Agility with Poggle

All last year, when we went to agility shows, we went for day trips. Most shows were at least an hour’s drive away. So that meant getting up REALLY early because the first classes are often around 8.15 or 8.30 and @HeatherAlex has to go walk the course before I get to run around it, and of course I have to have a toilet break before my run (cos if you “eliminate” – how posh – in the ring, you are eliminated from the class!).

This year, she decided that we would camp. I was thinking maybe a tent? I know she has one because she used to camp a lot when she was bagging the Munros. But I also wondered if she was a bit past that now, cos that was a long time ago! Turns out I was right. We have a tent on wheels!

She’s called Poggle, and I’ve told you a bit about her before. Now we use Poggle to go to agility shows, and we can go a bit further afield now that we go on the Friday before the show starts (they’re mostly Saturdays and Sundays).

We never used to pay attention to the camping area, as we were always in day parking. It turns out that LOTS of people camp at agility shows. Way more than I realised.

Look at all those people camping! This is at Scone in Perth.

We soon learned that you need more than a tent-on-wheels – you also need a garden 🙂 Where else can I be let out to play or for my late night pee?? Ours is very nice and solid (that’s so I will bark less often at passing dogs – and there are LOTS of passing dogs – it doesn’t always work, mind you!).

Poggle complete with garden 🙂

It was very funny watching @HeatherAlex put it up for the first time at a show. She’d practiced in the garden, except our garden was too small for it so she gave up. Then she practiced with a friend who has the same fencing (and a larger garden). It all seemed straightforward, even if it did take a bit of time. There are lots of nails to hammer in and loopy bits to hold the fence on the posts.

But… at our first show with it, there was a bit of a breeze. And that was a different story completely. We had to get all four of the neighbour’s family to help hold it in place while the nails and loopy bits were sorted out. It was definitely time for BOL (Barking Out Loud) – the humans were laughing too! Good job it wasn’t raining…

We’ve got better at it now, I’m pleased to say. I say “we” because I am, of course, the supervisor while @HeatherAlex does the manual labour. At our last show, she put it up all by herself, even with a breeze 🙂

I have to admit, I wasn’t too sure about what I’d think about Poggle and agility. I definitely don’t miss those early starts, especially as we sometimes had to do that twice in the one weekend. I have my own special seat with my old familiar car seat cover, fleece and seat belt harness. I’m allowed on the other seats and the bed when the fleece is there.

We even have paw-printed vet bed as a carpet!

On the other hand, I really don’t like that nasty sparky gas thing used for cooking and I bark at that a lot. She’s started giving me treats to stop me barking – so now I bark for a bit and then stop to get the treats 🙂

On the whole, you could say I’ve sort of got used to her, I think. There’s talk of us going for a longer trip in the autumn, so we will see how that works out and then I can report back!

 

 

Me’n’agility

I can see I haven’t really written much about my agility adventures (I blame the typist) so by way of a catch-up…

We started going to training classes for fun and, I hear, to tire me out (nae chance!) in 2013. I really enjoyed it, even if I did get VERY dirty (it was in a horse arena full of dust and stuff).

The next year, we went to a beginners’ class at a club (Gleniffer) which was outdoors so not as dirty (although the midges were vicious!). After that, we graduated to the intermediate class and then we were invited to join the club 🙂

In 2015, we carried on training but @HeatherAlex was very nervous about actually entering competitions until finally I put my paw down and told her we needed to give it a go. So we entered one Kennel Club show and one fun show – we were pretty rubbish but it was good fun!

At my one and only KC competition in 2015

Fnally, last year in 2016, we decided we’d give it a proper go and entered quite a few Kennel Club shows.

For those not familiar with agility, there are different organisations that run shows here in the UK but we’re registered with the Kennel Club (KC). I had to have a proper “KC name” so we came up with one that it turns out is quite hard to shout out at prizegivings (yep, we have won a few prizes). It’s “Clan Glengarry Twiglet”. Looks innocent enough, but try saying it quickly 😉

To make things a bit fairer, you only compete against dogs who are roughly your size. I had to be measured and I’m a “Small” – most of us terriers are Smalls with a few Mediums. Whereas, for example, cocker spaniels seem to be mostly Mediums with a few Smalls.

At the moment, there are 7 grades in KC. Being new to agility, we started in Grade 1, aka “Elementary”. Experienced handlers have to start higher up the grading scheme to give newbies like us a fair chance! To move up a grade, you have to win an agility class or several jumping classes, which I started to do, but there’s a catch – it has to be a clear round (no knocked-over poles or mistakes in the weave or anything) and it has to be in the time that the judge has set as the course time. It’s actually a bit more complicated than that, as you can use another system on points for the lower grades, but we liked the “winning up” method! I did win a few rosettes but, for a while, I never quite managed to avoid having faults of one kind or another.

My very first win – with faults – at Avon’s winter show

So it took us a while to move up to Grade 2, which is called “Starters”, though I do not know why since you don’t start there! The nice thing was, we won up to Grade 2 at our club’s summer show 🙂

Winning up to Grade 2 at Gleniffer’s summer show

When you win up, you don’t start competing at your new grade for 25 days – no idea why, but them’s the rules (which are here for anyone who is interested). It was a funny thing, but once we’d won up to Grade 2, I then had a stonking season and won up to each new grade at the first show we went to after the 25-day wait.

In case that sounds like I am boasting, I should add that for dogs competing at Small (and to an extent at Medium), it is WAY easier to move up the grades than it is for Large dogs. There are so many more Large dogs in classes – loads of Border Collies at every show. My classes might have anything from 4 dogs (yes, really) to 35 or 40 or so, where a Large class might have 180 or more! So there’s a lot more competition for the Large dogs to beat.

Winning up to Grade 3 at Ayrshire show

By the end of the year, I’d won up to Grade 5. I was VERY proud of myself for that, even if it is easier for Smalls. I’d won lots of crystal glasses (no use to me) and even more trophies (no use to me either), but at one show I won loads of tuggy toys, so for once all the Christmas presents to the family dogs were actually from ME 🙂

All of my 2016 rosettes 🙂

It really was a fab year, 2016, as it turned out I also won the Scottish Agility League class for Small dogs that started the year at Grade 1. And my club voted me the Best Small Dog of 2016 #proudears

Scottish Agility League Small Grade 1 – the champ!

So that was my first proper year in agility… My next story will be about how much harder it has been in 2017, cos Grade 5 turned out to be a whole ‘nother ball game!

 

 

 

Meandering in Melrose

In March, we went on our very first overnight trip in Poggle, staying in a small town in the Scottish Borders called Melrose. I’m happy to report that the trip was mostly okay though there were some scary bits…

@HeatherAlex quite sensibly decided that our first trip would be to a proper site, with water and toilets and electricity and all that (and a pub nearby!), just to make life easier on our first sleep-over. Mind you, someone got soaked trying to fill the water tank – a little matter of a high-pressure nozzle on the hose which did an imitation of a whirling dervish when the water was turned on! #chuckle

Once we’d parked up and she’d dried out a bit, we went out for a walk up some local hills called the Eildons – there are 3 tops to do, but we only did one of them.

2 of the 3 tops (we only did the one on the left)

The start is quite steep, up a LOT of steps. Easy-peasy for me, of course…

Someone (not me) was puffing by the top of these!

The lower slopes are covered in gorse.

Look at all that rabbit-infested gorse 😉

Fellow rabbiteers will know, like me, that gorse bushes are an amazing place to hunt out rabbits. Which made it very unfair that I was on the lead as soon as she spotted the gorse 😦

Now the path from the steps to the gorse was a bit muddy but, oh my goodness, the next section was a VERY muddy and slippery pathway, inches deep in orange mud. Now I don’t mind a bit of mud, I must confess, and I have 4 paws so I’m pretty sure-footed in amongst it, but it’s a lot harder for humans to keep their balance especially with me tugging on that lead. I think @HeatherAlex was worried about slipping over, which is why we only did one of the 3 tops. At least, that’s what she said – personally, I think she had run out of puff!

Once we were past the gorse, we did play quite a lot of Fetch with my ball so I did get a chance to run around a bit.

A quick break from chasing the ball to check for rabbits…

And then we were at the top!

I do manage a very nice Sit & Wait 🙂

Coming down was every bit as muddy and slippery, not to mention rabbit-less thanks to my lead, but we made it in the end. We went to the pub for “a swift half and a chew” (I’ll let you work out who had what!), but it was very crowded and noisy, thanks to the Scotland-England rugby match being on the tv. Don’t ask me about the score, it’s still a sore point… So we wandered around Melrose for a while before tea – there’s a nice abbey but we didn’t go in.

Melrose Abbey

The actual sleeping-over was okay, to my surprise. It was like a proper bed with all our usual blanket, fleece & so on, so it was more or less like home. The only bit I really really didn’t like was when @HeatherAlex went off to the toilets in the morning, and I started being a bit frightened and shivery till she got back.

We were going home that day (it really was a short trip) but we managed to fit in a walk by the river before we left.

We’re headed for that bridge…

I do love walking beside a river…

All too soon, it was time to turn around and head back to Poggle.

Can you read the notice? No horses or cattle, no loitering or jumping, and no more than 8 people at a time…

And there are the Eildons again…

We headed home after that walk, happy that we’d survived our first stay in Poggle!

First forays in the van

To be honest, the first time I was in the new van wasn’t exactly a foray as we didn’t move from the driveway. It was more a getting-to-know-you sort of a visit with Poggle.

The people had bubbly drinks and some crisps, and I had one of my favourite chews and some of their crisps. But it was bloomin’ cold, cos someone (naming no names) hadn’t managed to get the heating working*. So cold that everyone had their hats and coats on, and it wasn’t long before we came inside to the warm 🙂

Time to give up and head indoors!

But then we went for a proper day trip with Poggle to visit Aberfoyle. We picked it because it has a HUGE car park which meant we might not bump into anything 🙂

We went with our friends Morna and Finzi, and we all behaved very well in the van. Finzi was on a rug on the floor and I was with Morna on the front passenger seat, watching the world from much higher than normal – I could see over hedges and everything!

The walk was fine, quite a lot of it on a track so I had to be on the lead and then we got to a loch and it got more interesting. For a start, I love sniffing around picnic tables in case people have dropped any food…

Not much to eat at this picnic table 😦

And then we found some metal wildlife! It’s all part of the Sculpture Trail (I’ve described the Loch Ard sculptures in some of my Big Walk posts) but we’d never been to this bit of it.

There’s a big fish jumping out of the water!

 

…and a giant dragonfly hovering about the loch…

 

…and a massive bird on a pole

It was a very nice walk, we had some treats and then it was back to Poggle for the drive home. All in all, I quite liked my day out in Pog, so maybe I’ll enjoy her a bit more now.

Next, we’re going to try staying overnight in Poggle – wonder if I will like that?!? I very much hope the heating will be working!

 

* In fact, she spent the next 2 days worrying that she’d broken it until she realised she’d just done things in the wrong order (apparently there’s a lot you have to do EXACTLY right or it doesn’t work!)

Adventures in a van – maybe!

Some of you might remember that last year we hired a campervan and headed north to a wee village called Contin. You might also remember that I wasn’t particularly happy about that whole trip. Maybe it was the smell of all the furs who’d been in the van before me, I don’t know. Anyway, I thought that me being unhappy meant that @HeatherAlex would give up on her idea of buying a van.

Hmmph.

It did not.

In January, she came home from a day away and told me she’d bought our very own van and wouldn’t that be lovely? Hmmmm….I wasn’t so sure.

The van … It’s quite big …

She brought back some pictures of it (of course) so I could see what it was like…

That’s the kitchen on the right – doesn’t look very big to me

Seems that these turn into our bed?

There’s even a toilet!

That kitchen still looks small to me…

About two weeks later, off she went to get it and brought it home.

It’s been clamped already! 😉

When she brought it home, she put loads of my things in it – blanket, seat cover, vet-bed, a towel or two, even some toys. And it smelled like it was, well, mine. So maybe I could get to like it?

Since then, I’ve been in and out of it a few times to play and get treats. It doesn’t live with us any more, as it is too big for our street really, but I’ve been over to visit it at its new home a couple of times, and every time I get a nice chew. I think someone is trying to bribe me!

Oh and it’s got a name now. Seems that “it” is really a “she”, and she is called “Poggle”. If you are very clever and observant, you may spot that that is based on its, errm, HER numberplate. And that is thanks to my pal, Teagan, whose mum suggested her name. So Poggle she is, aka the Pogmobile, or the Pog for short. I’ll be writing about our adventures with Poggle in future!

At the Falls of Clyde

A couple of weekends ago, we went to do some agility training at a farm near Biggar (which isn’t very big, as it turns out).

I really enjoyed the training in the morning, practicing things that @HeatherAlex finds difficult (like running fast and right-handed weaves and things called “Ketschker turns”). By the end of the 2 hours, she was not bad at most of that. Well, not the running fast bit, but the rest of it 😉

It was a bit of a drive to Biggar, so she decided we’d do a walk on the way home rather than go to one of our usual places. A wee detour off the route took us to the Falls of Clyde, a nature reserve on the River Clyde. With woods and a river, we thought it’d suit us perfectly.

We combined two of the waymarked trails for our walk (turns out we pretty much did the walk described on the WalkHighlands website). We missed the main car park and ended up in historic New Lanark by mistake but, as it wasn’t very busy, we were able to park there after all.

New Lanark

So….off we set.

Why am I going the wrong way? We’re practicing “recall” 🙂

The reserve is looked after by the Scottish Wildlife Trust, and they have done lots to make anipals feel more at home here. There are bats, badgers, peregrine falcons and otters, it seems, but I didn’t see any of them 😦

Checking out the start of our walk…

There was a big notice board with lots of warnings and instructions on it…

Do I have to be on the lead?

It says I have to be under “close control”, mostly because there are some very steep sides where I could fall a long way down into rocks or the river. In those places, I was on the lead, but the rest of the time, I could run around and explore everything. That’s why we were practicing our recall, to make sure I remembered about being under close control 🙂

The paths were good, with lots of sniffs…

…but I prefer being off the boardwalk…

…and by the river is best!

I said I didn’t see any badgers, but I did, sort of. It was on the side of a building and it was HUGE!

If I ignore it, maybe it won’t eat me…

The views were great as we walked up past the various falls (or “linns” as they call them), so here are a few pics of the river gorge and the linns.

Aren’t the colours lovely?

Believe it or not…

…the falls are not as huge as they were…

…because lots of the water goes to the power station

Mind you, some of the water is kept for a water fountain, just for us anipals 🙂

Perfect (slurp)…just what you need on a long walk 🙂

Further along the river, there were – yes, you guessed it – more views of the river and linns…

Can’t beat a colourful pic of a river and trees…

…and more waterfalls…

On the way back, we took the Woodland trail, which looped up away from the river. It was surprising how quickly the trees shut out the noise of the river, which had been pretty loud when we were near it.

There’s a pinecone there, ready to be kicked…

In one place, they’d chopped down some trees, but they also planted some baby ones to take their place…

Some of those baby trees look a bit crooked!

Finally, we came back to the river and walked back to New Lanark, in time for me to have my tea in the car and a snooze on the way home.

A last look at the River Clyde before heading back to the car….

It was a great day. I think we’re going back to Biggar for more training, so maybe we’ll go back to the river as well.

Chillin’ in Contin

This month, we had a bit of an adventure. Normally, when we go on holiday, we rent a dog-friendly cottage in an interesting place with lots of walks and fur-friendly places to visit. This time, it was a bit different. No cottage for us – we rented a campervan instead. It was from Big Tree Campervans near Perth who have a fur-friendly campervan.

Our van! (it’s called Alder)

Simon from Big Tree was very helpful and kind to us newbie campervanners and showed us how everything worked. Well, actually he showed @HeatherAlex while I ran off and explored their garden 🙂

The van was bigger than I thought it would be. Lots of room for all our stuff (I need lots and lots of my favourite things when we go away!) and a kitchen and cupboards and a seat that turns round and a clever bed that folds out. Oh, and another bed in the roof – that was VERY clever – not that I was allowed up there in case I fell through the hole in the ceiling.

But it’s rather a long way up here…

Now the first thing I noticed when we drove off was that @HeatherAlex was a lot further away from me than she is in a car. I was a bit lonely all the way back there on the seat, so I tried jumping off it a few times, until I was told very firmly to stay put and the harness safety lead was shortened so I didn’t have much choice 😦

We drove for quite a bit, with a visit to a place called Ralia for lunch, a quick walk and checking of pee-mail, and finally we ended up in a wee village not far from Inverness called Contin, at the Riverside campsite.

Our home-from-home for 3 days…

Guess why it’s called that?

Yep, there’s a river at the end of the site 🙂

Once we’d parked up, it was time to put the roof up because someone kept bumping her head 😉 During the day, we could fold up the bed platform so it was out of the way.

There’s a bed in that roof!

If I’m being completely honest, I wasn’t entirely sure about this campervanning malarkey. It probably didn’t help that the weather was cold and wet. I did point out that the previous week was lovely and sunny and would’ve been much better but that didn’t cheer anyone up for some reason. I had to be on a lead on the campsite, but I didn’t want to be in the van, so I sat outside for a bit getting wet.

I *know* it’s raining but the van’s too small for the 2 of us!

Eventually, we went for a walk in the forest at Contin, which is handily just a few minutes’ walk away down the main road.

Time for a forest walk 🙂

It wasn’t a very long walk though because I was a bit fed up and didn’t want to walk very far. Well, it was raining, after all! Life improved when our friend Ally arrived though, and we went for another walk in the wee wood across the road…

All set for our big walk…

Actually, 5 acres isn’t very big at all so it only took us about 10 minutes to walk round the whole wood! I did have to stop and inspect a Giant Squirrel though.

It’s HUGE!!

So quite soon we were back at the van, and it was time to celebrate Ally’s big birthday.

Happy Birthday Ally!

I wasn’t allowed any of the chocolate cake (sigh) but I did get some special treats.

Yummy, it’s chicken!

It was quite cosy in the van, and the heater worked very well (just as well as it was chilly outside). Bedtime was … interesting. Ally had to climb up into the roof-bed (that was quite fun to watch). We turned the seat into our bed but I was still not very happy about being dragged away from my home, smells, parks and pals, and I slept on the other side of the bed for most of the night just to show I wasn’t very pleased. Until I got too cold and started shivering, so I caved in and snuggled up to keep warm.

The next day we all went for a nice long forest walk. We started at Rogie Falls and worked our way almost all the way back to Contin then turned round and headed back to the car at Rogie.

The bridge at the falls has gaps in it – I had to be careful where I put my paws!

The falls are quite impressive…

I was keeping an eye out for deer to chase, but the only deer we saw was carved on a signpost.

You’d think the signpost was pointing to where you’d find deer, wouldn’t you?

We found a great spot for lunch. Someone has built a shelter in the forest and it was big enough for us to sit and have lunch inside it, out of the showers.

My own lunch place…

Well, to be honest, once the other two were inside, there wasn’t that much room for me!

I need to fit in as well, you know!

We added in a detour up to a place in the middle of the forest called View Rock. I think on a sunny day, it would actually be a nice view…

…but the cloud was down and it’s a bit dreich!

We only got lost once. I didn’t mind as I got to scamper down and back up beside a lovely burn but the other two were muttering under their breath all the way back up the path. Actually it wasn’t really under their breath 😉 All in all, though, it was a good walk, and we didn’t get too wet, which was a bonus.

Ally headed off to go to a concert after tea-time and so we had a quiet evening. I did deign to cosy up on the seat while @HeatherAlex was reading, but that was mostly because it was chilly!

On our last day, we decided to drive most of the way back to Perth in the morning and go visit a different wood at The Hermitage near Dunkeld. It’s owned by the National Trust for Scotland, but parking is free for us members.

Hermitage Woods – lots of paths and a river as well…

We just did a short walk of about an hour, but there are much longer ones as well. We went round an interesting trail that had Ossian’s Hall and Ossian’s Cave on it. The Hall is quite small but has a great view of the river…

I’m glad the bars were there – it was a long way down!

The cave has more interesting smells though!

I had to be dragged out though, cos I found some food in there (hee hee)

On the way back to the van, we met loads of people in red and yellow suits and wetsuits, coming up the path. I think it was a rescue team going to practice rescues at the river. I’m glad they had wetsuits though because it was very wet and even more chilly by then!

They weren’t here to rescue me, honest!

That was the end of the adventure, because then we took the van back, and I snuggled into my usual spot in the car with some relief. Familiar territory at last! I fear that may not be the end of the story though, as I think we may try again in the future to see if I can be persuaded to enjoy it. We will see……..