Striving to improve

This week I'm pleased to say that a previous guest blogger Laura has written another blog after the second squad day. I hope you enjoy reading about Laura's experience. 

Squad Day 2……

After Squad Day 1 and the blog post I wrote, I’ve decided to write a second blog post following up from Squad Day 2.  These are some of my first blog posts and I’ve found they’re great for reflection.  After Squad Day 1 I had a little more insight into how the format of these days, meaning I didn’t feel quite so nervous as I did for the first time around.

So as per Squad Day 1, I was up at 04:30 and on the road by 05:00. 

I Arrived around 07:30 in time to help set up and to let Jade stretch her legs before the day’s activities commenced.  The day was packed with items for both canine companions and their handlers.  The morning was aimed at us handlers, with the afternoon being all about the dogs and our partnerships together.

First off, a small introduction regarding the day and then we all split into our pre-arranged groups.  My first stop was vet check and physio.  Now what I didn’t mention in my first blog post, was that during Squad Day 1 the vet/physio felt something unusual on Jade near her back end, which led me to take Jade straight to SMART clinic. We worked closely with SMART for Jade’s conditioning and fitness since her accident at KCI last year, Tace Allen (our regular physio), and our registered vets to find out what this was.  It was a false alarm (talk about relief from me!) and we had the all clear from everyone to continue with our training programme so persisted with our aim to be fitter by Squad Day 2. 


Because of all this, I was a little apprehensive about the vet/physio check, even though my regular physios were happy with Jade.  I needn’t have been.  They were pleased with her progress & fitness, giving us the all clear (another huge sigh of relief).  While others were having their dog’s vet / physio checks, we were tasked with a rather large (approx. 35 questions) questionnaire.  These were not your “normal” agility questions – they ranged from knowledge of countries, dates & judges of the different world championships, to proprioception and canine anatomy and FCI rules & even harness types.  A great exercise for team building while we all worked together (I mean on our own Gina J) to answer these questions. Oh, and well done Lucie, who I believe won. 

After the checks came handler fitness eeekk!! Anyone that knows me, know I try to stay fit, not only for agility but also because I really like food.  I managed to shave a few tenths of a second from my previous scores, which I am pretty happy about! This was helped by the encouraging tones of Lee Gibson and Dave Munnings shouting for me to run faster – great team spirit.  So I am pleased… all that hill running over Cleeve Common with the dogs is paying off (although I’d be lying if I told you I enjoyed it).

After handler fitness was an update from Mark, which similarly to last squad day was very interesting and informative. This was just before lunch so after this I spent 45 mins taking Jade for a little wander to stretch her legs and let her go to the toilet etc., ready for her afternoon of fun.

The afternoon consisted of a practice session (if we wanted to), so I took the opportunity to put Jade through an FCI type tyre as this is something that she had not seen before.  She handled this beautifully, so I was very pleased.  I didn’t feel I wanted to practice anything else so I cooled her down after this and waited for course walking.  

Jirina Mackova set 2 great courses, one agility and one jumping.  

These had technicality but in a way that the dogs were able to open up with some obstacle discrimination added in for good measure J.  These courses were set to run to enable the management team pick the top number of placed dogs to go through to the final for a ‘win on the spot’ place for the EO’s.

  

We all had an allocated time to walk the course then it was time – smalls first, then mediums and finally the larges.  Jade ran beautifully for me, I on the other hand was quite nervous.  She put in a great round, however I lost connection with her and so lost around 3 seconds – she thought I was sending her to the weaves for a second time when in fact I wanted her to turn left… oops.  Bless her though, even though she really thought I asked her for the weaves I managed to pull her off them and correct her line for the dog walk.  So a clear in the agility but lost a lot of time.  I needed to put in a good performance in the jumping to be in with a chance of a spot in the final.  

The jumping followed the same format & order of dogs running, enabling me to ensure she was cooled down from the agility and warmed up again appropriately for the jumping.  Again I couldn’t fault Jade, she, as always works so hard.  I miss handled one jump which caused her to have a pole down (very unlike her, but completely my fault), so 5 faults.  Oh well, we tried our best.  Looking at her time if we hadn’t have had the pole we would’ve made the final, so I took comfort in that.  Having said that, at the end of the day, I was not disappointed – this is our first year going through this process and am pleased with how it is all panning out.  Everyone is very supportive and I am really enjoying and honoured to be a part of it. 

So, next stop is Performance Weekend in April.  We will take the lessons learnt from Squad Day 1 and 2, and as ever strive to improve and see what PW brings.

Thanks for reading.

Laura Hope

Feb 2018