Wyre

Total case of great dog, shame about the handler.

We made a bit of a hash of the KC Olympia Qualifier, which was a really fantastic course. It looked so deceptively simple but it was filled with little traps and angles that meant only the really good dogs got around. We watched Dizzy (Raeanne’s Flippin Heck) run first and win it, obviously, with a ridiculously fast time (and a held dogwalk contact) that no-one else could touch. Kim went for the dogwalk instead of the weaves and then entered at the second-third pole, which was my fault for not giving her the command early enough.

We had the same judge for the Combined 3-5 Agility and again, really nice course, quite straightforward but with some sneaky bits. Kim had a flying clear until the dogwalk. As everybody knows, the dogwalk-jump combination has caught Kim and I out so many times that I now panic when I see it, and I did the same again. She was racing along the dogwalk and I panicked, yelled “steady” waaaay too early and so she ended up walking down the down-plank. Got her contact, of course, but wasted so much time! We needed to be around 27s to be in the placings and we finished in 30.68s.

Combined 3-5 Jumping was the same course the Large dogs had run earlier (and I’d seen Gina’s Rum put in a cracking run and win his class). Kim had a nice run but I just wasn’t with it, I walked it completely wrong for her and she really bailed me out a couple of times. And then I fell over. Somehow, we managed to go clear, but as you can imagine we finished out of the placings. Actually, we finished in 27.68 which put us 6th, and Wyre placed to 5th, so that does give me some hope. There were some really good Grade 5 dogs there and Kim did match them for speed, it was my handling errors that cost us time.

Anyway, last show of the year, we’ll have to see how we do in 2009.