The Encouragement Award

Tonight was ACWAs Christmas wind-up. We haven't trained for a few weeks but went along for a laugh. After a nice run in the restrained recall Selby was a little bit too wound up for the tunnel challenge (a shame as she nailed it last year!).
We got a lovely surprise when the club awards were presented and Selby and I were given this years' Encouragement Award. I missed most of the speech due to inattention but the bits I did catch were mostly about Selby's increased control and her managing to complete a trail without running away!! And how did Selby celebrate - by running away at all 3 runs in the relay challenge after the awards presentation :) That's my puppy for you! It really was great to get the award though and we'll take that into next year.

A Pass AND a Win!!

I was going to upload Wednesday night's video where Selby Nearly went clear in the jumping but now I have a better video to show!!
Last night at the Perth TODC trial we competed in both Agility and Jumping. The agility was 1st and had some really tricky bits. I was please with the run though as Selby is starting to get the idea of weaves a lot better.
The 2nd run was Novice Jumping. Selby was really distracted and I was worried about a repeat of the German Shepherd Trial (she ran away before starting and was disqualified) However she has a fantastic run, with a couple of hiccups that were able to be corrected before we got in any real trouble. You can see on the video how excited she was to finish her first clear run - she does a funny little jump after the last jump to celebrate :) To make the night even better Selby came away with the fastest time and 1st Place overall!! What a clever puppy.
It was fantastic to have Andrea down visiting from Geraldton and new flatmate Maz watching and to see the judge clapping as we finished and hear the cheers and support of the crowd was lovely.
As you can see all the excitement was just too much for Selby by the end of the night!

Video: Selby's 1st Pass and Win PTODC 7/11/09

Trialling Begins

Today was Selby's first REAL trial (although we are still having a few hiccups getting her measured so it can be official)
The day started with novice agility which didn't go so well! Never a good start to lie down and relax on the start line! First bar down and then disaster as she went through the tyre. Selby took off way too soon and came crashing down in the middle of the jump - this really scared me and luckily there was a table straight after for us to both catch our breath. Selby was really out of sorts after that and her weaves were terrible! (they did have a really hard entry)
We then had he whole day to recover before taking on the jumping course.
I was really nervous about having another tyre to get past, but as you'll see Selby did a fantastic job of this course, knocking just one bar on the spread. I didn't fair quite as well - ending up on my butt near the end! Selby kept going though to finish with just the 1 mistake. I was absolutely thrilled with this as her 1st attempt.
Sadly as well as belly flopping the tyre, Selby has also managed to knock her dew claw again and came home a little worse for wear. Hopefully just a minor setback and we'll be back out there again next weekend.

Novice Jumping Video Link
Watch Selby's great 1st Novice Jumping run - just ignore the bit where I fall on my butt!
Novice Agility Video Link
Not the best start to an agility career, but some good bits

Selby at the Guide Dog Demo

I have decided to create a blog so that I can keep track of Selby's improvement (and hopefully achievements) at Agility. At the moment we are both still learning, but we are having a lot of fun doing it!
Selby absolutely loves agility, especially the A-Frame and tunnels. With her registration coming through last week it's time to start entering in real events. We did go in a team event 2 weeks ago, but as you'll see when I upload the videos, it was a little too hard for her as a novice. (She has now done 3 events with hard courses but not yet attempted one at Novice level - hopefully this will mean it's going to be easy when we do!!
The video below was Selby's first public outing doing agility when the Perth Training club did a demonstration at the Guide Dog Association for their Open Day. At this stage she still hadn't learnt the weaves so we didn't attempt them. Selby loved the crowd and stopped to see the kids on the way round!