Agility No More?

[diane allen]

Surely SOMEONE out there is doing something in agility....beside me!? Yes?

 

Here's my brag: after no less than 8 trials, meaning 16 runs, my little speed demon Lucy FINALLY managed to her Novice JWW title. Yippee. It was a stellar run, 111 yards in 18.3 seconds (for them without a calculator, that's just over six yards per second!). Clean run, qualifying, first place and title. Whew. She is, of course, more than ready to do harder courses (and is already doing them in other venues) - in fact, does them much better, with a few twists and turns to slow her down so she doesn't drop bars. On through Open, in 3 runs, we hope!

 

THEN. Her intermittent rear leg limp was diagnosed as a stretched knee ligament. ARGH. Treatment: two weeks complete rest, then gradually resume normal activity over another couple of weeks. Gadzooks. We're going to start learning some silly stationary tricks tonight - just to exercise her brain.

 

Thankfully I can bring her to work and crate her (she's mostly quiet...), and get her out to pee frequently (she needs that; otherwise, I could crate her at home). But we're both going nuts with inactivity. The other dogs are getting restless too - they're probably going to "chase the truck" (actually, they stay nicely far away) on a dirt road this evening [side note: no snow here!], while Lucy and I supervise from the cab. Sigh.

 

Anyway, we're hoping to be back in shape for a couple of January USDAA trials - though with little practice. And I'm all set now! Got my field set up, new equipment, including 10 jumps and 5 sets of wings built of PVC over Thanksgiving. Guess I'll just have to work the slow dogs on it - LOL.

 

What else is anyone doing?

 

And! Two friends and I are hoping to be a USDAA DAM Team this year - two Border Collies and a Corgi, and we're looking for a team name! The Corgi and one BC are very fast and bark a lot; the other BC is plenty fast but not as fast as the others, very consistent and quiet. We're all from small towns where there's little agility going on (Gunnison and Durango, CO and Moab, UT).

Someone suggested somehow coming up with something like a Corgi sandwich (sandwiched between the two Border Collies - not looking very much alike, but both black and white; the Corgi is the tan/brown/blonde color - what IS that color called?) - there may be potential there!

 

Several from the past that I liked were

--2000 BC (that was last year, three Border Collies),

--Herd Enough (one sheltie and two Border Collies - darn! we could have used that),

--Fired Up (ditto!),

--Speed Demons (well, 2 out of 3),

--Running Commentary (again, 2 out of 3!) and the

--DAM Damsels (three women and three female canines).

 

Any creative types out there want to help us think of a good name?!?

 

Let the agility board become active again!

 

Thanks.

 

diane

[Shawna]

My daughter wants to try agility with her mini aussie. Unfortunatly I don't have the experience to help her right now. I hear there is a good trainer who competes about an hour from here and am going to look into it for her.

 

My son is also interested (another mini aussie) but he wants to look into herding first before he makes a decision one way or the other.

[Jerry Herzog]

For good discussions on agilty training etc, try the discussion group sponsored by CleanRun. www.cleanrun.com