December so far....

Senna - one of Spooky's pups

The first weekend in December we had the Border Collie Club Christmas show - obedience in 2 rings, breed show, rally-o and Freestyle/HTM.

Friday is always spent preparing for the show (I run the rally-o during the day & co-run the freestyle in the evening). Friday evening Tove arrived from Samsø - she runs a vegetable farm with her husband - and stays with me for the BCK shows. We went for Annette's birthday dinner in the evening before we spent a couple of hours laying carpets in the 2 sports halls.

Saturday morning when the alarm clock rang at 5 I was thinking WHY????? We offered all 4 rally-o classes with 60 + entries which is the maximum a judge is permitted to judge in a day. Soda competed in the Expert Class for the last time - she got 99/100 and was 2nd - next time she will compete in the Champion Class.  At the end of the day we had the prizegiving for Rally Border Collie Of The Year and Soda won The Expert Class :o) Saturday evening I judged some of the FS/HTM classes and did administrative duties & the prizegiving. We were home by 11.30 pm.

Many of Spooky's by Amy were at the show and had really good results:

Maiken & Chevvy got their CD (LP) & very good in the show ring
Randi & Diesel got their 1st rally leg & excellent in the show ring
Bente & Sakse got their 1st rally leg & excellent in the show ring
Ulrike & Topsy got their 1st rally leg & very good in the show ring
Henrik & Senna got a very good in the show ring

Last weekend I went to Sanne's Hundecenter for 3 days of teaching for DGI.

Friday evening was a Freestyle workshop. I had 10 students - some had done training with me before - others were completely new to the sport. All of them were instructors in other dog sports. We worked on 6 different tricks - each trick was taught on several levels so both beginners and advanced handlers were catered for. We then worked on linking tricks which definitely gave some of the handlers a few grey hairs. Finally after a yummy dinner in the warmth, they worked on a short routine to The Kelly Family's version of my favourite Christmas song "Little Drummer Boy". Not my favourite version but it has a nice speed for most dogs to perform to. Group 1 did a solo ( one handler presented the routine ) and group 2 did a 6 +. DGI had sent a reporter to do an article on freestyle for their magazine and I am looking forward to seeing that in print.

I stayed at the venue and had lovely areas to walk the dogs. Saturday and Sunday were agility days. The course for the first day was the same as I set for the Obay Sheltie Day - and we had a lot of fun with that. The 2nd day I set a new course but with a símilar theme. This was the first weekend agility seminar I have held since doing Chicken Camp. We did some theoretical sessions - building drive/focus, crate games, self control and stays - all based on behaviours and operant conditioning. One was my perfect demo dog for these sessions. I also went in depth with some of the handler/dogs regarding behaviours on the contact equipment and weaves which gave for some interesting discussions - especially on the subject: If you want to change your dogs behaviour - you need to change your behaviour ;o) I will be doing a follow up weekend in 2010 for the same group of people. Thanks for an outstanding weekend!

Photoes courtesy of Gitte & schnauzerpower.dk