Back from Sweden

Last weekend saw me teaching in Sweden where i was made very welcome and had a lovely time. Many of the handlers had progressed their dogs moves well with the "in" move being the dog walking sideways while facing away from the handler. It was great to see a wide variety of breeds, one of my favourites was the jolly little pug with a lovely front action.

I have to thank my hostsYvonne and Linda who looked after me very well, making sure i had the essential cola and chocolate to keep me going. Also thank you to all the handlers for not being too hard on me when i started to talk too fast, it cannot have been easy to understand as i know when i get excited by something the mouth cannot always keep up with the brain : )

I arrived home late on Sunday night and then i was up early as i had to get to Colchester as the Sky TV Dogumentary had asked to use my dogs in the filming of the opening titles. The location was Snoopies dog grooming salon http://www.snoopies.ws/ where the director had Whizzy wearing sunglasses in one scene whilst her hair was blown around with a hairdryer. One of the other dogs being used was a Pyrenean who was soooooo laid back which made it easy for Pogo to jump him or creep through his legs. As usual it was a whole days filming for a 20 second piece and I'm not sure how much of my dogs will be on it as i think the pyrenean mountain dog was a star of the show.

What do you do on a weekend off ?

Well I'm not sure where the summer has gone as it only feels like a few weeks ago we started doing the outside demos again but actually it was back in May when i started the arena shows. I have just done the last displays of the outside season so now its only workshops or displays inside.
It seems the last few weeks everytime we have done demos there has been some sort of animal excrement in the ring which some of the dogs found very tasty : ). There was a new one to their menu last weekend which was deer dung, i wish someone would freeze dry rabbit. horse or deer dung as it must be so tasty.
The last display was for the Animal health trust Gala day www.aht.org.uk where we met up with Elaine Hill and her sheepdog display as well as the Rockwood dog display team. Our last display in the afternoon went so well i think it might have been one of the best we have done all season. Its hard to know why some displays go better than others but it just one of those things i think plus of course the environment you are in.
The last weekend of September will see me teaching in Sweden, i have not been there before so it will be good to meet some new freestylers. I will be getting back late on Sunday night and then having to get up early to go to Colchester in order to film the opening titles of the Sky Tv show Dogumentary. They have decided to use my dogs in the opening sequence so fingers crossed the dogs do their thing. Heaven knows what this programme will be like, i have a feeling i will be cringing at points and that's just when i come onto the screen !

Routine panic !

In the last week i have been getting into Pogos two routines a bit more as i think i am panicking a bit that i haven't done as much as i normally do by now. It all started with the HTM routine where i had rigged up a prop to see if it will work. Starting to work Pogo a bit more with it i came to the conclusion it was ok but i didn't think i was going to use it enough to warrant having it in the routine. So that meant that i had to look at the whole routine again and ended up changing quite a bit of it.
Then a few days later i started to panic a bit about the freestyle routine which i had already written but i didn't factor in that I'm getting older ! i had a sequence which i found out my legs don't really seem to work with so another piece to choreograph again. I know there is four months to go before the semis and the coming months will be a little less hectic but i really do need to pull my finger out and do some practice on these routines.

A quick update

As i mentioned in the last post the bank holiday weekend was going to be busy. At the PNM competition i was glad that Whizzy won her intermediate class especially as it was being filmed for a documentary. So Whizzy is now well and truly qualified for advanced freestyle but will have a good rest before i do any advance classes with her.
From the competition it was onto the Eye show where it was very wet on the first day but the second day was sunny but with the Red arrows flying over late our second display was much later which meant we were very late home.
After a busy week of grooming and filming it was time to drive up to see Andy Nickless www.workingsheepdog.co.uk for a sheepdog lesson. As i had not done that much practice i wasn't sure how Pogo would work. At home i had been working on her driving to try and keep her away from the ducks plus slow her down a bit. Not having trained a sheepdog before i was relieved that it seems i had been doing most of it ok and i was impressed that Pogo walked behind the sheep so slowly and the sheep were the calmest i have ever seen them. It was one of those rare occasions when i actually felt in control and Pogo even laid down when told.
Now its time for Paws in the park in Kent www.pawsinthepark.net so i hope to see some of you there.