this and that

I was so much looking forward to go to Caerphilly this weekend, I have the caravan set up, ready to go but Colin fell ill on Wednesday, he came back very poorly and didn't go to work yesterday, he was in bed all day but he is better today and went to work this morning happily. He probably caught the 24 hours bug or something.

I think he needed more rest, so I decided not to go to Caerphilly. After all, family always come first! Life is not just agility! I knew I was hook to agility last year and the year before but since my brother had cancer and I went to visit him three time last year, I suddenly realised nothing is more important than the time you spend with your love ones, that including my shelties. We now spend more times going for long walks, playing, swimming together then doing agility and flyball. This is why some agility friends said to me: I haven't seen you for ages or I didn't see you at xxx shows ...

Caerphilly is a very nice show, lovely big ground, lovely walk, it is a relaxing show and they give away the best Dragon trophies! We went there first time 3 years ago and Saturn won me a lovely dragon trophy!

I was so impressed by him and the dragon trophy and vow to go back to do Caerphilly every year. We were there last year but both boys weren't working well; Saturn just finished his biopsy opearation three weeks before, basically he was still resting; Sing were not himself and we then found out by our chiropractor that he twisted his back, so no trophy last year. I am hoping we will try to get a trophy this year but apparently not again! Oh well, maybe one is good enough and I will treasure that dragon trophy more than ever!

Since we are staying at home this weekend, I will spend more time to take Zap out for some short trips. He has his first long car journey yesterday. I went to Bernadette to have a lesson with Sizzle and Saturn, guess what? He screamed the first 20 minutes!! Luckily he settled down after that, look at this:

Zap in his hamster cage!

Now, let's have a little update on Sizzle.

Firstly, his diet:

I have changed his diet again. After the 3rd trip to the vet, I have changed his diet to Adult's Nature Diet and he has been very good until I gave him half a liver cake, that set it all up again, diarrhoea and vomit, so off we back to the vet again. He didn't need a drip this time, just some jabs and anti-biotic. We also have the blood result back saying he is low in protein. Sizzle weighs 4.2kg, he is on the VERY LEAN size, so we needed some high protein to fatten him up. We go back to Burns tin food, Lamb & Rice which contains higher protein. He has been on that for a week, touch wood, he has been good so far but he did tried to steal Zap's mini bite so he has a couple off days.

Secondly, his training:

We didn't practice in the garden much, don't know why, maybe I am lazy and maybe the weather ... there is always some excuses. This week, we went to our usual club training on Tuesday noon time. I have to say he was very good, focus, enthusiatic, fast and no food involved at all. Other than he ping off the dog walk time after time, he was perfect on all the sequences we were doing. We trained more than 1.5 hours that day and at the end of the day, he was still very keen. Yesterday, we went to Bernadette for a lesson, he wasn't keen. I don't think it was too hot but he seems to find the cool spot to lie down. We have Saturn out to let him have a rest, normally he will bark and bark when I ran Saturn but yesterday he was quiet. Maybe his stomach is not right again?

The problem we keep facing at the moment is he keeps popping out the 11th pole. I tried different ways when I train him, run slower (stay behind while he weaves ahead), run faster so I am ahead of him, run wider or layer ... etc. I knew I am not good when I am ahead of him as I forgot to look back and I reward him everytime, so I guess I building up the bad habit by rewarding the 11th pole. I need to work harder on that. His weave entries are better. His running dog walk is not good this week, so more hardwork on that!!

and here is a little video taken last Sunday at Billinghurst, we didn't do well at agility but we had some lovely time playing frisbee: