Last Training before Easter...

Yesterday was our last training session before the Easter tournament at Fairview Farm!

Next weekend we re the Mutts tournament at Essex, which should be very interesting as this will be Ices big test - will he run with Kes or not.....?

We have some very nice dogs on our latest course, so if they stay and want to compete.... we should have some nice dogs to come out next year!

First we worked on Loki and Ice, this was to get Ice into "being good" mode, which seemed to work, so we then put Kes and Lottie in to the team - Ice ran really well - until he needed to cock his leg when he played up. But as soon as he'd been, he went back to Good mode!!! He is learning!! Then Ollie went in in Start, so all 5 dogs in that team were running. Then Kes sat out to give Ollie practice at coming back to Loki. Ice started to loose concentration, so he took a turn out and Kes ran again.

They did six runs at a time, then had 10 minutes rest whilst we ran the old course dogs. Rufus is doing very well and had a go over 12" jumps for the first time - he didn't even notice they were there!!!! Last time he trained, we only had net by the box, again he didn't notice and kept to the lane!! Although he's not done full runs yet as his box isn't 100%, he has done changeovers with most of the team dogs and isn't bothered at all. I hope his owner will compete with him.

By the time the Collies had run all their combinations, the last of the multibreed dogs had arrived so we could work on running order and changes. This group, for one reason or another haven't trained together at all!!! 3rd and 4th dogs were sorted out straight away and by swopping 1st and 2nd, we found that Merlin the springer prefers to run in second spot, so that sorted the running order out.

I am really looking forward to Essex and Fairview farm. It'll be nice to be competing again. Last year and the year before were ok as it helped some of the newer dogs to run properly, but two years of not really competing ( not that it was anyones fault, these things happen) but it'll be good to go to the start line with an equal chance!!!!