Chaos Crew

Chaos Crew

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Rip weave practice and tennis ball antics

I filmed Rip's weave practice and the necessary ball playing session while we were at the training building.
I am using the weave-a-matics with Rip and I have closed them up quite a bit. I am not happy with how this has affected his footwork though, as he is not single-stepping through all the poles - a couple times he gets caught up and double steps, so I will be opening them back up a little and getting his footwork correct again.
I am also likely going to get the new Susan Garrett 2x2 DVD for weaves and will try that method for both Rip and for improving Skye's performance too.

Friday, December 19, 2008

Another crazy self-entertainment Rip video

Rip is at it again with his self entertainment antics. I was heading out to do some practice with him and he found a tennis ball in the snow on the way to the building. He then proceeds to toss it in the air and chase and pounce it. I had the video camera as I was going to film our training, so instead I filmed his fun. Enjoy!

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Video from AKC trial below

Here's the video from the Thanksgiving AKC trial discussed below

More self entertainment by Rip

So I have been finding that Rip will sidetrack when bringing the ball back during our agility practice sessions. He likes to walk up to a jump or the tire and drop the ball over, and then pounce on it. It makes me laugh when he does it, so I brought the camera out to catch him in the act. Here's a video condensed from about 10 minutes of ball throwing in the training building.

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Rip weigh-in and height measure (attempt)

Last week I weighed Rip at 42.5lbs. He looks to be filling out a bit and not so skinny anymore. I double checked weight again yesterday and he was back down to under 42lb. Ugh!

He does not like the measurement wicket that we have, so getting any semblance of an accurate height measure has been difficult at best. He sort of slinks under it when I can actually coax him under with food rewards. I was clicking/treating when he got near it, then as I got him to duck under. Still lots of work to do on that. I found that if I entice him with cat food in a can, that the wicket isnt as scary. Soooo anyway, his measurements are all over the board, anywhere from 20.5" to 21.25".
Probably somewhere in-between is the reality. I dont know how much longer Rip has to get taller, as he is now 14 months old.

Of course, if he is over 21", that means jumping 26 in USDAA if we want to play in the Championship division. Seems really high, which is why I have Skye jumping 22" in the Performance division, as Skye measures 21.25".

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

3 days of AKC at Latigo, Thanksgiving weekend.

Skye and I attended the 3 day AKC show in the cold and snow this weekend. Fortunately the Latigo facility is only about 5 minutes from home, which made for a much easier drive than many people had with all that snow. Unfortunately, its not a heated facility, so by each afternoon, most everyone was feeling the chill.

Our Standard run on Friday was an eye popper with more faults than I have accumulated in an AKC run. Oy! We had a jumped DW contact which went to the table, with an on-and-off the table performance, then Skye got off the table at the 4 count, so that had to start over, then he popped out of the weaves at 10, and we finished it up with a knocked bar on the triple. What fun! JWW was nice except he entered the weaves at pole 2, so it was an NQ day.

Saturday wasn't much better than Friday, though we didnt have any disaster runs. The day started with JWW and again he had a weave fault. I haven't been stopping him for missing entries or popping, trying to keep his weave motivation high and not worry him or slow him down, which has been working for the most part, so we just keep going... Standard was an OK run, with good weaves (yeah!), but it was again a Dogwalk to Table and we had the repeat of Friday with a jumped DW contact followed by and on-and-off the table performance. Guess what Skye-boy got to practice on Saturday night!

Sunday I went in with good thoughts and we managed to salvage the weekend with our 3rd Double Q!!
I was mildly concerned that again the Standard course had Dogwalk to Table, but it went OK this time. I wasnt behind him on the DW this time since it was a tunnel with a flip up onto the DW. I felt like we ran a bit conservative, but still got 17 MACH points out of it.
JWW was a nice flowing course and again we had good weaves! We managed 10 MACH points.

I'll post video after getting it off the camera.