Dogs on Top, March 1st

Yesterday was definitely a day of extremes! I had six classes, four with Kim and two with Dylan. All the courses were reasonable – the Open Tunnel Vision was really tough and I’m so glad I didn’t enter Dyl! – but I thought all the others were either lovely or at least do-able. How wrong I was …

Kim had Primary Agility first, and to be honest I thought that even though it wasn’t an ideal “Kim Course”, she would sail round without too many problems. Well, what a write-off! It really was a slow-motion train wreck; I have never had such a bad run with Kim. She was completely out of it, bombing around taking whatever obstacle she fancied, often completely recklessly (seesaw springs to mind!), completely ignoring me, and just being an absolute sod. I still have no idea why she was like that, she was queuing for longer than I would have liked due to timing difficulties but I don’t think that could have thrown her out so completely. The only thing to salvage was that she got all her contacts.

We had an iffy run in the Tunnel Vision, she wasn’t interested but we finished it reasonably well so I wasn’t going to complain too much, at least she was listening and we did go clear. Third run was in Primary TFO, my favourite class! Gemma Miles set a great course and I finally got my dog back! She absolutely flew the course, hit all her contacts, and then I gave my right command too late and she tried desperately to turn, but couldn’t. Ran past the wing for a refusal so we were out on 17 obstacles in 36 seconds. I’m kicking myself because she had 24 seconds left on the clock, easily enough to complete another 14 or 15 obstacles and I know she would have nailed all her contacts because there was no seesaw. If we had carried on she would have won the class by 2 or 3 obstacles!

Ah well, another “what if…” run! We finished up at least with a rosette from an average run in the Primary Jumping, she wasn’t running particularly quickly but we ran a decent time, 4 seconds off the winner, to finish 6th.

Dylan started off the day with the worst run we’ve ever had too, again in the Intro Agility. He was completely distracted and un-motivated, and I was really miffed. I didn’t think we had much chance in his second class, Intro Jumping, because it was a tricky course with 12 right-hand weaves, but he was much more focussed (possibly because Jet ran a couple of dogs before him and he got really wound up!) and we got the fastest 5faults which put us 12th. The 5 faults were on the weaves, I took him back for the last two because he skipped them, but he couldn’t find his stride and I was being way too cautious. Oops! Still, really pleased, his time wasn’t much off the winner and we made a silly mistake which cost us a lot of time. The winner was also the super-fast Weimaraner Rada, so even more reason to be pleased!

So I had both my dogs at their worst and at their best (well, almost!). I know at least part of the problem is the complete lack of training they’ve both had to suffer over winter. That will be changing from April when we start regular sessions once a week, and I’m hoping to meet up with the lovely A4P gang over Easter for a couple of mornings with the equipment. There were also lots of dogs and handlers missing from the show – there has been a minor outbreak of Kennel Cough in the midlands and someone irresponsibly attended the last EMDAC in Feb (that we missed) and many of the “regulars” seem to have caught it. Thankfully everyone was a bit more responsible this time, we hope! We finished up the day with a photo shoot in the exercise area with Jet & Dylan. Katie stole my camera and therefore took most of the photos! As usual, click to see the bigger version.