EMDAC Winter 01

EMDAC were the only people in the country yesterday not to cancel their show because of the snow. Which seemed like an excellent plan to me, until 7:30 in the morning when we were skidding wildly on the A1 in blizzard like conditions. The A1 was almost completely covered and the road to the venue was completely covered. We genuinely wondered if we had finally gone insane.

Apparently we must have done, because only half the entries turned up for the show. Quietest show I have ever been to. On the other hand, we were done and dusted by 2:30, the sun had melted all the road snow and we were home by 5pm.

I made a shambles of Primary Agility because I walked the wrong course. Dylan ran the course I was doing very well, nice contacts and pretty quick. Unfortunately it wasn’t the same course everyone else ran … oops! So we’ll gloss over that one and quickly move on.

Primary Jumping was straightforward course, no weaves and no major challenges so it was running really fast. Dylan and I went clear, felt reasonably fast but wasn’t sure if we were quick enough to go into the places. We came 5th in the end, just over half a second slower than Bob’s super speedy youngest Twig, so pretty chuffed with that.

Primary TFO was a tricky course that I actually really liked, but I was pretty sure we weren’t going to get the link back to the start again. The dogs had to come out of a tunnel and run between two very tempting jumps to take an awkwardly angled dogwalk, and Dylan took the start jump again. Which was a shame, as I wanted to do some more contacts with him! We finished 3rd anyway, just behind Mabel and Riise, and we still had over 20s on the clock so pretty chuffed with that.

We made a hash of Primary Steeplechase so we’ll gloss over that one too. Dylan knocked a pole (!) and then I thought since we’d already got 5f I’d try and handle the top bit differently, but just promptly confused my dog. Oops.

More later on Dylan’s jumping, because it’s niggling.