Wilmslow Agility

For the first time at a competition, I had my crazy little man with me!

Combined 3-5 Agility was a lovely course, challenging enough but flowed really nicely. I was a bit worried about Dylan because he’s only ever done one show at Myerscough before, when he found the whole atmosphere very stressful. This weekend it was super crowded, as always, and we were in Ring 2 for two of our runs, so right in the hub of the traffic. I apparently shouldn’t have worried, because Dylan just took it in his stride, got very excited in the queue and was raring to go.

Just a shame about the handler! I pulled off way too early for the tunnel entry, and pulled Dyl with me to the wrong end. So that was the big E, and I’m more than a bit annoyed with myself as I think we’d have been comfortably collecting a rosette. Oh well!

Grade 3 Jumping (Part 1) was another nice course, fairly straightforward and we watched loads of clears whilst we were queuing. Dyl smoked the first half but then lost momentum after the cloth tunnel into nowhere. Still finished 10th and there was plenty of room for improvement, so that was pretty good.

Grade 3 Agility (Part 1) was back in Ring 2, a more challenging course with just with a slightly awkward bit off the dogwalk which I couldn’t figure out. I walked it with Jeremy and Mel, then again with Candy, and then finally with Leah, and eventually cobbled together some kind of plan, so thanks guys! We ran a decent clear, and finished 4th, yay! That’s our best ever Grade 3 placing, I’m so chuffed with him. There were places we could have made up time – the two wraps at the start were very wide, and I had to hold his dogwalk contact to get into position for the awkward section, which I didn’t handle all that well. I also confused the poor boy in the final seesaw-jump combi, he wasn’t sure whether to go straight or just peg it. Of course, I’m talking of fractions of seconds for all these “mistakes”, but if there’s one thing I know, it’s that there is no room for tiny errors for Dylan and I. We have to be perfect to have a chance of getting into the top-3 in these classes.

The really good thing though, the thing that makes me most happy about this whole weekend? Contacts. His Aframe was smooth, his seesaw was good. Do you know how many times I’ve watched Dylan’s dogwalk on the video? One hundred million times, and every time I want to dance. It’s not perfect, and it can be better, but it makes me so happy to see that the work we put in is paying off. That dogwalk right there is beautiful and confident and it will only get better.