Tailwaggers February

This was 300x better than Hare’n’Hounds last week.

Novice Plus Tunnel Troubles was a straightforward course, but I’d already decided to train Dylan’s run. We played tuggy a few times and he seemed to enjoy himself, his jumping was miles better than HnH but difficult to judge as it was a jump turn into tunnel – back out to jump kind of course.

N+ Agility was a really easy course for the level, and Dylan was fab. He finished 9th but I held his contacts so I’m not surprised, but I was so pleased with how he worked. His jumping was excellent, his Aframe was great, his seesaw was really confident. Dogwalk was a little slow but I can’t have everything. I ran off and left him in the weaves and he worked right through without popping … it was just like running Dylan from 12 months ago!

Uncomfortable though it is for me to watch, I’ve also uploaded a video. I hate uploading videos of Dylan looking terrible. I’ve picked the video of his Novice+ Jumping run, because this was probably his best and worst run. For the more complex sections (weaves – 13) Dylan was actually running nicely, jumping well and wearing his happy face (despite the dither from 12-13 which was completely my fault). For the straight 14-18 finish, it all goes badly downhill.

My handling is not good on this video, I was late, misjudging, and panicking because he was going a little faster than anticipated. It was one of those courses I wish I could run again though, there were some interesting bits in there.

N+ Speed and Power was another fun course, a reversal on Power & Speed where you did the speed course first, and if you went clear you could continue to the untimed contact section (which we did!). For each correctly completed contact you had 5s deducted from your Speed time. So Dylan’s final placing was 5th in 4.96s. I think the winner was 2.??s, it was a very big stretchy course. Seesaw and Aframe were excellent, 1-3 on the jumping was fairly poor but he picked up and ran the rest of the course reasonably well.

Rio had a fun day with one or two incidents that were caused by oblivious or just rude owners of other dogs. Particularly annoyed with the person who thought it was acceptable to encourage their 2 dogs to race each other around the small exercise area. Rio did set off chasing but I haven’t exactly prepped her yet for two collies racing past 3ft from us. On the other hand, if it had been Dylan he would have had a panic attack, so maybe it’s better I had Rio with me! I was fuming on that one.

Hare’n’Hounds again this coming weekend and I have lovely Bails to run! I’m very excited to be running a Medium again, even if it’s just a one off.