UKA DigItDogs

Soo, this was our first UKA show. It was tiny. I understand why; UKA is expensive and if you can only do 1 or 2 shows a year, it’s not worth it. Dylan needed the training in the ring aspect so I decided to shell out in the hope it would improve us elsewhere. However, because it was such a tiny show, I still only have the vaguest idea of what a UKA show is actually like. It felt more like an unaffiliated show, and I was very uncomfortable watching some of the Beginner dogs run. Some of those dogs should NOT have been near equipment, let alone be entered at a competition. Obviously not the fault of the show organisers, but it did mean I spent a lot of my time reading my book in the car.

I also feel like we cheated for our progression points, for the most part. Dyl came 1st in most of his classes, but apart from Steeplechase, he was the only dog in the class. As long as we didn’t get E’d, we came 1st. Which … eh. Also, because it was such a small show, on Saturday they elected to run all the levels over the same course. Which meant we were basically running G1-3 classes all day, super easy and all kinds of boring. Complaints, I have them.

Anyway, Saturday was a very slow day, Dyl’s jumping looked better than it had at Dog Vegas but not brilliant. It was like watching him finding his feet; cautious, testing strides, but not overly anxious. He Q’d in Senior Jumping (and came 1st), got E’d in Agility (which I wish I’d trained, in hindsight!), picked up 5R in the Speed section of Power and Speed (and came 1st, but no Q), won Steeplechase II with a Q. I trained Steeplechase I, at which point I thought we’d had a breakthrough because Dylan started pinging off taking all the jumps he possibly could from every angle with confidence and enthusiasm. He really wanted his Mouse toy. It wasn’t quite the improvement I hoped for, but the second Steeplechase was better.

Sunday was better, more course changes, lovely difficult Senior Agility. Where we got E’d. It was not our weekend for the Agility. We got 5f in Jumping, when Dyl popped the last 2 weave poles. I am pretty sure this was because they were the old minimum-distance weaves which suddenly seem very very tight, Dyl struggled to shorten up for them on Saturday and he was striding out much more on Sunday.

We did 6 obstacles in Senior TFO, oops. We cruised both Steeplechase classes and Q’d in both with a 1st, and we actually had to beat someone to do it so I feel better about those.

I should have trained more runs, I only trained one. But there was a practise ring up that we took full advantage of, and I wanted the points from the Agility classes. Training the Games classes seemed kind of stupid, because they’re Games classes, not normal classes. Next time, I will do more training. Famous last words.

On the very plus side, it was an extremely lovely venue, and I got some delicious brownies from the cake stall.