If our driveway gets any wetter I might not be able to get my car out to go to work, which is not necessarily a bad thing.
Not long back we were getting so excited at even a little shower of rain but now everyone is complaining about it and actually wishing it would stop. It is definitely the wettest Winter I can remember for a long time and we haven't even got to September yet which usually gives us more rainfall than the Winter months put together.
The local creek has almost become a river - much to Bosnich's delight. Our usual walking path is under water at the point where it crosses the creek-river.
Even our smallest dam has water in it and is close to being full and covering the jetty entirely. Don't be fooled by the sunlight, it actually stops raining and comes out for around 20 minutes or so just to suck you in but then it disappears, everything goes grey and the rain starts again.
Training is very minimal for the kelpies at the moment as our agility area is under water.
(We are getting very good at shaping tricks and exercising on the balance discs inside the loungeroom though and Atilla's toy drive is currently through the roof which makes me very happy)
Luckily our Friday night training ground is still OK but that's not the case for many other clubs across Melbourne and trials are being cancelled as a result.
Poor Cruz won't get out trialling again until October now. I decided to give them a bit of 'one on one' time at a trial and entered Atilla in the State Trial at the beginning of September and Cruz at Croydon the week after, but Croydon has now been cancelled and it is too late to put an entry in for Cruz at the State Trial as well. The only other trial scheduled for September now is the Melbourne Royal and I never enter there as I don't like the undersized area they use and the tight courses you get as a result.
Even though I decided on the one on one thing for a couple of trials, I have really enjoyed running both of them lately, apart from the inevitable clashes between classes of course, and finally getting to run them on the same course for the first time has also been a good learning experience and has given my training some new directions - that's if this rain ever goes away and I actually get to train them again. Not holding my breath at the moment.
These photos of Atilla were taken by Steve from Akuna Digital Photography at Bendigo a couple of weeks back. We were probably lucky to get to run as there was only a small area of their ground left that wasn't too muddy and slippery from all the rain. If they had scheduled their trial a week later we might just have missed out.
Last Sunday was my favourite trial for the year - Wangaratta. I have been hanging out for this one for ages as I missed it last year after I wrote my car off. It probably ties with Warrnambool for my favourite trial actually, but the weather at Warrnambool is often not the best temperature wise (very humid) so Wang is a bit more pleasant to run for both humans and dogs.
This time it was wet, wet, wet so they had to move the rings which were still wet, wet, wet and started to get slippery in places by the afternoon.
Cruz got 2 runs, Atilla got 4 and I was pleased with all 6 of them. Atilla qualified in Open Agility (which I haven't entered for well over a year) and finished in 2nd place. He also qualified in Masters Jumping and finished in 4th place, running almost 7 seconds under SCT. I know this doesn't sound all that impressive, but considering I have had 5 runs over the past 12 months that have been either one or two tenths of a second over time, I was very pleased with his results. His fastest run for the day was Masters Agility where he was so pumped that he decided he just couldn't possibly wait for a 5 second count on the table and left just a fraction early. This is an absolute first - I don't think he's ever left the table early before, but I was still so happy with his speed and enthusiasm that it actually didn't bother me at all and I loved the run. He also put in a good performance in Masters Jumping in the afternoon - the only afternoon run I actually entered - but ran by a jump after I slipped in the mud.
Some more photos from Bendigo, this time with Cruz. Very high second hit on the upside of the A Frame although he completed the downside perfectly with 2 hits on this one. (Luckily the judge is visible in the photo so I know which run it's from)
I thought the ring set up at Wang would be a bit stressy for Cruz - no space between 2 rings so when you set up on the start line you often had another dog literally only a couple of metres behind facing the opposite direction. They also had the same entrance and exit so you had to come into the ring past the dog that had just finished its run, which he also doesn't particularly like doing. He coped with all this way better than I expected though. In excellent agility he popped the last weave pole when I pulled away early for the next obstacle- more proofing required there. The rest of his run was lovely. I also entered him in Masters Jumping for the first time and was prepared to make up my own course and just give him a big speed circle around the outside if I needed to but his work was confident on this course and I couldn't have been happier. I haven't been doing any long lead outs with him at trials due to his stress issues but I think I may have to rethink that and start biting the bullet - I got a 4 obstacle lead out with no sign of stress from him and although I know he's still got more in the tank, his speed was good. He put in a lovely run and handled everything with little difficulty so on the home run (3 jumps) I sent him on ahead and started running. Normally he won't go all that far ahead of me but this time he actually opened up and moved ahead leaving me in the dust - or the mud anyway. As he got to the last jump he turned his head to check that I was still coming behind him and in doing so actually ran past it.
So we were very close to having a qualifying run on his first try, plus even though he DQ'd right at the end, the timer still read out his time, which was almost 3 seconds faster than Atilla and would have put him into 3rd place and pushed Atilla down to 5th. To say that I was delighted with him would be an understatement.
I have only been entering him in agility since he finished his JDX earlier in the year in an attempt to play 'catch up' - at that point he still needed one more pass for his Novice agility title.
He has had 5 agility runs since then - Q in Novice agility (2nd place) for his AD, Q in Excellent agility (2nd place) at Sunbury, Q in both Excellent agility runs (1st place in both) at Bendigo - and something actually resembling speed on the 2nd run and then his run at Wang. Minimalist trialling seems to be working with him.
He also had a run in Novice Gamblers last month (which was the only run I entered him in on the day due to doing this minimalist thing) and also ran clear, finishing in 2nd place.
So I think I need to stop labelling him as a 'stress head' and to start expecting more from him as his results lately certainly don't match how I have been describing him. I also had some very positive comments about him at Wang. which was nice. The best thing about the day though was how happy he was each time he came out of the ring.
Atilla has also had some good results lately - 1st place in Excellent Gamblers to finish his title, also 1st place in Excellent Strategic Pairs to finish that title too. A couple of good Masters Jumping runs at Bendigo, with one fault in one and being 2 tenths of a second over in the other - lots of twists and turns in his 'stiff leg' direction. He also got a pass in Masters Gamblers on his first try and finished in 3rd place.
The thing that has really surprised me though (and I don't really know why as it should have been a no brainer) is just how much of an advantage it actually is to run 2 dogs on the same course. Cruz got to run first the day we did Gamblers and as the only thing that changed in the opening set up was the addition of a seesaw, and as Cruz had enough points in the opening not just to qualify for his Novice run but also enough for Masters, it made it much easier to plan an opening for Atilla and to have a pretty good idea where I would be when the first whistle sounded.
On the Masters Jumping course there were a couple of parts where I was a fraction late with a cue for Atilla which caused a wider turn than I would have liked, so I made sure I fixed this when Cruz had his turn.
So I am looking forward to running them both together again and hopefully getting it right at least the second time - that's if it ever stops raining !
