Pop’s background

Pop Be Nimble Pop Be Quick – Poppy – came from the RSPCA at West Hatch near Chard in Somerset. She had been abandoned outside some public toilets out that way in a town centre late one night, tied up with a piece of string until a traffic warden took pity on her. It was late August and the RSPCA centre was packed with abandoned dogs – left by their owners to go on holiday. Perhaps that is why Pop was left? Who knows.                                                                 

Advertised at an agility show, she had to go to an active home! She had a skin infection, ear infection, lice and was undersized. She had no bond or inclination to be with anyone in particular, but decided on the journey home that as I had sat with her I was OK. Luckily I work part time, already had a rescue centre dog and so I had passed the home test. Things were made more complicated by the fact that I had fallen off a horse early in the August 2003 and by the time I got Pop I had learned that there was a chance that I might not be able to run again…. It was only the end of my first season of competing with the boys my jrs. I wondered what I had let her in for.

Learning to cope with life

She had no play drive and teaching her to play tuggie was hard as it put a lot of strain on the ligament injury I had. Obviously we had to start on the obedience work and, as she was very timid about everything, I began to socialise her in just about every situation I could think of as well. Sitting on Poole train station asking complete strangers of all ages, heights and general appearance (and mostly male!) to ask my puppy to sit and offer her a treat was memorable. Most of the men were really great once they realised I wasn’t going to proposition them! Traffic, horses and other livestock, horses with riders, donkeys, busy streets, shops and people in them, small children, cyclists etcetc all became part of her cultural experiences! Pop is my first WSD – having had terriers since I was sixteen – but my Mother trained a couple of her collies to bring the cows in on the farm – so I knew they could be mad but also knew how sensitive they are. Pop’s socialisation worked as she is happy to go anywhere now – city environments don’t bother her (took her round Cambridge last summer at DIN and she was great when tourists asked to take her picture), Olympia didn’t either and she is at home in the countryside here in Dorset. Then I began to recover the following Spring and began to run again….and proper tuggie play was possible!

Pop and Agility:

She loved agility from the minute she saw the equipment. She has immense drive and speed, is very, very herdy and has a strong eye (and a very pigmented upper palate too which I have since read is an indication that she would make a good sheep dog according to folklore in some part of the country – north somewhere I think!) but she is also very sensitive and keen to learn and get it right. And she is super smart – she is an intellectual, making connections and learning ‘in the gaps’ in ways that I find amazing. Almost every mistake made is down to me.  For her the worst is to be removed from the ring when she has not followed her training (ie she leaves the contact before release) – as she is so motivated by agility, and understands contact procedure fully, this is the most effective way of letting her know she must listen! I’m sure it is the same for many other dogs. This has been her first season of competing – 2005 – and she has left me gobsmacked. Pop has benefited from clicker training – nearly all her training on and off the agility field, including freestyle tricks, have been learned using a clicker. I trained her weaves with a set of channel weaves that I kept in the car and flung out in all kinds of places with a couple of fold away training jumps, and later a tunnel that I had acquired. She learned to weave with kids and people cycling past in the New Forest and with car music systems blasting out while lads played footie on the village green…….. I trained her contacts with an Aframe in the garden, generalising on to the dog walk at club and the seesaw on our patio! Then in October 2004 I found a field to rent, got some more equipment, and I looked around for other training.   I began to learn loads more about jumping and everything else while Pop and I gobbled up all our lessons with Stuart Carter, who was the guest trainer at a day I attended set up by Lin Bergan. There were so many things I did not know about agility training having had only a short time in the sport with the boys and six months of that with an injury! I’d never heard of agility before that! First clear round at Dashin’ Dogs at Easter 05 (10^th Open jumping) and then chaos in the ring while we got things together a bit (lots of encouragement from one or two very good people when they saw her run helped me to see that we could get it right eventually) and then 1st Novice Jumping at Shrewsbury – a testing course and beating Marc and Dash by 1 sec – he! he! More chaos while I bumped back down to earth ( I think we had 4 Es in our next run…….).And then some high novice agility places and then 1^st in Novice agility at Thames – the KC qualifier. And Senior. 

Since the summer I also go to Lesley Olden and she too is a very formative influence. Pop and I continue to learn masses of stuff – most times I feel like the wires in my brain are popping madly inside as I try to get a handle on everything. Handling Pop from in front, by my side as well as behind at least some of the time due to her speed and trying to tighten and control her turns some way from her at times (as well as up close) add extra dimensions to our learning curve! An additional handling challenge is going from Pop to Henry my little jack Russell (another rescue). Although I have transferred many of the handling techniques I have learned with Pop to my re-training of Henry it is so different! Sometimes I forget which one is on the course with me – but I am getting better. Someone told me that going from a mini (oops Small) to a standard dog is harder than the other way round so when I am really awful I remind myself of this!

Onwards and upwards

I had hoped only to get a clear round or two in Pop’s first season – I kid you not! And so I had some very sudden mental adjustments to make as we blasted through all the more modest ambitions I had for the year. In my inexperience with WSDs in agility I had not realised just how good she is.

Helen & Poppy flying around the big Olympia course

The Olympia Experience

In the semis at Stoneleigh she came 4^th and we went through to the Final after coming 10^th in the morning – but for a knocked pole she would have been second – and in the evening an ‘E’. She and I had to run first and while I wasn’t nervous I did feel very rushed and so I didn’t really get to grips with the position of the A frame/weave scenario. Plus she could not hear me as the crowd and the commentator had started doing what they do!  Still it is all experience! And we loved it! And Pop was stunning.

She is a beautiful girl, and I cannot stop myself from telling her she is everyday!

I could not have asked for a sweeter nature, or a kinder teacher in my first collie – and my first Standard dog.

Helen Davey Smith

Another brilliant story,  thanks Helen for writing about the lovely Poppy