Running behind on this one. I’m always in two minds about this show, the show organisers are great and they always schedule good classes, but the venue is one of the worst I’ve been to. It’s really uneven and hilly, and if it rains (and of course, it rained) it gets very muddy and awful.
Nice courses all weekend, except the C3-5 Agility on Sunday which was really difficult (less than 20 clears out of 200 dogs?!). Our first run was in the G4-5 Ag which was a super course, interesting push-out start and it flowed really well. Dyl had what I thought was a steady clear; we were very wide on the turn after the aframe and had a slight dither on the end because I’m an idiot. We came 2nd anyway, just behind Nigel Staines. And that was our only clear of the day!
We got E’d in the C3-5 when Dyl went back up the Aframe, which I kind of expected as I only got chance to walk the course once and couldn’t figure out how to do that bit anyway. We did the rest of the course well though, including the awkward turn off the dogwalk and the pull-thru at the end. We struggled with the same sequence at Easter, visible improvement!
G4-5 Jumping was a nice open course but we rushed onto the line and Dylan wasn’t focussed at all. He popped out of the weaves (second obstacle) and I took him back to restart and we did finished up well, although Dylan did the pipe tunnel a few more times than he technically should have.
We only got one run in on Saturday when it wasn’t raining. The G4-5 Jumping was a really fun run, we had a pole down (yeah, sharp turn going downhill, we weren’t the only ones with that pole off) so I decided to run the end in the risky way, which didn’t work. More extraneous tunnels!
And then it rained. Torrentially. I was queuing after they’d called to the end of the class in the Adams Derby when the clouds opened. Dylan hated me for that run but we went clear and came 12th. One day I will post the video of the run in the rain and you can all be appalled at how awful I am to run my dog in such terrible conditions. We then ran back to the car and waited for 40minutes for the rain to ease up so we could run G4-5 Agility, which I was looking forward to as it was just our kind of course. We ended up having to run it in the drizzle and I was too much of a wuss to run properly with Dyl, so we got a refusal. Oops! We finished 3rd anyway with 5R. There were a lot of 5f runs in the end, probably down to the weather.
A bit of a hit-and-miss weekend!