Nugget the killer cat!

Just because I haven't put anything on here about her for a long time, you might remember on the 1st of May 2008 I got given 4 ginger kittens to hand raise, at only approx 6 hours old, very cold and half dead I didn't fancy my chances. Initially they were on hourly feeds for about the first 2 1/2 weeks, but slowly the time increased! Sadly I lost one of the girls at 1 week old, it totally broke my heart. But I am pleased to say that the other 3 fought on and are now 8mths old on New years day! Karen has Delilah, and a friend of Toni Dawkins has Sebastian, and we are the proud (but very battered) owners of Nugget the attack cat! so here are a couple of pics of the gang.......

At approx 1 week old

approx 4 weeks old... Left to right Sebastian, Nugget, Delilah

Delilah then and now

Sebastian then and Now.......

And the snugget!!!!!! Then and now.........

Day 3




the baby sitter

Ever the lady!

So that is the story so far.............oh and yes Nugget can be seen most weekends in the caravan at our agility shows (there is nothing she likes more than caravaning, except maybe custard creams!)

About time!!!!!!!!!!

I know it's about time I did the Olympia update etc............
So to do this in order.....

WAG at the beggining of Dec... Here are the videos of both Hex and Kai at WAG, nothing to exciting to report other than I was proud of how they both did in the big boys class! And a vid of the georgous Herb doing his thing!

Kai



Hex




Herbie



Next to Olympia........

Firstly WELL DONE NANCY AND NIAMH!!!!!!!!

I felt soooo pleased when Nancy got through to the final and loved watching every second of it.... best of all she really ran! and I got it on tape!!!!

Not sure why I had my glitch, going to put it down to sods law! Herbie was fantastic, I really feel at one with him ( wiered as that souds) I trust him to do his job, and yes we had a glitch, but that is life......So anyway we got to experience the other side of Olympia and ran i the pairs with Ian Dobbinson. We won the final by over 3 seconds which I don't think is any mean feat!

Here are the vids..........

Herbie at Olympia



Nancy and Niamh.....



Then this weekend I went training on a Toni and Amanda training day......got loads of really good advice and helpful tips, but have to say I was a bit gutted as Hexy went into total herding mode. He is still a little unsure of the see saw and Hex's copping mechanisim is to totally melt down and herd... sadly the see saw was literally the 2nd obsticle we did.... so it took quite a while toget his head back out of that mode. He also had been fab on his weaves, but didn't get one set right yesterday. Obviously I'm not fed up with him, I have been concentrating on Herb so much with Olympia that Hex has gone a little bit back as the babies do, but he had been so good I was not really expecting it......Saying that the weave enteries were hard.
So here is a little vid, crud and all.........

Last nights training

So here is last nights course (well one of them). The dotted line is the ideal handlers path (note the little circle by 6, 7, 8, 9 is a front cross not a blind turn). Needless to say everybody did a great job of it (even Nancy! he he, after a lot of complaining! (not naughty Niamh, Naughty Nancy! )

No body got away with coming inside the jump between 13 and 14, the layering was very successful a great confidence boost.

We had a lot of fun with this course, and then did........(keep up with this....)

(south) Tunnel

Dog walk

wrong end of tunnel (North tunnel)

Dog walk

wrong end of tunnel (South T)

Dog walk

(north) tunnel

A frame

Then sending into...

(south) tunnel

This was a really good for some quick releases on contacts, and quick directionals to get them into the right end of the tunnel. We mixed the contacts up IE wide contacts, quick releases, stops etc which kept the dogs focused on what the handler was asking.

So that was the last lesson of 2008.......Roll on 2009

I would like to take this opportunity to say how proud I am of all my clubs members.....Many of them are doing agility for a bit of fun, and then I have the real die hards, but ALL of them are helpful, willing and a really nice bunch. Many of them have achieved their personal goals for this year (which Wendy and I'm very proud about) and a few have done better than that......

I believe we have

at Olympia:

Nancy and Niamh

Leah and Herbie

at Crufts:

Wendy and Cruise

Jan and Teasel

Debbie and Scooby

Leah and Herbie

Not so shabby for a small club. Thanks to all that make it happen x

AAARRRRRRGGGGGHHHHH!

OK so I have to admit I am "bricking it" now, never am good with finals, but hope that this is a good thing that will help??? My back is so painful today it is untrue and I've got 5 straight hours of teaching to do tonight! Oh well, can at least look forward to making Nancy RUN!!!!!!!

Tonight we are going for some FUN! Hopefully working on drive to and from contacts, really looking forward to teaching this.

Last weekend was great. I had my good friend Nat come and stay with her dog Kai..... We did a lot of training with the babies and took them out to their first full height shows.
Nancy very kindly let us go training with her at her house on Friday, we did some great exercises and I was very pleased with Hexy, he is such a different dog now days.
Many people who know me and Hex from day 1 will know how hard this little dog has been for me. He has had MANY aggression problems with both dogs and people, and has been very unpredictable. I think if he had gone to a different home, he may not be here today, as there had been many horrible incidents. Any way the up shot of this is that both me and the merley boy have finally created the "bond" that I am used to with my dogs. I do believe that agility has helped this a lot, but mainly I would like to thank Nancy who has NEVER stopped believing in me and him, and always remembers to tell me just what I need to hear when the times have been down..... So thank you Nancy!!! x

Anyway on Sat I ran Hex at my little show we held, he was really good....still isn't sure on the seesaw but it is coming!
Sunday we went to WAG and I suppose that this really was Hex's first big boy show. He was fantastic, the courses were really big (and I have to admit this scares me a bit as I loose touch with Hex), but he was amazing and just did it! No clears but I was so pleased with how he went!!
I will update with Videos soon. Nat's youngster Kai is amazing, she is soooooo fast and her contacts are stunning, can't wait to see her next year! We are also lucky enough to pairs with her in the new year, so the naughty babies will have a lot of fun.

Any way hopefully Nat will come and visit again soon, and we will see her at Ribble as she is running Link.

Back to the matter in hand then.......... I had a really nice e-mail from Ann Harmes yesterday saying good luck team! (woow I'm included in with Toni, Dave and Stuart, have to say that feels nice. Hope I don't let them down!) We will be leaving early on sat as I like to have a lot of time to panic properly in the morning :) and will pick up the Hudsons on the way through......from there on in it's anybodies guess?


So good luck to everybody at Olympia but especially Nancy and the NSNN (Not so Naughty Niamh (still not sure that is spelt right!))