Sheep Stalker

My neighbour has sheep on his land and the kelpies are pretty excited about it - especially Atilla who thinks they were a Christmas present just for him.

We put some ugly bamboo screening on our south side fence a couple of months back, not because we like the look of it (eeek!) but to try and cut down the force of the wind that constantly rips down the hill so we can actually plant some more natural screening and give it a chance of surviving. The wind has destroyed everything we've planted up 'til now. Before the sheep appeared the fence looked like this :

Within a couple of days of the sheep appearing the fence now looks like this in several places :

Any explanation Atilla ? Well of course it wasn't him, he says. How could you accuse this face?

Maybe it's time to go back to some more sheepwork next year..............

We are having a sort of 'semi break' from training at the moment. I want to keep working on fitness with both the kelpies, especially Atilla. We did a 10 kilometre walk along the beach last weekend with a friend and her dogs and it was a lot of fun. I really want to do a lot more hiking this summer but it's so dependent on the weather - nothing is fun in extreme heat.

We're going to have 2 weeks off jumping totally and have gone back to running a plank on the ground to try and build more speed for the dogwalk. Plus I am doing a lot of 'single repetition' weave poles and really rewarding highly for speed. He enjoys both these 'games.'

This year Atilla has almost become a 'comfortable shoe' in regarding to working with him as a team. I think this is both good and bad - good in that I feel he responds easily to my handling and all the errors (and there are plenty) are totally mine. Bad in that I don't want to become complacent running him as I know that at just turned 7 he still has a few more years trialling in him (hopefully) and there are still things that I know I could improve on with him.

Posing with his club sashes awarded for Masters Agility and Masters Jumping - he's so serious !

Cruz on the other hand has not got anywhere the comfortable shoe stage yet. But I'm working on it and going back to some more foundation work (ie: circle running and a lot more playing) can't hurt. Groundwork for his running A Frame has gone pretty well - we have the box on the ground as part of a jump grid with a board under the box to simulate the A Frame contact.

Yesterday I tried the box on a lowered A Frame just to see where we were. He did a great job of hitting the box, but the problem is coming over the A Frame. I want him to be a 2 hits up and down dog, but at the moment he is hitting 2 on the way up, then doing this little shuffle as he comes over the top, which is creating 3 hits on the down side. I tried a stride regulator near the top but it's freaking him out for some reason. As my main goal for him at the moment is reinforcement and keeping him happy, I have decided just to let him run the lowered A Frame for a bit to see if it builds his confidence at all. At the moment I am leaving the box there as he is well and truly hitting it each time, but I'm not commanding him to do so. I think the little shuffle came about when I changed his training to 2 on 2 off a while back - for some reason he has never been as comfortable doing this as he is on the dogwalk and it has changed his striding coming down. Again I'm sure it's my fault but the A Frame is truly my nemesis when it comes to training equipment. So we'll see how it goes just letting him run for a couple of weeks and then I'll reassess the training. (That's the plan anyway)

Cruz looks pretty happy about it and wishes everyone a belated Merry Christmas. As does Atilla ...... And old man Yasser who is about to turn 15 next week. And not forgetting the mad Cattle Dog Bosnich. (Puppy Ivy can do it on her own blog !)