Taking the Long Way

That's what this agility journey feels like sometimes.  No matter how well you plan, there's always something out there to come along and mess with your mind.  Obviously my idea of postponing my usual Christmas 'time off from anything to do with agility training' and doing it sometime over Winter instead was a bad one, or so the universe ends up telling me.

Training was going great over Summer on my dry, grassless, dusty area until Ivy managed to get something sharp between her toes while executing a tight turn. Result, one totally mangled toenail and a big gash between the toes that was a nightmare to stop bleeding.  Just when I thought it was under control it would open up again .... and so the healing process had to start all over again.  Did I mention how impatient I am when it comes to not being able to train and Ivy is even worse!  And so we had quite a few weeks off in February/March even though it wasn't planned. Plus I learnt that toe injuries take forever to heal, who would have thought.


But the good news is - I have grass again.  So much nicer to run on than dirt and Ivy agrees.

We ended up missing the first few trials back this year.  I still went to Warrnambool and gave the caravan another outing in March since the accommodation was already organised.  Plus I managed a Masters Jumping pass with a 'borrowed' dog which was fun.  But I missed running my girl and couldn't wait to get back to it - especially as all I wanted was to start to test her contacts under trial conditions after hardly entering agility last year.  Yes, I'm one of those weird people who actually prefer running agility to jumping as well.


Any excuse for a photo overload .

So on to Easter - I didn't even bother entering jumping and entered every agility related run I could find.  Ivy was so excited to be back .... so what does her dumb handler do ....... climb a fence as a shortcut back to the car and pull something in my thigh, all before I have even had a run of course.

We tried to do Excellent and Open agility.  Excellent was a course where I didn't have to run too much, clear until the 2nd last obstacle which was a tunnel/dogwalk discrimination which we didn't get.  On the Open course we had one refusal, caused by me not being able to run and get to the end of the tunel in time.  I decided to call it quits after that as my leg was really hurting and it wasn't fair on Ivy either.  But the encouraging part mixed in with the frustration was that all her contacts met the criteria, big YAY for Ivy.

But wait, there's more - photos that is.

So now it's April and we have only just come back to trialling.  Last weekend was our first trial for the year so once again I am taking the long way.  Learning patience along the way too.  But very happy with her contact performance - over quite a few runs she self released only 2 times, once on an A Frame and once on the seesaw. 

I am willing to cut her a bit of slack on the A Frame for now as I'm sure I have confused her with retraining it so many times. (eg: you're stopping, you're running, now you're back to stopping again)  Plus on the next run I held her there while I ran off and she didn't move at all so I'm not worrying too much about the slippery slope of anticipation just yet.  But I'm not accepting anything like that on the seesaw, so much so that on the run where she self released I actually put her back on as I knew the particualr judge wouldn't mind ..... to the collective sound of gasping outside the ring as it was the 2nd last obstacle from home and we were clear at that point.  So I guess that taking the long way in Excellent agility is self inflicted and so be it.  The rest of her seesaws after that were perfect so I just keep telling myself I am right to look at the big picture, LOL.

We had a clear in Open Agility and won the ring which was pretty exciting given that there were quite a number of Agility Champion dogs entered in Open.   This was a lovely flowing course with the only real difficulty being the distance challenge which caught quite a few dogs out.  It's hard to see on the video but the line went from near the end of the A Frame with 2 jumps down to a tunnel (with the wrong end looking tempting for dogs that didn't really drive down the line of jumps) and then out of the tunnel over another 2 jumps ending in another tunnel discrimination.  I found this one hard as I had to handle it on the 'wrong side' of the jump because of the tape and really made a bit of a mess of handling that part - getting a big spin in the process that cost me time , plus lots of yelling and arm flapping I'm sure. NOT PRETTY ! But I don't think anyone looked very pretty handling that part and I was certainly happy with the outcome.  Here's the link to the video, thanks Deb for getting that run in between trying to fit your own in.
    
http://youtu.be/tKSVJGQj0HU

We also managed to go clear and win Novice Gamblers so a big weekend out for Miss Ivy on her first trial back.  Plus she did some lovely work on most courses - one bar down on another Excellent agility run (my fault, especially after seeing the video) and one refusal on the only Masters Jumping I ran -  totally caused by me yet again. 

Told you there were more !

Best thing was her contact performance though.  I am not naive enough to think that they are 'fixed' by any means but it was a good start under trialling conditions  I still want more speed across unfamiliar dogwalks (she's much faster on mine) and I know I need to watch that occasional self releasing on the A Frame but for the first time in her career I had contacts in a trial that I don't hate.  I don't necessarily love them either but I can really see the progress which makes me feel that taking the long way and having most of last year off agility was worthwhile.  I am so envious of all those gorgeous running contacts that I see many people training but I'm not quite ready to go on that journey just yet - hopefully I can get the stopped ones sorted first anyway.  Love training this girl, she is so much fun.  Some more 'testing contacts' coming up this weekend and then we will see where we are and decide how to go on.  Fingers crossed.