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Takes me an hour and a quarter to get to Vic Park for training, so 2.5 hour round trip.

"*High grade spring system on bottom snaps pole back into place" I would want to know what that spring is about before I looked at them more. Most competition weave poles I have seen are not sprung. In fact I have only seen one set of agility competition weaves which were "sprung" and a lot of dogs (particularly the hard driving dogs) refused to complete the full set as they were literally flicking back into the dog.

Definitely nothing in Camperdown, other than the very occasional puppy pre-school run by the local vets. There has been some info re: classes pinned up in the Petstock store at Colac but I haven't paid much attention. I travel to Ballarat for training as we do agility and the instructors there are excellent.

A big well done, particularly in such foul weather

About $25 worth of vegies/fruit per month, a $5 tub of yoghurt a week, occasionally offal//tin of sardines plus ACV, vitamin E tablet and some linseed oil. Plus a meaty bone per day, I end up paying for more bones than I'd like because I want meaty bones, not the fatty crap you pay $3 a kg for from Safeway. Bones work out to be about $1/day for one dog, which is mostly roo tail. I have to be careful to keep my dog lean, I have to be very strict with her diet as she gains weight on the smell of an oily rag. Also being rural limits my cheaper options.

I chop mine up with a tomahawk, buy them whole and then chop them up into smaller sizes so she can have a piece every day rather than one every 3 days and nothing in between. Darcy's favourite job is cleaning up the chopping block when I'm done.

No way, no disaster thread this year.... We're all going to do brilliantly this year! A big well done to everyone for the year so far, it's great to be back in "trial" time again. Love summer, hate the lack of trials. We started off the year really well, came incredibly close to a Masters Jumping pass but dropped one bar (my fault as usual) and a pass in ADX and a 2nd at the K9 twilight trial. We were unlucky to miss a pass in ADX today (translate my fault again!), which would've been Darcy's title, but we did manage 2 out of 2 JDM passes for the weekend, and two 1st places to boot.

No Coolies trialling this weekend Pandii.

There will be a few DOLers doing agility, I'll leave them to out themselves. I reckon their avatars should give them away though :rolleyes:

Thanks heaps for the offer Laffi, but I think I'll go with the D-fa coat which I'll order direct from NZ as it will be a lot cheaper.

It's ok, have emailed CR and they have them back in! I'm thinking about ordering an obtrack coat, I wanted to have a look at the D-Fa ones while in NZ but just didn't get time to find the stores that stocked them. Seems that a few that have tried the D-fa after the obtrack preferred the latter. Will have a think about it and let you know, the D-fa ones are a lot cheaper to buy direct from NZ given the exchange rates.

Edited: looks like what I was after is out of stock and can't order til more come in :rolleyes:

Mine was late again too KC. Showed up on Monday apparently, was hoping it would show up in time for reading material on the plane but no luck.

If I place my dog in a sit and lower a piece of food or a toy towards her face, but don't release her to take what I have, she will look away from said toy/food and then look back towards it as I raise it away from her. It's her way of resisting the temptation to self-reward without a release.

Badly trained/mannered through a human's eyes only. To dogs most are just being....well just dogs. Darcy is ball mad, and I spend a lot of time in summer at the beach keeping her fit through swimming and water retreiving with a ball. The game is all that matters to her. To have a dog steal her ball and rack off with it, or jump all over her trying to get her to play, or shove their nose so hard under her tail that they've lifted her entire rear end off the ground really doesn't float her boat, and her attempts to avoid such dogs makes it obvious what she thinks of such intrusions on "her" game. She's also a very submissive dog to others, and has had a few run-ins with a small dog at training. As a result she is not a fan of small dogs, particularly loud small dogs. She loves the whippet who frequents the local showgrounds who has no recall whatsoever, but the lack of recall would be my opinion not hers

I suppose it would depend on where you are? Doesn't change the definition, but it does change whether I'd use it or not. In a small country town of 3000 people, we have so many places to run dogs off-lead that often you have them to yourself, and might come across one other dog and owner even at peak time. Many are regulars, and you get to know who's dog is good and who's are badly trained/badly mannered etc. Have no issue at all with using such an area, but I wouldn't call them a dog park either. On the other hand, a really busy off-lead area with dozens of dogs - no way! And that's what I would call a dog park. I guess I won't see you at Brighton Beach on a warm Saturday afternoon then The joys of city living Ahhh that would be a no! Why share a beach with 50 others when I can have one to myself

I suppose it would depend on where you are? :rolleyes: Doesn't change the definition, but it does change whether I'd use it or not. In a small country town of 3000 people, we have so many places to run dogs off-lead that often you have them to yourself, and might come across one other dog and owner even at peak time. Many are regulars, and you get to know who's dog is good and who's are badly trained/badly mannered etc. Have no issue at all with using such an area, but I wouldn't call them a dog park either. On the other hand, a really busy off-lead area with dozens of dogs - no way! And that's what I would call a dog park. :rolleyes:

There isn't any specific dog parks around here in Country Vic. I do avoid over popular spots, Darcy likes her doggy friends that she knows but when it comes to strange dogs she'd prefer to play ball with me. You can see her get very frustrated at having other dogs in her face trying to play when all she wants is the ball. She can be quite submissive with other dogs, particularly small snappy dogs, and I don't like the idea of her being jumped on or roughed up by dogs who are bigger than her. One place I do go which is really popular, I find most dogs there are well behaved and most of them are just as fetch mad as what Darcy is so they don't bother her. I do take her to the beach at every chance, have just found an awesome beach which is really quiet so we head there as often as we can.

My 3 y.o was the same when she was young - bad enough that you always felt like washing your hands after you patted her, no matter how many times I bathed her or what I bathed her with. It wasn't until I was talking about bathing dogs with a friend that I twigged that she didn't stink anymore and hadn't had a bath for ages... in that time I'd changed her from a 1/2 raw 1/2 super premium food over to full raw. She's also a lot less itchy, and her coat is now a beautiful shiny black (I get heaps of comments on her coat now) as opposed to an awful brown. I've put it down to her not tolerating grain or preservatives, most likely grain. She gets a good tablespoon of human grade Linseed oil and another one of ACV in her dinner every night to help with coat condition and her itchies.

She was on last night, the closest fires were under control but one was still causing some concern at a distance. Hopefully she will update us later this evening.

So pleased to see you post KC! I couldn't quite remember where you were but I knew it was over there somewhere! :D Stay safe

There is the ability to DQ in ANKC for unsafe handling, it just doesn't get used very often. Crops up more often in the games I've noticed.

I'd be ringing your vet. Most of those packets have pretty strong warnings on them. I hope she's ok.

Take a brief moment to consider the dogs in the heat, particularly the younger dogs in the foundation session. Agility trials are shut down after 1/2 an hour at 32C for the safety of the dogs as well as judges/stewards and handlers. It was 32 C at 11 am this morning, and we're 2 to 4 C cooler than Melbourne.

Thank god!!