Bit of a shock

After a conversation to my mam about Gypsy’s weight, speed and how she’s tiring out so quickly, we went to check the records that we have on her. She’s 9 this year!

I know there are dogs who are 11 and 12 who are competing and are faster than her, but jeez bless her I wouldn’t have pushed her so hard if I knew that. She will definately never touch another full height jump, she seems so much happy in midi anyway. From the videos from Tuesday her stride looks so much better, it isn’t consistant but I really like it. It’s obvious I need to do more work on her running to a toy too, as that is what makes her gain speed.

I don’t like the music on it really so you’ll probably want to turn the sound down, but by doing such basic courses I was really pleased with what I saw.
I added the left turn in on the spot so hence why she’s so wide and looking confused, I know I did it twice but I wasn’t really thinking about what I was doing - and couldn’t be bothered to lol!

Marley went fantastically! I did as I said I would, I left him in the car with the window open (which was originally fully open thinking only his head could fit through. Well - I got quite a shock when walking about five steps from the car a big Marley appeared infront of me!) I left him alone and made sure he could see that I was focused with Gypsy and playing etc. All I heard was him barking and whining for the rest of the time. Adrian asked if I wanted to get him out, and I was hesitating but I figured why not?

There were only two dogs there tonight, a very laid back German Shepherd named Disney and a Border Terrier who’s name I’ve forgotten. I had him waiting in line, doing tricks, tugging, barking at me, whining at me, and when I stopped playing with him he’d then go on at me for attention.

He hasn’t done this for at least 6 months.

And yet here I was, Adrian was running Pepper so there was a lot of noise on the course, and he had a bouncy BT and a huge GSD next to him and he wasn’t phased at all.

I need to do distance work with him, he just will not jump over a jump if he’s ahead of me, which is pathetic of me to have not taught him. He’s going to be soo speedy though, mainly his jumping and possibly his a frame. I didn’t get any videos of him, only one on the dog walk where he falls off bless him. But the most important thing from that is I could pop him straight back on without no worries - I was really proud of him for not freaking out.
He did, however, freak out at the tunnel. Which surprised me, as at home he loves it. It was on a slight curve for him though so I’m hoping it was just us pushing him too far rather than some other reason that will be hard to tackle.

Very, very pleased with my boy!

xx

 

An introduction to a Marley

I was going to post daily for work expo but by the time I’d get in I was off to agility or just wanted to go to bed lol. Basically, I had a fab time and I was glad to be able to work with people I already knew.
There are a lot of pictures I took so hopefully I’ll post them later or in a few days, right now I just want to tell you all about my new plan!

I know most of you already know about him, I know I already have a page about him both on here and on my site, but I want to round this down.

Marley is a 2 year old lurcher (Irish Wolfhound/Saluki/Greyhound), and not a particularly typical one. He has high energy levels, is absolutely hilarious, and when chasing rabbits will turn on an instant when recalled. (I do love teaching recall!)
It took me a while to bond with him, as he wasn’t planned and I was more interested in Gypsy. He’d listen to me of course, it wasn’t a case of some terrible relationship, but we weren’t rock solid together until summer last year.
Over 2008 Marley has suffered three large dog attacks which I’ve found very distressing, and it seems since them he is constantly being “picked” on. He does have his cocky days I must admit, but the majority of these times he is off lead and doing absolutely nothing to the other dog. On two of the occassions I nor him knew the dog was even there. When the third attack struck, it was very serious. A massive chunk was taken out of his back end/leg and it was very deep. It became infected and he was at the vets weekly, and I couldn’t let him off for nearly a month. A month, over a bloody dog attack! He was really depressed and it was effecting me, too.
He is now back to his normal self and I’m very thankful that that attack didn’t make him scared of his walks. However he is now terrified of dog clubs or large groups of dogs around him.
My first intention, as well as my instructors, was just to keep him at it, as he’d get better and used to the situation. Only as time went by, the situation began to make him worse. He was beginning to see the car as being safer than me, and his recall is VERY good, so for me not to be able to call him back at our local dog club was simply terrible. At our last show he bolted out of the ring and everyone shouted “catch hiiimm”, yet both me and Hazell didn’t really think much of it as I slowly walked over and followed him. He was, just as I expected, on the fields waiting for me.
It was at that point, and after doing it more than enough times at training, where I refused to carry on.

We took him to agility, and the same thing happened.

After watching his behaviour, and trying very hard to work out how I could go around this, I’m still very much struggling. However, tonight I’m going to take him, leave him in the car but leave the window open for him to watch. I’ll leave him in there, and get my mam to sit outside and completely ignore him. By doing this, hopefully he’ll become irritated that he can’t join in, and that he’s stuck in the car. He barks, whines, howls, chews through his lead, anything he can do at Lumley (where my own equipment is and I just do stuff myself), so hopefully he’ll become jealous again. I don’t want to tie him up incase there is a dog that runs off (tonight there are two german shepherds which he’ll sh*t himself at, and since one of them does tend to run around), as if I’m on a course somewhere he won’t be able to get away and I won’t be able to help him. Hopefully keeping him in the car but still with full view of things should be enough.
If that goes well, there are only small and quite quiet dogs in tomorrows session so I’ll take him and run him then. Well actually, if all goes well tonight I’ll run him, but I don’t want to push my luck around large dogs.

This has actually become as what I’m going to consider a behaviour problem, and it’s annoying me because although he’s generally a quiet dog with new people/new atmosphere he’s soo bright and bouncy when he’s comfortable. He loves agility (what we’ve actually done of it anyway) and I always told myself I’d compete properly with him. Which of course will be impossible if he even work at a club.

I don’t want to let myself down, but most of all I don’t want to let him down. I’m not giving up on him!

 

Work Experience - Day #1

Really pleased with today!

They don’t make me do any work really, for ages I was just sat round cuddling a Shih Tzu puppy or playing with Ava & Drift.

I don’t have much to comment on other than I really enjoyed it and Gaile has said that I can bring Gyps in tomorrow. So I’ll take a pic of her hideous coat before, and a hopefully beautiful coat afterwards!

One of my favourite collies in the whole wide world ever ever!

x

 

la Belgique

What was considered Belgium was actually a French trip. We stayed in French hotels, and the majority of the cemetries were there, too.

We visited about 8327492384 cemetires, it was soo grueling. It wasn’t as moving as they said it would be, in fact despite it being one of the biggest events of history, none of us really took it seriously. Infact, when we went to the buildings where it had written on the names of the men who hadn’t been found, it did hit my quite hard, but after a few minutes we got distracted. We then spent the rest of the hour finding funny surnames. I won’t post them here out of respect but it was rather amusing! I don’t really think the tour guide realised that we went on the trip because there was nothing else to do, rather than actually being interested in history. I don’t regret going though, I’d probably do it again.

My mam agreed to going up the park and taking some pictures of me and the dogs, if I get time I’ll put the rest on later. I really don’t like my face on them but I am really happy with the ones of the three of us. I took some fairly nice ones of them by themselves, too.

I have work experience tomorrow so I hope each night I can post a blog on how it went.
Nick is coming over and is bringing star wars with him, as I’ve never seen an episode of it in my life.

Byee!
x

 

15th

FINALLY I’ve turned 15. Being in July means it always takes forever!

Thursday was my actual birthday, so there are a few pictures from in school. Although I may look a bit weird in them as most of the time Katie would just say “smiile” and I didn’t have a chance to pose properly, haa. Friday me & Nick went for a lovely meal and he slept at mine afterwards. Then last night (Saturday) Claire and I promised to drink together.

I was dreading it as it was pouring down with rain and there isn’t a house to into. Then I realised the only time we’ve had bad times in the past was because no one prepared for the rain. So I pulled out my hoody and wellies, and we marched off, with arms full of cider. Katie and Lydia brought binliner’s for us to sit on instead of the wet grass, and I was ecstatic when my birthday present was a kite and a space hopper!!

Claire & Miles and me & Nick headed to mine and we pulled out the matresses and slept in pairs and it was really good. There were a few who didn’t enjoy last night and it’s selfish to say, but I loved it and I don’t really care if they wished to hate it. It was my birthday and at least the four of us had fun!

x

 

ways & means

I know I haven’t posted for a long time but things have been very busy and I think my interest is slowly becoming none existant. I’d like to be able to tell you that I’m now fully reformed and will be posting every day about very interesting things but I can’t, infact it’s my birthday on Thursday which means up until Sunday I’ll be out of the house, then once I’m back and finally have time to relax I’m off to belgium at 6am Monday morning! I think I get back Friday or Saturday, either way it’s that weekend that I’ll be back with more posts.

Hopefully I should have a lot of pictures from my trip to share, and then the week after that I start Work Experience (15th) with Gail who owns the lovely Ava at A1 Pretty Paws. I’m going to try and post each day about what my day has been like, as I’ve never worked let alone full time!

This week was our first week at Hazy Shades and Gypsy loved it, Marley not so much. I don’t really have a lot of time to type an essay on my feelings about him right now, as I have work to do, hamsters to clean and boyfriends to see, so basically I think I’m going to pull him from any dog club he’s in. I will explain in more detail in a better post, but this isn’t a case of “the socialisation will do him good”, from what I can see it’s actually making it worse. And this isn’t me being all mumsie and annoyingly worrying like the dog owners you see, this is me observing him when I’m handling him, when my mam’s holding him or when someone else is holding him. It’s just not working, and we didn’t get him specifically for sports, so really, I don’t see why I feel the need to do it so badly. I have Gypsy who although is old there is still a lot more I can do with her, I think I just feel that if I stop with him I won’t feel as close to him.

Anyway, I said I wouldn’t get into an essay ..that will come later!

I hope everyone is well and for those of you who read regularly, you’ll need to check back in a week or two for another post.

xx

 

HE’S BACK!

I didn’t think I’d even be going to Butcher’s today, no matter taking Marley with me, too.

I got back from Lydias (which when I get the photos will be in the next post) he went crazy for some reason and I just couldn’t not take him. So with a rule of “only a little bit of exercise” we set off. Yet when we got there and he was let off (baring in mind he hasn’t been anywhere further than the park in weeks/months) he was literally running around in circles he was so happy to be somewhere new.

The show itself was very boring and I’d say it wasn’t worth going to but Marls just made my day!

Gypsy was full of energy too which was really strange, she always has moments where one minute she really wants to work for me and another she doesn’t, but she was really good today for some reason. She went mental when she spotted agility jumps and went crazy whenever I pulled out a tuggy.

His wound still looks really sore but he’s coping with it now and it’s cleared up a lot since the stitches have come out. He’s grown a lot more hair too bless him! He always has loads during summer and none in winter, silly boy!

x

 

i’ve come to a conclusion

I’ve decided that having two blogs just simply does not work and so I’m reverting back to this one.

However, right now I have no spare time as I have my physics GCSE and biology GCSE next week and I know nothing about either of them, along with all the other pointless coursework. Marley is still looking incredibly upset with himself but he does look like he’s getting better. The wound isn’t though!

It’s the Butcher’s Great North Dog Walk this weekend, and so when looking on the site I went to see if they had FINALLY put the pictures of 2007 up. They had!
I was really shocked to see Bracken in the pictures, I can’t remember seeing him there and I didn’t know he did agility.

Anyway, hopefully his owner (who I’ve stupidly forgotten the name of) will be there this weekend, too. Although they may be at Blackpool for flyball, I don’t really know.

I’m hoping people agree with me when I say that I look a bit older now - I was only 13! I love how relaxed Gypsy is though, she’s soo good.

1st best trick I think?

& 2nd best in show! How cute!

 

Weaving

after no agility for at least a month, i decided to take gyps up the park with some weaves & a tunnel.
i’m really trying to kick the right hand in hard, and so the video isn’t really all that interesting as it’s all V’s.. but i thought it would be worth showing how rusty i am and how chaotic and messed up we became. my body language is all over the place!

marley’s getting a bit better and he was a bit brighter today, so i’m hoping that’s a good sign.

 

my modern love

personal problems etc are now moving to a different blog. i’m sure most of you are here for training updates and what i am currently posting is generally not really floating your boats.

for those of you who did enjoy catching up with my life please keep reading! i am still grateful for the comments etc. but it will probably be more personal so be prepared for a few shocks here and there.

http://mymodernlove.wordpress.com/