Saturday, May 30, 2020

Virtual Agility


So in these crazy times, all of our agility competitions have been cancelled so the Agility Association of Canada started a virtual Fun At Home Agility League. You just need three jumps and a tunnel, it's supposed to be a 15 ft tunnel but a 10 ft one works too. The space required is 40 ft by 40 ft but you can get by with less. My problem is the slope of my yard and the trees. Every week there are two jumpers courses at each of three different levels. You can buy any or all the courses or you can buy the courses you'd like and judging too.  You submit your videos to a FaceBook group.

Usually I buy the two level 3 courses and judging, this week I bought all the courses but no judging as I'd like to work a bit more with Teddy and it takes up quite a bit of time to walk the courses, then warm up Keltic and have him run the course.  The courses are so nested that I really can only do one a day as otherwise I would get super confused. 

The videos are from the courses from the week before last. Keltic ran well, I didn't. This was a mulligan run after we had already run the course. No handler or dog was hurt in the video.


The next day I let Teddy have a chance on this course before learning the next course.  He did really well considering how little training we've actually done.  Level 3 is approximately Masters level. This week as I said I bought all the courses so I'll see how he does on Level 1 which is closer to Starters.  


Keltic has earned his Level III Novice Jumpers title the week before last. This past week although he was clean he was over time on both of his runs.  This week we'll focus on some training.  

Wednesday, May 6, 2020

Just Jump

So in this crazy time, I have lots of time at home so I decided to paint my outdoor agility jumps.  I bought most of them off eBay many years ago and have always taped them which had to be done every other year.  I'm hoping the paint will last longer.

I did an online order at Home Depot for paint and coloured electrical tape. I had to wait nearly three days for the order so luckily this wasn't urgent work.  I ordered this spray paint in red and black as it said it adhered to plastic so we'll see.


It was hard to get the the old tape off. In some cases I just gave up and painted over the remnants of the tape. The jumps look fine from a distance but up close they're a bit messy.  I also retaped my tire too but didn't have enough tape to do a really good job of it. I also learned that it is hard to mask off the jump bars to get nice lines, the paint bleeds under the tape.  On the last jump bars I did, I masked them first with electrical tape then paper and painters tape which worked a little better. 


I worked out of the garage, making a little spray booth with a garbage bag and my saw horses. It worked pretty well, there's spray paint on the garage floor but does it really matter.  Once I had spray painted the first of the uprights, I realized I couldn't lay them down on the floor so I have to come up with a drying rack. I used beer bottles for that.

First Jump

First two jumps

All three jumps
I had a little blood shed doing these jumps when I pinched my finger trying to get the jump cup off of the upright.  The PVC is sharp where the joint has been cut. It's not as bad as it looks, at first, I didn't even think that it had broken the skin but then it started to bleed.

Ouch

Jump Cups
We set up the back yard with the newly painted jumps. As I was painting the jumps, I realized that red, black and white had been Beckett's colours so I re-dedicated the backyard as Beckett's Field.



No one has yet to run in Beckett's Field, the Agility Association of Canada (AAC) has started a virtual Jumpers League. Keltic and I ran two events last weekend before I had painted the jumps.  The link below is to our run on the second event we did. The AAC hasn't put out anything yet on the next event.  Last week was free, the next time you have to pay to see the courses and, if you want to have your run judged.  Pretty neat what we can do with today's technology.


I ordered a new rubber skin for my teeter just before the lock down happened. I haven't received it yet but they said delivery was six to eight weeks, hopefully by then my brother-in-law will be able to help me re-board the teeter.