Hare'n'Hounds October Halloween

Kim had a great run first thing in the Combined 1-7 Jumping, a course with just jumps (no tunnels/weaves), so it was a pure speed kind of course. She finished 7th, I think 4/5s off the winners but she was the top Grade 6 by 8 seconds or something ridiculous. That was fun, but frustrating, as I ended up pulling her from the only Graded class of the day as I thought her jumping looked off mid-way through.

I’m not going to keep her going just for the sake of one more win, but it really would be nice for her to reach Grade 7 before she retires. She is skipping the next few months as I don’t trust the weather to stay nice enough for her, but Kim has always preferred running indoors so we’ll see if we can fit in a few more shows before the summer season starts up again.

Dylan had a hesitant run in his first class, an ok run in his second, and then was just beautiful in his last three. His jumping was super, really smooth and no silly stuttering around. We only got one clear, in the G5-7 Jumping, which was in the same ring as Kim’s earlier C1-7, so no tunnels/weaves and a fairly fast, open course. We were well out of the placings but it was a nice run with a moment where I got lost, and we were only 2s off the pace. I’m pretty pleased with that, Dylan and I are at our weakest on these kind of just-jumping fast courses, and this was our first Grade 6 show.

We had a horrible flyoff on the seesaw in the first run of the day, which I was really very surprised about – Dylan does not do flyoffs! I missed walking the course because I was too lazy to get out of the car, and we were running a really nice clear until the second to last obstacle (seesaw). Of course, Kim was in that ring later and she also flew it, so I’m tempted to blame the equipment. I did see a lot of other dogs do the same, clearly surprisingly themselves for the most part.

We had a super tough 6-7 Agility for our first proper G6 class too, a short spaced jump-seesaw line where you had to pull off the seesaw to hit a 120 degree weave entry to double back on yourself (I will try and get a course plan up). We avoided the seesaw and got the entry, but we messed up later on. It did remind me that running G6 with Dylan is actually going to be fun, he has all the training to do these harder courses and I love the handling challenges.