We had a very disappointing weekend at Shrewsbury. Kim just wasn’t working and I’m actually pretty worried about her, she was very tired and quiet for the whole weekend. Anybody who knows Kim will attest to the fact that she’s a very noisy girl and likes to bark! But this weekend she was heading back to the car and sleeping solidly between runs, no barking at people walking past or dogs playing in the exercise area, which we backed on to.
We did come home with a rosette in Combined 1-3 Agility, our first class in the weekend. It was a lovely course and normally the kind of thing that Kim would have loved, but she actually came to a complete standstill on the dogwalk and she was pretty slow. Our 4th was 8 seconds off the winning time — and we know the winner very well! Moss competes against us at EMDAC shows in Primary, and I’m pleased for him and his owner now they’ve won out. On the other hand, Kim and Moss normally run very close times to each other. The classes were competitive, notably with Amanda Hampson’s young Toller Shoredancer Sea Jade was running in our classes, and Gemma Hanekom’s Rajinka Smokescreen, both new dogs out with very good handlers, and Moss was brilliant all weekend (as usual!). I don’t think Kim would have been outclassed if she’d been on form though, some of the courses were perfect for her.
Our other Combined 1-3 Agility was probably Kim’s best run of the weekend, which naturally I then got her E’d on! I timed a rear cross atrociously and pulled Kim onto a different jump, and I take all the blame! The only other agility class we did was the Olympia Qualifier, which was a really difficult course for Open but I actually quite liked it, I thought Kim could handle all the difficult sections. All the courses we’d had were quite straightforward and Kim and I tend to do better on things that are a bit more tricky. Unfortunately Kim still hadn’t found her crazy and although she set off better, the ground was very slippy and she skidded badly coming out of one turn which put an end to any hopes of a clear round. We actually had a pole down too, which is unheard of for Kim! (Natasha Wise won it with a cracking run, with Raeanne’s Flipping Heck, aka Dizzy).
(I have a feeling I’ve got this course a bit wrong from the Olympia Qualifier, all the numbers and obstacles are right but it doesn’t look quite like it did from the ground, if that makes sense!)
There was a chiropractor at the show and Kim went over for a check-up; her pelvis was out of alignment and she was a bit rough in her back end, so maybe she was just a bit uncomfortable this weekend. I can’t help feeling like there’s something more to it, she was so sleepy the whole time. To use an apt analogy, she was always working in 1st gear, occasionally getting up to 2nd, but never hitting her usual 4th gear. (5th gear is the Special Crazy, we don’t see that very often anyway!). I think we might just check her out at the vets this week, I want to make sure there is nothing physically wrong with her. It could just be she’s burnt out and fed up of agility, we have been competing a little more often in the past couple of months. I kind of hope that’s all it is!
Shrewsbury is always a nice show though. There were some fantastic courses too. Ring C on Sunday had some great Jumping courses that I would have loved to have a go at with Kim or Dylan in particular. And we stood watching the 6+7 Agility in Ring E for ages on Sunday, it was a really difficult course but looked lovely to run if you got it right! I can’t remember who judged it but there was a real set of spectators hanging around to watch, lots of applause for those who got it right and commiserations for those that got it wrong!
So, still Grade 2 and I won’t be entering Newton Heath, I want to see if giving Kim an agility break will make a difference. No Newton Heath will leave us with June free of agility competitions — a weird time to take a break, but hopefully it will leave Kim bright and chirpy again for the rest of the summer season, and maybe she’ll find her crazy again.
