Scunthorpe
I feel like the title of this post should really be “That was Unexpected”, since the whole show was definitely so. I went hoping to see how Dylan would measure up in Grade 4, and let Kim have a blast in the 1-7 classes she had. I suppose I did achieve that, just not quite in the way I thought I would.
Kim did have a blast in the 1-7’s. The Jumping was a lovely course, really spread out and with just a wrong tunnel entry to challenge. I would have been quite surprised if Kim hadn’t gone clear! She cruised around, didn’t fire on all cylinders but she enjoyed herself and made it look super easy. And then she came 1st … great, says I, but no more wins please Kim. She had a Jumping win from High Peak, so another Jumping win would have taken us to Grade 6. Which I wanted to avoid!
Graded 1-7 Agility was a difficult course for Open, very tight spacings to start and a really awkward soft weave entry. I handled the start badly and was way too far behind when Kim hit the weave entry, so she popped out to check where the hell I’d got to. She doesn’t weave away from me (there’s always something to work on!), and then I tried to send her back in from a stupid angle before finally getting my head in gear and setting her up properly. She flew around the rest of the course, did beautiful running contacts on the dogwalk and aframe, so we finished up with 10f — and 2 time faults, grr. We probably wasted only 4-5s at most at the weaves, so to get time faults was a little frustrating. Still came 1st though! Only Grade 6 won with a clear, Grades 4 and 7 both had faults and nobody from Grade 1-3 even got around. Too hard for a 1-7, maybe?!
Sunday’s 1-7 Agility was a lovely fast course, and Kim just blitzed around again, came 1st, and took us to Grade 6. Scuppered all my plans there for her having a few relaxing retirement runs in 3-5 classes! Kim does like to do it in style though, three wins in one weekend. (Annoyingly, last course of the day was Doc’s really nice 1-7 Jumping — probably the only real 1-7 type course of the weekend — and we blew it with a 5f as Kim skipped past on the weaves).
Dylan was not so good. Felt like we’d gone backwards 6 months, 12 months. We badly crashed a jump in the first (very difficult!) C4-5 Jumping class, and although he finished that course well, I wonder if it through him off for the rest of the weekend, but that sounds like a fairly bad excuse. He also took the first pole in the second class of the weekend too, which upset him, but again he finished the course well and I thought he would improve as we went on. Famous last words. First agility run was clear but slow, slow creepy contacts and no real drive at all through the whole thing. No where near the placings in that. Second agility was better, much more driven, but we were E’d at the start.
Again, thought things were going to improve for Sunday … notsomuch. CSJ Qualifier was a fab course, I loved it and tried to push Dylan since I thought he would like it too. He was way too slow over the first section and after we dithered after the weaves, I decided to hold his contacts since I thought we’d be well out of the placings anyway. Aframe was nice but dogwalk was disappointingly slow. Finished 19th. Untidy clear in the Jumping and well out of the placings, and then a shockingly bad run in the other Jumping class; Dylan was measuring jumps and should have gotten a refusal, but apparently the judge was very generous. His jumping improved in the Derby but we were way too wide at one of the turns to get placed, although we finished 19th again.
Much to think about, not least what I’m going to do with Kim now!