Header to chaser bin (capably driven by Beta, Dave's other half): Chaser bin to truck:
What is Unca Mike wearing?!
Hanging out with Aunty Kate:
Now the fun begins!
The plan for 2009:
Crack on with GP training- somehow find regular study time and some degree of organisation.
Get fit. The baby-weight excuse isn't cutting it now I don't have a baby anymore, and I miss running for the stress relief. Plus I have a wardrobe full of nice clothes I don't fit into.
Train my dogs! This year's aims are Pinky casting and taking her sides, Queani getting fit for trialling, and doing something with Ziggy and Bart. Bill is going to stick to 3 sheeping, and the pups will just be pups. Fly- hmmm...
Train a dog in J location.
Keep up with the garden, aiming for a productive veggie patch all year round, a decent thriving herb garden, pruned and netted grapes and fruit trees, and a surviving lawn, somehow without emptying the dams. First step- two more compost heaps.
Poultry- get the chook tractor fixed, get the chooks going, and start planning for a decent (?orchard based) chook run. Investigate ducks and guinea fowl.
Learn to crutch.
Learn to do something useful re cropping (somehow overcoming my deepseated auger phobia).
Write and draw, at least once a month.
Start wearing a hat, sunnies and sunscreen every day.
As a family:
Succeed with the farm expansion. Twice the work, same man-power, but I know we can do it.
Kennels.
Perimeter fencing around the house.
Have some sort of holiday.
Get the house properly unpacked after moving in (over 12 months ago).
See more of family and friends in Perth and down here.
This is Jess. Officially she's OC AgCh Jess UD ADM JDM plus a long string of other letters.
I first remember Jess as a really annoying dog from the beginners' agility class at Northern Suburbs Obedience Club. She used to take off after Ash and Bailey and chase them around the course, and her apparently preteen handler couldn't control her. She grew out of that eventually, and it turned out that Kriszty, her owner, was actually a uni student, studying to be a vet. Jess was her first dog, a symbol of their family's new stability as they settled in Perth after years of the international gypsy life. A show-bred dog from a registered breeder, she was sold without papers for a life as "just a pet". But then Kriszty took her to obedience training.
For most people, training their first dog is a series of mistakes and "learning experiences", and that first dog never achieves as much as it should. I'm sure Kriszty made her fair share of mistakes training Jess, but it didn't show. Whatever she wanted, Jess would get on and do. They cruised through the club obedience classes, started trialling, and in seemingly no time, they were doing their UD. Obedience was never a big thrill for Jess- she looked great at training, she scored well and seemed to get her Obedience Champion title without much trouble, but she never lit up in the ring the way she did in agility.
Jess probably started out as a fairly average agility dog- I don't remember her novice career at all (apart from the Bailey-chasing), and the flashy fast dogs always used to stand out for me. But she graduated into Masters quickly, and the more experienced she became, the more impressive she became, adding speed, tight turns and incredible responsiveness to her consistent obstacle performance to become a phenomenal agility dog. Jess has always been fairly laid back in training, but when she gets in the trial ring, something fires up inside her.
(photo- I don't know! Pilfered from somewhere, if it's yours please let me know)
I can't list all Jess' trial ring achievements here (maybe Kriszty can compile a list ;))- she's won all the big events more than once, made many national finals, taken out our State Agility and Jumping Dog of The Year multiple times and has been a permanent fixture in our State teams for years. For a first dog, it's an incredible record. But even more incredible is the fact that Jess was born with a congenital heart defect, patent ductus arteriosus. She underwent an unsuccessful attempt at surgical repair as a young dog, and her murmur got progressively worse until 2006, when Kriszty took her to Queensland for another attempt at repair: Things didn't go entirely smoothly, and although she's better than before, she still has a murmur and reduced endurance.
As she approached double figures, about the only thing Jess hadn't achieved was the newly introduced Agility Champion title. Competing against so many much younger, faster, up and coming dogs on the WA agility circuit, she'd increasingly been relegated to places instead of the wins needed for the AgCh. I don't think Kriszty ever thought it would happen, but in early November she finally cracked that last MJ win, and her long deserved AgCh.
Kriszty is proving that she's a talented handler and trainer with her second dog, Terra, already an AgCh at age four, who is already equalling Jess' winning record. But I suspect that a large part of that is thanks to Jess, a dog who could turn her paw to anything Kriszty asked, who gives her all under any circumstances and really proves the power of positive training and the meaning of teamwork.
Now she's 10, I've heard Jess will start settling into retirement, enjoying a bit of agility here and there when she's in a shoelace tugging mood. I hope she'll also get the chance to dabble, like many retirees, in her life's true passion. She might be totally show bred, she might have a handler with no idea about working sheep, she might see sheep once a year if she's lucky. But for a dog who's hardly had a lesson in her life, I think she does okay:
Good girl, Jess. And happy birthday for Christmas Eve :)
We went out for a walk just before Christmas, making the most of the last days of the cropped paddocks before harvest. One of the advantages to having crops close to the house is that we can enjoy long walks with the dogs around the perimeter of the paddocks, without worrying about disturbing sheep. Now that we've finished the harvest (as of 11pm last night, woo hoo!) there'll be sheep in all that stubble, and we'll be back to exercising the dogs in the house paddocks. Canola swathes:
Sybil keeping an eye on Muddy, with Blue and Pinky behind:
Earlier in the season the dogs used to enjoy bounding like little roos through the oats, and I always wished I had the camera with me. But these days we're likely to encounter the real thing. So the other night we weren't surprised when a handful of roos appeared out of the crop ahead of us, and we managed to call all the dogs in close as the roos took off away down the fenceline.
Except one- as we gathered the dogs around the pram and asked them to stop and wait, I caught sight of a black something flashing away around the edge of the crop. Which dog? We scanned the dogs at our feet- surely everyone was here? But nope, that was definitely a dog, a blackish one, moving very fast after the roos, but then moving off diagonally, almost in a casting fashion, as though trying to head them off. It was so far away we could hardly see it, widening out as it ran, and then, it suddenly swung in and leapt straight over the new fence without pause, streaking across the wheatgrass. "Muddy!!" but nope, he's here by the pram. Black and white? Very fast! "Fly!", but there she was, leaning on R's leg. "Queani?" but she's back home in the bitches' box.
The dog was a tiny speck in the distance as it swung around behind the roos, turning them back towards us, when R finally whistled his generic recall and the dog stopped in a kickspray of dust and spun around, racing back towards us. It was Trim, wee Trim, and she cleared the fence again in a leisurely fashion and galloped back to us, tongue lolling and ears askew with delight, just as the spooked roos crashed past along the fenceline and into the neighbouring paddock.
People talk about "heart dogs", the dogs that are so much a part of a person that it's hard to imagine one without the other, the dogs that change someone's life forever. It's one of those corny Dogpeople terms that make me squirm a bit, like the "Rainbow Bridge" idea, but unlike the Rainbow Bridge, the concept of a perfect human-canine partnership makes perfect sense to me. I know exactly what is meant by "Heart Dog". It's Jules with Samroc.
Way back in the early 2000s, I turned up to agility training at Perth to hear Tom raving about this Scottish girl and her dog, both just arrived in WA, and OMG, this dog is so amazingly fast that Tom was literally jumping up and down with excitement. Not only was this dog fast, but they could do things that we'd only just started to think about. Distance handling had just started to appear on our radar. We were watching the FCI World Champ videos and seeing these handlers directing dogs at top speed from half way across the course. Jules and Samroc weren't exactly at World Champ level, in fact they were fairly new to agility even in the UK, but they did have a solid system of directional commands and Sam was like a huge black and white guided missile. Jules could just aim him at a sequence, launch him (and sometimes he'd self-launch) and he'd blast over every obstacle at full speed. He's a big dog and solid power, and I've lost count of the number of weave poles that have snapped under the force of his massive shoulders driving through, but he could turn on a dime and take jumps and find weave entries at angles that seemed impossible for any dog.
Of course Sam also has a fairly effective auto-pilot function, which had a habit of flipping on whenever Jules was at all slack in her handling. But the brilliant thing about Jules and Sam was that they always had a good time on course. No matter how brilliant or bad a run they'd had, they'd come off course the same. Even today, they argue like an old married couple- Jules tries to boss him around, he flicks his ears back and does what he wants, she puts her hands on her hips and swears at him, and then they're both laughing about it.
It must have been something to do with the time they've spent together, since the day ten years ago that Jules looked over the litter of little working sheepdogs and picked the pup with the pink stripe on his nose, and then leaving behind everything they knew to travel across the world together, but I swear Samroc understands every word Jules says, which is more than I can say for most people! And he talks back, more communicative with his facial expressions and body language than I'd believed possible. Sometimes I'm sure he isn't a dog at all, but an opinionated Scottish bloke in a dog suit.
One classic Samroc moment for me was April 2006, when he and Jules came down to the farm to have a look at some pups (and ended up going home with Diva, but that's another story). We took Sam to have a turn on our training sheep. At the age of 8, he'd only been on sheep a couple of times before. He had a good idea naturally, balancing up fairly easily, but being Sam was rather pushy and was constantly up the sheep's bums, so Richard got out his Parelli carrot stick and tried to widen Sam out. After 3 or 4 well timed flicks of the rope on the ground where he was coming in too tight, Sam started to respond, but it wasn't the response Richard was expecting. Samroc shook his head in exasperation, gave Richard a "look", and grabbed the carrot stick rope, pulled it out of R's hands and flung it on the floor. After pausing for another glare in R's direction, he stomped off after the sheep again, this time on his own terms.
Samroc is an elder in the tribe Dog. He never fights or squabbles, he doesn't need to- Sam has "Alpha male" stamped across his forehead. Puppies absolutely love him, following him everywhere like tweenie girls behind the Jonas Brothers' tourbus. He takes this responsibility seriously, tolerating most things with a longsuffering expression, but cracking down on hooliganism with a hard eyed stare, and if necessary, a quiet rumble from deep in his chest. He's more effective than a stint in military school for bringing wayward puppies into line.
Sam was always a star in agility, a natural showman and athlete, the dog everyone stopped to watch. He was at his best for the big events and seemed to turn it on for the crowds, but he never gave less than 100%, ever. Unfortunately this drive became a liability in 2006, when he threw himself over a jump and into a tight turn and injured muscles in his back. After extensive investigation, therapy and rehabilitation, he started to get back into activity, but it wasn't until 2008 that he was able to get back to trialling, and by then his age was starting to take the edge off his speed, although not his enthusiasm for the sport. They travelled over to the Nationals in Melbourne this year to enjoy one last big event together, and the worst possible scenario occurred- Sam misjudged a tyre, which was unpegged and tipped over as he clipped it, landing on his back. He spent ages in hospital, and it looked for a while as though he may never walk again.
But once again, Samroc does things his way, and after months of rehab, he's on the move again- not as freely as he was before, but he's back to the most important things in life: being Jules' best mate and the canine leader of the pack.
I wish (as always) that I'd taken more video of Sam running, but this is all I've got:
A few random agility videos from the hard drive clear out:
Midland club trial, 2006
Karen Phillips' Riot running an Open jumping course:
Simone Tolhurst's Raven on the OJ course (this was pre-lymphoma, but I'm happy to say she's just as fast and happy to be out there now she's officially a Cancer Survivor):
Kriszty Cumming's Terra (Bill and Fred's great-aunty) running (I think!) Novice Jumping:
Tom Weir and Brynn, also Midland, Open Agility:
Ash Poli and Bailey at the Canine Centre, 2005:
Ash and Bailey at Northern Suburbs training, 2005 sometime. Nice weave entry, Bailey!
And the Flyboys' aunties show how it's done, ? early 2008:
We don't really do agility any more, and I'm getting more accepting of that recently. I'll probably muck around with it now and then, I'll keep dropping in on training when I'm in town, and I might even enter the odd trial here and there, since Bill and Zig really enjoy it. But I wandered off the agility path a while back, and it's probably too hard to get back on that track now- it's heading into uncharted territory for me. I'm OK with the basics of fast dog training, the sending on and directionals and targetting and independent contacts and weaves... but the handling, the person's job, is something I never really did well, and living way out here in the bush, no club, no training group, no motivation, no time, realistically I'm not going to work it out any time soon. I do miss agility though, it's a great sport. Second to working a sheepdog, it's about the best activity you can do with your dog.
I've been thinking about it a bit recently, because some of the greats of the agility scene from my day have been moving on. Some of them are nearing retirement age or having it forced on them through injury. Others have sadly passed away, and it's bringing home the reality of my boy Jack's advancing age and impending mortality. He was twelve this year, and feeling every year of it. The deaths of dogs like Rod Stockdale's Bundy and Di Rose's Taylor, dogs that were there in the ring with us when we started agility almost ten years ago, pile heavily on my heart when I hold Jack's grey muzzle and look into his cloudy eyes.
Agility is very impressive these days: so many fast young dogs driving around demanding courses, precision and speed hand in hand. I love watching today's sport, but I'm also glad to have been a part of it "back in the day", especially during those exciting few years when the old style agility, with its left-side handling, "heelwork with jumps", point/shout/pray contacts started to open up to the concepts of independent contacts and weaves and dogs working on both sides, even (gasp!) away from the handler. Agility competitors these days would laugh at the idea that a dog could be "too fast" for agility, and while I was incredibly frustrated at the time to be told I needed to slow my dog down to have any hope of success, I'm proud of having stuck with it and been a very small part of such a huge change in the sport in our area.
So when I go to an agility trial now, I'm thrilled to see so many incredibly fast dogs doing things that would have blown us away. But it always seems wrong, somehow, that so many of the dogs that were WA agility for so many years are missing.
Ash Poli's Bailey, a greyhound-kelpie cross, really was Mr Agility for me- I've never seen a dog so perfect for it. An insanely driven agility dog, he knew the possibilities of the sport long before any of us did, and set out to realise them, dragging Ash along for the ride. They started training at Northern Suburbs not long before Jack and I did, and right from Day One Bailey threw aside suggestions at heelside control and took off running. Fortunately Ash had long enough legs to stay close behind, and together they negotiated their own style, with independent weave poles, running Aframes and some of the tightest turns over jumps I've ever seen. At their peak, they were the team to beat here, and won at the top level across the country. Since injury forced Bailey into retirement (forced being the operative word) there's been a big lanky Ash-and-Bailey shaped hole in the WA agility scene.
Emma Smith's Major was another dog I'll miss incredibly. Maj started agility around the same time Bailey did, and obviously they'd read the same instruction book. A stocky little kelpie cross, Major threw himself around a course like a cannonball, barking the entire time. Presumably he did take a breath somewhere on course, but it didn't sound like it.
Tom Weir's Paisley was really the dog that ignited my interest in training, when I took Jack along to our first PTODC obedience class and Tom and Paisley were practising tricks in front of the caravan. She was barking out the answers to maths questions, I think, and I decided that I would teach Jack to do that. She and Tom were an even more impressive team on the agility course. They ran like they were connected by an invisible elastic band, always knowing exactly where the other would be as though by instinct. I think Paisley won just about all the big events, and towards the end of her career topped it off with the inaugural Agility Dog of the Year title.
And where's Andrea Carde's Wicket, the ballistic Beardie? He was the permanent puppy, never taking agility that seriously (why spoil a good excuse to go fast and loud?) but he was always the most fun to watch. I don't know where agility dogs go when they die, but wherever it is, I'm sure Wicket and Major are barking the place down.
Photo- from ? Tim Abidin at Simone's old WestOz Agility website
There are so many great dogs missing from agility now, whether they're at home with their paws up or gone away forever, and I'm getting all misted up thinking about them. Rod Stockdale's Bundy and Frank Fitzpatrick's Harley, true masters of the sport, Karen Phillips' Soda, who jumped like a little rabbit and was just as quick, the Rhoden's big Max, a GSD in a border collie suit, Megan Bell's Jester and Tracey Wansborough's Jake, the start of the border collie ring domination in WA, Di Rose's Taylor, who competed with Jack at our very first trials and stayed in the sport almost until the day he died. There were lots of others, and I think about all of them from time to time, looking at rare photos or even rarer video clips. It wasn't that long ago, even though it sometimes feels like another planet in memory, but the shadows of those dogs still fall on the agility field for me.
And then there's Val Meyn and Guinea, who are both hugely missed from WA agility even today- although sometimes when I'm watching a really great run I'm sure I can hear a familiar "WhooHoo!" from somewhere not too far away... They really deserve their own article, but sometimes there just aren't the right words.
That's a rather long-winded prelude to me posting a bunch of video clips from agility- not featuring many of those dogs, unfortunately, because I didn't get a camera until 2005. But if I ever get around to editting some of the videos I have on tape, then you'll all be for it!
Trading peaceful
city existence for one farmer, two kids and an armful of chaos on a few thousand hectares somewhere in the South.
Featuring Farmboy, The Ginger Biscuit and the Mac's sheepdog crew.
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