Dog Vegas

Kim qualified for the Dog Vegas Final at Easter, so we made a bit of a detour to Scunthorpe before going down to the BAA Finals for Dylan and the Trios.

Kim and I started the day with a slow clear in the first G1-7 Jumping. It was quite a straightforward course, a flowing loop with a figure of 8 to a straight finish, but I knew we wouldn’t get anything on a fast course like that. As it happened we weren’t far off the winner, and only 10s off Dizzy (Reanne’s Flippin Heck) which sounds a lot but anybody who has seen that dog move knows how fast she is! It does make me a bit wistful though, I wish more than ever that I’d been able to run Kim over courses like this when she was younger, she’d have blitzed everyone else out of the water. I don’t regret any of what we’ve done, but I do regret what we didn’t get chance to do.

She actually picked up for the G1-7 Agility and I just had so much fun running her in that class, she blew her dogwalk and seesaw contact but had the fastest time by 8s.

Kim had a slow clear on the G1-7 Jumping, she set off at a steady lope but picked up over the last 5 obstacles. She came 2nd anyway, to Willow (Beagle), which was a bit of a nice surprise! That gives her enough points for her Agility Warrant Silver.

The Final itself was a really nice course, it had plenty of difficult bits but wasn’t overfacing and after a bit of a fiasco (which I won’t go into; suffice to say I owe Jackie Kenny and the Dog Vegas team a huge thank you) Kim had a lovely clear round, she really enjoyed every minute. Her seesaw contact was a bit debatable *cough-missedit-cough* but the judge didn’t fault her, and she nailed her dogwalk so I can’t complain. We finished out of the placings (they placed to 3rd and we were 4th or 5th, I think) but we had such a good time.

Huge congratulations to Anne and Moss who just won in style, and to Julie and Gertie who came 3rd with a really lovely run. I have to mention Sarah and Willow who had such a good run, shame it all went a bit wrong but they did some serious Beagle representing.

Dylan

Dylan and I were not working on the same wavelength on Saturday! We had a pretty slow, safe clear in the Graded 1-3 Agility and somehow came 7th, which was a bit of a surprise! It was a “nice” run but with no drive, especially over the contacts.

We made a hash of the jumping, which was a bit of a shame but oh well! Still a bit dead though, although he crashed through the first pole and watching it back on the video, he really landed heavily on it and I think it probably shook him up a little.

The final agility was … unusual? Dylan was totally focussed on the jump-weave-jump line, or so I thought, but when he landed after the first jump he veered sharply off to the left and bounced off the downplank of the dogwalk, 20ft in the other direction! Even the judge looked a bit shocked! He then did a lovely fast run, of course (!) but I’ll never know what was going on in his head. I’ve watched the video back and can’t see anything I did that might have cued him for the dogwalk, and neither could any of the other people who watched the video back to try and give me a clue! Complete mystery, I think.