We had a rough start to the day when Dylan blew all his contacts in the Introductory Agility. He did hit them all, but he refused to wait and over-ran on everything. I wouldn’t have been too worried if he’d been going superfast but he wasn’t. Thankfully Emma and Bailey proved that we do actually do some training sometimes and won the class in awesome style.
Our Jumping run was along similar lines; it was reasonably fast but he wasn’t really listening and drifted very wide on everything and took a wrong course. Not a good omen for the afternoon’s Introductory Final!
The Finals course was a very straightforward course, it did have a tunnel call-off and subtley tricky weave entry but I was fairly confident Dylan could handle that. We drew 4th in the running order, which was a bit earlier than I would have liked. I was not nervous at all about the Agility Final, although I probably should have been.
Dyl was not going full speed, but he nailed his weave entry and was running well. His seesaw was slow (probably due to flying it first thing that morning) but he was tight around all his turns and did nice quick weaves which balanced things out. I pushed his contacts and he nailed the Aframe and the Seesaw without issue, but then was faulted on the Dogwalk. Personally I thought he got it, by a fingernail, but he did jump and he didn’t wait, and since the Dog Vegas judge had called in Kim’s favour on Saturday, karma was probably just balancing out. First time Dylan has ever been faulted on his contacts though, and I suppose a Final is the best place to do it (that might be twisted logic, but hey!)
Dylan finished 8th overall. Not the place I wanted or thought we could get, but I have no one to blame but myself! We had the fastest time by 2s, but unfortunately that’s no good if we don’t go clear, and we didn’t. Knowing the times now, I know I had time to stop Dylan for his contact, but of course I didn’t know at the time and thought I needed to push it. Arg!
Congratulations to Freda and Ritz, who did win and looked very classy doing so.
The Team Trios Challenge
The Ruff Squad suffered a minor mishap when our Primary dog Pippa picked a fight with Mishka and came off worse the day before the Final. Thankfully Vicki is a superstar, and she knew of a team who needed to do a bit of a switch around with some of their dogs, and we ended up with Heather Mitchell and the fantastic Minkie (KC name is Noworries Sweeping Breeze, I think!) instead.
Bailey set us off with a cracking clear, Kim just went into flyball mode and ran the fastest I’ve seen her run for months (we picked up just 5f for an arguement at one jump) and Minkie flew around — she was E’d but her time pushed us right up the tables. We finished 4th overall.
Tri Colour Trios were made up of Dylan, Inca (Locheil Miss Independent at Ruffs) and Lottie (Wiccaweys Lottery). Unfortunately I got the team E’d despite a decent fast run from Dylan (I should have told Dyl to turn, but somehow forgot!) but thankfully Bob and Vicki are fantastic and didn’t lynch me – Lottie’s superfast clear and Inca’s fast 5f pushed us up into the top-3 anyway and we came 3rd.
A good finish to the day! Monday promised the Jumping Finals and the League awards, although I knew neither of my dogs had got the Dog of the Year this time (Dylan was 4th, Kim was 7th, in their respective Leagues).