Saturday 20 November 2010

And we're back,...

Well Fly is nearly 10months old, where on earth did the time go?

Agility wise we've done nothing to be honest, I can't get to training on a Tuesday and at the moment I have to say my interests are 100% more in flyball. That will change, as it always does :).

Boxwork:
We've been doing the beginnings of box work for a few months now, i.e. changes of direction on the flat to get her used to whipping around fast but nothing on the actual box. I also determined that she turns the opposite way to Jet and Chip, so is the odd one out in our house now. In the last week, I decided to step it up a bit and let her have a little go on the chute properly. Now we obviously modified this a bit, she wasn't running at it from 30ft like Jet does but she was going on it from near enough a standing start as she's still young. I do hate people doing things with pups too young, but after a bit of an odd discussion with one of our orthopaedics lecturers and explaining her build/growth patterns, he thought she'd be absolutely fine. Plus, we are doing 3/4 reps maximum, and it's only once a week as I'm at uni for most of it. I sound like I'm panicking here, there are dogs younger than Fly doing full runs for a ball out of the box, which I find absolutely insane.

Here are a couple of videos:
http://yfrog.com/epk48z
http://yfrog.com/ea91hz
I'm not pushing her properly for speed just yet as it will make it too high impact imo, but I just want her to get used to the motion. I'm quite pleased with her, she's a good girl. We still have a lot of work to do, but tbh the thing I'm most delighted about is that she absolutely loves it!

Ball/tug work:
Well, what a difference here. In the last month the change has been brill, and I have to put that down to Kelly's help. Without going into too much detail, and getting into the whippet mindset she's so much better. She also gave me some stuff to do with the tug to get her a bit sharper on it, and although we've only just tried it - wow has it made a difference! I've now got her targeting the ball and bringing it back over a short difference (I was told off for doing the distance too long before!) with an immediate drop for the tug. I have to say she's quite shifting too. :) Yey!

Finally, she's had first rabies vaccine (as has Jet!) so that she can come along to the European Flyball Championships in Germany next year. Exciting stuff! That also meant that the girls came to uni with me at the beginning of this week, as you can see they were totally phased by the experience...

I have to say, I really am enjoying little Fly at the moment :)