Week 4 of the Weave Challenge

Jive at Morwell agility trial. Thanks to Robyn Evans for photo.

We have no trials for several weeks as a lot of trials have been cancelled due to wet and muddy conditions and also other things, so next trial is not untill the 16th July. We now have plenty of time to train on our weave entries and other things like running Aframes with tunnels very close to Aframes. As Jive loves his tunnels.

As Kris and Jive have only one pass to go before they are in masters jumping, we need to train on advanced skills like obstacle discriminations, seems like that is very popular with judges at the moment, tunnels and tyres next to each other, lots of discriminations also more on serps, threadles, and pushthroughs.

We are in the middle of the Weave Challenge and up to position 4 which we found pretty tough going with the send and the recall. I am doing this challenge with Jazz, Merlot and Jive so we take it in turns and they don't get so tired. With the wet weather lately my ground is very soft, so after a couple of runs on the weavers it tends to get churned up quickly so need to keep moving the weavers to other parts of the ground.
And to think we have another two months of winter. The dogs get so wet and muddy that they have to swim in the dam at least twice a day not that they care as they love their swimming. I am getting very sick of mud.

Below is a video of the send into the weavers with some forward motion, I also had a tunnel very close to weavers as Jive is a bit of a tunnel suck but he was a good boy and did not go into tunnel at all. My computer is very slow in editing so I only videoed the send. I need to get a better edit program.

The Good and the Bad

Last weekend we trialled at Bulla which is near Melbourne's airport, it was a lovely winters day in Melbourne we even had a bit of sunshine we were lucky with the weather as only a light shower during the day.

Thanks to Robyn Evans for some great photos of Jive

The Good
Jive had a lovely run in Excellent Jumping and won the ring, there were over 30 dogs in excellent jumping, Kris handled Jive well  and he and Jive did a good job winning the ring. Only one more pass to go in Excellent Jumping and then he will be with the big kids in Masters.




The Bad
We are not having much luck in agility though, Jive had a lovely run in Novice Agility, we have been working on his weaver entries all week and he did a lovely job getting his entry as a lot of dogs stuffed up the entry. But this was the first time in his trialling that he missed the A frame contact, just when I saying to Kathy that we have not had any problems with the running A frame. Funny my older dog Merlot also missed his A frame in the same ring using the same A frame, so not sure why, maybe it was a bit higher than usual, but really no excuse. Jive did end up winning the ring with one fault as no qualifiers in novice.
Jive certainly enjoys himself running as you can hear him talking as he races around the ring with Kris.

Jive wins Novice Agility

Jive had three attempts at novice agility on the weekend and managed to win one, the other two he had a bit of trouble with the weave entries as the other two courses were very difficult with the weavers. Below Jive's winning run with Katie handling Jive.




Weave Pole Challenge

I came home from the weekend at Morwell and thought we must train some more on weaving and then when I read Kathy's blog I thought what a good idea.

Kathy and her girls at Agility Adventures are doing a weave pole challenge and I thought as Jive has been failing in his weavers in Novice Agility it would be a great idea to do the Weave Challenge with Jive's sister Cricket and others . It will be good training and lots of fun, Jive is pretty good at the weavers but lately we have been getting some really hard entries in novice and he has just not been gettting them.

We are a bit late in starting but over the last two days we have been doing some of the work in week 1 and 2 as we need to get to the hard entries as Jive is competing this weekend and it would be nice to get out of novice agility. We are supposed to have only the six poles but seeing we are competing on Saturday I am working on the 12 poles this week.
So, if you want to join the challenge or if you just want a really good description of the exercises just click here .

My videoing  is not too good and I did not video all of the exercises, I should be better next week when I now know what I am doing. We are in the middle of winter in Australia so it is very wet and muddy, hence the gumboots.

Jive wins Excellent Jumping three times

Jive has been very busy since I posted last as he has won three excellent jumping events over the last three weekends, also he had three matings with Nakita so hopefully we will see little Jikita's early August.

Nakita ready to play with Mr Jive

Nakita and Jive playing together

Some of Nakita's runs at the Royal Show last year

Below is a video with Jive's  first two excellent jumping from Knox and Croydon. Jive has had a bit of trouble getting a qually in agility, if it is not one bar down it is a tunnel suck problem, we have got over those two problems and now we have a weave problem. Oh well back to more training.

Jive's win at Scottish Breeds

Jive's agility trials with weave problem