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.

Scruffs Visit

Scruff is here to visit us for the week end. We posed for this picture after we were told to, but we wanted to play instead. Can you tell from our expression?
When Scruff first got here he was a little bit overwhelmed with us but he soon settled down to our games. The three of us chased toys thrown by KnK and we let Scruff get them a few times.
Three of us mooching in the garden is much more fun and we take turns being the chaser or the chasee. Scruff's little legs make it hard for him to keep up with us, but he can sneak through gaps that are too small for us and so he can dodge us quite easily. He has to go home soon, so we had better get back to playing.

Tiffany, Agility Dog Excellent

Tiffany has passed her final leg of the ADX title, and then she passed another one just to make sure.
The pic shows her with her sashes and qualification cards, while lying on the dog bed she won in the raffle.

It had not been a successful week end. We were both in the Obedience trial on Saturday, I missed out on one Heel command in the CD heel work and got non qualified for that, and Tiffany needed 2 commands on the Broad jump for the CDX class, which also got her a non qualification. We were pretty much in the dog house until Tiffany got her first pass on Sunday morning, then passed again in the afternoon trial.

We practised Strategic Pairs on Thursday, and we did quite well. KnK are going to enter us in Strategic Pairs at the next Games trial. We have to complete an Agility course where we take turns in doing sequences of obstacles until all the obstacles are completed. Should be lots of fun!

Agility Trial at Noarlunga

Keith is not happy. Tiffany knocked a bar down in her ADX trial, you can see the bar on the ground behind her in the picture. Not only that but she refused on the hoop too. Then in Masters Jumping, Tiffany refused on the hoop again. Keith is not happy.

It was a humid day and we do not like weather like that so Tiffany was feeling a bit out of sorts. We had been resting in the shade while we were waiting for Tiffany's turn in the trial but we were both hot and sticky by the time Tiffany got in the ring, and her runs clashed so she did not get much of a break between them. Even so, Keith seemed to think she should have done better. Did I mention he was not happy?

Tracking Training

Hannah an I are learning to be tracking dogs! We went out for our first training sessions today and we both found our people on the first attempt. The pic shows Hannah in her tracking harness hard on the trail of Keith who was hiding in the bush.

We not only had to find our people, we also had to identify things they had dropped. Keith had dropped his old socks on the ground so that was easy for Hannah, I had to find Kathy's socks, they are smaller than Keith's. (You thought I was going on about sweaty feet didn't you?)

After a couple of hours we decided to call it a day and went home for lunch and a lie down so we can recover for obedience training tonight.

Snooker Dog

Look what they did to me! I won the Novice Snooker trial last night, which gets me the title Snooker Dog and the letters SD after my name, and then they stick me in the bath as a reward! Well I've got news for them if they think this is a reward.

I was in Agility Excellent too and nearly passed. I went past the start of the weaving poles and got a refusal which non-qualified me, but I did not hear Keith say "Gaps" so how was I to know where I was supposed to go? We did the rest of the course well and under time. If I had got the weaving poles on the first attempt I would have passed agility excellent too.

The Masters Jumping was not as good, but I did have a nice run. It was not my fault that the judge put the numbers on the wrong obstacles.

Grandmother Nike did very well in the Snooker trial too, she qualified and got her Snooker Dog Masters title, so we made it a family affair.