Vickie

I have pulled a heap of ticks off my dogs over the years Laffi. I have only ever been to the vets once after seeing symptoms. I am not sure there is anything they could do if you take her in. They will not give you tick serum if she has no symptoms. Just make sure you go over her again in case there are any more & watch for signs over the next few days. panting, vomiting, change in bark, instability etc. Any of the above probably means she has another one somewhere.

Sounds like very dangerous ground you are treading here, especially since none of your dogs have reached maturity yet. Can you not put them, outside while you prepare the food? or make them sit or down a distance from each other. I would also be very wary of throwing chicken frames out. Things can change very quickly & get very dangerous. If your boy needs to be managed every time you prepare food or eat, I would be fixing this now, before something really bad happens.

An interesting clip, mostly an example of what you don't want

Interesting method RexAppeal. Out of interest what state are you in? This is the method that was used when we first started agility. There is no doubt that it is considerably slower. I hope this is not the case because most people worldwide now are training the dog not to feel the pivot point & are training them to race to the end. I have not seen or heard any evidence that this is damaging joints & I sincerely hope it isn't.

Eddy makes great equipment in Sydney. Maybe pm Maverick for his contact details.

It does, that is the problem. As I have offered before, I have a full sized SS in my backyard which you are welcome to come & use. Well some certainly do, I have done at the 2 clubs I have been a member of. I often just train one piece of equipment or one skill instead of the sequence others are running. No point trying to run a particular sequence if you don't have the tools/skills to do it.

If you right click on the red box & copy the link from properties into your browser you will be able to see them They are very good

You haven't linked them correctly Here is the first one, it looks great, very well exposed.

I am fairly happy with Shine's seesaw. I initially taught her to jump on the end & bang it as in the last clip but without the nosetouch. At the same time I was teaching her to run over it fast with tables at either end so it didn't tip. She didn't have any fear of the movement or noise right from the start so we didn't spend a heap of time on the bang (but I would spend as long as required if the dog showed any reaction). Once both these were good, I reduce the height of one of the tables, so that she could run & then bang a bit, then we did it the whole way. I use 2 words, Tip to get on it (and differentiate it from a DW) & bang to remind her she needs to stop. Her SS is pretty good, but every now & then in a trial I still see her try to ride the up ramp of a DW, thinking it's a SS, but I see that in SO many dogs. Depending on the layout of the course, it is almost impossible for the dogs to know which is which since the cleats were removed on the DW. I'm sorry to say it, but I'm not a fan of training SS's unless they are the correct length, weight & height. I think they are responsible for most of the hesitant performances we see in competition. It is like tricking the dog, they learn a number of strides, feel a tip or a pivot point and then at clubs & in comps, those 2 things are totally different. I thik the rulebook already allows way too much variation and I hope this is fixed at the next review. I'm also not a fan of nose touches for SS's as they teach a dog to shift their weight forward, when in fact they should be shifting their weight back on landing. Trim's SS has never been great. B/c she is fast & driven, it works but I wish her first experiences on it had been different.

Yep I know what you mean. I'm loading on PC b/c the files are SO enormous that it takes forever on the Mac. But I guess forever is better than never . I may just delete them all, they are just Lorikeets, so no loss. I'm really not sold on Raw. I thought I'd give it a try but it seems more trouble than it's worth to me. I got this...which I am happy with, so I'll keep it, delete the rest & go back to Jpeg Fine I think

I have both, but am trying to load on PC.

Does anyone use Nikon Transfer to load images? I took some photos yesterday in RAW for the first time with the D300. I have always shot Jpeg fine with it. I loaded them with Nikon Transfer. Half way through it closed and now it won't load the rest off the card. I am wondering if this is related to them being raw? I might shoot some jpg on another card & see if it like it. Any tips/experiences?

sure sounds that way doesn't it

Ummmm, thank you...I think . The focus doesn't look too bad to me Ruth, although it's hard to tell from that size. I see the biggest issue with them as mostly a lighting one, as someone said, you were taking them in the wrong spot in relation to the sun. Another this you might want to play around with is getting lower to the ground yourself, so that you are not standing up over your subjects. This has been an interesting thread. I'm going to take my cheap UV filter off & see what the difference is.

Barkly is one happy & content looking pup. I love the pics, they really show his personality. Looking forward to the next lot

That's exactly what I tried...except there were 2 dogs...I think it would be much easier with 1 dog, and I used a toy intead of food.

Thank you (but I still want a better lense ). I'm frustrated with agility shots b/c I feel like I have reached the capacity of my lense...AND I WANT MORE!

OK, I tried it & I suck at it I got 1 out of about 50 that was almost OK but badly composed How cool is that! I'm chuffed. Thank you

Glad you're heading in the right direction, sorry, I totally misunderstood what you were after. I've never tried panning. I'm not a huge fan of it, but now I want to have a go always up for a new challenge.

I think that is one of the reasons that your photos are so incredibly awesome Cheryl...because they don't conform and they are so pure. Someone once told me that when you have a good eye for what makes a photo, that doing a course is not a good thing, because you lose some of that ability to see in trying to follow the rules. I think it makes sense, although I can't help thinking that I would not have deleted thousands & thousands of photos in experimentation if I had learnt some rules & done a course .

Yep the D300 handles noise SO MUCH better than the D70s...although I guess I overdo it sometimes. I just figure it is often easier to get rid of noise than to sharpen something that is not sharp. And sometimes noise works. Some of the shots I took at the nationals were very noisy, but I like that about them.

Thanks for that, you are spot on...most of my better shots are F8, 200-250. I still think we should swap lenses Bugger! I know it, but it is just not an option. Although we did just get a new home theatre system that we didn't need ...so it's only fair that I get something (that I do need) as well

Hi Luke, a question. I find that at full 300 zoom, anything bigger than F8 & the subject loses sharpness...I think b/c of the shake at full zoom. Is this what you mean above? I am going to get a monopod, I noticed you had one at the Nationals. Will this help with the above problem?

Just keep in mind that the amount of blur you will get in the background will largely be dependent on what the background is. A busy background with either of those 2 lenses is going to be very hard to get a good shot & lots of blur. The background is blurred on something like this...because there is nothing in the background. In the beach shot I showed above, it is not very blurred...beacuse there is such a big contract between sand, water & sky.

Here are 2 shots, you can see the difference between the 2 lenses telephoto 70-300, F8 kit 18-70, F6.3