Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Risk and Fusion's Running Dogwalk Training

I decided last fall that I would retrain Risk's contacts from 2o2o to a running. Unfortunately our winters are not conducive to training agility outside, so I had to wait for good weather. I have started training the dogs again. I also decided that I was going to train Fusion, Risk's grand daughter, on running contacts.
I have played around with a couple of our other dogs and found out it is not for every dog.

Fusion is just starting out on plank work. She tends to come off of the sides at times, so I decided I would put up x-pens on either side. I move them away from the plank more and more in each session. I am just working on her running, not pouncing, as she is doing the plank. What I am looking for is that her back feet are separated when they push off of the plank each time. I am very happy with it and will quickly fade out the x-pens so that I can raise the plank.




I am very happy with Risk's progress. I knew she would progress faster than Fusion because she has many years of dogwalk training. She also did "see wood run" as a young dog. I was able to raise her plank up to about 8 inches after warming up with it on the ground.


Monday, February 15, 2010

Time To Blog Again

Wow, I looked at my blog and the last time I wrote in it was the middle of November. So much has gone on over the winter. Murray's mom passed away right after Christmas, so that took a lot out of us. Connor (now 4 1/2 years old) has been taking up most of my time. He is a very active boy and very strong headed too. We have also been doing some remodeling of our house along with painting.

My goal is to write in the blog at least 3 times a week. I will update on our training etc along with puppy pictures of Havoc x Singe puppies.

The winter weather makes me so uninspired to train as there seems to be very little daytime hours to get out and train. I am feeling more inspired to train dogs in both agility and herding now that the days are longer and the bad weather "seems" to be behind us.

Went and worked Fusion, Skarlet and Brew at my good friend Karen's place. I hadn't worked Skarlet all winter and the break seems to have done her some good. She is releasing pressure better and squaring up on her flanks. This was Fusion's 2nd time on sheep and she is more than ready for me to start her training. And Mr. Brew had his first time on sheep at 7 months old. We liked what we saw. Brew is out of my Skarlet and Karen Child's Rock.

I was very pleased to see that Skarlet is not coming up tight behind her sheep now. She only had one major slice leaving for her outrun and was quickly stopped and brought back to retry.



Fusion is very natural and should be easy to train up. She should be running sometime in 2010.
Who knows, she may train up to be a nice Nursery dog.



It was so nice to see what Brew had to show us. He is only 7 months old, so he will go to sheep about once a month until he is around a year. If he is able to handle the pressure I will start him then. My hopes is that he will be my my Nursery dog.