Strategic Dogs

Who would have thought that I would be able to compete with my big sister so soon? but here we are in Strategic Pairs. The pic shows Tiffany at the top of the Scramble while I am racing into position to do my next sequence. Tiffany started the course, with some bars and a tunnel, I did the Dog Walk and some more Bars, Tiffany did the Scramble, Spread and Broad jump then I had to do more Bars and a Tunnel. I got a bit over excited when I saw Tiffany running to do her last section at the Weaving poles, so I went to see her, then came back over the scramble which cost us some time, but I got back on course and did my bit. Tiffany raced through the Weaving poles and over the jumps then started celebrating too soon and came to me. Fortunately she got back on course and did the last jump with less than a second to spare.

That was our first pass in Strategic Pairs, we need two more to get another title, Strategic Pairs Dog.

We will be putting the whole thing on video soon, so everybody can have a laugh.

PS. The video is under Video Links - Strategic Pairs on the left of this page'

Rally-O Dogs

Is there no end to the versatility of a Toller?

Yesterday we both passed in the first Rally-O trial held in SA. The pic shows us with one of the signs and our sashes. Hannah passed in Novice Obedience too, that is her extra sash on show at the front.
We had to do lots of stations in the Rally-O trial. A Station is a card, like the one holding up the sashes, with a set of instructions on what to do. We had to take the humans with us as interpreters because we can not read. They worked out what we had to do and told us to do it. Unfortunately they were concentrating so much on the signs they forgot to talk to us a couple of times, but we managed to fill in for them.

Hannah passed her second Novice Obedience trial so now she needs one more to become a Companion Dog. I did not go well in the Open. We did the heel exercise well and I did not freeze up, but I missed four positions and ran out of points, must have been a bad day because we do not normally miss positions.

We are Champions in the show ring, we have titles in Obedience, I compete in all forms of Agility and Hannah is learning Agility, we have competed in Retrieving and we are learning Tracking. While all this is going on, we still have to bark at the postman, warn when the phone and the doorbell rings, check out the garden and make sure the beds work. What other dog could do all this?

Freki gets his Obedience Champion.

Our friend Freki got his Obedience Champion today.  The pic shows us all celebrating Freki's title, left to right is me (Tiffany), O.C. Freki, Hannah, Billy, Gracie and Mini  Mac. We have been to the dog trials at Port Pirie for 3 trials in two days, and we all failed every one of them, except for Freki who passed with 187 out of 200 in the Utility class to qualify for his Obedience Champion Title.
We did not go very well in the trials, KnK were disappointed in us especially on the Saturday. We did do a little better on Sunday, but we do that just to encourage the humans, they get despondent so easily.
Freki is coming round to the caravan this afternoon and we are going for a long walk round the inlet next to the caravan park. The humans are going to have some pain after the walk, Sham Pain they said, but any sort of pain is not a good way to celebrate.

Busy Weekend

What a weekend we had, we were up at the crack of dawn on Saturday so we could get to the Muno Parra dog club in time for me to have a go at my first ever Masters Agility trial. The top pic shows me doing my first masters jump. We got round the course, with a few errors, but Keith was happy because we did do the difficult bits. I was in Masters Jumping too, but once again, there were some errors. Kathy took us home at lunch time because Keith had to judge in the afternoon.

On Sunday we were up BEFORE the crack of dawn, in fact we were 30 kms down the road when the sun came up. We went to our first ever Retrieving Ability Test for Gundogs near Willunga. The bottom Pic shows Hannah at full speed racing across the paddock. Unfortunately Hannah decided to visit the thrower, which was being operated by David who regularly gives us pats and treats. She forgot what she was doing and left the dummy behind. I did a bit better, I got the first dummy easily and then when the second dummy went up I tried to catch it. This meant that I did not mark the landing spot and I was searching on the wrong side of a clump of reeds so I failed that one. We watched the Novice Retrieving trial afterwards, then we went home at about 2pm absolutely exhausted.

We were glad to get home, eat our dinner and go to bed.