Wigton 2013
This show is so beautiful. I can’t think of a more picture-esque venue for agility, it’s stunning. The weather this year definitely helped as well, although I got burnt to a crisp on Saturday and had to resign myself to wearing a jacket all day Sunday as a result. That wasn’t fun!
First proper camping trip of the year as well, and the dogs were ready to go on Friday morning before I’d even packed the car!
We had a pretty good show, Dylan is a whale at the moment and I think that contributed to our general slowness. It was a little frustrating, the classes were small and Dylan had some decent runs on Sunday, but we were just well off the pace. So it goes, I suppose. My main aim was to get some decent dogwalks out of him after Lincoln, especially since we have drilled dogwalks to death at training! So my whole weekend was mainly dogwalks dogwalks dogwalks.
Dogwalks. New discoveries were made. Apparently Dylan is ok with aluminium rubber-coated contacts providing they’re on wooden trestles and not aluminium trestles. This was a chance observation by (oddly enough) my lovely mother, and I can’t say it was tested to destruction but it did make for some some interesting considerations. Only one ring had aluminium trestles (Ring 1), the other two agility rings used wooden trestles (Ring 2 + 4), and Dyl’s dogwalk in Rings 2 + 4 were confident and relatively speedy (for Dylan). Ring 1 = panic. Now, it could be the colour of the dogwalk or the angle or something else, but it is a very noticable difference.
Please, if anyone can offer any thoughts on this, tell me! Even if it’s just “stop overanalysing and deal with it”, I’d appreciate the input.
Really nice courses all weekend, and I’m doing a run-by-run recap for my own purposes below, but ignore if you like. We had a lot of runs.
Saturday
C6-7 Jumping: Interesting course, had to run! Dylan worked really well, jumping suffered after flat tunnel/going uphill to final spread. Clear, 39.332 (winner low 31/2s?, Dyl 4th G6)
G6-7 Agility: Pushed weaves (handled from 10ft parallel at start then moved laterally to dogwalk), Dyl did well! Scary dogwalk. Clear, 37.816 (held dogwalk)
G3-7 Agility: Nice run! Weaves were bent, judge informed but didn’t care, Dyl popped (what a shock). Really pleased with his run, best run on Saturday. Not sure if E’d or 10F (weaves) + 5H (dogwalk contact).
C6-7 Agility: Good course, interesting bit after the dogwalk! I made good handling decisions and it paid off. Dyl had a great dogwalk, jumping suffered after exiting flat tunnel. Clear, 43.056
G6-7 Jumping: Flick-flack with last component being long-jump. Bit too easy for us, clear but sloooow.
Sunday
C6-7 Jumping: Fun course to run! Circle of jumps with a few added elements outside the circle. Dyl ignored pull-thru at start and pinged off doing other jumps, actually ran really nicely despite multiple E’s!
FC G6 Agility: Hardest course of the weekend, lots of push outs (we’re good at push outs, it’s cool). Dyl freaked out at dogwalk again, but went clear, 9th (Reserve for Final).
G3-7 Agility: Seemed like an awkward course when walking but it ran really well, Dyl super but I pulled him off the tunnel entry, 5R! Probably would have been in the placings if clear, stupid handler.
G6-7 Jumping: Another variation on the circle of jumps, should have had 5R as I pulled Dyl off #2 and did a very wide circle back to continue. Fun to run nonetheless, and super weaves from Dylan! Clear 31.325 (winner 23s)
C6-7 Jumping: Nice course, bit too fast-paced for us and tight course time. Messy run, especially after the flat tunnel. Was clear in results but course time on ticket said 36s, Dyl 41.884s, so not sure there!
