Monday 16 December 2013

So much homework!!

Last weekend we went to Lian's beautiful farm to do a training day with Toni Dawkins with Sparkle and Brooke. The weather was very kind to us and although it was a bit chilly we were warmed up by lots of warm soup, hot drinks and Roz's yummy cakes! Sparkle was a good little puppy, she was the only collie in the puppy group, the others were all shelties including Brooke's nieces Tula and Rae. It is a good thing that Spark thinks she is a sheltie!! This is a little compilation of the exercises we were working on



It was good practice to not run all the time and do a combination of dropping the toy in on a tight turn and driving them forward to a toy. I was really pleased with Sparkle as her turns are coming on nicely and she was getting better about being restrained.

Brooke was a different story bless her. She worked quite well and then saw her Grandma Lian and could NOT string a sequence together :( It was even affecting her jumping style to the point she was over-jumping and not reading Matthews cues at all. After Lian went back into the house Brooke did some amazing runs and her jumping style improved no end. If anyone has any ideas about how to rectify this issue I would be really grateful! Lian has tried ignoring her and telling her off verbally for coming near her but it makes no difference. I am sure she will grow out of it at some point but it drives us nuts!!

We finally got round to doing some Christmas shopping yesterday (without dogs) and had all you can eat Chinese for lunch. Only Matthew would voluntarily put a sprout on his plate!!! Apparently it was horrible-what have I tried to tell him for years??!


Matthew got out one of the shelties favourite toys yesterday evening-squeaky egg that Sarah (who has all the lovely hounds) gave us. Brooke won it off Bracken and Spark decided she quite wanted it...


...So Sparkle and Matt had a little chat about who gets to play with the egg...


...and Matt decided to steal it off Brooke bean...and give it back to Brax!! Poor Sparkling!


And Brodie didn't care about who had the egg :)


Thanks to Caroline for filming all our dogs runs-good thing really as we didn't have time!

Here is Brodies Masters jumping (3rd)



And his Masters agility (1st)



And little Brax in her Masters agility (4th) with her new running dog walk :)



I love the way that on the same course, Matt and I do totally different things, lol!!

3 comments:

  1. Oh sounds like you had a great day! Wish I lived closer! Lovely runs and well done on the placings! Sparkle is looking good, nice and tight wrapping (can she have a word with Ellie please) Awww Bless Brodie shattered zzzzzzz!

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  2. Sparkle looks brilliant! I love that she continued to do the line of jumps with the toy in her mouth :)

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  3. Poor sparkle not getting the egg! Toad is a dude

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