Karran
Well-Known Member
Massive couple of weekends for Mrs Collie lately!
She's doing so well at trying to stay with me in the parks and not chase things so we're now upping the anti by going to the main park in Greenwich which is super busy with joggers and people cycling to work, we struggle upon arrival but then she manages to settle and we have a relatively nice walk and doesn't chase when we reach the bottleneck entrance/exit points, so i'm hopeful that its all going in the right direction there.
But she's finally been out earning her keep!
We did our KC Bronze award two weeks ago almost to the day that I picked her up and we have tentatively made enquiries about entering an obedience show in November. I find it rather dull compared to flyball/agility but the little peabrain comes home exhausted after class, so we'll deffo keep up the classes and dabble in the odd one or two.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNDDD!! This weekend we did our first flyball competition! We had a team in our 5 team division pull out through kennel cough and another go NFC on the day, so rather than risk chase issues, we only ran her in the empty lanes - we got a 3rd out of 3.
But on Sunday she ran in the starters/foundation competition and her team stormed home to a first place. She was exhausted by this and left her dinner half eaten to get into bed!
She was shocked to her very core to realise that being a sport dog involves more than dossing on the sofa and terrorising people in the park when we got up early again yesterday to run in the singles competition. She was awesome and went through to the finals where we lost by 0.02 of a second. It was a lot for her to handle and I did worry about her being over-stimulated and losing the plot but I think its helped enforce the idea that she's there to race other dogs, not chase them.
She has her first agility shows in a fortnights time, we've struggled a little with agility as our local club haven't reopened after covid, so its taken some time to find somewhere else to go that fits in around everything else, so we will just be doing some steeplechase classes to get used to the environment. She's still not great with weaves and hasn't yet attempted seesaws.
She is being spayed mid Sept and will then have a few months off to recover and then go back to training in January, and hopefully the break and the work she has put in recently will help cement everything in her mind.
Final shoutout to the worlds best spaniel who was raging she didn't get to play on Saturday and just there as a spectator and ran her paws off for me in her team comp on Sunday and singles comp yesterday to prove a point, recording her best times so far this season. A few green issues by her team meant we didn't place and my error in the singles meant we lost our semifinal in the singles and finished 4th I think. Still very proud of her though
She's doing so well at trying to stay with me in the parks and not chase things so we're now upping the anti by going to the main park in Greenwich which is super busy with joggers and people cycling to work, we struggle upon arrival but then she manages to settle and we have a relatively nice walk and doesn't chase when we reach the bottleneck entrance/exit points, so i'm hopeful that its all going in the right direction there.
But she's finally been out earning her keep!
We did our KC Bronze award two weeks ago almost to the day that I picked her up and we have tentatively made enquiries about entering an obedience show in November. I find it rather dull compared to flyball/agility but the little peabrain comes home exhausted after class, so we'll deffo keep up the classes and dabble in the odd one or two.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNDDD!! This weekend we did our first flyball competition! We had a team in our 5 team division pull out through kennel cough and another go NFC on the day, so rather than risk chase issues, we only ran her in the empty lanes - we got a 3rd out of 3.
But on Sunday she ran in the starters/foundation competition and her team stormed home to a first place. She was exhausted by this and left her dinner half eaten to get into bed!
She was shocked to her very core to realise that being a sport dog involves more than dossing on the sofa and terrorising people in the park when we got up early again yesterday to run in the singles competition. She was awesome and went through to the finals where we lost by 0.02 of a second. It was a lot for her to handle and I did worry about her being over-stimulated and losing the plot but I think its helped enforce the idea that she's there to race other dogs, not chase them.
She has her first agility shows in a fortnights time, we've struggled a little with agility as our local club haven't reopened after covid, so its taken some time to find somewhere else to go that fits in around everything else, so we will just be doing some steeplechase classes to get used to the environment. She's still not great with weaves and hasn't yet attempted seesaws.
She is being spayed mid Sept and will then have a few months off to recover and then go back to training in January, and hopefully the break and the work she has put in recently will help cement everything in her mind.
Final shoutout to the worlds best spaniel who was raging she didn't get to play on Saturday and just there as a spectator and ran her paws off for me in her team comp on Sunday and singles comp yesterday to prove a point, recording her best times so far this season. A few green issues by her team meant we didn't place and my error in the singles meant we lost our semifinal in the singles and finished 4th I think. Still very proud of her though
