To Follow...

Okay, just an update to say that I will be posting an update tomorrow... yes spaz of me, but just in recovery after an awesome Agility weekend... give me some time folks, we will chat tomorrow :)

Sadness time...

I just got back from an Agility Committee meeting... even though I REALLY enjoy being part of the organisation of the sport (okay well, not always, but that might have to do with my hard head, thick skin and short-fused temper), these meetings always make me sad... I don't really know why, but if I was to psycho-analyse myself, I guess I would have the following to say...

I really love the sport, Zeus knows why, but I do  I have all these big plans and ideal ideas, but of course, not everyone shares my views.  Fair enough, you know it's a free world, freedom of speech, bla-bla-bla all that shizer.  Obviously I believe that I have the best interest of the sport at heart, but so do all the people around the table, problem is... we all have different 'best interests'.  And believe it or not, but all our training methods, goals and even handling styles influence these beliefs.  Tonight, just as a random discussion, we started chatting about why the quality of Agility in South Africa seems to be stagnating, well the agility and the growth and... well the sport in general.

For you guys that live... well anywhere other than the ass-end of the world...  let me try and put this in context.  This coming weekend we have our Easter event, which I am organising... It is an open event, all heights, sizes, shapes, dogs, handlers, jokers, competitors, weekend-warriors, World Team hopefuls welcome... and we are very excited that we have our largest entry in years... a GRAND TOTAL of 52 dogs...  Not a lot in most of your frames of reference now is it... unfortunately that is what we have.  To some these low numbers are the worst part... to me it is even sadder that the quality is not remotely where it can be, or should be.  Tonight's convo revolved around the biggest question in the entirety of the world... WHY... haha, we are such clueless and selfish beings aren't we?

There are many opinions... the agility schools in the province aren't on track?  There are only five after-all... should there be more?  Yes, probably.  Should I be setting up a school? Yes, probably.  Should more of the experienced handlers be teaching... Yes, probably. But actually you cannot fault that.  Some people want to teach, some people can teach, some people have the resources to do so.  But not all of us are cut out for it.  And not all of us have the resources... Frankly I REALLY miss teaching, but finding grounds, getting another set of equipment... well just not going to happen at the moment.  Have some of our schools/trainers lost the plot... yes, probably, but how do you influence people positively without offending them?

Another opinion is that competing in agility is too expensive, so people are just not interested in seriously competing.  I don't think this is the case.  The average champ show entry (for three rounds) will cost you R150... that is $22/13 pounds/15 euros.  Considering what (proper) dog care cost in a year...

My honest opinion... people think what they are doing is 'good enough'.  We have stopped striving to be better.  And if on person stops that quest, inevitably it is a chain reaction.  It is the butterfly effect.  A win is NOT just a win.  To me it is only a win if it was the absolute best you could do.  I am tired of hearing 'you only have to go clear'... 'just get around'... you know what I mean.  We should be striving for the best.  If not for ourselves, for our wonderful loyal dogs.  They might not understand competition, they might not appreciate the rosette or the trophy or the prize money or the title or the honour... but don't they deserve our ultimate best try, in training, in competition, in life.  They devote their entire lives to us, we really do owe them a little something back.



Thanks to Nadine Shortland (http://www.mackland.co.za/) for the awesome pics she took in PE.

Weekends and Opinions

And I am back, 2400km and A LOT of agility later, I have a lot to say, so here goes.

On Friday I was judging the whole day, so no competition for me and the Spaz... very sad... I love judging, but ALWAYS wish I could judge AND run my dog... perhaps I should investigate cloning myself!  First up was contact agility grade 3...  Of course all my courses are available for download at my course maps website:

https://sites.google.com/site/dogagilitycoursemaps/courses---previously-run/courses

This is my course:

I really liked this course and it ran very nicely... even though certain unnamed people that SHOULD have won the round, made some stupid mistakes.  Mostly the faults and eliminations occurred between 9 and 10 because handlers tried to get ahead and do a front cross after the long jump, they ended up getting their dogs eliminated by pushing them over 15.  The best option here was to hang back, call over 10 and then either front cross before 11 or back cross 11.  Some handling faults for handlers that 'kneed' their dogs onto the see-saw.  And of course the normal problems with the tunnel/dog walk discrimination.

My agility 2 and 1 courses was pretty straight forward, but unfortunately I had no clears in my lower grades (and a very small entry... sob, why don't we have more up and coming dogs???).

Next up was Jumping Grade 3... a very technical course that handled very nicely, producing nice clear rounds, despite the stupid bloody PE wind interfering and blowing down all the jumps and generally p#ssing me off!

The biggest problem here was the pole entry... it was a tough one, but DAMN some people had to manage their dogs big time to get in there.  A couple of DQ's on the 4 go-round, but I did have some nice rounds!

My grade 2 and grade 1 courses... this time I did get to sign some cards with some clear rounds:

General observations of judging for the weekend:

1.  I have said it before and I will say it a million more times (which by the way is a little ironic) - If your dog does something wrong, try it again, if he does it wrong a second time, YOU have not trained it properly, leave it, go on with the course, go back home and do  your homework!

2.  Very sad to say, but there were only 2 dogs there the entire weekend, that have good, independent, reliable contacts, a few dogs that had almost there contacts which I think they should get right eventually, but still ... Geez South Africa, we honestly kind of need to work on that.

3.  Damn we have fast Border Collies (and one awesome Whippet) in this country... just need to work out some finer details.

Anyhow, let's get to the exciting part now!  The competition part...  Saturday morning started off badly... Chaos knocked two bars in the first round, I was NOT impressed... let up on my handling after that and incurred a refusal too, but that is just because I am a retard.  Next up was a very nice non-contact course, it had good lines.  I was relatively early in the draw and after my first round knocks I wasn't really even thinking of being competitive, but I ran my round...  I didn't push, I just did my thing... and surprise surprise I walk off and Chaos is in the lead... I only realised afterwards when I watched the round on tape what a nice round it was.  So I spent the rest of the class in a stressing and head spinning at the start line to make sure I heard all the times... Of course this also means I put R on his toes, no wait that is not correct... I put the pressure ON and he was bloody pushing his little arse off... he was the second last dog to go and he DID manage to take half a second off me, but still... Spaz has his first non-contact qc.

Next up was another contact round.  The dog before me, had a very fast and very competitive round... f$ck it was the decision, I was going to push push push, man you have to love competition...  Man did I push, in fact I pushed so hard that I nearly pushed my dog right off course, so had a slight wobble, but still managed to take a second off the previous dog (as I recall), so another win for the Spaz.  We had another non-contact with a very speedy non-contact course.  By this time I was very pumped and ran my heart out (Chaos always runs his heart out)... what a heartbreaker, he slipped and knocked the long jump, but had the fastest time of the day, taking almost a second off the winners and the only dog to break 28 seconds...  We ended off the day with Dog Jumping, and I think my brain was a bit fried and I pulled my dog right off course.  All together now 'JACKASS'.

Since this post is starting to get very long, I will just sum Sunday up... not a very good day, I think I was over-confident from the previous day's success...Sigh, well that should teach me.  Anyhow here are the rounds I have of our weekend.



On a side note... at all our out-of-province weekend shows, you get approached by a lot of handlers offering advise, and I like this aspect, HOWEVER... When it comes to knocked bars and coming out of weave poles... On my knocked bars, a lot of handlers came to me to tell me how I caused my dog's knock.  And while I agree that they were right that whatever I was doing caused him to drop a bar, it is NO excuse for him to knock the bar... in my training I do funny and extreme things BECAUSE I want a dog that will clear bars REGARDLESS of circumstances...  and he did it over the weekend too, so he knows HOW to do it and on the occasions he brought them down... he made a mistake, even though I might have caused him to make the mistake, it was still his mistake.  Same thing goes for him coming out of the poles... at training I can send him into the poles and he will do ALL twelve with me running in the opposite direction.  While I wouldn't do something that extreme in a show, I DID taper and pull off etc often this weekend and he stayed in the poles, so when he pulled out... that was still his mistake.  I mean it's not an issue, that is all part of agility... it is just that I do think that South Africans don't understand the meaning of independent obstacle performance...

Anyhow I feel this weekend was all good for my plans to go to France and the hard work will continue!

Thanks to all the PE guys for their hard work, once again an awesome weekend!

The New Project

The new project is now live!!! Woot!

Still uploading courses daily as I receive them, but here it is...

https://sites.google.com/site/dogagilitycoursemaps/home



My idea is to create a massive database of agility courses all on one page... no more googling ten million websites, going through hundreds, only to find that they are not translatable in google or that they no longer exist or that they haven't been updated for 7 years...  I will be keeping everything up to date and continually looking for more courses to add... so if anyone would like to contribute, please email me!  Or send any suggestions or comments or whatever you would like.... a favourite saying of the computer nerd hubby is always 'agility addicts all over the world unite' (a very loose adaption from Hackers for those that did not know)... so this is the plan...

Anyhow, I hope it gets used.... so let's see what happens!

Weekend Summary

Well another weekend come and gone...

Yesterday was just one of THOSE days... Everyone was on edge and I am surprised that no-one got shot (or at least beaten up) in 'Agility Rage' (it is the equivalent of Road Rage, just in Agility).  Whether it was the moon, or just weather or whatever, it was not exactly fun...  I generally avoid the screaming and swearing, because I was too caught up in my own current problem...  Out of Chaos's nine rounds this weekend... he lost out on FOUR, yes count them... one, two, three, four QC's because of one knocked bar each round.

The problem with this is the amount of 'knock' training I do...  What is knock training in my world, you may ask?  Well it consists of many different exercises.  I have done grid work with my dogs since I before STARTED agility...  in 1994... co-incidentally in fact.  See I used to ride and because we did loads of grid work with the horses, it just seemed like a good idea.  I didn't think much of it or WHY I did it at that stage... that only came later... the point is that all my dogs have done grids... progressive, regressive, even and random grids (or whatever they are called in 'dog terminology').  Once I figured out the value and why I was actually doing these, it became even more of a habit.  I also do a lot of one jump training... this involves me doing a LOAD of weird things (eg. sitting down, running in the opposite direction, climbing a tree, running inside the house, spinning in a circle seven times (yes, yes, exaggerating, in case you have not noticed)), while I send my dogs over a jump and reward if they don't knock.  The idea is to teach them to clear the bars DESPITE my actions... and of course I never reward on any sequence unless they have cleared all the bars.  I will not re-do the ENTIRE sequence (how the hell are they supposed to figure out what is going on???), but only redo the section (one, two or three jumps where they knocked) and reward for NOT knocking...



I even did an experiment today... running progressive jumping grids, varying the distances (between 2.5 and  5m) and the heights (between 500mm and 750mm) on EVERY single grid I ran... he only knocked ONE out of 40 jumps (5 jumps per grid, two training sessions, where I ran each grid 4 times)... and the knock was on a 2.5m bounce, on 650mm and 700mm respectively, which, lets face it, is quite a lot to ask from a dog that is over 570mm at the shoulder...  I honestly do think my dog knows how to stride.  So what am I supposed to do???  HELP ME!!!!

Anyhow, yesterday was a busy, busy, busy day... six rounds in total, so I could not manage to get someone to tape every time, but here are some of my rounds...

I have to mention this... out of the nine courses from this weekend, 5 did not comply to our South African (or the FCI rules), purely because of the fact that the distances between obstacles were below minimum, being less than 5m... I wish I had all of Chaos's videos, because he bounced all of those distances (the ones in a straight line ofc), but still... I do not agree with this... purely because I feel all judges should stick to the rules... my dog didn't knock and perhaps our training should be of the quality that none of the dogs knock because of shorter distances (like they have in the UK for example)... Eish, but stick to the rules.

On another point, some close friends were very upset this weekend, complaining that the courses were just too much and drained all enjoyment from agility.  I am hardly ever on the fence, but on this subject... it is a difficult one.  Sometimes technical courses suit me, because I have taught my dogs those skills, however other times I do feel that it DOES upset me... Where is the line?  We had a few instances this weekend where NOT ONE dog could get around a course... is the fault with the (very small) South African agility community... or is the course design just really too much?  Most of these courses will be posted on my new website... which will be going live a few days later than planned since I  have been caught up in processing all the results for the last two weeks.



My one observation on that subject will be:  As a judge I set up VERY technical courses, ask anyone that knows me, but they are all very open... I very much lean towards maximum distances in between obstacles, where as 99% of the technical courses set up here are on absolute minimum distance (or less).  Obviously these do not suite me as I have VERY tall dogs (Chaos 57.5cm, Quake 56,8cm, Echo, 56.9cm)... and my opinion might change with the High Voltage Maniac... there will always be such a large 'personal preference factor' in agility... I really think we should all just stick by the rules and as long as those are followed shut the f$%k up... haha, not going to 'slap Alett for free' card with this one, since I am quite prone to the whole complaining thing... haha, just know I do it it because I am passionate, not because I am trying to nail anyone!



All pictures courtesy of Melissa Wilson.

Courage

Spaz working hard to keep that bar up

Courage is... well for me it is posting my bad rounds as well as the good ones.  You always see the good rounds on Youtube, sometimes even the nearly theres... but very few people post there bad rounds.  My resolution for this year, was to share EVERYTHING.  So here we go... these are my rounds from today.



And don't worry, Spazzie is 100 % fine after that fall of the dog walk... Don't know how he does it... when I ran it, it felt like he took a bad angle onto it, but when I did a frame by frame, it just appears like he lost track of his back legs.  Not a rare occurrence for him... despite the fact that I make him reverse for kilometers every month and make him stand on his back legs for hours everyday (oh in case this is the first time you read my blog, I DO tend to exaggerate every now and again... just a slight spot you know) Chaos isn't much into the whole 'back leg thing'... I don't know, maybe he just figures he only actually needs two legs.  I am happy with his contact round actually, would have been a good one if he didn't crash the dog walk.

Quake Monster with Flying Hairz and Flying Tonguez

In the jumping first round he did really well... he judges his distances nicely etc.  The Non-contact was a very technical course and I should have gotten it right.  Both mistakes are mine, complete handler failure (What's new?)  But he worked nicely and got some difficult bits right...  Sigh so tomorrow is another day and we will give it another go.  Due to the show raining out on Friday night (which by the way involved me having a one woman wet t-shirt contest, hosted by yours truely), we have six rounds tomorrow to 'give it another go'.

Check woman, I am friggin staring at that contact already!

Haha, after my rant and rave in my previous post, I feel obligated to say the courses and the judging was excellent today, thanks G, B and A for that.  And as another bonus, uber agility photographer, MW, brought me my newest batch of pics today, so now I have tons and tons and tons to upload with my blogposts again... woohoo!

Sheltie haz gotz ballz

As a last thing... My new project should be live by the end of the weekend...  I am starting a website solely dedicated to Agility Course Maps... I have uploaded about 150 courses already and lots more to come.  The idea is to have courses from all over available at your fingertips to train/study/set up/hate/love/practice/crit and just generally enjoy (if you don't enjoy it, that is your problem)...  If anyone wants to submit courses, please email me!!!  I want more more more...

Intense!

All photos courtesy of Melissa Wilson.

Fixing things and another rant on judging...

Actually I will start on my judging rant and rave...  I have been a judge for 11 years now, needless to say I don't judge with great frequency, since I would much rather compete.  I limit myself to about four shows a year...  BUT nerdy me... I read my rules A LOT and I keep up to date with the FCI guidelines.  I especially appreciated the FCI Guidelines that came out after the February 2010 meeting, you know the one, where they went to all the trouble of drawing a million and a half scenarios explaining refusals and refusal planes.  Read it dudes...

This weekend saw as many as TWENTY refusal calls missed, by various judges... Yeah we all make mistakes, but seriously???  I think as judges we owe it to the competitors to do our jobs properly... Prizes and even qualifications were awarded because of these refusals not being called. Just some (of the many examples):

In scenario B, a dog (one of many to do this), ran the path I indicated, originally the judge called the refusal, but when she approached the table after the round, she withdrew the refusal when she heard the dog was in Grade 1 and not Grade 2 as she had originally thought.  This to me is also not acceptable.  We have rules, they are clear in black and white.  Each just has their interpretation of these rules, this is inevitable and I accept that, but these rules do not allow for leniency because of Grade or size or personal issues or who they are friends with or who they are shagging or what colour t-shirt they are wearing.  I often hear discussions like 'if that dog was in Grade 1, I would not award the fault, but in Grade 3 I would'... now I am one of the judges that disagree with this.  A refusal is a refusal, a missed contact is a missed contact, a knocked bar is a knocked bar.  The CHALLENGE in judging different grades, is setting up a course for Grade 1 that is flowing and easy enough that you do not have to allow for leniency because of YOUR course design...  Nobody ever said judging was easy, okay?  Haha, and of course you will always have obsessive compulsive agility freaks like me that is bound to b$tch and moan, I honestly mean it as constructive criticism... I did have a very friendly conversation with all the said judges and they were all open to discussions... that is much appreciated.

Once again the retarded look on my face... Eish

The other incident that bugged me this weekend regarding judging... We are a small agility community bla bla bla, you all know that thing by now.  While walking of the course following a BAD round, the judge made a comment to... a personal comment about me and my dog...  Although it was a friend and a person I have known for years, I saw RED for that moment... I was on an adrenalin high after running, irritated with myself for screwing it up and generally on edge.  As a judge, you HAVE to act professionally at all times and that means NO PERSONAL issues/comments/remarks/feelings of any kind while you are judging.  You are friendly, but not a friend for that time... me and my big mouth...  if you run under me and I do the same, this is once again 'smack me upside the head for free card'...  Anyhow the judge did apologise profusely and made me feel like such a big tit afterwards... but I stick by the 'no personal remarks thing'...



Anyhow now to get to part 2 of the monster post...  Agility is quite hard for me at the moment.  This year I have lost a large part of my 'agility support system'... so at the moment I am functioning on very little input and support from anyone else.  Oh sob, I must just get over it... the boys are all working their hearts out for me, so no complaining... but add onto this that as I mentioned in my last post, every single round I run at the moment is preparation for SA Champs.  This means that I am DQ'ing myself a lot... every time Spaz decides to self release on a contact or creep too much in his waits, I am stopping and correcting it.  Now for someone as competitive as me, because I turn what could have been a potential clear round and placing (not perfect according to my training, but still clear), into a big fat elimination.  But I am getting results, that is for sure... even though I DQ, my rounds are looking smoother, handling better, good contacts and more and more connected with the Spaz dog.  That in itself gives me immense satisfaction, so I get up every weekend and drive to the show, knowing that there is a large chance I will walk away with 3/3 eliminations and just keep the bigger picture in mind.

Why does Chaos always have rabid like drool hanging from his lips.. what a spaz

On that subject... I would like to define what I see as 'okay' to train or correct on the course... First of all, I ALWAYS check with the judge if it is okay to rerun a contact...  If they are not cool with it, I rather leave the course.  I NEVER waste the judge or anyone else's time, I run back quickly and redo the obstacle once, lots and lots of praise and then continue.  I always keep up Chaos's enthusiasm, he has never displayed any sign of stress when I redo something, because I always keep it fun... in fact it is never a correction, I just create another opportunity for him to get it right.  And in the last 6 months Chaos has always succeeded on his second try, I have never had to attempt anything a third time, because he knows his job, just gets the occasional brainfart and forgets it the first time.  I will only redo something if I KNOW that my training has been 100% correct and he DOES actually know what is expected of him.

I mention this because of watching countless dogs shut down completely in the ring, when handlers redo something a million times... eventually slowing to a dead stop or running of the course in panic.  Grrrr, this makes me ANGRY.  Want to smack some people.  And 99% of the time it is because you can SEE these dogs have no idea what is expected of them.  They have no clue what their criteria is... wake up jackasses, go and train it properly and STOP confusing your dogs or just shut them down!  And another problem is handlers that train on the course... which I am cool with if done right.  But don't spend 5 full minutes on the course, kay?  That is not on... not for the judge or the helpers or the handlers running after you.  If your dog has gotten it wrong THREE times, go home and TRAIN, your poor Fido obviously does not understand and that is YOUR fault, not his.  Oh and when the show and judges allow you to practice a bit afterwards, that is an awesome opportunity, but there is NO need to run the same course 15 times even after you competed the whole day...

Oh hat, time to stop ranting and raving.  I will post some vids later in the week... I think you have been 'over-chaosinagility'd' by now.  Once again all the amazing pics in the post is courtesy of Melissa Wilson.