Becky

I have been trying to put together a video tribute to Becky, but it seems my operating system is too old to cope with editing software! However with a bit of help from my friends I hope to have one soon...

Why love a dog?

Why do some people form such a deep attachment to dogs and/or other animals? I came across a really interesting and well written article today that suggests our connection with animals is ancient and has been an important and significant driving force, defining the path of human evolution. Have a look at this: http://patshipman.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/New-Scientist.pdf
This article suggests that the human-animal link makes sense of three of the most important leaps in human development – tool-making, language and domestication. It explains how developing an understanding of prey and predators was required to develop and make the most of tool-making skills. Prehistoric art from 50,000 years ago shows that understanding animals was the most important thing to the people that depicted them, and observing animals, compiling and sharing information was a strong impetus to developing language and communication. It suggests that the first domesticated thing was the dog, the earliest known dog skull is estimated to be 32,000 years old. Domesticated dogs may have provided hunting assistance, protection, and possibly even transport, and could live on animal remains that were not so desireable to humans (meaty bones and tripe!). In addition, domestic animals could be seen as a mobile source of wealth and personal power (and continue to be seen as such on the streets of cities today!). It is easy to see how important, beneficial and valued it would be to develop an understanding of how to keep them alive and well, of being able to communicate with them and control them, and of understanding how to change their genomes to enhance or diminish certain traits. All these things may have driven human evolutionary success and development. We probably owe dogs a great deal more than we realise! Food for thought.

RIP Becky (aka Squecky, aka Wildkap Wannabe) 3.3.00 - 5.5.11

I have not felt like blogging for quite a while.

In the beginning of May, less than a week after finding two lumps, Beckys lymph system was overpowered by cancer (multicentric lymphosarcoma). Within a few days she was unable to eat, struggling to drink, and fighting for every breath. By the time I knew what was going on, it was too late to even take her somewhere nice for a last walk, as she was too ill to walk far. I couldn't leave her side that last week, being torn apart as I watched her fade away so quickly.

It was the worst week of my life by far.

RIP Becky I miss you so much

Becky always gave every bit of her spirit and soul in everything I asked of her, all she ever asked in return was to be near me.

It breaks my heart that she did not have the many happy golden years that she deserved, that I expected her to have.

The evening she died I wrote this for her:

How quickly time slips away

We were having such fun only yesterday

Plenty of time for our lives to be totally entwined and united

Not as much time as was taken for granted

Not enough time in forever to make this feel right

Part of my soul, part of my shadow, is lost tonight



Becky (aka Squecky, aka Wildkap Wannabe) 3.3.00 - 5.5.11

Now, some six weeks on, I still think about her (and therefore cry) many times every day. However, I realise that the reason it hurts so much to loose my Golden Girl, and the reason that loosing her has left such a huge hole, is because of the enormous amount of life and great and good things that she brought into my life. I am grateful for every single day that I had her there with me.
My other dogs have pulled me back to functioning in the real and present world, and I realise how lucky I am to have them, how precious every moment is. I think I appreciate them more than ever now. I feel the need to enjoy every moment I can with them. After all, the only thing we can be certain of, is that we have the moment that we are in.

April, blog to order!

Hoorah! The show season is starting up again. I have been to a couple of UKA shows so that I could do some training in the ring, particularly so that I could relax Deece into his first experience of competing and could give him lots of reward. It was also lovely to see people that I haven’t seen for a long time and I have had many interesting chats. It’s really good to be getting out to shows again!
Thank you to the lovely people who came up to me to say how much they enjoy reading my blog, what a nice surprise! I have been asked to write something about warming up the human part of the partnership in readiness for stepping into the agility ring, so I have been thinking about that. I have a routine for warming up my dogs, as they obviously have the most athletically testing part of the performance, but I don’t have a warm up routine for myself. Probably partly (OK mostly!) because I’m lazy (for example, at the recent UKA show I was up at 5am and constantly on the move from the time I arrived at the show until the time that I left 8 hours later, apart from sitting down for a 20 minute lunch break, so didn’t feel like expending any more energy!) and partly because I’m self conscious about prancing around where people can see me! As a consequence of not warming up, I have tweaked something. So this is definitely something that is good to think about (and more importantly to action!).
Why is warming up important?
Movement is powered by skeletal muscle contractions. Our muscles are made of bundles of muscle fibres, and in turn these are made up of smaller structures called myofibrils, where the actual contraction occurs. Within myofibrils, there are two types of filaments; actin and myosin. According to the sliding filament theory, when a muscle is activated and movement occurs, these two interlocking filaments grab onto each other and pull like a ratchet system, which causes the myofibril to shorten. This shortening causes muscle contraction. The contraction is powered by calcium ions, an energy source (ATP), and for the contractions to continue beyond a few seconds, oxygen is also required. So the first requirement to efficient movement is to have a good oxygenated blood supply. By the time you reach the start line, ideally your heart should already be pumping, and you should be breathing more deeply, so that your circulatory/cardiovascular/pulmonary systems, muscles and physiology are fully ready to power your sprint round the course. Because it takes five to ten minutes for your body to respond to the demands of moving faster, your warm up should involve enough exertion for at least five to ten minutes beforehand to get to this state of readiness.
Hmmm, I haven’t been doing this – unless the end of the class has been called and I have to charge back to the van to get a dog before I miss my run!
However this is important, because an appropriate warm up should improve performance by:
1. Releasing adrenaline, which:
 Increases heart rate to a level appropriate for faster movement
 Enables oxygen in the blood to travel with greater speed
 Increases blood flow through active tissues as local vascular beds dilate, increases metabolism and muscle temperatures
 Increases production of synovial fluid located between the joints to reduce friction allowing joints to move more efficiently
 Causes dilation of blood capillaries, and therefore a better blood supply to the muscles
2. Increases muscle temperature
 Decreases viscosity of blood
 Enables oxygen in the blood to travel with greater speed
 Facilitates enzyme activity
 Encourages the dissociation of oxygen from haemoglobin facilitating oxygen utilization by warmed muscles
 Allows greater economy of movement because of lowered viscous resistance within warmed muscles
 Greater extensibility and elasticity of muscle fibres
 Increases force and speed of muscle contractions
3. Increases muscle metabolism
 Increses supply of energy through breakdown of glycogen
 Increases speed of nerve impulse conduction. Facilitated nerve transmission and muscle metabolism at higher temperatures; a specific warm up can facilitate motor unit recruitment required in subsequent all out activity
4. Aids mental preparation
 Allows time for you to become mentally focused on the training or competition ahead.


So warming seems like a very good idea, but what happens if you don’t warm up?
Best case scenario - if your body isn’t ready to react to a sudden sprint, it simply won’t be able to respond quickly enough and you won’t be able to run as fast as you potentially can.
More worryingly, ‘cold’ muscle, tendon and ligament is more prone to rip and tear if put under sudden stress (comprehensive warm-up programmes have been found to decrease injuries in soccer and athletics).

What would be a good warm up?
A good warm up should be specific to task. Warming up before competing or sprinting should start with 5 or 10-minutes of jogging. Gentle running will get the blood flowing. This can be followed by dynamic flexibility exercises and some faster running. Current opinion is that static stretches are not a good idea while warming up. Firstly because if you stretch cold muscle, ligament and tendon you could over-stretch it and cause damage, a strain or a tear, secondly because it is not logical to want to have your muscle fibres stretched before you want efficient muscle contractions to power your sprint, and thirdly static stretching for too long can weaken the muscles temporarily. However, stretching all the muscles in this way after exercise is important to help prevent injury, shortening of muscle fibres, and allow greater flexibility and agility in the long term.
Examples of dynamic stretches include:
Arm Swings
Swing each arm in a giant circle, maybe five forward rotations and a five backward rotations with each arm.
Leg Swings
With your left hand on a wall, stand on your right foot and swing your left leg backward and forward in an exaggerated kicking motion. Complete 10 swings and repeat with the right leg.
Star jumps
High knees – slow and fast
Form drills include a slow motion, exaggerated high knee run. The aim is to concentrate on your running style, to make it efficient, smooth and powerful. Your arms should be moving straight forward and back, not across your body. The knee lift should be a powerful movement getting the knee as high as possible, rising onto the ball of your other foot. Once you have good form try a faster running on the spot with high knee movement.
Heel kicks to bottom
In a fast running style.
Squats
Imagine that you are going to sit down, so you are pushing your bottom out and back, and keeping your knees from going too far forward (you do not want them further forward than your toes, this will save your knees).

Warming down
As mentioned above, it is a good idea to stretch after your run, but while your muscles are still warm. Stretching will aid recovery, keep you muscle fibres long and flexible, and help prevent injury.

Deece is 18 months and goes to his first show....

I have taken Deece to a UKA show so that for his first show experience I can take a toy into the ring and reward him lots....

Recent training

Training with Natasha Wise


Training with Lee Windeatt


Deece is a wonderful dog, so happy and nice, everyone loves him. I am fairly pleased with his agility progress, although I have never had so much trouble with teaching a dog to weave. He gets his very long legs in a terrible tangle, and just can't seem to 'get it'. Because he had so much trouble with different sets of upright weaves, he slowed right down. Now he is very accurate, concentrates really hard but still gets his legs crossed, especially in tighter spaced weaves. I think I made a big mistake by teaching him using weaves that are wider spaced, think mine are 23" between the poles. However, according to the current KC rules and regs our weaves can be between 18-24" apart (varying by up to 6" between poles, what a massive difference!!), and Deece really struggles with the tighter spaced ones. He also sometimes looks very ungainly running up the dogwalk, like his back legs are too wide apart for the width of the plank, and he is trying to run on stilts! Bless.
Zazzy has done some fab training, but gets very stressed around dogs that she doesn't know. She does unexpected things fairly often, for example recently she has been flicking away from me, despite doing training exercises designed to improve her running with me.

More weaving

Deece