Cairn Chronicles

A Great Agility Weekend

Tamber & Colin both competed in the NADAC Agility Trial at Hollins College March 21-22 2009. They had a great time and came home with a load of ribbons.

This was Tamber's 3rd year and she had her best trial ever. She competed in 8 events and had 4 Qualifying runs. (a Qualifying run earns points toward a title) She had 3 - 1st Place finishes and 3 - 2nd Place finishes (competing against other dogs entered at the Novice level with an 8" jump height).

This was Colin's first Agility Trial. He had a blast! He entered 4 events and had 3 Qualifying runs. He had 2 - 2nd Place and 2 - 3rd Place finishes. He competed against Tamber in all 4 events and always finished one place behind her. He actually beat her time by over 4 seconds in the Touch N Go event but finished in 3rd behind her 2nd place (and did not Qualify) because he was so excited he jumped off the A-frame too soon and missed the required contact zone.

Below are video's of some of the events:
(if you click on the title of the video or the link below the video you can see it in a slightly larger format on the Vimeo site)

Colin's Touch & Go Run from Byron Dillard on Vimeo.

Colin's Jumpers Run from Byron Dillard on Vimeo.

Colin's Tunnelers Run from Byron Dillard on Vimeo.

Tamber Touch N Go from Byron Dillard on Vimeo.

Tamber Chances Run from Byron Dillard on Vimeo.

Tamber's Jumpers Run from Byron Dillard on Vimeo.

Tamber's Regular Agility Run from Byron Dillard on Vimeo.

Finally, we have to remember that Agility is supposed to be fun and despite hard training, the results are unpredictable - you have to keep a sense of humor as illustrated by one of our classmates:

Agility does not always go as planned from Byron Dillard on Vimeo.

Another good Flyball weekend

Tamber had another great weekend last weekend at the FBI Tournament in Manassas. Tamber ran 2-3 heats per race - 23 heats over the weekend - All Clean!!! No spitting, bobbling, chasing, visiting or loss of focus ... and her times didn't slow at the end of the day.

Look at her go - holding that ball!

If you look closely you'll see that I've taught Tamber to hold her mouth open just like I do when she gets ready to run!

And lets not forget Colin. He ran warmups this weekend. Mostly just recalls but he had no problem focusing and staying in the lane. He's just starting to get over his fear of the box. If we can just build his confidence to the point where he doesn't freak out when the box pops then I think we'll be over the biggest hurdles to getting him playing this game too.

Tamber earned her first Flyball title!

Tamber earned her first Flyball title; Flyball Dog (FD); this past weekend. FD requires 20 points. She earned 31 points this weekend to give her a total of 38 points.

We met 2 other Cairns from other Flyball teams this weekend. Cairns are relatively rare in Fllyball. Only 58 are registered with NAFA and only 31 have earned the FD title before Tamber. We've been a bit frustrated that it took about a year to get Tamber this far when some dogs get the hang of it in just a couple months. After talking to the other Cairn owners, I feel much better. One Cairn has been training for almost 3 years and the other for over a year and neither are competing yet. For a Cairn, getting Tamber trained and running in a year turns out to be a very respectable accomplishment.

After the big weekend, Tamber is worn out as you can see from the pics below:

Pick a Caption

Salt & Pepper
Ying Yang Yappers
Sofa Symmetry

Flyball Success

Tamber & Colin just had a fun weekend at the Spring Fling Flyball tournament in Franklin VA.

This was Tamber's first tournament actually running in real heats (she ran warm-up heats in 2 previous tournaments). Our goal was to have her run a few clean heats (not dropping the ball, missing jumps, going off course to visit judges or other dogs, etc.) Not only did she successfully run several clean heats, her team of primarily new dogs managed to get it all together in the same heat a few times and Tamber even managed to earn 7 points (two 1 point races + one 5 point race). Not bad for her first tournament running!

Colin also had fun this weekend. This was his first tournament running warm-up heats. He did well - he did not over react to the environment and stayed in his lane running recalls over the jumps. Colin is very enthusiastic about Flyball (and everything else in life) and I think he has a great future in Flyball!

After the exciting weekend we have 2 very tired puppies today!

I just noticed that my previous post was about "lying together" - they are still at it when the mood is right.

Let Sleeping dogs Lie (Together)

Recently we've noticed Tamber and Colin sleeping together at times. Until recently, if they were laying together it was because they both wanted the same spot (like the arm of the loveseat with a good view out the window). In the shot below, there's nothing special about that end of the couch, they more often prefer the other end. I think that they've finally reached the point where sometimes they sleep together because they actually like being together.