24C Experiment

Ah, that weird pre-Summer we always have in May where we suddenly go from 50-60 to up to 90 degrees with no chance to acclimate (and then back down again!). I had entered the trial this weekend assuming it would be nice moderate spring weather – ha! It’s funny how I ALWAYS seem to trial when we get our sudden pre-summer weather, every year. The good news, the weather will go back to spring eventually, but in the meantime … ugh. So not a fan of sun and heat, but I have yet to find that location where it’s 57 degrees and partly sunny year round.

Did just a little more practice at 24 with Navarre over the week, with trickier courses he does knock more bars. He keeps them up the second time around, but I assumed he’d be knocking bars from lack of experience with that height over the weekend. Maybe a bit more of a warm up at 24 would have been a good idea, but it’s just an experiment anyway. Mostly I wanted to see if it just feels ridiculously wide. He feels okay in practice, wider but not unreasonable – but he definitely gets goofier in trials.

The trial went surprisingly well, Navarre worked really hard to keep the bars up, and, yes, was wide and floating, but it actually didn’t seem like that big of an adjustment or particularly difficult, just a lot more air time – the amount of drifting was about the same. The jumpers course on Saturday just had some really awkward lines where I felt the need to put in like six front crosses because nothing flowed (and I almost NEVER front cross!). That course was hard for him as everything was a turn, so lots of really wide and awkward turns. Funny enough, Navarre kept all the bars up for that run – but I didn’t support a jump enough and he came past. Really though, he can do 24 relatively comfortably, if not particularly efficiently. The really surprising one was when Navarre managed to beat Bright by quite a bit on the standard course on Saturday, and both their runs were very nice with running contacts. No idea how that works, but kudos to him.

Sunday we continued out jumpers curse, not getting ANY jumpers Qs this weekend, including in premier. Bright threw in a spontaneous backside instead of rear crossing at the end, and Navarre through in a spontaneous threadle when I obviously tried to be TOO cautious at a tunnel discrimination where Bright had gone off course. My dogs would like more backsides and threadles, apparently. They both did well for standard though, and I was really happy with what they did in jumpers, despite our issues. Now, standard I had been letting them run their teeters and, yeah, that’s going to bite me in the butt one of these days. Bright’s running contacts remain pretty sketchy, but she manages to squeak by with those too. Navarre’s RC look great, but, yeah, the trampoline teeters were looking pretty questionable. Every dogwalk exit was straight off this weekend, so the dogs ran them all. I can’t really complain.

So a fun weekend, I’m glad I entered despite the heat. Both dogs are at a really fun stage. Bright in the ‘I have no goals but my dog is at the perfect age’ stage where she is just such a good teammate – there is no stress or questions, she has this agility thing down. And things seem to be finally pulling together with Navarre. He still feels somewhat baby-ish, but I think by the time he’s five we’ll have it together. So we’ll stay with our 24C experiment and see what happens. He had a 50% Q rate this weekend. Assuming we actually enter some trials, I don’t think qualifying for WTT would be an issue. Now, I also have no idea where it actually IS next year, or what the qualification requirements are – but one step at a time. We may enter another trial or two, but summer is coming, so won’t be doing much when it’s hot. Did I mention I hate when it’s hot?

Oh, and I got to run a bonus Papillon – Sadie is so much fun! We may be playing again now that’s she in all excellent!

We also did some herding this week, two times actually, and Navarre was curiously ‘off’. From heat? From the puppy? From lack of practice? He seemed to be oddly more sensitive and just kind of disconnected. Did not seem to have his normal obnoxious intensity. Dave felt he seemed like a dog that had been ‘over corrected’. Maybe it’s just because I haven’t worked with him at all, so he hasn’t gotten to ‘cut loose’ for a while. But it was odd, so we’ll see if it’s just a weird week or what. I’m supposed to go up to Fido’s next week to practice, so I’ll work him and see if he seems at all worried or subdued with me (which had certainly not ever happened before). Maybe it’s a sign I can’t farm him out anymore and it’s time for us to actually work together. Heh, probably not.

Navarre did get to work some ducks for the first time! And he was curiously into it and also super calm about it all. Maybe being a duck herder is his destiny. He was very gentle with the ducks, a little puzzled about the whole thing, but trying. If we get a chance we may explore it further.

Haku did some more shedding, with Ian’s sheep it goes pretty well! Ian’s sheep practically shed themselves, so it gives me a false sense of confidence.  Haku is still not great at coming through fast enough, so we talked about some options for speeding that up, either backing up or coming in. So we’ll play with that. We also went back out to Dave’s this week and worked with the heavier sheep and shedding. The good news, we did much better this time! Mostly with me sorting sheep, and we did a couple sheds with them too – but much harder to get Haku to come through. And he gets so upset when I get upset when he doesn’t come when I ask. I think he’s upset to be both splitting the sheep that feels wrong and that I keep getting frustrated and sharp because he won’t come to me. Still, at least we could do it and he’s starting to get a little glimmer that if I come to him I’ll send him around to catch them. The goal is for him to be able to shed with Carol with heavy sheep … we have work to do.

Knock on wood, he continues to be sound (is that two weeks in a row?). I had all the dogs adjusted over the weekend too, nothing major found. Fingers crossed this continues!

Meanwhile, Tilly the rat terrier went home earlier in the week, the house is MUCH quieter. While she did settle in pretty well during her stay, she managed to piss off the other dogs and cats quite a bit. Dragon wanted to murder her, so I had to keep them separate. Dragon does NOT like hyper puppies that come running up to him trying to frantically lick his face. Tilly got the wrath of Dragon put into her, though it didn’t stop her from wanting to still run up to cats. Still, she really is a NICE puppy.

She’s pretty much the dog that people want, a small dog that isn’t at all yappy, short hair, people focused, super friendly towards everyone and every dog.  I really would recommend a rat terrier if you’re looking for a small dog, she is a very fun little girl. She did settle in and was ready for more training, we trained a foldback down and once you can get her focused she’s very smart. And sweet! She got to sleep on the bed a few nights as well, and it was really cute to have her snuggled up with me all night (though Haku did NOT approve). Navarre played with her quite a bit, but would also get quite annoyed with her when she would just keep pestering and pestering. I always think it’s fun to play with a new breed, and it’s good to see how my dogs react to a ‘non-border collie’ puppy. Yeah, my dogs like border collies.

And, look, Dove’s puppies are 4 weeks old now! Oh, they are really getting fun and cute – and such rolly-polly little porkers!