itzy wants to know why she has done no agility for a week!

European Open 2011

2011-08-23T09:33:00.007+01:00

This year the European Open Agility Championships was in Austria. You can find all the results here.

Austria is a beautiful country and this is the 3rd time we have visited there. Twice for agility and once for a walking holiday. I would love to go back and spend more time walking there; maybe when we get our motorhome and spend a few months travelling around Europe. (I can dream!)

I picked up a Linzer Tart while we walked around Linz on our day off. Believe it or not this brought back memories of Long Island! Lots of things we saw in Austria made me realize just what a melting pot of nationalities I grew up with. We had so many German delis and bakeries on Long Island that some of the Austrian and German foods seemed familiar.

Our hotel was gorgeous and had great food and ample room to walk the dogs. This was the view from my balcony! The weather was overcast on all the days but I can imagine on a clear day the views would be even more amazing.

The weather was good for agility; overcast and cool. The only bad weather was on the NIGHT of the finals. The Large dog final was run in the pouring rain in the DARK! Yes the Dark! They had floodlights but they kept failing; sometimes during people's runs. I don't care how far I have travelled; I would not run my dog in the rain, mud and dark....

I won't go into details about the lack of organization. Suffice to say it was not the best organized EO I have been to! This is so disappointing for the people who spent so much time and effort to qualify and then to get to Austria to compete.

On the positive side, the team final was an amazing event to watch! I am slightly glad I was not participating though as it was quite a tough course. If you search Youtube I am sure you can find videos of the team final event.

This will be my last time going to the EO for a few years I think. It is just not worth the long journey for what amounts to 2 or 3 runs. I think I should use my money more wisely! We pay for the entire trip ourselves. The KC gives us our clothing and our entries (which helps) but other than that all the World Champ trips and European Open trips are paid for by ourselves. I do not have a sponsor that pays for my expenses....Thank goodness on this trip Nancy offered (was convinced?) to drive! So, at least, we could split the fuel and travel costs between the three of us (Nancy, Leah and I).

Here is Zeki and Herbie at the opening ceremonies. I generally don't take my girls to the opening ceremony as they get too over the top excited. I love the closing ceremonies as I can let them be crazy if they want. Sadly this year we missed the closing ceremony as the event went on too late and too long because it was so unorganized.

I am so disappointed that the EO will not be in England next year as planned. The Kennel Club would have a fantastic job organizing it as they do with the Kennel Club International Festival every year. Nearly 20 rings of agility and more competitors than at the European Open and everything goes smoothly and on time. I realize England is harder to enter for most people, but in reality for most Europeans it is not anymore difficult than getting into Sweden.

Zaz travelled so well. Zen was fantastic to run but she hated the travel. Zaz just took everything in her stride and was her normal calm self. We had 5 runs total (2 individual,Individual final and 2 team).

I like this photo of her on the see saw as we have been working so hard to improve our see saw performance. It is still work in progress but it is getting better.

Here is Zaz chilling out in the seating area. Johanna had this beautiful blanket made up for Zaz. I love it! We also got a lovely embroidered lead from Leah and lots off Union Jack pressies from Nancy. You see we actually only do all this for the pressies! Union Jacks and pink are a great combo!

Here are the videos: the good and the bad!

Individual Jumping: I panicked at the end and blew it!

Individual Agility: I LOVED the feeling after running this course! Zaz came 4th in this class!

Individual Final: Her top 15 place in the individual agility gave her a place in the final. I was so proud to be running Zaz in the final but afterwards broke down in tears. I did not expect the announcer to mention our podium place at the 2008 EO and I kept wanted to say to them "You have it wrong; that was Hex not Zaz". Such a little thing to bother me but I couldn't help it. For me it felt worse because I didn't want people to think I was upset about my run when that was just not the case....While I would have loved to go clear I don't think I could ever cry over an agility run as long as I still had my little happy dog by my side.

Our team agility and team jumping. Clear in both but the smalls and mediums are lumped together. I think she ranked 15 in the combined small/medium agility and 40-something in the team jumping.

Again I would love to give y'all a full rundown of our experiences and runs but puppies have happened and I spend alot of time looking at them and worrying. This takes up an extraordinary amount of time. More about "The Boyz" in my next post....

Dania Cup 2011 Part 2

2011-08-16T08:26:00.013+01:00

Here is the view of the three ring Dania Cup 2011. The little tents around the rings belong to the competitors. They get there early to stake out their spots; the best ones being along the front so that you can sit in the shade or out of the rain and still watch. These tents went three rows deep; this is one of the biggest shows in Denmark. This is quite a contrast to the UK show I was at this past weekend. The Kennel Club International Festival here in England was 17 rings.

I love how they all have the same size tents and are SO neat in how they line them up. So very cute!

I really enjoyed my week in Denmark competing at the Dania Cup. The courses were exciting and it was fun to have so many runs per day. We had 2 runs at our level (Class 3 for Zaz and Itz) plus one open class per day. I would love to go into detail on all the courses but I keep running out of time. If you want to see the courses and results you can just go to the website at DANIA CUP 2011

The class 3 courses were very testing and fun! We had judges from many different countries including the two World Champ judges for this year. That alone made the trip worthwhile for me. It gave me confidence that we could do it!

The open classes are generally slightly easier as they are for class 1,2 and 3 dogs. The open class results helped to qualify you for the end of the week final. There were some complicated rules to get into the final but at the end both Zaz and Itz qualified for the finals on Saturday.

Here is Zaz in her open class on the first day. That was her only clear for the first two days as we seemed to need a few courses under our belt to get our rhythm together.

On the Monday I was disappointed as we had 3 runs with no clears for either dog. Just tiny mistakes but so frustrating. Finally on Tuesday, the third day of competition, Zaz got a clear in her Grade 3 agility which gave us her first Agility Championship Certificate! In Denmark they have a separate Jumping and Agility Championship title. They need 3 championship certificates to become a champion. The titles are Agility Champion and Jumping (Spring) Champion.

Here is Zaz in her Class 3 agility on Tuesday getting her first Championship certificate in another country!

The prize giving was at the end of each day. Everyone would sit around with their chairs and drinks to cheer on their respective country wins. The funny thing is that the prizes were not what we are used to! They did give medals out for 1st,2nd and 3rd but do not do rosettes, ribbons or trophies. Each person (usually placed 1st-6th) get a trip up to a "prize" table. On this table can be an assortment of things: dog toys, dog treats, vouchers for vendors, beer, wine, human toiletries, clothing ect! Basically anything could be up there! The 1st placed person picked first and then the rest choose in order of their placings. By the end you could be walking away with a bottle of skin lotion or bug spray! It was funny to see the men walking away with all sorts of face lotions!

This shows everyone hanging around waiting for prize giving.

Some crazy Norwegian lady! She wore this shirt to every prize giving. The Norwegians are amazing agility handlers; I love to watch them. At the European Open this year they really stood out for me again.

I wasn't so brave in dressing up but I did bring up the big Union Jack flag (thanks to Ian Watts) which in itself was quite a feat. I almost managed to kill someone with that flag because I couldn't control it!

While giving these types of prizes rather than trophies/rosettes may seem strange to us in the UK I can really see the benefits. While I love to get my beautiful trophies; in reality how many can I keep? At the Dania Cup I kept trying to collect the vouchers for a certain vendor and at the end of the week I had enough vouchers to get a lovely dog bed for free AND a free photo of my dog. I know that it might be disappointing to place 4th in a big class and walk away with bug spray but do the trophies really mean that much anyway? I like having something useful! My dogs got loads of extra dog treats, toys and leads plus I won bottles of salmon oil (very expensive!), a dog bed, photos and various toiletries. Oh and I won 3 bottles of champagne for winning some open classes. The more alcoholic team members chose cases of beer or cider whenever they won anything!

For winning a Championship Certificate they gave a special prize. You won a shirt! Since Zaz won 2 championship agility certificates and 2 championship jumping certificates I could have had 4 shirts made up. Instead I got a pink shirt that said "Winner of the Agility & Jumping certificates". I love that shirt but really didn't need another shirt so instead Dennis got a Dania Cup 2011 shirt. Again something functional that he will enjoy often. Dennis will probably wear his Dania Cup shirt more than I will wear mine. I have a closet full of Team GB shirts that I never wear either.

For the next agility and jumping certificate wins I had another shirt made up. I went for the lime green shirt and asked for pink lettering (of course!). I didn't quite expect her to use the FLUORESCENT pink lettering! Wow this is one bright shirt! I am not sure I will ever wear this shirt but wore it on our last night out for dinner with friends at the Dania cup. Hmmm maybe I will wear it for our party when Zaz finishes her Agility Championship here in England. That will give us something to look forward to. LOL

After 3 days of agility there was a day off on Wednesday. A nice relaxing day and the one day of rain! We were lucky with the weather and there was only one morning where I didn't run 2 of my classes due to the weather. I was disappointed that this show did not use the rubber coated contact equipment as I was expecting. I think we assume that all European agility shows use the rubber equipment but that is not the case. So as in the UK, I will skip a class if I think it could be unsafe for my dog. The equipment was generally good and I really liked the magnetic breakaway tyre. The tyre just gave way if the dog hit it. The judging was easy; they did not fault it as long as the dog went through the tyre.

I think I skipped the first runs on Thursday (class 3 agility) but Zaz went on to win the Class 3 Jumping Certificate later on in the day.

Friday was our best day! Zaz won both the jumping and agility championship certificates and won the open agility. Little Itzy got a 6th place in the Class 3 agility. I was really proud of Itzy all week. She had some issues with the wall jump which cost us some clear rounds but overall ran really well and constantly amazes me with what she knows! When I put more time into her training she will only get better and better.

Here is Itz in her agility class 3 on Friday.

And Zaz in her agility class 3 on Friday.

We had a fantastic time in Denmark. Dennis and I had hoped to go back next year but have just found out that the week show in 2012 will be non-KC affiliated. This makes it less attractive as they will not be awarding Championship certificates. I think because of this they also will have less competitors from other countries and will not get the world champ judges. For me it was being able to compete against some really good small dogs from other countries under tough courses in a more relaxed atmosphere that made the show so attractive. I hope to get back to Denmark again to finish Zaz's Agility and Jumping Championships but it might not be next year.

I have also decided not to tryout for the EO next year as it is in Sweden. This would be another long expensive drive. Instead I would like to find a show like the Dania Cup where I can enjoy a few days of good agility in a relaxed friendly atmosphere. So I am on the lookout for another good show in a different country next year. If anyone has any good ideas let me know? A 3 day or longer show would be best because by the time we pay for fuel,hotels and entries it is more cost effective to have more days of competing.

I am going to try and catch up by talking about the European Open next. I must get the blog caught up so that I can concentrate on writing on more important matters: PUPPIES!

Dania Cup 2011 Part 1

2011-08-10T08:50:00.006+01:00

Last month we went back to Denmark to compete at the Dania Cup 2011 agility show. In Denmark they have a week-long agility show during July that moves every year to a different part of Denmark in a 3 year cycle. This year it was called the Dania Cup and was near Naevsted Denmark. In 2004 I attended the Jutlandia Cup which was in the more western part of Denmark.

Things have changed quite a bit for me since 2004. Back then I was running my lovely Pax and came to Denmark to pick up a hopefully pregnant True (Zen's mom). Pax's best placement that week was a 4th place and I was thrilled with that! True went on to produce a singleton puppy that year called "One".

Now fast forward to 2011. I ran Zaz and Itzy at the Dania Cup and was there to pick up a hopefully pregnant Zen. Zaz won numerous first places and both Zaz and Itz made it to the end of the week Final! I already know that Zen is pregnant with more than one puppy so we are improving in both agility and breeding on our last attempt in Denmark!

From 2004:

Tazz and True. This combination produced the singleton One on their first try and then went on to produce Hex, Indy and Max. I wish I had repeated this breeding again...

4th Place for me and Pax. These courses were so foreign to us and it took me all week to get a clear round!

On that trip I got to see Unique for the first time since he left us as a puppy at 8 weeks. Here he is at 1 year old with his mom True on the left and dad Monty on the right. This breeding also produced Zen. This was one amazing breeding and encouraged many sheltie breeders in Denmark and Sweden to start using Monty.

Now back to 2011 and it was fantastic for me to see so many shelties running that are related to my dogs through Monty or One. I saw both children and grand-children of Monty! My little Monty, who almost did not come with me to England, has now really left his mark on the sheltie world. I was so glad to see him again this year and hope that it is not the last time I see him as he is now 12.5 years old. I also got to meet some grand-children of True: my little couch potato who produced the most amazingly smart and crazy pups.

In my Class 3 classes I was often beat by shelties related to Monty! HA! Don't these people realize they should have let me win as payment to me for their pups? LOL

Zaz getting 2nd to a swedish Monty daughter.

Zaz narrowly winning the class to another Monty daughter!

The happy couple of 2011: Zen and Carson. Say a prayer that all 6 pups are healthy happy and gorgeous and that there are a few little black girls for me to choose from!

More about the Dania Cup 2011 with video soon!

Itzy is now Grade 7!

2011-06-25T10:01:00.005+01:00

Three weeks ago Itzy had her 3rd win towards the 4 wins she needed to go Grade 7. Two weeks ago before Thames I started thinking (and saying) maybe I would like NOT to get her 4th win until the KC Festival in August. That way she could compete at the KC Festival in all her Graded 6 classes. I have never done this before as I am usually so focused on getting them up to Grade 7 and want to get there as soon as possible. For my dogs (small/medium) I feel there is no reason to keep them in the lower grades; the courses rarely change from 5-7. We get alot of combined classes and there is no huge increase in challenge from grade 5 through 7.

I don't know what came over me thinking I wanted to hold Itzy back other than I just wanted to stretch out her time at Grade 6. Well that was the KISS OF DEATH! LOL As soon as I started talking about NOT winning Itzy decided she could NOT complete any course properly and could definitely NOT do a see-saw. She started running around jumps and basically going nuts.

I do think some of her issues that weekend were due to how she felt mentally and physically after being blown off the dog walk the previous weekend. I have since had Itzy treated and have been working on her strength and balance on the Fit Ball and wobble cushion. I have also changed how I am training her see-saw and changing how I am rewarding her on the see-saw. All of this seems to be working and, fingers crossed, I think we are improving. The see-saw has always been a weakness for Itzy and I am glad to now have a new plan of action. I also told Itzy that she could do whatever she wanted; if she wanted to win another class I would gladly take it!

This past weekend Itzy did not get alot of attention and we missed most of our runs. On the Saturday I only did one run with her due to the weather. In that run she did a LOVELY see saw! I was so excited I pulled her past the next obstacle but was thrilled with the run. Sunday was the Championship day and I was totally focused on Zaz. I do not do well splitting my attention between dogs. The Championship class ran smoothly and was done just after lunch. I was on a high from winning with Zaz so I was in no hurry to leave. I could have floated around for hours until they put the equipment away! LOL So I decided to stick around for Itzy's last class which was running at the end of the day.

I had visions of running the course and packing up to leave right after running but Itzy had other ideas! The course was a funny one with some strange angles on jumps and a loooooong run across the top of the course missing out obstacles. I did not expect to go clear and really didn't take the course seriously; I just thought it was another chance to get her on the see saw.

Itzy did a great run but you will have to imagine it because I did not get it on video. Nor did I get any fancy photos; just a photo taken on my mobile phone of her with her trophy. Itzy says videos and fancy photos are for wimps; she is hard core tough!

Zaz's 2nd Championship Ticket! Axtane 2011

2011-06-20T19:38:00.004+01:00

After 15 years of playing in agility I have had a first this weekend...I felt physically sick before a run! I do hope this will not be a common occurrence but it is all good as the results were positive!

It is hard to believe that Axtane last year was only the 3rd weekend of competition for Zaz and Itz. What a difference a year makes and what fun times these two pups are giving me. Even more unbelievable to me was that it was 9 years ago in 2002 at this very show that Pax won out of Starters!

So the small/medium championships were on Sunday. I was entered on Saturday also but due to the chance of rain I woke up in the morning uncertain if I should get up and go. Dennis is away in Japan and I was bored without him so I decided to go to the show and see how it was when I got there. I arrived and it was sunny and calm so I hurried up and walked the Small Crufts Challenge and ran Itz followed by Zaz. Itz did her see saw and I was happy! Zaz ran a nice clear and I was happy as I knew that would give us points towards the Small Crufts Challenge class (it is a class run a Crufts that requires an accumulation of points at certain shows during the year). I decided not to wait around for any of my other classes and left before the rain started. I used the opportunity of a free afternoon to hit the shops on the way home. Sadly I bought nothing more exciting than a new folding chair and a retro bubble umbrella!

Sunday I got to the show early because Zaz was drawn as #1 in the small champ jumping. I liked the course and felt as if Zaz and I ran it really well. We came 3rd in this run and I can honestly say I don't know how we could have run it better! I could have turned her left after 6 but I thought turning her right kept the flow better even though it was a longer path. It felt good to run the jumping early so, for once, I could sit ringside and watch the rest of the small dogs and see the medium dogs run the same course.

After the jumping we had two Obays that had run clear. Zaz in the small class and Zeki in the medium

Now came the Champ agility. Zaz went clear again and won the agility! It was nice to run again on rubber coated equipment and I really appreciate the clubs that are hiring rubber equipment.I did not have to worry about letting Zaz approach the dogwalk at an angle and I could concentrate on getting into position for the sequence from 3-5.

Zeki had a nice agility run also in the medium. You can see her Axtane champ runs on Nancy's blog post. This put both Zaz and Zeki into the Champ final!

I had another early run in the champ agility; so I was again able to sit ringside and watch the last of the smalls and all the medium dogs run. I had a nice cuppa and ate my lunch. All seemed good! They set up the Championship final course and we had 15 minutes to walk it. Both Zaz and Zeki had ended up in the penultimate position in the running order. A great place to be! You had the chance to see how the dogs before you fared and yet knew that you had one potentially faster dog running after you.

I started to walk the finals course and suddenly felt as if I had to sit down. My legs had gone to jelly! What was happening? I thought the course was one that we could do and imagined it would be a course that would be won on speed and turns. I did not think there would be many faults. Of course I was concerned about the final two jumps and when you see the video you will understand why. I asked Nancy's opinion as she knows how I have trained Zaz and what we can and cannot do. I spotted Lesley and dragged her over and asked her to quickly give her opinion about the last two jumps. I figured we had a safe option and a quick option. I decided to go for the quick option as I knew that there were quite a few dogs in the class that could beat us on speed. Then I started worrying that I was too concentrated on those last two jumps and I needed to focus on the entire course. By then it was time to get Zaz and get ready and I was starting to feel sick!

Now, contrary to popular opinion, I am not the most confident person. I tend not to show my nervousness before I run a course because I have learned that it doesn't help to give in to the nerves. Even when I am nervous I will not discuss it as most "mental management" gurus will tell you that it does not help to keep repeating this. Instead I repeat certain words and comments to both myself and people around me. Words that help me feel relaxed and confident. Most importantly I love my dogs and I love doing agility with them and I do not ever want this game to be so important to me that it is stressful.

So why, on this day before this run did I feel like I was going to be sick? I have heard people say they felt like this before a run and thought they were exaggerating. Well, actually, I now know they were not lying! I walked Zaz around and around while we were waiting to run; not to warm her up but to try and not lose my lunch!

I had a vague idea of what the other teams before me had done. I knew one of the faster dogs had gone clear and that I had a fast dog to yet run after me. So there was no room for error; we just had to go for it. yet as I stepped to the line all I could think was "please don't let my legs give out!".

We did it! We ran clear and we ran it the best we could. As I sat on the ground outside the ring I just kept hugging Zaz as we watched the last dog run. I had no idea at that point if we were in the lead and when the last dog finished I waited to hear the results. Someone checked for me and they said they thought Zaz had won. I couldn't believe it so I made them check again! They confirmed it and I couldn't stop hugging Zaz even though she hated it. I am amazed that my little girl now has 2 Championship tickets and needs only one more to become an Agility Champion. She is such a special dog to me for so many reasons and I am so happy to be playing this game with her.

At that point I realized that Zeki could also win in the medium champs and I just had a vision at that moment that she would. Since Zaz was fed up with me hugging her I sat ringside to watch the medium champ final. Up came this years medium Crufts champion and she was putting in a foot perfect extremely fast run. She had the win in the bag with only two jumps to go when all of a sudden they got a refusal at the second to last jump! I looked over to see Nancy's face and I think she just about passed out at that moment when she realized that, actually, she and Zeki could now have a chance at winning. If anyone needed the saying "Keep Calm and Carry On" at that point it was Nancy.

Well they did it. They put in the best run they could and at the end of the class Zeki had won the Medium Championship Final!

Amazingly this is not the first time we have had two OBays winning the tickets on the same day. Zen and Indy have won the Medium and small championship tickets on the same day at 3 or 4 shows during their careers. Zen and Hex had won a medium and small ticket on the same day as well. These were all True pups. Now the next generation have done the same....two of Zen's babies (True's grandpups) have won the small/medium tickets on the same day. I hope this is good omen for the last litter of Zen puppies that are being made as I type!

Well the day couldn't get any better could it? Stay tuned for Itzy news!

Hopefully our blog posts will increase soon...

2011-06-16T10:54:00.003+01:00

I just loved the look in Zen's eyes in this photo. It is her naughty look because she knows I want to flip her into the tunnel and she would rather not go all the way down the contact.

So I always blog more when I have puppies. It is the puppy training that I most love to talk about and think about. So posts should increase in August because Zen is off being bred as I type. I want you all to keep your fingers crossed that she makes me a litter of many little girls from which to choose!

I am missing Zen like crazy; the house seems so empty and quiet with only Zaz and Itzy. We took this photo of Zen with her two WAO medals before she left on her journey. My gorgeous girl!

We have had three weekends in a row of agility shows. Cippenham was only one day and we enjoyed the slightly smaller show with a late start! Zaz ran well and Itzy came second in her graded class. I felt as if it was one of my best runs with Itzy to date, a run where I felt Itz and I were totally connected. I love that!

The following weekend we had Hinkley on Saturday followed by Keston on Sunday. It is hard to believe that Dartford and Keston were Zaz and Itz's first shows last year! They have now been competing for one year! No more excuses, huh? LOL Hinkley was a championship show and I had great hopes. Unfortunately it was not meant to be as we got eliminated in champ jumping when Zaz ran past the collapsed tunnel; a baby mistake. Still she won the champ agility and the Crufts singles so all in all a good day for Zaz. Not a great day for Itz when she was blown off the top of the dogwalk in a freak gust of wind. My poor Itz! She took quite a tumble landing on her back. I felt sick but kept her going on the course to try and keep her from thinking about it too much. I had her checked out by Tace (our WAO team massage therapist) and she seemed OK. I thought I was shook up more than she was.

Here is Zaz in her Champ agility run.

Keston was a more local show the next day and I was looking forward to it because Dennis was coming with us. When Dennis comes to the shows Itzy wins! And she did it again winning Small 1-7 and getting her third win towards Grade 7. One more win for Itz and she will be in Grade 7.

I asked Andy if he wanted to run Zen in agility because I was going to let Johanna run her in Demark in July at the Dania Cup. This is the 2nd time Andy has run Zen and the 2nd time he won the class with her. Little did I know that should would be going to Denmark sooner than I thought as she came in season the next day!

This past weekend was Thames Champ show. Usually Thames has good sunny hot weather but that was not the case this year. Itz did not have a good weekend as on Saturday she decided that she could no longer do a see-saw. This was out of the blue but I wondered if it was a result of her fall off the dogwalk at Hinkley. I felt awful that either she was sore or she was worried. I took her to see the doggie osteopath for a treatment just in case. Saturday was not a great day for me and the girls and I was felt down and worried about Itz.

On Sunday the weather was horrendous and we did our champ final run in heavy rain. I went through two raincoats that day as each one got soaked through.I skipped many of our runs on Sunday due to the rain but really wanted a shot at the championship with Zaz. Here she is in the champ agility qualifier. My hat started coming off while Zaz was on the Aframe which is why my hands are flying all around the place! It finally came off and luckily Zaz did not try to retrieve it. I was more worried about the state of my hair under the hat than finishing the run!

I felt really worried about running Zaz in the rain and have such mixed feelings about having done so. I am only human and the lure of the champ final really pushed me to do that last run. Yet my heart was not in it for many reasons; so in hindsight I should have pulled out of the final. Easier said than done...

So three weekends of agility shows are past and, as usual, I did not keep up with taking photos of trophies and rosettes. So here is Zaz and Itz's stash of trophies and rosettes for Cippenham, Hinkley, Keston and Thames. What good girlies they are.

WAO 2011 Part 3 Small Fast Kick Yer Ass

2011-06-06T12:16:00.006+01:00

Well I have really been dragging out the report on the WAO! Gosh I hope I get all my details correct as I am starting to forget.

Saturday was a little better for us! This Pentathlon Jumping was another of my favorite runs. Imagine that? It is amazing how my clear runs are my favorite.

Zen came 2nd in that class with a fantastic time!

On Saturday we had the second part of the games classes: Gamblers. Now Zen is not a great Gamblers dog by any stretch of the imagination! It is not something we train although something I would like to train in the future with other dogs. Zen, at 8 years old, is not going to suddenly start being able to work away from me. But I knew that if we could accumulate enough points in the opening we had a chance.

Well she did it. We came 4th in the Gamblers which put us 3rd (BRONZE MEDAL) for the Overall Games classes. That's my girl! My goal was to come away from this weekend with a medal and we did it. I was starting to let go of my disappointment from the previous day.

At the end of Saturday the English team had 3 overall medals. Gold, Silver and Bronze!

On Sunday we had the Pentathlon speedstakes which was the final run for the Pentathlon. I knew we had no chance at a medal in the Overall Pentathlon so I would just be running the speedstakes for a class placement. I really enjoyed this course and I thought Zen ran it well. After the turn off the aframe into the tunnel I felt something wrong with Zen. It may not look like it on the video but I was surprised that Zen did not beat me out of the tunnel to the next jump. I felt as if something happened in the tunnel but was not sure.

Zen came 2nd in that run! If you listen closely you can hear Leah yelling my motto for this competition. Small fast kick yer ass!

After her run while walking her to cool down I just felt something was wrong with her gait but I thought I was over-reacting. I walked her around and finally put her away to rest and tried to forget about it. Unfortunately when I went back an hour later to take her out for prize giving she was lame on her front leg.....I was devastated and just wanted to pack her up and take her home.

Thank God that we had Tace A. available to treat our dogs for any injuries and Peter Van D.available as our vet. Both Tace and Peter were so helpful and Zen was treated immediately. She had a injury to her right wrist so we started icing and metacam right away. I was nearly in tears as I could not believe that Zen was in pain after just running her little heart out for me... This was my dog who has never in 8 years been injured in agility. And now she gets an injury in her last big event! Was she telling me it was good that she will be retired or that she was not happy about this retirement malarkey?

This photo was not taken during that run but at our official practice on the Thursday. Could she have hurt her wrist coming out of that tunnel and then aggravated it turning into the tunnel on that last run?

Now the next run of the day was the Team Pentathlon Relay. We had the greatest team lined up for that run. All four of them could handle the pressure of a team relay that would decide if our team came away with Team GOLD.

Sometime during that morning I had realized (doh!) that Zen was possibly going to get a TEAM GOLD medal! OMG what a way to end her career. I put the pressure on Lee and Jo and told them they were going to win this team relay for Zen! And you know what? They did it!!! Dave and Rusty, Gary and Ellie, Jo and Bitzy, Lee and Bonnie ran that Team Relay with grace under pressure and won! This put our team as OVERALL GOLD! Zen finally got her Gold medal!

Thanks to the entire TEAM ENGLAND for being great competitors and teammates.

WAO 2011 Part 2

2011-06-03T10:06:00.005+01:00

Girl Power!

This was one of my favorite runs. It was our first team run. All 3 in the team ran clear and we won this round!

Our other run on the first day was the Snooker run. I found it very funny but fantastic that Zen ended up with a Bronze Medal in Games! I actually like Games but doing them once a year does not encourage us to practice for them. LOL This is Zen's Snooker run; we ended up in 4th in Snooker because I did not go for the 7-7-7 combination. I decided to play it safe and went for 7-7-5 and hoped that would be enough to help us get on the podium for the Overall Games. I am still not sure if I should have tried it as, of course, it would have been the difference between a bronze and a gold medal. That is the interesting part of games; trying to be strategic in addition to knowing your dog's strengths and weaknesses. I know that Zen can only be run past so many obstacles before she would decide that enough is enough! LOL

So after the first day we had many highs and lows. Zen had 4 runs that day and Zaz had one run. Zaz's first run was her Biathlon jumping. I knew that sequence at the top of the ring would be an issue as I saw dog after dog do the same thing. I would have preferred to have been able to get a front cross in but just could not get there. Many people tried and it pushed their dogs into the other end of the tunnel. Or if they tried to sprint off after the weaves it caused the dogs to cross jump the long jump. Obviously this is a sequence I need to practice! sigh.. Otherwise I was so happy with how she handled the course.

Zaz is very different from Zen and I obviously feel so much more comfortable running Zen. Running Zaz is still a new experience in many ways. I found these two photo from the photographer at the WAO and was amazed again to see the similarities between Zen and Zaz.

More later...

WAO 2011 part 1

2011-06-02T10:09:00.004+01:00

My post about the WAO is very late. I wish I could be better about documenting our journey immediately after the event. Unfortunately it seems that I need downtime after a big competition before putting my thoughts into writing. I always have mixed feelings; never sure if I am happy or sad that it is over and never sure if I am thrilled or disappointed about our performances!

So I wait before I look at videos and by that time I have lost the impetus to put together a detailed post. I am thinking that for the European Open I would like to try and put together my posts on the day but that might just be a little ambitious. Dennis isn't even coming and so photos and videos might be sporadic as it is!

The World Agility Open Championships (WAO) 2011 was a fantastic event. The time and effort put into every detail was obvious to us all. As with the IFCS last year, there was a great atmosphere and awesome (yes AWESOME) volunteers working very hard every day. The courses were fun and challenging and I enjoyed them all.Zen and Zaz were great fun to run as always. Zen placed in the top 3 in almost every class.

The only thing that prevented us getting onto the podium in the pentathlon was my ridiculous errors. I am not even talking about handling errors as I could forgive myself for those (and often do!). The errors that happened to me that weekend were ones that I have nightmares about: I forgot the courses! I guess my two worse nightmares going into any big competition are forgetting the course and falling down. Well now I have gotten one of those over with and I hope never to repeat it!

Looking back I now understand why I forgot the courses but that doesn't stop me from feeling like an idiot and worrying that this may become a problem. A problem both in reality and a problem in my mental attitude. I read enough about Positive Mental Imaging to know that I almost should not even be writing this paragraph! Yet I do think it helps me and others reading this post to put my fears in writing and then get some help in getting over it! And maybe it will help others who have similar problems.

Do I have an answer to this problem? No not really but I will keep working on it and I will not let it get me down. How can I forget that my dogs have no idea when it goes wrong; they give me their all on every run and I am so grateful to have them by my side.

I thought I would start by showing you my two worst runs of the weekend; the run where I get lost and have to stop on course and the run where I sent my dog over the wrong jump when I forgot the course. My thought is that I need to watch them and then let them go forever.

This was our first run at the WAO. I was really positive about this course; I loved it and was looking forward to running it. What I did not count on was forgetting the course. In hindsight I understand why this happened but that doesn't help after the fact!

The great part about the WAO is that we get ALOT of runs. The worst part of the WAO is that we have to walk ALOT of courses. This is fine at the normal weekend show especially as we do not get complicated courses at our normal everyday show. In addition you may have the luxury of watching many dogs run before you go into the ring. At the WAO we walked 3 difficult courses in a 1/2 hour period and then immediately ran the 1st course we walked. So after walking the 3rd course I needed to get my dog and go run the 1st course without being able to watch. I was not ready for this mentally as it did not occur to me that this would happen. This was a failing on my part in my preparation both mentally and physically. Hopefully if we get a chance to do the WAO again I will not let this happen again.

I was really down after this run. It was our 2nd pentathlon run of the day and again it was the 1st run in the afternoon after a rotation of walking 3 courses. Can you see the common thread? I had gotten lost on the first run of the morning as well. What was wrong with me? I felt as if I was too old for this sport. Not only is my body falling apart and I am having difficulty running but now my brain is gone! I don't think I have ever felt this low about agility.

I am the first person to say "It is just agility" and I do not get upset about those little things that happen in the ring. Yet I do agility because I love it; I love working with my dogs and figuring out challenges. So when reality hits and I start doubting that I will be able to continue....that does make me sad. Thank you to those who understand that; who commiserate as well as trying to help me get over it.

So no more talk about getting lost on course. I do need to work on running more complicated courses on a regular basis. Zaz and I have alot of work to do over the next few weeks before the Dania cup and the European Open. I am glad to have a game plan in my head; now I just need to implement it!

More about WAO 2011 later!

Tunbridge Wells, Crufts, Olympia and puppy news

2011-05-24T07:18:00.002+01:00

So Saturday was Beacon Agility Show and Sunday was Tunbridge Wells Agility Show. Although it was a long drive up and down to Beacon; I really enjoyed the day. Thankfully Tun Wells show is only 45 minutes away and at one of my favorite venues: South of England Showgrounds. It is a nice venue with great walks for the dogs afterwards on their cross-country course. There is no motorway noise and there are trees dotted around for shade. What more can you want?

I was just running Zen and Zaz this weekend as we needed work to get ready for the WAO. Itzy got to stay home with Dennis and help around the garden. I am looking forward to getting out and running with her again but I just cannot concentrate on 3 dogs at one show. Itzy's time will come; no worries about that!

My goal for this show was to not have to go to another show (BATS) in two weeks time. I guess that sounds like a strange goal! I do not love going to show after show every Saturday and Sunday; I am enjoying my new house and garden too much. So I really wanted a weekend free after the WAO. That next show was BATS and it had a Small Olympia Qualifier. If I could qualilfy at Beacon or Tun Wells; I could stay home and not go to BATS. Beacon was done and a mistake in the Olympia Qualifier meant we had one more chance at Tun Wells or else I had to go to BATS. I just kept thinking of that drive up the M1 motorway to Bats and I was inspired to win! LOL

For those who do not understand how we qualify for Olympia: There are approx 10 shows during the year which are Olympia Qualifiers and the top 3 in those classes go through to the Olympia Semi in September. Out of the 30 dogs that make it to the Semi, 10 finally get through to Olympia. The qualifiers are dotted around the country to try and make it fair so obviously we don't get to all the qualifiers. So when we have a qualifier we try really hard! It is not easy as there were 160 small dogs in the Beacon qualifier and 213 dogs in the qualifier at Tun Wells!

I am happy to report that WE DID NOT HAVE TO GO TO BATS! LOL Zaz won the Olympia Qualifier at Tun Wells (out of 213 dogs!) Bless her little heart; she had such a good weekend. I don't have that run on video but here is her other run (Crufts Singles) in which she came 2nd. It was back to reality on Sunday with more "english" type courses. Variety is good so I hope we start to see more of a mixture this year.

Zaz now has two really good places in the Crufts singles so I am hoping that is enough to get us into the Crufts Singles next year. I am not sure if we have any other Singles qualfiers coming up as we are doing some travelling and missing some shows. As opposed to the Olympia Qualfiers which are top 3 in the class; the Crufts Singles are a cumulative qualfier. So the more qualifiers you attend and collect points in the better chance you have. Two good placings could be beat by 5 lower placings in the point scale so you cannot afford to be complacent. It is good that each event has different ways of qualifying so that everyone has a chance.

So everything looks like it is going well. The agility shows are fun, dogs are healthy, house is great and pup is on the way......hmmmm things never go perfectly do they?

Sadly there won't be a black and white girl puppy joining us this year.The lovely girl puppy that was meant to be mine has not stopped growing. I have been breeding shelties long enough to know this is always a concern but I had high hopes due to seeing previous litters from the mum. My hopes for a little bi-black girlie was just not going to happen. In some ways she made it easy; it was not even a doubt that this girl was going to be BIG. Shelties are hard to breed; over and undersize pups are always an issue in any litter. They don't breed true and you can only make guesses about the size from previous experience, height and weigh charts and alot of finger crossing.

I am disappointed as otherwise it was such a lovely litter from a lovely bitch and a great breeder. This big girl had another home waiting, just in case, so I made the decision to let her go.(sigh) I am told she will have a great home with an obedience trainer and will be loved greatly. I decided not to fly out this week to Denmark as planned because I didn't want to break my heart by seeing the pup in person. I know that things happen for a reason and I am hoping there will be a reason born here sometime in the months to come. It is all up to Zen now.....

Beacon Champ show 2011

2011-05-20T17:38:00.006+01:00

We are back from the World Agility Open Championships 2011 (WAO). WOW what a great event and I am going to work hard to be able to go again next year with Zaz. Before I go into more about the WAO I wanted to catch up on the the weekends prior to the WAO.

First in my excitement about Zaz's 1st champ ticket at Vyne I forgot to do the obligatory trophy photo for Vyne. I am trying to do this after every show but sometimes just run out of time. These are not the most creative photos and they are taken with my little video camera but they are just meant to be a special reminder of each show. The rosettes and trophies will eventually be put away in a box and/or recycled; the photos will last a little longer! I like to get better quality photo from Dennis but sometimes it is just inconvenient to do the photos when he is around.

Beacon and Tunbridge Wells shows are run on the same weekend. On Saturday Beacon is a small/medium only show and Tunbridge Wells has no classes for smalls and mediums on Saturday. On Sunday Beacon is a Large dog only show and Tunbridge Wells holds classes for all sizes. So it works well on paper...the only catch is the distance between the two shows!

Beacon is in the north of Birmingham so it is on the edge of being able to do in one day.(3 hours) Instead I drove up on the Friday to stay in a B&B so I did not have to get up at 4 am to drive up on Saturday. We drove up late so we were able to have the whole day home and just used the B&B to crash for the night. At only £25 per night it is worth staying just to not have to be up at the crack of dawn.

Beacon show is one of my favorite shows. It is held at sport field so the grounds are good and it is only 4 rings so we can park close to all the rings. This makes Bernadette VERY HAPPY! Have I mentioned before how much I hate being parked miles away from the rings? LOL Also having a show dedicated to smalls and medium dogs also makes me happy; not that I am prejudiced against big dogs but well.....just saying I like my smalls and mediums. Just saying...

Beacon is also a championship show. So it was Zaz's second chance at a ticket. Sadly we didn't win the ticket this time but I was chuffed to bits with Zaz and Zen's runs. We had a new champ judge for Beacon; Lee Gibson was judging his first champ classes. I was looking forward to the courses because I knew the Lee has been exposed to a more "international" flavour of courses. He didn't disappoint and I was thrilled that all the courses were on the difficult side. Not only were the jumping and agility rounds difficult but he kept the final just as difficult. I LOVED it! We had to work all rounds and the final was so exciting.

Here is Zaz in the agility qualifier round.

Zen was entered in the champs because she was competing in the WAO the following weekend. So it was nice to have some handling courses to get us tuned up as a team. I was so happy that both Zen and Zaz made it into the final. Both girls did really well in the agility and jumping qualifier rounds so Zaz was running 2nd to last and Zen was running last.

First up was the small dog final. There were alot of faults and eliminations in the final rounds but then up came Helen and her poodle (running 3rd to last) putting in a faultless fast round. I watched that round and knew that if we had any chance we needed to go for it. So we did but my over excitement caused Zaz to miss out a jump. Watching the video back I know what I did to cause it so it was my fault totally. She never even saw the jump I wanted her to take the back of so she locked on the next jump she saw. I was not disappointed because I was thrilled with the rest of the run. After Zaz ran there was one dog left to go. Nicky and Indy put in a fantastic run to just win out over Helen by a nano-second! It was such a great final and I was proud that Zaz and I were sandwiched between those two great teams. I cannot be complacent as Zaz and I still have work to do to become as polished as Nicky and Indy and Helen and her adorable poodles. This is what makes it fun!

I needed to trust Zaz's weave poles more to have run that section smoothly and in my rush to get to the next off set jump I forgot to change arms to bring her in after the go-round. Listen closely and you will hear my videographer say "pants" which is an English term meaning SH*T or DAMN! Now you all have a new swear word you can use in the USA and not get eliminated for cursing on course! LOL Yes my English friends can you believe they will eliminate you for swearing on course in the US?

Then is was Zen's turn. My little Zen-star ran her little legs off. We ended up in 2nd place to get the Reserve Championship Ticket. Not bad for the old girls (me and Zen!)

Itzy did not come to the shows this weekend; instead she stayed home and kept Dennis company. I find it exhausting running 3 dogs and not sure how everyone else does it!

It was a long drive back home to get up early the next day for Tunbridge Wells. The nice part is that Tun Wells show is only 45 minutes from home. Yay!

Zaz's First Championship Ticket! Vyne 2011

2011-05-10T12:11:00.000+01:00

Two weeks ago Zaz followed in her mother Zen's pawprints and won her first Championship ticket in her FIRST Championship class! Anything I could write would be inadequate in describing how I feel about Zaz and what she has done for me. Instead I will let you enjoy the video.

Champ jumping

Champ Agility

Champ Final

We leave in two days for Zaz's first big event. The World Agility Open Championships 2011. I am grateful for this opportunity to show off my two special girls Zen and her daughter Zaz. This will be Zen's last big event as she will be bred this summer; so I will be cherishing every moment and just enjoying her awesomeness. I thought I would share this special good luck card made by our friend Sonia. I have similar cards for almost all of Zen's international competitions. Each one is kept in Zen's scrapbook as a memory of that event. Now Zaz can have her own scrapbook and we can start with this special card.

Itz's Great Adventures 2011

2011-05-04T17:04:00.002+01:00

So Itzy is now in Grade 6 and her first graded classes were at the Lincoln show. I was really happy with how she ran and that she can be competitive in Grade 6. She achieved two 2nd places at that show. Now it is just finding Grade 6 classes for her. The majority of shows put on combined Grade 6/7 for the smalls and mediums. The quandary I am in is that I want to do the Championship Shows and shows with Qualifiers for Zaz but I need the Graded 6 shows for Itz. Unfortunately they often do not go together.

Her second shows at Grade 6 were over the Easter Weekend. Although I really do not like the Newbury showgrounds I drove out on the Easter Friday to the WBSDS show because they had a Grade 6 class for smalls. Itzy ran really well but a small error got us Eliminated. I try really hard with Itz not to let her know when things go wrong; we just go on as if she was correct. So if you see me run a class and wonder why I am acting like we went clear even though you saw a fault, don't feel the need to tell me! LOL

Itzy had one Grade 6 agility class on the Easter Saturday but we had a knocked bar. Again I was so pleased with how she ran. On the Sunday she was sh*t hot and happily won her first Grade 6 class! I felt like a starter handler all over again worrying which dogs were left to run and if anyone would knock her out of 1st place! LOL Hopefully I have got that out of my system now and what will be will be for the Itz. I am not worried how fast she gets out of Grade 6 but only focused on both of us running happily. Itzy is actually suprising me with some of the skills she has because I don't remember teaching them to her! She is still behind Zaz in alot of training but I am OK with that. This is why it is so nice to have the two pups together; I am not in so much of a rush with Itz.

Here is how Itzy plays with her rosettes. Actually it is one of Zen's rosettes as I wouldn't let her play with her first Grade 6 1st place ribbon! She bounces up and down with it but, of course, since we were trying to video it she became camera shy.

The following weekend we had a long 4 day weekend due to the Royal Wedding on the Friday and the Bank Holiday on the Monday. I was tempted to do some shows but decided instead to stay home and spend time with Dennis and friends. Once the show season starts in full swing those relaxing non-agility weekends become scarce. I am trying to plan a few one day agility weekends rather than spend both days away but it is easy to get carried away with entering shows. Luckily because our entry fees are so low; I can easily just decide not to go on the day without stressing about losing the entry fee.

On the Bank Holiday Monday we headed out to Newbury Showgrounds (again!) for the one day Vyne Championship show. This was to be Zaz's first Championship class. (more about that later!) But even better there was a Grade 5-6 and Grade 6 agility for Itz. We were rushing around for the Championships classes so I missed walking Itz's Grade 5-6 class. Even so I was pleased with how she ran! She came in 4th out of 51 dogs in this class.

Then came out Grade 6 class! And she won it! This time I did not watch and check the other teams but waited to let Dennis check after the class was closed. Yes Dennis was there again to see his Itzy Bitzy win! (which is why we have lots of video!) Poor Dennis is now going to feel obligated to come to every show were there are Graded classes for Itzy!

So Itzy is now half way to Grade 7. I do not think she has another Graded class now until June. But it looks like our goal of Grade 7 by the end of the summer is very achievable! Go The Itz!!

Easter Celebration: Team OBay

2011-04-29T08:20:00.004+01:00

I am already getting behind on trying to keep up with documenting all the agility shows this season. Luckily today is the Friday of the Royal Wedding which means this is ANOTHER 4 day weekend! So while Dennis golfs this morning; I will download some videos. I love my new little video camera (Kodak Zi8) which makes videoing and downloading so easy. No more time consuming editing and carrying around a big camera and case. It is smaller than my IPhone! The downside of this video camera is the viewing screen which can be difficult to see in the bright daylight. This is a small price to pay for the convenience and ease of use.

I am going agility-less for the first 3 days of this holiday weekend and going to the Vyne agility on Monday. Monday will be Zaz's first Championship class!

Easter Celebration has always been one of my favorite shows. Who wouldn't love an agility show that gives you chocolate Easter eggs for prizes? Happily Dennis came along on the Sunday to the agility show. He wanted to make sure he got the chocolate eggs that he preferred and also to make sure I was handling Itzy properly. He has threatened to start interviewing for a new Itzy handler. I have news about the Itz from this show but that will need a stand-alone post!

On Sunday we got lucky and ALL our runs were in one ring! It felt so nice to be able to sit around the ring and enjoy watching all the OBay pups run. I am so proud of them all.

So this is a mega video post! With Dennis at the show for the day I was able to get video of almost all the OBay pups and I thought it would be good to see all the pups running the same course. Don't concentrate on any mistakes; just enjoy them all having fun and maybe turn down the sound on your computer! LOL

Zev-man

Zeki-beeks

The Todd-ster

Momma Zen

Yazz-oooo

The Itz

Za-Za-Za Zaz

Lincoln Agility show 2011

2011-04-26T08:23:00.003+01:00

The European Open tryouts were held in conjunction with the Lincoln Agility Show. I do not usually travel this far for an agility show but I might do it again. What a nice show in a great showgrounds. We were blessed with good weather and good parking as well so maybe that made me slightly biased!

On Saturday I was preoccupied with Zaz but I did run Itz in two of her classes. I really wanted to run her at this show because she had TWO graded 6 classes each day. She had a great jumpers run but came in second. She also had a super agility run but had one jump bar down. I have to admit to being disappointed because they were her graded 6 classes and finding a graded 6 class is tough for the smalls down south. Usually the classes are combined 6/7 and this makes it tough to get a win.

Sunday we went back to Lincoln and I was able to run Zaz and Itz in all their classes. Itz had another good Grade 6 jumping run but again ended up in second. She then went into her Grade 6 agility which was a nice tricky course so I was looking forward to it. We almost did it! I was so happy with how she ran this course but we just had a silly bobble at the end. I still came off this course in a high that she ran so well. I am so looking forward to running Itz this year; we still have some training to do but when I see her so happy running it gives me such a great feeling.

Zaz had three clear runs on Sunday. She just felt so easy to run on Sunday compared to the day before at the EO try-outs. This shows me that we need more exposure with the tougher courses and also more chances for me to start to trust her more on difficult sequences.

I was especially pleased with this run and this was an European Open tryout qualifier for 2012! We need to do qualfiers for the tryouts for the European Open! LOL It seems a little overkill but we have more dogs wanting to tryout for the EO than for the FCI World Champs. This is due to the non-pedigree aspect of the FCI World Championships.

Zaz came 2nd in this run behind her Uncle Indy run by Nicky G. I am sadly used to coming second behind Nicky; good thing I still like her.

So Lincoln is definitely a show I would go back to. Good showgrounds, results posted for all to see and a generally friendly atmosphere. Slight problems with scheduling for the smalls and mediums but hopefully they will learn from that for next year.

This photo is not great and slightly blurry but I am determined to try and get photos of the pups with their trophies and rosettes at every show this year. This way I don't feel bad when I have to "recycle" the rosettes and trophies at the end of the year.

I am really blessed to be running Zaz and Itz this year. They are each special and unique dogs in their own right. I have goals for both pups but that does not mean I don't enjoy every run with them. We have loads of training to do and that is what makes it fun for me!

And yes yes we are still working on Zaz's startline......hmmph!

European Open Agility Tryouts 2011

2011-04-20T11:57:00.003+01:00

It felt strange leaving on Friday for a "try-out" for an International event and not bringing Zen. I will admit to feeling quite emotional about leaving her behind. Now we move onto the next generation and Zen's daughters Zaz and Zeki were now trying out for the European Open Agility Championships for the first time.

Since we sold our caravan last year this season is all about trying to find clean, reasonable Bed and Breakfast accommodation that allows all the dogs. I have found Facebook and the Agility Forum great resources for this and we booked a B&B that was recommended to me from the Forum. We drove up Friday night so that we would be fresh for Saturday's try-outs and I was lucky to catch a ride with Nancy. It is much nicer than driving that far alone. Dennis stayed home with Zen and worked in the garden getting us ready to start planting veggies this year. God help us as we don't know what we are doing!

The B&B was an interesting place. We were slightly worried as the person that recommended it said the accommodation was in a "summer house". As we drove up the the main house we noticed a little wooden "shed" with a porch. I was so worried that that was the summerhouse! Nancy and I were already starting to think that we maybe needed to do a quick get-away and were planning our escape just in case. I knocked on the door to the main house and was greeted by a flock of young boys and I had visions of "Lord of the Flies". I was getting more worried by the second! Added to that there were screams from the many peacocks roaming around the grounds and the dogs were going crazy. Hmmmm....I was starting to miss my caravan!

Luckily the boy walked past the wooden shed and down a path to a big wooden "summer house". It was actually nice, clean and surrounded by grass so that we could exercise the dogs. The room was good although the shower room was small; overall a good find albeit a strange place at first! I need to start to keep lists of these B&Bs because it can be so difficult to find the right place to stay. Once I have been there I feels comfortable knowing what to expect for the next time.

We arrived at the Lincoln Showgrounds on Saturday morning. It is a fantastic venue for an Agility show; I wish it was not so far away for us to go to for more shows. The EO try-outs were in conjunction with the Lincoln Agility show but the ring was off to the side so it felt more private. I was really looking forward to working Zaz on some difficult courses and I was not disappointed as the courses all day were fantastic. I just love a course that you have to work hard at the entire time. I won't say Zaz and I handled every course perfectly but we gave it a good try and loved the challenges.

The first course was jumpers. It was a tight course and I felt like I was trying to control Zaz too much. We got through 3/4 of the course and the rubber band broke and I just could not get Zaz off an off course jump. If I had layered a jump and/or used a directional I think it would have worked but hindsight is easy! You will be able to find the off course; just listen to where my Zaz Zaz ZAZ get louder. LOL Not one of our best runs for sure!

The second run was agility. This run didn't go so well! The start included a tight wrap turn off a jump onto the dog walk with a tunnel under it. This trap caught many good teams and gave me a good training plan for this week. I have trained dogwalk tunnel discrimination but obviously not as well as I thought!

By the third run I was feeling desperate. Not because I was desperate to go to the EO but because I knew my little Zaz was better than this. I was at the point where I just wanted to prove to myself that I could get a clear round. I will admit I was also thinking I wish I had Zen with me as she helps me out on tough courses!

Thank God we finally got a clear on this third round! I was happy with most of the run except for the push through from 3 to 4. Something more to work on this week!

So now I was excited for the final agility round. The course was changed and the dog walk was moved for this round. In the first two agility rounds the majority of the dogs (even those who had never been on rubber contacts) handled the rubber/aluminum dog walk really well. The rubber contact equipment was a pleasure to run the dogs on; I loved the lack of noise as the dogs traversed the rubber equipment.

The final round began with the large dogs running first. This was good for us as it was the larger class and we could watch 60 dogs run the course before it was our turn. Smalls were running last.

Then disaster struck! Dog after dog balked severely on the dog walk. Confident experienced dogs were crawling up the dogwalk plank or hitting the deck expecting the dog walk to move. Some dogs fell/jumped off. This was so sad to watch and no one could understand why this was happening. We all tried to understand why. Could it be the supports were not placed properly? Could it be the vibration because the supports were not pegged? Could it be the sun shining on the up plank or aluminum supports which blinded the dog or made it appear slatless? These dogs were obviously convinced it was the see-saw.

I was getting more and more nervous for Zaz. She is a young dog with running contacts and I did not want to risk her being injured and/or having her confidence shattered. It was my job to keep her safe and confident no matter what. Sometimes we cannot help it when bad things happen but this time I knew it was happening and at least I could do something about it.The final straw was watching 3 confident experienced medium dogs (2 who had been world/eo dogs before and had run on rubber equipment many times) do the exact same thing. I did what I felt was necessary for Zaz and I; I pulled her from the last round.

I was sad to have to do this; I am competitive enough to have wanted to be chosen for the team. Yet I was happy to have made that decision; my dogs come first and I would have been devastated to have done anything to knock Zaz's confidence and trust in me when I had another option. I had no excuse as I had just watched the large and medium dogs. I could understand the large and medium handlers thinking that "their" dogs would not have any trouble. After all they had just run two rounds with the same equipment and the dogs were fine. I had the "luxury" of watching and my decision was made.

The good thing was that the course was set so that the dogwalk was towards the end of the run and I planned an exit strategy. The course was correct up until 2nd tunnel where I then took 3 jumps out of the ring. This is why you hear my video person questioning was I going to do it! LOL

So the day was over. We were staying on for the next days regular agility show at the same venue. So at least I felt like the trip was not wasted.

We started packing up all our stuff. Why is that i start out the weekend with a nice organized car and after one day my "stuff" seems to explode and double in size? When I heard the announcement that they were going to officially announce the team I wandered over to cheer for the new Team GB. I was officially gob-smacked to hear my name called as a wild card; I truly did not expect it. I cannot compete at any of these events without thinking of Hex. Sometimes I even wonder if I should continue to compete at these events as it never seems to get easier to stop missing her. I felt very emotional at that moment not because I was picked but because I was so proud of my little dog Zaz. I am strangely glad that Zaz is so different from Hex as I do not need to ever worry about comparing them.

So Zaz has now been chosen for her first International event in another country. I have no idea how we are getting to Austria and worry about the cost and the long trip but bizarrely still want to go.

The day was made even better when we heard that Zaz's big sister Zeki was chosen for the medium team. Zen is such a fantastic dog that she needed to send two of her children in her place!

Team GB medium

Team GB small

More about the Lincoln show and Itzy Bitzy later!

If you are still reading this....please send money. This agility stuff is expensive!

Oh and here is another teaser. Wonder what breed they are?

New agility season starts! Shrewsbury Agility

2011-04-15T08:09:00.004+01:00

So this photo really has nothing to do with this post but I just found it while clearing out boxes of old photos. How cute was Jordan? We had the last of our boxes delivered from New York....almost 10 years later. It was quite emotional looking through these two huge boxes of old photos and memories. I will slowly start to scan some of these special photos. It did remind me how nice it is to have photos you can HOLD in your hands rather than just view on a screen.

I don't know why I entered Shrewsbury! It must have happened sometime during the cold agility-less winter when I was anxious to get back competing. So I found myself getting up at "way too early" o'clock and packing up all 3 dogs to go up to Shrewbury. I am glad I had the foresight to only enter one day and to catch a ride with Nancy. I like when someone else drives especially on the drive back when we are all tired.

Zaz and Itz liked Nancy's extra big car cages and the sign was appropriate.

My plan this year is to only enter the pups in most shows. I just cannot run 3 dogs in multiple classes and I need to concentrate on Zaz and Itz. Zen is just so easy to run and I know I will miss running her. The difficulty is that I have to run the pups differently and my timing is off because Zen is so forgiving.

Until the WAO is over I will continue to enter Zen because she is competing for England at the WAO. After that she will be shown sparingly until she is bred for the last time.

So Shrewbury was a lovely show. It felt strange running outside in big rings again and having to do all the walking back and forth to the car. I was exhausted! The courses were a nice mix; some fast and flowing and some more challenging. I really enjoy running Itz in fast courses and running Zaz and Zen in challenging courses. Itz needs some fast courses to learn to open up and feel confident. I am feeling really positive about her this season and the courses this weekend suited her. Zaz feels amazing to run and we just need to hold it together for an entire course; she is so responsive but will tell me off if I am not clear enough for her.

Sadly no video from this show; we had too many classes to run! I had at least two classes were I was queueing up for over 1/2 hour only to hear another of my rings was calling to the end. Ran over to those rings only to find another queue of over 1/2 hour! Arghhh! This is the part of agility I don't miss! I wish there was a way to keep to smaller queues but with an 11 ring show and 3-4 runs per dog it must be hard for the show committee and ring parties to organize. Luckily the weather was glorious and you just couldn't get too bothered on such a beautiful day.

Result-wise it was not the greatest show for us; but I enjoyed all the runs. Zaz came second in a Grade 7 agility and Itz came 3rd in a Grade 6 agility. I am hoping we can find more Grade 6 classes for Itz this year as I would love to get her into Grade 7 by mid-season.

We were not entered on Sunday and I was glad for that. 9 runs on Saturday just about did me in. Monday was to be our 25th anniversary from our first date (a blind date!). I arrived home after the show to find that Dennis bought me a wonderful 25th anniversary present. I had been looking for a nice big bird bath forever and Dennis found one!

Of course the photo needed some shelties to dress it up!

Just so Zen does not feel left out. I found her sitting in the middle of the pergola sun bathing all on her own. I wish she would do some weeding while she is out there as I cannot get a handle on all the plants and flowers in the perennial beds!

And a little teaser.....a possibility.....

Crufts 2011 Part 3 Championship

2011-03-26T16:06:00.003Z

Well here I am sitting at home on another beautiful day. I am grateful that this flu seems to have past the worst and I am on the mend. As much as I would have loved to do the UKA show today, I am playing it safe and staying home to keep recovering. I think I would have been OK running (well maybe sauntering or ambling) around the ring but not sure I would have had the energy to drive the 2 hours back and forth to Newbury.

It would have a been a good show to do as it had a Masters Class and I could use the ring practice right now with Zaz. Also they were going to have the rubber contact equipment and I need to get practice that with Zaz. But there are worse things than missing an agility show; so I stayed home and tortured the shelties with baths and grooming.

So now I will finish writing about my Crufts 2011!

Saturday was our day off and I had thought I might go back to the NEC to watch the International agility. I thought about it but decided to stay back at the B&B, have a full breakfast and take the dog for a long walk instead. I really didn't need to watch any more agility.

I love having a full English breakfast at the B&B yet most of the time we have to leave so early we miss breakfast. So it was a treat to get up late and have a leisurely full breakfast. Afterwards I took Zaz and Zen for a long walk and we all cleared our heads and stretched our legs.

I have always known that Zaz is so similar to Zen but it really hit me this weekend: Zaz is definitely Zen's mini-me! This photo was taken with my mobile while sitting and reading on my bed in the room. I just happened to look down and see these two lying identically at my feet. They even turned their heads the same way when I spoke to them. How cute are they?

Sunday was the Championship day. I am not being melodramatic when I say this; it is actually what I believe. This will probably be Zen's last championship at Crufts. This year I am hoping to have one last litter from Zen and so it is unlikely we will do any championships classes with her. The following year she will be getting up there in age and I will be busy focusing on the pups; Zen will slowly be retiring. (sob) Yet strangely I do not feel bad about this. Zen has done so much in her career and I enjoyed every minute with her.

I was looking forward to some challenging Crufts Championship courses.....but unfortunately the courses we ran were not "Zen" courses. Zen is a little sheltie girl running against much bigger faster border collies; so we need courses that are difficult in order to get anywhere. The courses were fun to run, no doubt Zen enjoyed herself! But a challenging course is what we needed in order to place any higher in the class. These courses had no opportunity for the other dogs to go wrong or for Zen to shave off anytime on turns. They were all straight fast lines. As usual, different courses suit different dogs and handlers and these were not the courses for us.

Even so Zen looked good and still made the Final in the evening. She ran her little socks off and came 5th in the final.And gosh-darn they only showed the top 4 (AND the handlers with mistakes!) on TV that night. Booo-hiss!

Crufts Champ Jumping.

Crufts Champ Agility

Championship Final

So another Crufts over for Zen. Zen-star did pretty good; she was 7/7 clear runs, Winner of the British Open and made it to the finals in both team and champ. Not too shabby for the two old girls! LOL

Our focus now for the next 2 months is the WAO. I have lots of plans for the summer but it will all depend on Zen's timings. AND I may have another new addition to our doggie family; watch this space!

Crufts Part 2: ESSC Sheltie team

2011-03-25T08:58:00.005Z

The Friday of Crufts was our Medium Team day. It was nice being able to run team at Crufts; twice before we have qualified and not been able to go for one reason or another.

We were running for the English Shetland Sheepdog Club. There is nothing better than a team of shelties and I think it was quite an achievement for our team to qualify. Thanks to Lian for organizing the shirts for the team even though ,sadly, we had to pay for the shirts ourselves. I do think it would have been nice for the club to sponsor us considering we were representing them. Most teams had club sponsored shirts and some even had jackets for their dogs.

Lian gave us all lovely gifts! A fantastic coffee mug with photos of all the team members.

And a bag of chocolates with the dog's photos on the wrappers! I hated to have to eat the chocolates but I made the sacrifice! I did save a few until I got home but sadly they are eaten now also....LOL

There is one "semi final" team run in the morning. Out of the 8 teams that compete only 4 make it through to the "final" in the afternoon. What a let down it would have been to make it to Crufts and potentially have only one run! Luckily in teams anything can happen! We all had good runs and no one got eliminated which in teams is usually the goal! LOL We made it through to the afternoon final!

It was a tough team course with a straight tunnel at the beginning and the end. Well done girls for some great runs.

Then came the "final".

I think we looked really good as a team. Lian had some issues with Saturn but it can happen to anyone. Probably in hindsight we should not have had Lian run last as it is alot of pressure. It is difficult in a team of 4 with a baton change to get the order right. I was especially impressed with Lisa and Tyler for putting in two fantastic clear rounds at their first Crufts! They looked like pros. Thanks to Eleanor, Lian and Lisa for being good team-mates.

This is a photo of the entire team including the 2 reserves. I think Becky with Ellie were very glad they didn't have to run and just got to enjoy being a team supporter! I can see now that choosing the reserves can be just as important as choosing the team; it is not easy putting together a team when everyone is so spread out geographically.

I don't think I will be doing a sheltie team again but I enjoyed it this year. I think everyone knows that I am PASSIONATE about shelties so it is a tough think for me to start pulling away from a "sheltie" club. But, let's be honest, I have never felt that the ESSC has been supportive of my dogs (in fact quite the opposite with the whole American vs English sheltie debates) so it actually feels strange running "for" them. So I think I will skip teams this year unless I find a nice team of small dogs that wants one of my shelties! I could offer myself to the highest bidder? Anyone who will actually give me a shirt? I am really pretty easily bought. LOL

I would like to do Mini/Mixi this year instead if I can organize some of these OBay handlers to join in! The trouble is finding shows with qualifiers that everyone is going to.

I will end this post with a fuzzy photo that makes me laugh. How could I resist? Zaz had her Crufts debut.....she was fantastic with the entire atmosphere and I am looking forward to qualfiying her for Crufts 2012. I know she will love the atmosphere in the main ring.(I am sure this photo is considered sacrilege to the breed people but I think she is the BEST!)

Crufts 2011 Part 1

2011-03-24T08:01:00.006Z

I was going to put together a long three part post-Crufts blog post detailing the three days we competed.....but that was before I was hit with the super Crufts Danish flu. Damn this flu has knocked me for a loop. The worst part of it is the constant headache and lack of energy for anything including doing things on the computer.

So it will have to be a condensed post-Crufts play by play. Zen did well. The end. LOL

Zen competed 3 of the 4 days at Crufts. I can honestly say it was too long for the both of us. I am glad we had the Saturday off and we stayed back at the B&B to relax and just get out in the sunshine. Crufts is amazing and it is a privilege to have qualified to compete. Unfortunately is just too crowded and the lack of air and light gets to me after the second day. I also have had just about enough of some of the "breed" people who seem to have a lack of common cleanliness (can't pick up after their dogs and let their dogs pee everywhere) and common courtesy (run over other people's dogs with their damn trolleys).

I took this photo of a fellow competitor because I thought it was funny and cute. But this is how I felt after 2 days at Crufts and wish I could have lay down on the floor but not sure I would have been able to get up again!

Thursday was the British Open at Crufts. Zen qualified for this event back in August at the KC International Festival. I was very proud of her for qualifying at the Festival. To qualify she needed to be in the top 15 of nearly 125 medium dogs after 2 rounds to make the final. Once in the final it was a clean slate and the top British dog qualified for the British Open at Crufts. As Zen was competing against most of the top dogs that day; I had no expectations. Luckily, in our favor, it was a tough international type course and dog after dog had faults. At the end of the final Zen was only beaten by the French dog and so she was top British dog and came 2nd overall. On that weekend in August the French dog and handler were amazingly fast so, again, I had no expectations for Crufts.

Yet again Zen surprised me and won the British Open Jumping, Agility and Overall! This is her second year in a row winning the British Open at Crufts. She ran really well and although I felt her slipping on the first run after that she seemed to get her feet under her for the rest of the weekend. The French dog and handler did not seem to be able to do this and surprisingly they struggled in their runs.

These videos make me laugh as they are taken from the Crufts TV and so you can hear the commentary that I didn't hear on the day. I love the Crufts internet live streaming TV as I was getting messages from people congratulating me even before I was out of the ring! How cool was that.

Oh and even better Zen made the "real" TV that night! Her entire run was broadcast during the Crufts show on More 4. Woo-hoo! The small things that make us happy! LOL

Here is her British Open Jumping.

And her British Open Agility.

Here is Zen with her ribbons. I know there must be good photos out there somewhere of her with her trophies but for the second year in a row Dennis stayed home. So no good photos! Dennis has to come next year when Zaz and Itz get to Crufts for the first time as I need better photos!

Zaz and Itz do good!

2011-03-18T13:31:00.005Z

Zaz and Itz have started the 2011 agility season off well.

First I found out that Itzy won a trophy for the English Shetland Sheepdog club Working section. She won the trophy for the best Novice dog of 2010! Not bad considering she only competed for 4 months last year.

Itzy is now recovering from her spay; so no agility for Itz for awhile. She doesn't think she should slow down at all but I think 6 weeks off training will be good for her. I will concentrate on her fitness and I know she will come back even stronger.

Then we had our first competition for 2011. Mid-Downs is the show where we all get there and start walking courses thinking...."damn I haven't done this in months!" Everyone is rusty and I know my legs felt like lead after my first run.

I was really pleased with Zaz's win in this class. I remember Zen winning the same class during her first season of competition in 2005. (That was when Zen was running as a mini). This win qualifies her for the Pro-plan stakes final in September!

I am hoping to get Crufts videos and photos up this weekend. We had a great Crufts. As usual it was exhausting and exhilerating at the same time. Unfortunately I am suffering from what I call the "Crufts Danish Flu". So my energy levels are not great and just when I think I am feeling better it comes back again...Yuck I hate being sick! Thank to the Crazy Danes for leaving their flu behind yet again!

WAO Try-outs 2011

2011-02-10T15:27:00.003Z

Here is Zaz with her celebratory sheltie cupcake! I won't say I bullied Leah into making it but I think I wore her down with my requests!

So as you can probably guess Zaz did good!

There is a new "World" Agility competition being started by Greg D. et. al after the success of the IFCS World Champs last year. The WAO (World Agility Open Championships) is a really interesting idea and I was glad to be able to try-out with both Zen and Zaz.

After Zen competed at the IFCS World Champs, the European Open and the FCI World Championships last year I decided not to do anymore International competitions with her. Luckily the WAO is here in the UK so I thought it would be a good one for the both of us. I especially thought it was a good opportunity for me to do some interesting courses with Zaz as I really want to get Zaz ready to participate in the EO and the FCI World Champs this year. We have lots of work to do to get up to scratch but I know that she has the potential if I just get off my butt and do more training.

The WAO is using the same height classifications as the IFCS. These are really good heights for Zen as the height cut-off and jump height is 15.75 inches. Since Zen is 15" this puts her nearer the top of the jump height and gives her a much lower jump than the FCI jump height of 18". I love to see her jump the lower heights as she looks so much more comfortable. There are no jump height classifications that will please everyone for different reasons. There will always be dogs at a disadvantage either because they are jumping a higher height or because they are competing against much bigger dogs. For once Zen is at the advantage with this height division so I am happy! LOL

Unfortunately Zaz is at the Disadvantage for the WAO. At 13.5" tall she is jumping nearly 2.5" over her normal jump height and competing against dogs that are 2.5 inches taller than her. Now Zaz is a great height for FCI because she is at the top of the small jump height. So two different dogs with two different ideal agility organizations. Variety is the spice of life!

I decided to give Zaz a try even though I knew the jump height would be difficult for her. Not difficult because she could not do it but difficult because she would be unaccustomed to it. I have to admit I did not do much training at that height to get ready and that was my fault. I was just being lazy.

I had been really focused and ready for the try-outs when they were originally scheduled back in November. Then they were cancelled due to the big snow storm that hit the UK. The try-outs were rescheduled for January and I have to admit that (like most of us) there was not much training for me in November,December and January. Added to that we had just returned from our trip to New York; so we were definitely not at the top of our game!

As with the previous IFCS experience, I found these WAO try-outs to be a good experience. Very well organized and a good atmosphere. For the life of me, I do not know how the ring party and the judges dealt with the cold arena! We all were able to chill out in the enclosed warm cafe area that overlooked the main ring but the area/ring was FREEZING!

We stayed at a nice B&B for the weekend. The only issue was that because we booked the room late we ended up in the attic room! But it was clean and dogs were allowed.
We had a little heater in the room for extra heat and Zaz obviously thought it was a sun bed!

Zen just chills out in any hotel room she stays in. She must be the laziest sheltie in the world.

So onto the competition. It was broken down into a Biathlon (agility and jumping) and a Pentathlon. The overall winner of each event would be guaranteed a spot on the team. Since I am pretty late in writing this post; I cannot remember all the details; but basically Zaz ended up winning the Biathlon and this guaranteed her a spot on the team! She had some difficulty with the jumpheight; I did not feel that she was running at full speed and she crashed a double and dropped a few bars. But overall I was pleased with her as I did not ever feel as if there was something she could not do. She had a little hiccup with her see-saw and it is something that we need to work on: getting her on a larger variety of see-saws.

What I did have trouble with was running the two dogs back to back. Unfortunately we had to run in the order drawn and there were quite a few absentees which put Zaz and Zen running one after another in quite a few rounds. I did NOT enjoy this and do not know how some of our UK handlers do this weekend after weekend. These were large spread out courses and even though they did not rush me into the ring; I still found that I "hit a wall" about 1/2 way through my second run each time. I wasn't even out of breath; I just felt my legs give up and I felt as if I could not run anymore. My mouth stopped working and I just could not give clear directions. Not good!

Here are two of Zaz's runs. I was not focused enough to have my runs taped on Saturday but remembered my camera on Sunday. Thanks to Jay for taping and for his commentary!

So Zaz was automatically on the team. Zen and I had some issues during the weekend and we did not get an automatic qualification. Luckily I received a letter the following week offering Zen a spot on the team! I accepted with the caveat that I run each dog in two different events; I did not want a repeat of the weekend running the dogs back to back. So Zen will be running in the Pentathlon and Zaz will be running in the Biathlon. I am really looking forward to being part of this new venture and so excited to have Zaz in her very first International competition!

Happy Belated 11th Birthday!

2011-02-08T08:33:00.004Z

Back in January Halo and Presto turned 11 years old. It is hard to believe that the "twins" are 11. (l to r: Presto, Jordan, Halo)

They were Jordan's two pups born by c-section. Boy oh boy that was one long night. After waiting for Jordan to deliver we finally rushed her to the vet at some ungodly hour in the morning convinced that the puppy in the canal had died. Little Jordan just would never have been able to whelp the two pups that weighed almost 1 pound each! Those were two big puppies! We were so happy when the vet came out and said he had TWO live pups.

They were two great pups; easy going and happy. A litter of two is so simple. Both Halo and Presto have Jordan's loving sweet temperament. I miss that happy Jordan very much.

Here is Presto at 11 years old looking angelic!

And Halo at 11 still competing and loving life.

OBay Training Day 2011

2011-02-01T10:20:00.002Z

This past weekend I organized another Obay training day with Lesley Olden. It is a nice chance for me to see some of the pups all together. One day I would love to do a day and/or weekend with ALL the OBay pups but I think that may be a impossible task. First we would have to organize everyone and second we would have to find a place far far away where no one can hear us. Maybe one day; I can dream!

If nothing else it gives me a good photo opportunity!

(L to R) Todd, Yazz, Ziga, Zeki, Itz, Zaz and Zev.

The dogs are all at slightly different levels in training so Lesley sets us up simple sequences that she can time as we try different ways of handling. This helps to see what is the quickest way for our own individual dogs rather than comparing dog to dog. Here is the jumping sequence tried a few different ways.

Christine and Zev

Karen and Todd

Nancy and Zeki

Me and the Itz

During the second half I worked with Zaz.

And Karen worked with Yazz.

It was a shame that the only pup I did not get on video was Ziga. It was hard to video as well as keep The Zitzy twins quiet! We also missed not having Zavvi (Zaz, Itz and yaz's litter sister) with us as Marilyn had a family emergency. Hopefully we can all get together again. Christine's husband Marc stepped in to take Marilyn's spot and trained his poodle Mr.Big. I am happy to note that Mr. Big was probably noisier than the shelties! Hurrah!

It was a really good day followed by a yummy pub lunch. I am thankful to Lesley for letting us come to her nice warm school and putting up with the noisy crew.

I am especially grateful for all the wonderful caring owners that share their lives with my OBay pups.

Olympia Agility Finals 2010 Part 2: ZAZ-Star!

2011-01-03T21:52:00.008Z

We were all worried about the snow but luckily it held off and we got to London with no problems. Rock on Olympia 2010 Small Dog Final!

I felt so confident about running Zaz; no expectations other than going out and showing everyone how special she was. I have never been a fan of the "I am just going to enjoy myself" mantra. I feel like I enjoy every run with my dog and I think I used to say this to give an excuse just in case things went wrong. So you will never hear those words come out of my mouth! But be assured.. I do enjoy it and enjoy it more when the runs go well. LOL Yet please remember that having the best run is not dependent on winning; it is dependent on knowing that my dog and I did the best run that we were capable of on that day.

Olympia is special to most UK agility people. The Christmas atmosphere, the shopping, the crowds and the energy all add to the excitement. I was happy to be going again with a dog that I knew would enjoy the atmosphere. The last time I was that thrilled to be at Olympia was in 2007 when Hex went for her first and only time. Now I can say that 2010 was the last time I was thrilled to be at Olympia and hopefully I will be able to say that again in 2011, 2012 and on until I decide that agility no longer gives me that feeling of excitement.

We arrived at Olympia early (no big surprise as I am early to everything!) and walked Zaz around. She came upon this bronze statue of a boar (why it was there I have no idea!) She had a slight hissy fit and decided that this boar was very scary and woo woo woo-d at it. I had a talk with the boar and told Zaz that it was a friendly bronze boar after which she was happy to pose next to it. Later that night she went past a bronze cheetah and decided it was not as nice as the boar and it seems as if we need to find a Bronze Animal zoo in order to desensitize her to bronze animal statues.

Please note that Zaz had on both her special borrowed Christmas collar AND her special "ZAZ" harness. That girl does dress to impress!

The marketing geniuses at Olympia thought of a way to get us all to buy Olympia shirts. They made special shirts for the Dog Agility finals! How adorable they were with a special Olympia dog logo and all the dogs names on the back. I was tempted so so so very tempted....but you will all be shocked to know that I resisted and did not buy one for myself. I cannot tell you how many dog agility polo shirts I have and never ever wear. So instead I bought one for Johanna as a christmas present! She should be proud anyway as all three Obay shelties competing at Olympia that week were sired by either Monty or Tazz so it was as if she was there with us all anyway!

So Olympia involves alot of waiting around for short bursts of intense excitement. The first up was our pairs run. It is the "warm-up" round and the only time the dogs will have access to the arena, the crowds and the equipment before the final which will then be 6 hours later. Yes it is all a bit insane and everytime I wonder "is this worth it?" only to be saying "Wow" after we leave the arena.

Amazingly Zaz and I ended up being paired with Nicky (Miss Cool) and Indy (the pocket rocket). Two OBay shelties as a pair! yay! Now I needed to have a chat with Miss Cool before we ran and I TOLD her to pull herself together and take this seriously! I expected a double clear and wouldn't be happy otherwise. hahaha

Nicky pulled herself together and put in a cracking run. I was so busy watching it I almost forgot to go the the line to get ready. Seriously! The guy getting us to the line started looking around and calling for me because I looked too relaxed and he didn't think I was the next to run. LOL It is a strange pairs run as we don't hand off a baton; we just need to watch the other dog clear the finish jump and try and go as quickly as possible without leaving too early. This may seem as a strange way to do pairs but there is a reason. Most of the dogs competing do not know each other and having two strange dogs hyped up for agility in a small area while passing off a baton is just a recipe for dog fight.

So Zaz and I took off and I was just so happy she ran so well. She hesitated on the see saw but otherwise ran really well. It was a good omen for the evening final. Although Zaz and Indy were the fastest double clear they still ended up in 2nd place. This was because they used a different scoring method for the pairs runs. They did time plus faults which put us in 2nd behind a faster team who had 5 faults.

Here are the two cuties. (Indy and Zaz)

So now the long wait for the final. Hanging out in the "competitors lounge" which is basically a bar with some tables and chairs right next to the door and the horse stables...all very glamorous. (not) I was glad that Nicky, Mark and Marc came with us for a walk to the local park followed by some pizza to kill some time. We walked the dogs down to the park but I got worried by all the salt on the sidewalks due to the snow. So after the walk I made Nicky and Mark wash Indy and Mr. Bigs feet. No one can say that I was out to nobble the competition!

BTW here is Mr Big. Isn't he the cutest? Mr (not-so) Big also just started competing this year along with Zaz and Itzy and he has done so well already!

So now the finals are almost happening. I was almost too relaxed and finally went out of the glamorous competitors lounge and put my earphones in to listen to some inspiration. I played Zaz's special song "Soul Sisters" over and over until I felt excited again!

I was happy with Zaz's position in the running order. She was running 4th as she had qualified in 7th place. No pressure on us; we just needed to put in our best round on the day. I need to DO my best; not TRY my best and Zaz just needed to run her little legs off!

I let Zaz do something I don't normally do. I let her watch the dog before her run and get over the top excited. I figured what the hell! There was no control needed on this course; just speed so let's rev her up. LOL Zaz did her normal scooting forward on the startline. I started giggling to myself when I heard the crowd laughing. I knew the camera man had focused on Zaz and she was now plastered on the big overhead screen scooting forward like she was on rollerskates. That's my girl!

The collapsed tunnel to an extended flat pinwheel after the dog walk was my nightmare sequence. I knew that Zaz would start to pull in after the collapsed tunnel as I would be getting further and further behind. Until you are out there on that huge Olympia course it is hard to understand just how FAR those distances are! Bloody hell it was not a course made for old women over 40! Ha! When she picked up that jump I just so excited! So excited I threw in a blind cross after the weaves just to have fun. LOL

Zaz ended up in 2nd place and I couldn't have been more thrilled. She ran her little legs off and I ran without falling down! Result!

So sorry for the delay in finishing our Olympia posts but Christmas got in the way! Here are some photos from the champagne reception after the finals. Don't tell anyone but I borrowed the Champagne glass as a memento of Zaz's day. It will stand next the the glass that I borrowed after Zen won Olympia in 2005. Hopefully one day I can add to my "borrowed" collection and add another one for Zaz or Itz.

Zaz and her Olympia 2010 runner up trophy.

Me and my girl.

All 10 Olympia 2010 small finalists.

Top 3 places.

Olympia Agility Finals 2010 Part 1

2010-12-21T16:54:00.005Z

So many people think of Olympia as the most prestigious agility final in the UK. Certainly we all work so very hard to get there and the qualifying process does bring the best of the best to the finals at Olympia. In order to qualify Zen and Zaz competed in classes of around 160 dogs and needed to come in the top 3 to qualify. There were approx 12 qualifiers during the year which gave us 36 dogs for the semi-final in August. Those 36 dogs will then compete over one course and the top 10 qualify for Olympia.

Yet Olympia Dog Agility Finals take place at the Olympia London International HORSE show. It is a show that is all about the horses and dog agility is a sort of side show to entertain the crowd.It is exciting to be there but it is also a long day for both the dogs and the competitors. In the small and medium finals we have a warm-up run (speed jumping for mediums and pairs for smalls) at around 1:00 pm and then we have to wait until 7:30 pm for the final event. Top this off with having to travel into London and it makes for a long day.

Each time I attend I have to tell myself that the 30 seconds in the ring make it all worthwhile! It is exciting competing in front of the crowds and having your small moment in the limelight. On the other hand no matter how hard the judge tries there is only so much he can do with his courses. I think the Kennel Club has around 15-20 minutes total in the ring each time. This includes time to set out the course, walk the course and run 10 dog/handler teams around the course AND give out awards! The poor judges barely have a chance to walk their own course to check it out before the first dog is on the line. The ring crew is like a well oiled machine! They have the equipment pulled on a trailer out in the middle of the ring and the equipment out in no time flat. The competitors have to start walking the course before everything is actually set out and even before the judge tweaks the course. We have a few seconds to check the angles and then the first dog needs to be on the line.

Here is some photos of the ring with the horse jumps and the crowds. You can see how large the ring is.

Because of this the judge has to keep the course fairly simple. In addition the course has to be spread out so that all the crowd can see. AND the jumps are extra wide so that they are easier to see. All this adds up to a fast course suited more towards the bigger dogs and the faster handlers. I think there are some dogs and handlers that are just suited to Olympia. I do struggle with the uneven ground and the distances but I was so pleased this year that I was NOT struggling for breath at the end! (no sarcastic comments that I wasn't running fast enough! LOL) Thank you Sussex Bootcamps for getting me fitter this year! No I will never win a race and even when I think I am running it looks like I am barely breaking out of a trot...but at least I was not out of breath this time and my legs did not give out at the end.

Thursday we packed up the car and off we went into London with Zen. I had it in my head that this could very well be Zen's last Olympia. Mixed feelings about that really because I love showing her there but she does not love being there. It is crowded and noisy and Zen is not a city dog. But I was pleasantly surprised this year that Zen actually seemed to enjoy herself! It is still probably her last time at Olympia as we have plans for next year which will limit her chances at the qualifiers. And realistically Olympia with the large spread out courses do not suit Zen's strong points. I felt as if she struggled with the jumps this year and this worries me. I will continue to work on her fitness over the winter to see if it is something physical or just my worrying too much.

In the morning speed jumping Zen came 4th. In the evening final she did something she has probably never done before...she missed her dog walk contact! Probably my fault as I released her early. Ever since Zen fell off her dog walk at the beginning of the year her dog walks have not been as fast as before and I knew this would effect our times even more at Olympia. In the end it really did not matter as it would have only made the difference in one placing. She ended up 5th and without the 5 faults she only would have been 4th.

Here are Zen's videos. I still think she looks so small compared to those jumps and was not flowing as she can.

After the event we all go up for champagne and photos. Unfortunately we didn't have the good camera but I had to pose with Zen anyway. She looked so happy and actually enjoyed her day at Olympia. So much that she was flirting with some boys at the champagne reception! That's my Zen!

We are getting ready to leave for New York tomorrow early so I am not sure I will get Part 2 (ZAZ at Olympia) done before I leave. First I have some packing to do!

New Garage and Snow pups 2010

2010-12-01T11:53:00.010Z

The builders left last week and our garage is nearly done. It still needs some finishing work but the weather has been so cold that they could not finish everything. Hopefully we will get a break from the cold so that they can come back sooner rather than later.

Here is the garage from the front. This is Dennis' part of the garage!

Getting this garage built has been a good start for us in the new house. We have plans for an extension and originally thought we would start on the extension next year. Now we have revised that and have decided to give ourselves a break next year and plan the extension for 2012. It would be nice to have a shiny new kitchen but it is more important that we just enjoy this beautiful house as it is for now. We are finishing off smaller projects right now and those really add up. A new front gate, a few new windows, finish fencing the agility paddock and new boiler are the next steps for this year and after that a well deserved rest.

We still need to finish off the fencing but we put some temporary fencing up so that I can do some lessons and also train my own dogs finally! Monday I actually went out and trained all three dogs for the first time in a long time. This was good timing as the snow started yesterday and has not stopped! Snow in November in England is very unusual; I don't think it has ever happened since we arrived in 2001.

This photo shows the garage from the bottom of the agility paddock. It is a nice distance from the house and now we have loads of parking.

This is my little "doggie room". I finally have my dog sink up and running which makes sheltie bathing less back breaking. I have a place to store my training bits and pieces and a place to make tea! I even have a toilet; what more could I want?

This is the view from my little doggie room.

I know it is not the indoor training venue that I would love but I am very happy with my little room and my lovely agility paddock. It is big enough to set up courses but not so big that mowing is impossible. The ground drains well and the grass/weeds seem to hold up to the dogs running. Hopefully I can continue to do some training during the winter barring anymore snow storms!

By the way, no one can say my husband doesn't know exactly what to get me for our anniversary....my new agility tyre! It was a difficult tyre to buy as they haven't used frame tyres in England for a long time. I wanted a frame tyre because that is what they use in other countries and I like to train my dogs on it right from the start.

After a cold snow day there is nothing better than a fire in our new woodburner! We love it!

Discover Dogs 2010

2010-11-20T09:28:00.006Z

Discover Dogs takes place at Earls Court in London. It is mostly a promotional event for The Kennel Club where they showcase all the breeds and some of the doggie activities such as agility, flyball and freestyle. It is a nice event for the public with mega shopping opportunities.

In agility they invite the small and medium dogs who are going to Olympia in December. It is a good warm up for the dogs and for me it was a good opportunity to see how Zaz dealt with travelling in London and doing agility surrounded by crowds of spectators. The venues are not the same though as Olympia takes place on a sand/dirt surface and is a huge oversize ring whereas Discover Dogs agility takes place on astroturf in a small ring.

I had a really nice day out with Zen and Zaz. I was really pleased with how Zaz dealt with the crowds and noises of London and how she worked in the agility ring. She is such a pleasure to be with!

Dennis was going to come with me and I am sure I would have loads of photos if he did! But unfortunately the heating in our house was acting up and he had to stay home to wait for the plumber. Luckily Karen was going with Todd so I caught a lift with them. Karen was very brave to drive through London and we got there quickly in the morning although the ride home in Sunday night London traffic was not so pleasant!

The courses were not difficult as this was more about a display for the audience and I think the small ring makes it difficult to be creative. So it was all about speed and not losing your head in the excitement!

Zaz came 3rd in the jumping and 2nd in the agility. This put her 2nd overall. I was very proud of my little girl; she could not have done better. Zen came 4th in the jumping and 3rd in the agility and this put her 2nd overall. If we can do this well or better at Olympia I would be chuffed to bits!

Some video. I do love my new little video camera. It is as small as my phone and takes really good video which is easy to download. Thanks to Nancy and Jay for videoing for me.

Zaz jumping.

Zaz agility. Gotta laugh at Dave who says at the end "I didn't know you could run that fast dear". haha Oh and he got Zaz's name correct! For once she was OBay Itz Got Pizzazz and not OBay Itz Got Pizza! Thanks Dave you are a star!

Zen agility.

It was really fantastic to have 2 days of agility this past weekend; I have missed it!

Next weekend is my birthday and our 22nd anniversary and Dennis gave me my present today. So more about that later with photos. I bet you can guess what it is?

North Downs Agility 2010 with video!

2010-11-16T15:37:00.005Z

North Downs is a lovely local indoor show that has become even better with addition of more small and medium classes! I was so excited to be running all the girls again and I had 3 runs for each. Nine runs in all. Since I have not been posting many videos of the girls lately I thought I would try and post a video of each pup's run even the ones with errors. Who knows maybe it will help someone out there to see that we all make mistakes?

First here is Zaz's winning Grade 6/7 run. It is hard to believe that Pax won into Grade 7 (aka Advanced) in 2004, Zen won into Grade 7 in 2005 and Hex won into Grade 7 in 2007 so it has been quite awhile since I had the "pressure" of trying to get that last win to get into Champ classes. I was happy with how we handled this course and even happier with our "Funny Turn" at the #7 jump after the tunnel. I have been wanting to add some European-type blind turns into our training and this is the first time we tried one in competition.

Obviously I had one major goal in mind for this show. To win Zaz into Grade 7. And we did it! The funny thing is that now I remember how important it is to be complete about my Goal setting....Out of 6 runs with Zaz and Itzy I only had ONE clear and it was the one clear that won Zaz into grade 7! HAHA I must remember to add more to my goals because I seem to only get EXACTLY what I ask for. From now on my goals will include 100% clear 1st place runs with both girls! Ask and you shall receive.

Zaz put in two more good runs but with some small miscalculations on my part. She tries so hard and we just need time and practice. In her 3-7 agility I miscalculated her speed down the middle after the Aframe and just could not get there to show her the jump before the dogwalk and she ended up taking it from the wrong side. I am not sure if a double rear cross would have worked either; it is just one of those sequences that you would have to run a few times to see what worked. I was really pleased with how she handled the Aframe even with me peeling off to try and beat her up the line of jumps.

In her jumping we made the mistake at the same place that most people did. I still think the way I handled with with Zaz was the right way for her but she just back jumped due to inexperience. Then it just went all wrong as Zaz was correctly telling me!

Itzy was a little star and I feel that she is still going up a gear. This show was her first Grade 6 show and I felt as if she belonged in Grade 6. In her first run (in the 6/7 that Zaz won) I didn't see the back of the long jump as an off course possibility. Itzy showed me it was a possibility and that helped me when running Zaz after Itzy!

In Itzy's jumping I tried a funny turn and it went all wrong! I couldn't get either pup around this course. Hmmm.. With both dogs I went wrong at #9 and #12 (jump before weaves should be from the other side).

In her 3-7 agility she just miscalculated the weave entrance but otherwise was lovely. So all in all I was really pleased with her and feel as if we will have a great season together next year.

I can't forget Zen. Sometimes I feel that now she is just coming along for the ride but she feels differently. Zen ran 2 beautiful clears in agility with a 1st and 2nd place! In one of the classes Zen got 1st, Todd (Zen's nephew) came 3rd and Zeki (Zen's daughter) came 4th! Unfortunately a border collie snuck in there for 2nd place just messing up our potential sweep! Must try harder!

We had such a lovely day at this show and I was just ridiculously happy to be running Zaz and Itzy. They are such fun: my two little "Soul Sisters". Thanks girls!

I have now finished baking the cupcakes to take to class tonight to celebrate Zaz's win. So more about Discover Dogs 2010 show with video tomorrow!

Denmark Trip 2010 Part 3

2010-11-15T13:03:00.003Z

So we spent the last two days at the Silvia training day. Silvia put up some great courses to run and I have already set them up in my own agility field. It was good to watch everyone running them but, of course, the whole time I was wishing I had my dogs there with me!

I took lots of video but as they were not my dogs I don't feel right posting them. But I did think this video clip was too funny not to post. Silvia had everyone working on their "cik/cap" turns (tight wing wrap turns) in the way she recommended. I thought I would video the three shelties there who were either one of my own or sired by Monty. How strange that the noise increased exponentially when three shelties were out on the floor at the same time? LOL

The only disappointing part of the training day was the flooring. It was a beautiful venue; light and bright and open. A training venue we would all LOVE to have. Unfortunately this lovely venue was let down by the flooring as it was was carpet over concrete. Not something I would want to run my dogs on.

It was a good two days not only listening to Silvia's ideas on handling but also seeing how each handler worked on the courses. I loved the variety of handling and the variety of dogs working. What works for one team may be different for another team and that is what I love about agility. No rules; just knowing your own dog and your own strengths and abilities.

I really enjoyed the week in Demark just hanging out and talking shelties and dog training! Thanks for inviting me Johanna!

Denmark Trip 2010 Part 2

2010-11-12T08:09:00.004Z

Only in Denmark. Crazy Danes!

Although it even came in pink, I didn't buy the lamp! LOL But I did buy this fab individual coffee press/travel mug. What a great idea and the coffee stays hot. Now I can make individual cups of coffee when I don't want to share my special flavoured coffees with Dennis.

People just kept torturing me with puppies; yet no one would let me buy one! LOL Here is Luna again now with Etta (litter sister to Dutchess). Etta is owned by Kirsten. Kirsten is a fabulous trainer and at 10 months old Etta already has obedience titles and is so well trained.

Yes another cutie! Pieya is a Monty daughter out of Monty's first litter sired in Denmark. Monty has produced so many nice puppies for the people smart enough to use him; for that reason alone it was worth letting him go to Denmark all those years ago. It is amazing to think that Monty had three pups (from 3 different mothers) at the World Champs this year and many up and coming up with promise.

We took a walk on the beach with Johanna and Marianne and a bunch of shelties (and one Spooky border collie). And I thought I had a noisy bunch! It was good to see Monty again. I cannot believe he will be 12 soon! He still does little bits of agility occassionally and he can still perform his studly duties. Go Monty!
By the way notice that Luna does not get involved in the mayhem with all those hooligan sheltie boys. haha

So finally we went to the Silvia Trkman training days. The first day was a trick training evening and Johanna and I just went to spectate. The building was lovely to look at; big and bright. But damn it was COLD and sitting to watch a tricks class generated little heat. Very interesting class with lots of ideas on more tricks to teach the pups. I guess because I agree with Silvia's ideas about starting pups on tricks to teach body awareness I already do alot of the work. But it is good to come back with a few more ideas that I had not thought of! Again there were some really nice dogs at this training and it was fun to watch people work through their training. I think a trick training class is hard as a one day event as some behaviors will take alot longer to perfect but everyone made a good start.

So the next two days would be the agility training days. Our class took place from 4pm-8pm so we had the days free to visit and shop which was great. The bad part about it was that it got really COLD at night! Not bad for the participants as they were running and training their dogs but for me just sitting and watching it as COLD! Did I say it was cold?

More later....

Denmark Trip 2010 Part 1

2010-11-12T07:31:00.001Z

I invited myself over to Denmark when Johanna told me about a Silvia Trkman training day near her. We don't get many "foreign" trainers here in England and after being at the worlds again I was inspired to get some new ideas. It is actually cheaper to fly over to Denmark than it is to drive some places in England (due to petrol prices). We made these plans months ago and they seemed like a good idea at the time. Then when it came time to actually leave....I was sad to leave Zaz and Itzy again so soon. Johanna was at a Freestyle competition on the day I flew in so I was kindly met at the airport by Marianne. Marianne took me to a local agility show so that she could pick up her husband Bent and the dogs. Luckily I got there in enough time to be able to watch a few runs and even got to see Bent run with Ticket. I must be his good luck charm because Ticket won her class while I was there!

Agility is agility world-wide but there are always differences. This show took place indoors at a sports recreation center. Nice and warm but I did not like the flooring. It was carpet over a wooden floor. I saw alot of slipping and dogs generally being cautious about running; I would have to have thought twice about competing there. The equipment was different from anything I have seen before as it was covered in ribbed carpet! The dogs all seemed fine with it but I would think they would need to get used to it.

The next two days I tagged along with Johanna to 2 days of training Canine Freestyle with Attila Szkukalek from England. Attila was well known for his dog Fly and their amazing Charlie Chaplin and Gladiator routines. I did pay attention a little but I have to say that I sort of glaze over when people do Freestyle as it does not interest me at all. I find it amazing how they can teach the dogs such complicated tricks and maneuvers; very inspiring. But find the whole "dancing with dogs" thing a little giggle-inducing! I have told Johanna that she is still my bestest friend but if she starts doing any of those weird moves that look hmmm well just WRONG! You know...just picture... Moves like lying on your back with your legs spread in the air while the dogs jumps through them OR having the dogs put their feet on your back and hop behind you....just wrong! enuf said! I did see some amazing dogs at the training but was most impressed by......

Dutchess was the most adorable little girl. She is Luna's neice out of a Monty Daughter and would be just what I wanted out of Luna. (Damn Luna why won't you give me a puppy?) I would have bought Dutchess in a heartbeat but her owner wasn't giving in. Boo hoo.

I was so happy to see Luna again. She is beautiful as always but not the easiest dog to photograph. Bi-blacks are the hardest colour shelties to photograph. Luna is petite and feminine but all her photos make her look like she has a huge head! You can see how tiny Dutchess really is as she makes Luna (who is only 13.5") look huge! Gosh I do love the little ones....

We are still waiting for Luna to come in season again to try breeding one more time. I have got to catch a break eventually don't I? Come on Luna help me out!

This is what Luna thinks about all the fuss. If she could speak she would be saying "Whatevah!"

Shrewsbury Agility show 2010

2010-11-10T17:44:00.008Z

The weekend after we returned from Germany I headed up to the Shrewsbury Agility show. It was a long trip up for a one day show but I really wanted a chance to move Zaz and Itz up a grade. Zaz just needs one more win to go Grade 7 and I wanted to get Itz into Grade 6. I have missed so many shows with Zaz and there are not many shows now until next year. As this was a dedicated small/medium show I thought it would be worth the drive.

I stayed at a beautiful B&B and I had the entire place to myself! The B&B was so pretty but it had cream carpets and cream duvet covers so I was so worried about muddy doggy footprints. As I had to wipe their feet everytime they took a step outside; Zaz and Itz were not as impressed with the B&B as I was. We woke up to a fantastic hot breakfast and headed out to the show which should have been only 15-20 minutes away. It is a beautiful part of the country and I would love to go back for a longer visit.

I had never been to this show before so I used my Sat Nav with the postcode given on the schedule. Unfortunately this did not take me to the show site and I drove around for over 1/2 hour trying to find it! I had to keep stopping to ask people if they knew where it was. There were no details on the schedule and it said just look for the sign; but it turned out to be the world's smallest agility show sign. LOL When I finally could see the show site; I could not figure out how to get in! There were closed gates and I could see the show site down the hill. I pulled up to the gates and turned around looking for an open entrance. Then after more driving in circles I met some local people and they said that they thought the gates could be opened! (they were those solid metal gates that you sometimes see in an industrial estate). Finally I pulled up again and some cheery guy in black leather (not!) came up and opened the gates. Without a word he let me in and then closed the gates behind him. Really strange! As he gave me no instructions I headed off to drive to where I saw cars parked and that was the only time he opened his mouth and made a comment about how I had to go park elsewhere. I guess they are used to people who have been there before but the rudeness was not necessary. Not a good start to my first experience there! Yikes at that moment I wasn't feeling too positive about my decision to drive all that way to this show.

Happily after that bad start the rest of the day was lovely. It was a nice little show and each dog had 3 runs. It was so nice to have 2 graded runs with the small dogs; I really appreciate the clubs who do that. Unsurprisingly our weeks of no training showed and I was not totally in sync with the Zitzy twins. Sadly I got an E in the graded 6 agility with Zaz and then got a 2nd place in the Graded 6 jumping. Bleh! So close! I know that Zaz will do it. She has only been shown in 8 shows since she started competing in June yet I feel as if we have been competing together forever. I just love this little dog.

Itzy and I pulled it together for her Grade 5 agility and she won it! Hurrah!!That made Itzy Grade 6. Then Itz and I went on to do two more gorgeous Jumping runs with silly mistakes. That little Itz just keeps me guessing with what she is going to do; I need her to keep me humble! Even though I have actually competed at more shows with Itzy we really don't have a complete and total understanding. I love running Itzy as there is always a little excitement involved! LOL

Her is the naughty Zitzy twins with their prizes from Shrewsbury. I have made an effort since June to get photos with all their trophies and ribbons from each show. This way I don't feel guilty recycling the trophies and ribbons at the end of the year.

Our next adventure was going to be our trip to Denmark to visit Johanna, see some shelties and to see the Silvia Trkman training day. More later!

Autumn 2010

2010-11-08T14:28:00.006Z

How about this gorgeous (and yummy!) Zen Cupcake? Made by a very talented friend for Zen and I. I had no self control and ate it immediately after taking the photo!

So now the agility season is over and the excitement of the World Championships is in the past. The past few weeks of not getting up early and driving insane distances has been lovely! I have had quite a few weekends of just puttering around the house and garden with Dennis and both of us doing odd bits and pieces to make the house feel more like our own. Dennis is enjoying his new toy. And we are building a garage to house his new toy! :-) The garage was started in September and hopefully will be done in 3-4 weeks. Here it is a few weeks ago before the roof tiles and siding were put on.

Today the roof was finished and the scaffolding starting to come down. These photos show the side facing my agility paddock. The little room with the stable door on the end is my room where I can keep my training bits-n-pieces. Even better it will have a doggie bathing tub so I can groom my dogs out there. After moving the oil tank tomorrow the builders can start doing the ground work around the garage and will be making me a little paved patio for under my porch and then will gravel around the garage for extra parking.

Here is our beautiful garden this afternoon complete with the most perfect semi-border collie called Murphy. I was allowed a short Murphy visit to make me happy and help exercise the shelties. I know you can hardly see the dogs in this photo but the sun came out and everything looked so peaceful.

Training has been sporadic. Zen has been on a mega agility break and since the garage is being built I have had little chance to train the pups. We work on silly things like sheltie torture before dinner time.

I have been trying very hard to keep all three girls fit and a walk at the Witterings Beach was just the ticket to burn off some sheltie energy. Here is Zaz with Poppy. Poppy was not going to give up her tennis ball!

Another noisy walk with shelties; you may want to turn off the volume especially if you are watching this at work! Let it be known that only one of those tri-shelties were mine. I only brought Zaz on this walk; the other two tri shelties were Zeki and Yaz.

I found this photo on my Iphone today while trying to clear out some photos. Here is Zen and I after arriving at the hotel in Germany before the World Champs. I had on my Team Small Dog shirt which had arrived in the post the day before! I really bought it for Zaz and Itz who are my own personal Small Dog team. But thought it was appropriate for Zen as the logo says "small fast kick yer ass"!

We have done a few exciting doggie things over this past month including an agility show and a trip to Denmark. I will post about them later.

FCI World Agility Championships 2010 Part 4: ZEN

2010-10-13T11:21:00.001+01:00

It was our last run. I felt really relaxed as I had nothing to lose; we were in 28th place so the reality is that we could not medal. The course was not difficult at all and I knew there would be too many quick clears.

I did not feel down about it; I just made sure to enjoy it even more. This course was so easy I did not even need to ask for help in deciding how to handle it! (VBG) I went to the start line knowing this would be Zen's last FCI World Championship run. Probably the only thing I did differently was to run her Aframe as I figured we had nothing to lose. My goal was to run the course relaxed and efficient with Zen's typical smooth style.

I promised Zen that after her last run she could have an ENTIRE cup of tea. Zen's favorite treat in the world is tea. She usually shares a cup with us in the evening but only gets what we leave at the bottom. This time she deserved the whole cup to herself. So I brought a Thermos of water from the hotel and made the cup of tea before we ran. After her run we went back to our little room and I let her drink the whole cup. These little dogs don't ask for much do they?

After Zen had her cup of tea and I had a little cry I gave her the biggest hug and told her she was the best little dog in the world. Zen loves her agility and could run agility all day long. What she does not like is the travelling and the commotion at the large venues. She has done 4 FCI World Championships for me and I don't have any doubt that she did it for me. Zen placed in the 2nd in team agility and 4th in team jumping (she was not in individual that year) in 2005. In 2007 she came 3rd in Individual Agility, 2nd in Team jumping and 3rd in team agility. That year her medium team earned the Silver medal. In 2009 Zen ran two clears in her individual runs to come 5th in the world. This year she ran two clears in the individual and came 13th overall. In between she has had 3 litters of puppies and kept me from losing my mind after I lost Hex. I have no right to ask anything more of her and she has earned the right to just chill and run in local shows.

What a star...Thanks Zen.

FCI World Agility Championships 2010 Part 3

2010-10-13T10:50:00.003+01:00

Saturday morning began early with small individual agility. I was more nervous watching Nicky with Indy and Suzanne with Unique. Each one had a shot at a medal. They were lying 4th and 6th going into the individual agility. Both dogs has also had double clears in the two team runs with Unique actually winning the team jumping class. Both Unique and Indy are super little dogs with such talented handlers. I am lucky to have matched them up all those years ago.

Here are Indy and Unique's individual jumping runs. I love watching Nicky and Suzanne's individual styles in handling.

Unfortunately Indy was up first and he misread a rear cross picking up a fault. After that Nicky gave up and finished up with an Elimination. That was stressful enough but next up was Suzanne and Unique. Unique has been so close; always at the top but just missing out due to bad luck. He was putting in a foot perfect run when a slight bobble caused him to drop the double. It seemed like the bar came down reluctantly! It was such a shame as the rest of the run was gorgeous and he would have had the silver medal.

Indy and Unique are about 3 years apart in age and have the same Mother. True really made the best babies!

After the stress of watching it was now my turn again!

FCI World Agility Championships 2010 Part 2

2010-10-12T13:42:00.004+01:00

On Friday we had our first run. Team Jumping. All three dogs ran well and our team went into 8th place overall with the best combined times but with one fault.

Zen and I ran last and this always seems to be the case for us in team. People have asked me if I run last because Zen and I are more consistent or because I am not nervous at big events. Actually we run last because no one else wants to! I guess the pressure of running at the end after two clears worries some people. One of my former team mates said to me recently that he really wanted to see me run last after both my other teammates have run clear. I think he was implying that I wouldn't be so relaxed at that point. (VBG) Actually I would be just as relaxed as I know that neither my life nor my dog's life depends on that run. Each run is a moment in time that is meant to be enjoyed not worried about. Yes I want to run clear and fast and YES I want to win! But wanting to win and needing to win are two different things.

I take the runs seriously and obsess about how to run the course and how to remember the course. In fact my most nerve-wracking moments are getting the course map and trying to decide how to run the course. I always feel like that is the time I really could use help. I also worry about remembering the course and trying not to fall down! But once I step into the warm up area I let all that go and just try and enjoy the course and my dog. By that time, what will be will be.

All I can say to anyone who is thinking about competing at these events is DO IT! And take every moment into your heart and enjoy it.

Here is Zen in the team jumping.

The next day we had two runs. Individual jumping was first. The course was fairly straight forward and I was happy with how Zen ran. A misplaced front cross confused Zen and caused us a wide turn and almost wrong course. I was concerned about this sequence because it required a front cross followed by a pivot turn. Pivot turns for some reason are difficult for me. These are the times I wish I was more agile myself but I cannot beat myself up about it. I just need to work harder at figuring out other ways of handling the type of sequences that require pivots as it is where I really struggle. Luckily Zen saved me again although that wide turn cost us big time and we finished Individual Jumping in 28th place. I think we could have shaved off 1-2 seconds in that spot so I was slightly annoyed with myself but happy with Zen.

Team Agility was next on Saturday. I was really excited about this one as I felt we had a real shot at a team medal. I kept visualizing running last after two clears! Unfortunately my 2 team-mates made uncharacteristic mistakes and the two eliminations put the team out of the running. I felt good that we had a very positive and encouraging team and we all know that it could be any of us that made the errors. Either way we all looked good out there even with mistakes! My team-mates were so sweet and tried to talk me into joining the team again next year.

Here is Zen in the team agility. I have to encourage the GB supporters as I think they were in shock about the previous two eliminations! (VBG)

This was Zen's only mistake all weekend. Poor little thing!

I am used to seeing her jump more like this!

At the end of the day on Saturday none of our GB teams had made it to the podium. Such is the way of teams! Anything can happen.

Sunday would start early with the small individual agility followed by medium and large. So exciting!

FCI World Agility Championships 2010 Part 1

2010-10-12T11:59:00.012+01:00

Another FCI World Agility Championships is over. There is such a long build up to this weekend that is takes me a week or so to get together with my thoughts about our experience.

The day before we left I received a call that I was not expecting. We lost Zen's brother Lucky to Lymphoma. It was so unexpected as Lucky has been doing so well in his fight against the cancer; he had only just come back to running agility in August after undergoing months of chemotherapy. I kept thinking of the special people and dogs we have lost recently to cancer; agility seemed like the last thing I wanted to do at this point. One part of my brain said why bother with something as trivial as agility when there is so much sadness. On the other side my brain said Go for it while you can; life is too short.

Zen had other ideas...She had her pink union jack bag packed and ready to go. I must admit every time I stepped to the startline I said to Zen "Let's do it for Lucky".

A gift for Zen from Lesley; what could be more "Zen" than a pink union jack?

Our World Champ build-up started the weekend before with our "official" team practice. I have never understood why we have the official practice on the weekend before we leave for the champs. It always seems to be too late by that point! Luckily the girls from the medium team got together for a few sessions the month before so that we could work on some European courses. That was so helpful; having Nancy set up courses that we could walk and run together. To me that is the best practice and a great way to get the team working together. It was those sessions with Nancy and the medium team along with a few extra lessons with Lesley that helped me feel confident going into the competition.

The official team practice has the potential to be great as Steve sets some fantastic courses and gives us all good inspiring words of wisdom. For me it is also inspiring to see the each dog/handler team from each height attack the courses in their own particular way. I just wish this session was the month before and that we had more of them. Since we all love attacking these type of european courses we just cannot help ourselves from running each course. This can be a detriment when it is only 3 days before we leave for our journey! After some close calls on injuries (handlers and dogs) we were lucky to go into the competition with all dogs and handlers able to run.

At the official practice we all got a lovely suprise from Lesley! Union Jack Dog beds for all the dogs!

On Tuesday I said Good bye to Zaz and Itzy and left them with Nancy and Andy. Gosh that gets more and more difficult; I hate leaving them. But I knew they would be both spoilt and wrapped in bubblewrap for the week. Nicky and Indy arrived on Tuesday and the evening's entertainment was watching a DVD on Russian Agility training. It was not meant to be a comedy DVD but it kinda was....just saying! Still we learned a few things about their methods of training for our own dogs and about new ways to handle our own students! Lets just say they have little patience for people who "do not listen!".

We had an early morning start to get to the Eurotunnel and start our trip across to Germany. It was one of the easier trips; not too long and fairly straight forward. Dennis drove the entire way and we got to our hotel in enough time to take a walk, unpack and shower before a nice dinner. The hotel we stayed at was gorgeous! The hotel was right on a river and you could walk along the river into the town of Amberg. The rooms were beautiful and the food was good and we were only 20 minutes from the venue. As compared to other years at the WC and EO; this was heaven!

The next day was the team practice at the venue. We were suprised to hear that other countries were able to rent equipment at the venue during the previous two days. While we probably would not have taken advantage of this; it would have been nice to know. We found out during the ride to Germany from Facebook postings of other countries!

Practice was chaotic as usual. Every year I try and go in just to work on getting Zen relaxed in the environment and used to the equipment and surface. Best laid plans and all that; the atmosphere sends her over the edge and she gets a glazed look in her eyes! I just cannot keep her from barking non-stop and after 5 minutes any advantage is gone. Zen is just not a dog that trains well in that type of environment. I walked out of the practice a little discouraged. We just did not feel in sync and as usual I feel like Zen and I are so slow compared with the border collies and younger members on our medium team. Not a good way to start our last world champ experience.

After the practice I walked Zen around for awhile and mentally slapped myself. I had the most gorgeous talented little dog in the world. I was determined to enjoy this experience with her and celebrate our time together. How lucky am I to have had this dog by my side for the last 7.5 years making me look like a good handler and trainer?

I love to hug Zen as she puts up with it with such a look of distain on her face!

After the practice we headed back to the hotel and took a walk into the town of Amberg. Such a cute town; until the Brits got there and posed and abused the local animals...

Zaz and Itz Stour Valley 2010

2010-09-23T10:49:00.003+01:00

We competed this past weekend at Stour Valley. It is a nice small (6 rings) relaxing show. Just park me close to the rings and I am a very happy bunny! Add in beautiful weather and nice people and that is the perfect agility show for me. As a bonus Dennis actually came with us on the first day!

I was expecially looking forward to competing with Zaz. Zaz and I have not competed since July except for the Olympia Semi so I knew we would be a little rusty. This was her first show at Grade 6 and luckily there were two Graded 6 classes (rather than grade 6/7 combined) so I was hoping we could get a win towards Grade 7.

We started out the day with our jumping class which just went WRONG. It was like we just could not get ourselves together. So the best thing to do was to sit around and drink coffee, eat breakfast and chill while waiting until our agility classes were ready to run. In the afternoon we got our mojo back and thank goodness the agility classes went much better. Zaz ended up winning 2 agility classes on the Saturday and one on the sunday. 3 wins towards Grade 7 and only one to go! She came close on Sunday to winning the fourth class but ended up 2nd in a tough jumping class.

Itzy had a really good weekend also. We made silly errors in our Graded 5 classes so unfortunately she did not move up to Grade 6 this weekend as I had hoped. But Itz was running like a little Itzy Bitzy bullet! She is the type of dog that is rather steady in training but speeds up in competitions. This makes each run quite a suprise for me! She did get one jumping win and came 2nd to Zaz in a combined 4-7 class which was pretty awesome for my little Itz. What made that 2nd place even more impressive was that she had to run the course twice. The electronic timing did not stop in her first run. This meant that although she ran clear she had to run again from scratch. Running from scratch when timing fails is probably the fairest way to handle the situation. Of course it does not feel fair to the handler (me!)at the time but the alternative (running for time only) is not really fair on the rest of the competitors. This is the 2nd time Itzy has failed to stop the time in her short little career to date! I think the electronic timing is just dazzled by her cuteness and forgets to stop. LOL

Here are Itzy's two runs over the same course. I am not sure if the first or second run is actually quicker. Either way she was so darn cute!

Here is Itzy running the second time. I was worried that she would be slower from being tired as we only had a few dogs in between for her and I to get our breath back. Her startline is getting as naughty as her sister Zaz which means I am consistant in teaching naughty startlines. GGG

Zaz running the same course but just once!

Another agility course from Saturday.

Zen had a good weekend also. I only ran her in one agility class per day just to proof her contacts. On Sunday she did the most perfect contacts and won her class. This was a great way to end her last show before the World Championships.

I still have so much to teach the Zitzy twins. It is hard to believe that they will be 2 years old in December yet I have only been competing with them since June. They still seem so much like babies to me. With past dogs I have felt that they were grown up and mature by two years old. Zen was in her first world championships at just over 2 years old. But not these two! Maybe it is because they turned 18 months (age they can compete) during the middle of the season and so they did not have as many compeitions? Or maybe it is because I am training two of them at the same time? Either way it is so exciting because I feel as if we all can keep improving!

Olympia Semi 2010

2010-09-07T10:00:00.004+01:00

I was really looking forward to the Olympia Semi-Finals this year. I was competing on both Friday and Saturday with Zaz and Zen. Zaz had qualified back in July at the Agility Club show. I figured we had a month of competition to fine tune our teamwork but that was not meant to be. It turned out that the Agility Club show in July was Zaz's last competition until the semis arrived this weekend! So although I know my little dog is special; I also knew that our partnership was a little rusty. I had to keep reminding myself that she qualfied by placing in the top 3 of over 150 dogs so she had the potential.

So Zaz and I arrived on Friday morning hoping but not expecting. Thank goodness for the warm-up run as it proved to be a little hit and miss for Zaz and I. Some good things came out of it; her contacts were spot on and she was being very responsive. The warm up gave me a good idea of how she was running. She was not running full out and she was watching me quite a bit as well as barking. I admit that after seeing the final course, I made a decision to run her cautiously in the final. I knew that the course would claim many faults among the 33 dogs that had qualfied.

The good news is that Zaz and I are going to Olympia 2010. I had mixed emotions as the last time I was at this semi-final was when Hex had qualified there for Olympia 2008. I then lost her only one month later. And losing Nanette only one week ago made it hard to get excited about a dog show. So maybe my joy at qualifying was not as strong as it would be otherwise. Don't get me wrong I was happy to qualify and so very proud of my little dog but it was just not as important to me as it should have been. Or maybe that is the way it should be? Maybe we all take this little game we play with our dogs too seriously.

There were two other OBay shelties who qualified to compete in the small semi. Nicky and Indy put in their normal quality run and have also gone through to the Olympia Finals. Elizabeth and Ziga were competing at the semis for the first time and came oh so close to qualifying. A small error put them out of a finalist position but we know they will be back next year to try again!

After the small semi on Friday I spent the night at Nicky's new house about 1 hour away. Nicky had moved into her house last year and, like us, has a hard time leaving her gorgeous new house! I can now see why as she has the most fabulous house with adjacent agility field all set in the middle of a forest! Why would you want to leave? We could walk into the forest and walk for miles right outside her front door. We got back late so I just took the dogs for a quick walk and after only a 5 minute walk came across this beautiful lake. I only had my Iphone so this photo is not great but it gives you an idea of the peacefulness of the area.

Zen was competing the next day in the medium semi-final. I had no expectations for the medium competition because of the large number of border collies and border collie crosses that had qualfied this year. Zen has nothing to prove to me; I know she is the most awesome dog possible! She gives it her all and runs her little legs off for me but I knew it would be down to the course design. A straight forward course with straight lines would be our downfall. I left the showgrounds excited on Friday as the courses on Friday were challenging. These were just the type of courses we needed for Saturday's medium competition.

We arrived on Saturday to another bright and sunny Stoneleigh. The good weather combined with close parking and lots of vendors makes for a great day at any dog show. The warm up went well with Zen getting 4th place. She was running well and I was pleased with her contacts. I was suprised at the simple course but as it was the warm-up I was not overly concerned. Then the final course was set and we walked it over lunch. I walked it and walked it and still could not find any place where Zen and I could shave off any time. It was a very straight forward course and it would just come down to pure speed. I must admit I was very discouraged. I had to take myself away from the course and the other handlers and just sit with Zen and re-group my thoughts. It would have been terrible to go into that ring with my awesome dog already thinking that we were not going to make the top 10. I was tempted to just leave at that point as I do not ever want to run my dog with negative thoughts in my head.

Once I gave myself a good talking to and again realized that it was up to me to enjoy the course not matter what it was. Zen and I could enjoy the course even if we did not qualify. I hope we attacked the course as well as it felt (no video!). I do not think that Zen could have gone any faster.

No video but we did get this fabulous photo from Alan Score of Zen during the semi.

In the end Zen did qualify but only just! She came 9th and the top 10 go through. We very nearly did not make the top 10 but the last few dogs made uncharacteristic errors. Sadly the only other OBay sheltie, Todd, ran a beautiful clear but ended up in the unenviable position of 11th place. Just out of qualifying which was so disappointing for Karen.

It was nice to spend Sunday at home relaxing. Dennis is away in Japan so the dogs and I just put our feet up and chilled out in the garden. Read some books, watched some videos, picked some tomatoes and runner beans and even did a little bit of training with both pups. Ahhh... heaven.

Sad days

2010-09-05T19:50:00.003+01:00

Sadly last week we lost a special person in our lives. Dennis' sister Nanette lost her battle with cancer. It is hard to accept that she is gone; her time on this earth was not long enough.

This photo of Dennis with his brother Richard and his sister Nan was only taken 6 weeks ago.

Cherish your family and friends.

Kennel Club Festival and Dogs In Need 2010

2010-08-31T10:19:00.010+01:00

Our mega-agility week has past. I had certain expectations of what we would achieve and it just did not turn out as I thought! Certainly not as expected but not in a bad way...

Zaz came in season unexpectedly which put to rest all our plans of getting into the finals and Crufts with Zaz. I was disappointed not to be running Zaz but that is the life of running an intact girl. So how lucky am I that I also had Itzy to run!

Itzy really came into her own during the week of agility. She actually went a little agility crazy but she was such fun to run.

Zen kept up her string of clean fast runs and made it to the British Open Final. She finished up by coming 2nd in the British Open (2nd to a fantastic fast kelpie from France) which sends her to Crufts 2011 for the International Agility representing England.

All the Kennel Club Festival finals were fun to watch. There were quite a few OBay Shelties that made it to the finals but especially note worthy was Daniel and Bailey winning the KC Novice Cup!

Another great OBay win put Zeki into Grade 7! Champ classes next year for Nancy and Zeki!

Dennis stayed with us at the Kennel Club Festival and with 18 rings of agility to get around it was helpful to have him there! Sadly Dennis had to return to work after the KC show. So he drove me to the Dogs In Need show, set up the caravan and left me and the three dogs for the week.

It was even more difficult not to be able to run Zaz at Dogs in Need as there are less runs per dog at this show. Compared to our many many (too many!) runs at the KC Festival, the 2 runs per dog at DIN seemed easy. Of course nothing is easy when all 4 runs happened before 11 am each day. Ha! Still DIN is such a nice show and very relaxed and chilled.

Itz continued to amaze me with her enthusiasm and speed!

I was so excited to find out that Itzy made the Dogs In Need Novice final! Itzy went into the final as the top placed Novice dog and ran last. She put in a great run and we only had one baby mistake where she ran by the see-saw. She had taken the previous jump at an angle and I did not think to worry about her picking up the see-saw. But she is still a baby and it is in these little things that we both need to get experience to start working together as a team. It is for this reason that I was so glad to have the whole week of being able to concentrate on Itzy. I called it the "week of Itzy". LOL Do you remember the old show children's show " The Howdy Doody Show"? For some reason the song stuck in my head and everytime I went to the ring with Itzy I would sing "It's Itzy Bitzy Time" to the theme song tune of "Howdy Doody". Yes I am sad but it cracked me up! This little dog sure knows how to make me laugh.

Although Itzy did not win the Novice finals; the OBay Shelties did us proud again with Daniel and Bailey coming 2nd and Peggy and little Zoe coming 3rd!

In the Small/Medium Champ finals at DIN we had two good results. Nicky and Indy won the small Champ ticket and Karen and Todd won the medium reserve champ ticket. Congratulations to the OBay boys who like to prove that it is not only girlpower. This is Todd's 2nd reserve champ ticket so we know that the Champ ticket cannot be far away!

Zen also made it into the Finals for the Grade 6-7 dogs. She put in another clean fast run and came 2nd to Natasha and Dizzy. I never feel dissappointed coming 2nd to the World Champion and Zen still amazes me with how easy she makes it seem.

Overall there were 7 OBay shelties that made it into the small/medium finals at Dogs In Need!

So the mega-agility week is over. Out of our agility bubble we all emerge; back to reality. Can I go back please?

7 things....

2010-08-22T14:50:00.004+01:00

We are back from our mega-agility holiday. Usually I would say we were "agilitied-out" but I actually am not! I could have done more agility but was tired of being in the caravan. I loved running Zen and Itzy and had a great time with both of them. Unfortunately Zaz came in season a week before the Kennel Club show so I could not run her. It was disappointing but it means that she will be out of season for her first Grade 6 show and even better, for her Olympia semi-final. So really she was a most accommodating girl! So the week was all about Itzy! When I walked to the ring with Itzy by my side I would sing to her "It's Itzy-Bitzy time" (yes I am sad that way) as it felt right that I concentrated on her this week. More about our agility week in another post.

As I have been downloading videos I was catching up on blogs that I like to read (I missed them while I was away!) and found that another blogger nominated us to write 7 things you may not know about me or my dogs. I do not usually like these games but this one intrigued me as I have been doing alot of thinking lately. (scarey) I actually had a more difficult time coming about things you may not know about my dogs as I talk about them so much! So here goes:

7 things you may not know about me:

1. I bred my first litter of poodle pups when I was 11 years old and whelped them all on my own on Christmas eve while my parents were at Christmas mass.

2. I spent 8 years in Catholic school and still have terrible handwriting but am very good at spelling.

3. My parents never read a book to me yet I have loved to read since I was a child and even then could finish any book in one day.

4. Met Dennis on a blind date set up by our mothers.

5. Always hated being tall.

6. Used to drink " Long Island Ice Teas" when we went out to nightclubs as teenagers as it was the cheapest way to get drunk quickly. Now I hardly drink at all as I hate the results the next day!

7. For 8 years of catholic school we wore green plaid school uniforms with green knee socks. Once we graduated I swore I would never wear dark green socks again and I have not.

7 things you may not know about my dogs:

1. Pax suffered from seizures as a puppy and I never thought she would live past a year old.

2. Zen does not normally bark in the car when I sing. But if I sing "If you're Happy and you know it" Zen will bark exactly when I get to the part that says "clap your hands".

3. Zen hates having her photo taken.

4. My German Shorthaired pointer, Tess, used to chew on her front dew-claws when she was bored.

5. Joy once "spoke" to a animal communicator. What she said was amazing.

6. My first dog Honey-bun was a poodle that we bought at a pet shop called "Puppy Palace" and we got a discount on her as she had been there for so long.

7. Zen sleeps in a bed on the floor in our bedroom. She jumps up onto our bed every morning at almost exactly 5am just to curl up by our feet.

I am supposed to nominate 15 other bloggers. Rather than nominate specific blogs I will just ask that, if you have a blog, please join in! Let me know if you do join in as I would love to read what interesting answers I know will be coming!

Spookily the photo I put at the top of this post has 7 OBay shelties in it and that was not planned! I just wanted to dress up the blog post with a photo from last week!

Finally got home only to be leaving again! Mega blog post

2010-08-05T10:41:00.011+01:00

It seems as if I have been away from home for ages. I have enjoyed all our travels but missed the pups and the house. Jamaica and New York were both too hot but both weddings were beautiful. I hope that both sets of newlyweds have as many happy years together as Dennis and I have. We will be married 22 years this year and obviously I was a child-bride....

This was the view from our Villa in Jamaica. Yes that pool was all for us! Yet sadly I still missed my cottage in England!

The family at Jonathan and Jen's wedding in Jamaica. It was nice to have a family wedding somewhere interesting! We have tried to advertise our lovely garden in England for anymore family weddings. I am not sure our sales efforts worked but it is worth a try!

The family photo at Laura and Chris's wedding. Laura was a beautiful bride.

The European Open has come and gone. I have though alot about why we did not have more success there this year but have decided that I do not want to dwell on excuses. Instead Zen and I will just do more training over the next two months to get physically and mentally ready for the World Champs. What a little star she is and how lucky am I to run this little girl.

After the long trip back from the Czech Republic we got right back into agility again first with the UKA Masters final followed by Agility Club show. It was a long drive (3 hours each way) to the UKA Masters but I really wanted to give it a shot. The prize was money! Unfortunately Zen almost won it but one pole came down and that put us in 2nd place. Boo hoo! Luckily the 3 hour drive was worth it just to see Marilyn and Zavvi get on the podium and come 3rd in their first final. Way to go Marilyn and Zav-lana! You were running like a Russian!

Zavvi on the podium.

Marilyn running like a Russian!

This past weekend was the Agility Club show. It was better than ever because the venue changed to the showgrounds at Ardingly which are only 1/2 hour from me. Such a beautiful showgrounds compared to Newbury (which I hate!). Great walks for the dogs and good toilets; what more can you want from an agility show site? GGG

Saturday's results were mixed. I was disappointed with some of Zen's runs but happy to be a part of the English Shetland Sheepdog Club team. This was the last chance to qualify a team for Crufts 2011 and we did it! For the second time we will have an all-sheltie team at Crufts! And Zen will be the rose amongst the thorn as she is the only girl in the team.

Sunday was a much more successful day result-wise. Team OBay was ROCKING! Zen and her pups all won at least one class on Sunday! I had to get this photo taken since Zen and her girls won a Grade 3, Grade 4, Grade 5, Grade 6 AND Grade 7 agility class between them! Combined with Zavvi's podium place on Friday; I think that was a good OBay weekend.

From L to R: Yaz, Zen, Zaz, Itz and Zeki

I did not think I would have any video to share but luckily a friend's husband was in the queue and took some video on his camera. Thanks!

Here is Nancy and Zeki winning their Grade 6 agility. One more to go and Zeki will be in Grade 7 and be able to run championship. Zeki is looking great and as one of the smallest dogs in medium she is still holding her own.

To finish this mega post I have to brag about the "Zitzy" twins. Zaz and Itzy were amazing this weekend. Itz won her Grade 4 agility to move up to Grade 5. My special little girl just gives her heart into every run. Zaz won her Grade 5 agility and is now Grade 6! She is such a serious little worker and so much fun to run. Zaz also made my day by qualifying for the Olympia Semi Final. She is still naughty on her start line and I probably should work harder on it. Hehe

We have this next weekend off and for that I am happy! I will be hanging around the house and garden and NOT going anywhere! On Wednesday we leave for almost 2 weeks of agility. The Kennel Club International (with 18 rings of agility) is going to be massive with 3 days of agility followed by Dogs In Need Week with 4 days of agility and finished up with the Royal Canine UKA Final for Zen. Yippee! I am so excited to be running my three girls again!