Family Reunion

Ivy got a lovely surprise at the Ballarat trial a couple of weeks ago - a chance reunion with her brothers who came all the way from Western Australia.



What a good looking bunch !



That's the very handsome and talented Dan on the left - a full brother to Ivy from an earlier mating. Dan is an awesome agility dog and if Ivy turns out to be half as good I will be over the moon. 

That's the gorgeous and very exuberant Quinn on the right - a half brother to Ivy as they share the same father.  The first three words that come to mind when watching Quinn run are fast, fast and fast - did I mention he was really fast ???  Definitely a potential superstar in the making there.

It might not seem all that exciting to catch up with relatives for those who do it on a regular basis (yes, I'm talking DOGS - LOL) but for the little girl who moved from one side of this big country to the other it was an out of the ordinary event that we were not expecting to happen so most definitely 'blogworthy'.  Hopefully we will meet up again if we end up making the trip to Nationals next June.

We have just returned from a full weekend trialling at Warrnambool - Ivy had a ball and was just as enthusiastic at the end of the second day as she was at the beginning of the first.  Wish I could say the same about me !  We finally managed to break the cycle of 'just one little thing and always something different' in Novice Agility when she won the ring on Sunday morning to complete her title.  Best thing was that her contacts were great on every run and she didn't self release once - I even chose a run where she had already knocked a bar to run past the end of the dogwalk and continue ahead without releasing her and she stuck her position perfectly. 

Our Summer project (after she has a break for a few weeks) is to really work on proofing those contacts and improve her confidence in driving to the end position that I want.  I was so despondent about her contacts after Sale at the beginning of the month, but a couple of weeks of 'extreme consistency' in regard to criteria really appears to be making a big difference to her performance.  Now that I have stopped obsessing about speed over the contacts at all costs and am more concerned about the consistency of her performance,  her 'slow-ish' (in relation to the end picture that I have in my head)  contact performance is suddenly speeding up anyway.  Another lesson learned the hard way.  I still intend to teach a running A Frame down the track, but I don't think I'm quite ready to take a walk on the wild side just yet.

The 'just one little thing' saga now seems to have taken up residence in Excellent Jumping.  We had some lovely runs over the weekend in jumping but just couldn't seem to manage a pass.  But very happy with her startlines, serpentines and response to my cues when I actually got to the right position, which sadly didn't quite happen as often as it should.  My favourite run for the weekend was probably the most difficult jumping course of them all, where we managed to get a fairly difficult lead out pivot into the tunnel, pulled off a fairly difficult diagonal line front cross, followed by a tight tunnel discrimination and by then I was on such a high that I totally forgot the course and just made up my own - but tragically I had made up quite a bit of it before I realised it wasn't right and the judge yelling out 'go straight ahead' brought me back to reality.  Well it felt right to me and obviously felt right to Ivy too as she was having a ball running my course instead of the judge's one which we both felt was far superior, LOL.

Just a couple more trials to go before the 2011 season is done and dusted and we look forward to them both as well as tackling the 'training list' over January and February.  Bring it on !