We had a fantastic practice yesterday for our upcoming demos at Newark Showground, and 3 of us decided to stay at the barn for a bit (ok, A LOT) longer to get a decent agility training session in before Agility Nuts next Sunday. I am really pleased with my dogs, but most of all Trent. As soon as he is more able to cope with show environments I'm sure he will be showing off to the world what Smooth Collies are really capable of!

Fair to say it's been a while.. :)

Well.. I have not updated this blog since March 2009.. whoops! So much for that resolve I talked about. :)

I am keen to start blogging again, as a lot has been going on with me and the dogs. I honestly thought about deleting this blog and starting again, as it has been left for so long, but meh, I'll stick with it! :)

Since I last posted here, a lot has changed -

- Trent and Indie have both now passed their Kennel Club Good Citizen Gold assessments, so I now have 3 KCGC Gold dogs, yay :)

- Ash has been competing successfully in agility at unaffiliated shows since August 2009, but we have only been regularly going to competitions since this June. He competes in medium as he is close to 18 inches at the withers, and the limit at the unaffiliated shows we have been to is 18 inches for medium dogs. The KC limit for medium, however, is lower.. so I fear that when we start competing at KC shows (as soon as I can get my dogs officially measured), he will end up in Large.. not good for a short legged, fluff monster Sheltie. He isn't a slow dog, but he could never compete with Trent and Indie for speed. I am training him with full height jumps now, just in case.

- Out of 5, 2 day Agility Nuts shows, we competed in 2 and a half, and Ash managed to come 7th overall in the ABL Elementary league due to his consistently good placings earning him a lot of points. We have already entered every show in the Agility Nuts winter series so we can have a crack at perhaps winning the league. I feel this would be a real highlight for his career, as if he ends up in Large at KC, he won't be able to achieve much there (breaks my heart really, as I feel he could be fairly successful in medium). Darn my freaky Sheltie for growing so much! :P

- Trent and Indie are both now competing in agility. I have only been doing dedicated agility training with them since around June/July. I started entering them purely so they weren't left out doing nothing whilst I was at competitions with Ash, as they knew all of the equipment and had some experience due to ICC occasionally doing agility training in the KC Good Citizen classes. I found they both really enjoyed it, were really motivated and exceptionally fast, so I decided to actually focus on agility with both of them, on top of the heelwork to music/freestyle/obedience. We started off the summer with constant eliminations (as I expected.. we were only having a bit of fun!), but have already ended up managing to get in the placings (with faults) and a few rosettes. Indie's only problem now is that she can be a bit of a pole-knocker. I called her destruct-o-dog at first as she'd have so many poles down, but it's frustratingly down to 1 or 2 at times now. Frustrating because her times are so fast, that without that one pole we'd have done really well. Trent just has issues with containing himself. He has some absolutely fabulous runs, and some diabolical ones. Nothing to do with his actual skill.. just his personality. He finds the agility shows very stressful and sometimes gets himself so wound up that he will fail to work with me, and just targets me, mouthing me. I need to dedicate a lot of time to him at the shows, working with him in the practice rings etc. to prevent this. As my friend dislocated her knee in August, I ended up running my own 3 dogs and 2 others for 2 days, and had no time to eat let alone go in the practice ring. I noticed this had a huge impact on Trent's performance, as at the next show when I was able to focus on him again, he worked the best he ever has done. I do think the shows are really good for him as he does get better and better at coping with the environment with each show we go to.

- Despite all my previous ramblings about HTM/freestyle shows I had entered.. I chickened out of all of them! However, I did actually enter my very first competition with Indie in September, after basically being forced to by people from dog training (Lorraine and Naomi!!). I don't think there is anything I am more passionate about in life than freestyle, and we have worked so hard, so the terror I felt was absolutely indescribable. I was shaking, I couldn't speak properly.. I was an absolute mess! Somehow, despite this, Indie and I actually managed to come 3rd! The marks were very close between the top 3, and I don't think I have ever been more happy in my entire life (how sad!).

- I have been doing public demos with my dogs, as part of the ICC display team, throughout 2009 and 2010. I have done freestyle displays with all 3 of my dogs (separately - yes I even did a cute little routine with Ash to Hillbilly Rock!), as well as being part of the off-lead, obedience-to-music display (it's a lot of the KC Gold stuff, done in a group routine to Madonna's "Hung Up", put together by our very own Barry). Our next display is on the 16th and 17th of October at the Robin Hood Game and Country Fair, at Newark Showground. We have a practice for this tomorrow morning.

- I plan to continue competing in freestyle with Indie, and start entering her in practice rounds for the heelwork to music. I built her freestyle routine around ensuring I could keep her focused, so i'd be interested to see how focused she can be doing just heelwork. I am also going to start entering Trent for practice rounds in freestyle. He is a sensitive little soul, so I want to ensure he is happy and coping with the strange environment before I enter for competition.

- Since August I am now training Indie for competitive obedience at Black Jack DTC in Wigtoft, with Hetty Van Hassell. I have had a few private freestyle lessons with Hetty with both Trent and Indie, and had been dying to get into one of her classes for a long time. When she finally had a space for Indie in competitive obedience I snapped it up and I feel we have been doing really well. I'm not particularly passionate about competitive obedience, but I feel that if I can keep my dogs focused and motivated doing that, then the more exciting freestyle should be a doddle! I am actually really enjoying it, and Indie seems to be thriving too.

Right, I can't think of much more to say right now as it is incredibly late at night and I'm dying of flu, but I may come back and edit this tomorrow to add more and include some photos.