Saturday was very hectic. Much like last year I knew we were going to have to leave early and I really didn’t want to miss Kim’s agility classes again. To be honest, it would have probably been a faster journey to Lune Valley at Myerscough and therefore I could have stayed later, but I really like South Durham. It’s a very friendly show, the organisers and judges are lovely and the whole atmosphere is of a laid-back and relaxed competition. It’s definitely gaining in popularity anyway because the class sizes were bigger than last year and there were a couple of people there who live further South than us. It’s a bit quirky too; last year when we were queuing we were offered Quality Street chocolates, and this year chocolate biscuits were handed around amongst the queues. I also know that the judges get fish and chips for lunch, as one poor guy has to go and order fish and chips 40 times. Can’t imagine what they think in the chippy!

Dylan and I ran his Pairs first with Katie and Jet on a lovely straightforward course, no weaves, just a blast round. Jet had a cracking clear but I forgot Dylan’s out command and he pull-thru’d and carried on before I could call him back, otherwise we’d have been clear! First run of the day though, can’t complain. He was much more focussed and forward going than at Lincoln last week, which was also a big plus!

Kim ran her Medium Combined 1-7 Agility next. It was a nice course, fairly flowing and no horribly difficult bits. I had a feeling Kim was going to run enthusiastically as she had been playing with Cat’s Marley a moment before, but I wasn’t expecting her to be quite so fast. She set off like a rocket and I have no idea how we weren’t faulted or E’d! It was a real skin of your teeth round but we went clear, incredibly messy with so much time wasted, but looking at the results later it turned out Kim had came 6th (although they only placed to 5th). She beat quite a few Grade 6/7 dogs and all the other Grade 1-5 dogs despite wasting so much time, and was only .5s off 5th anyway so I was really pleased with that.

Dylan then ran his Graded 1-4 Jumping, which went a bit downhill. The first line went completely wrong as he broke his wait, but we got back on track at jump 9 and he did the rest very competently … until the stretch, which he smashed into again. Even the judge winced! He looked to limp in the first steps afterwards but I think it was the shock as he was fine as I pulled him up for a check. He obviously missed his weave entry after that, but we gave the last 2 obstacles another shot and he finished fine and walked away happy. Hitting the stretch is just Dylan being a bit lazy I think, he can clear it without trying but he’s dropping his legs too early. He has done it a few times so I’ll work on it in training.

Dylan also ran his Graded 1-4 Agility. Typically, Dylan did worse on the two classes where he had most chance of being placed! It went pretty badly, Dylan developed his fairy-head midcourse, but I was to blame. He nailed his weave entry and I said “good boy”, which pulled him out. It just went downhill from there really.

Earlier in the day, a friend asked me if Kim was running in the Pairs. I hadn’t entered her because Emma and Bailey weren’t going, and the rest of our Medium friends were at Lune Valley. Anyway, Julie’s partner hadn’t been able to make it so we ran with her dog Ron, who is in Grade 7 which was a bit intimidating! They actually had a cracking clear but we wasted time in the changeover as Ron ran in front of Kim and Kim tried to eat him. Maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration but I couldn’t let her go until Ron was completely out of the way, and that put us out of the placings.

Nice long break for lunch, tripped off to Yarm to buy some food. We spent ages chatting to Cat, who was just fab and managed to take some photos of Kim and Dylan for me — I finally have some shots of Dylan doing agility! We also tried to take a group pic of Katie’s gang, my two and Cat’s two. The photo does not reflect the sheer chaos! Note Kim is sat front center, where she positioned herself. Photohog.

Kim ran her Combined 1-3 Agility next, which was a lovely straightforward course. I didn’t push Kim for speed as I knew if we went clear we’d be in with a shot for the placings, so we had quite a steady run. Her seesaw contact was a bit suspect from my angle but I think she got half a paw on there and it kept us safe, thankfully! She really wanted to bomb the rest of the course but I couldn’t get in front of her or keep up so we finished in safe time. Clear though, and as it turned out we were over 12 seconds in front of the next dog. Kim came 1st and so now she’s into Grade 4!

Bouyed up by that news, Dylan ran his Combined 1-3 Jumping and had a lovely clear on a very simple course. I knew we weren’t going to get placed as he wasn’t running at full speed, but it was a nice run nonetheless, nice and tight on the turn. I shuttled him off to run the Combined 1-3 Agility straight after, which was the same course as the Medium 1-7 Agility that Kim had run earlier (and therefore probably pitched on the more difficult end of 1-3). He had a cracking run, his contacts looked great and he weaved brilliantly, until jump 10 when I stood completely in the wrong place. I know he hates jumping into me, so he dodged out and then came under the pole. Took him around again and got into the right spot this time, and he finished flawlessly. Gutted! From watching the other dogs I think he would have actually been placed somewhere around the top-10 so really disappointed in myself. Still, it was my fault and not his so I know what I have to do.

We then had to leave, so Kim didn’t get chance to run her Combined 1-3 Jumping. Which is a shame, because all the judges had been setting lovely courses, very appropriate to levels etc. It was strange looking at the courses though, there was a definite difference to the courses we got at Lincoln last weekend. The tyre was used in almost every class at South Durham, compared to the box pull-thru’s which cropped up in almost every class at Lincoln.

So pleased with both the dogs. Couple of well dones: Katie & Poppy for their 25th in Combined 1-3 Agility and Katie & Jet for their 21st in the super-competitive Combined 1-3 Jumping. Anne & Kafka for their various Grade 5 placings on some very interesting courses! Jeremy & Rosie for their placings, and Diane and Silvia for not getting E’d! We also saw Sam and Dash of April Magic but sadly didn’t get much chance to chat, although I saw Dash run a couple of times and he is looking fab. South Durham is definitely still on the diary for next year.

All (but one) photos provided by Cat Clark of the modern love, with huge thanks. Report from Doncaster flyball going up later this week.

I really love this show, it’s a great venue and a very relaxed atmosphere. I blame our lack of success on a number of things: 1) we had no Wine Gums on the journey down, and as everyone knows we have to have Wine Gums otherwise everything goes pear-shaped. 2) we saw no Eddie Stobart trucks on the way down, and ever since Michelle Ainsworth related this peice of good-luck making for Daisy (Crazy Daisy Moses) it’s become vital for Kim going to KC shows as well. Finally, 3) Bailey hasn’t won out yet! Over the long course of her career, Kim has always waited for Bailey to win out first. As for Dylan … well, I never expected him to have a successful weekend anyway!

Kim

Brenda’s 1-3 Jumping course was first for Kim, and perfectly set! The kind of course that means E’s and 5’s are handler errors rather than dog errors, which is good for Grade 1-3. Anyway, Kim set off like a little rocket and got the zoomies at jump 5, so we got an refusal. How can I be mad when my 7 yr old dog gets a refusal because she’s too happy? That kind of set the tone for the whole weekend, actually, but I have no complaints! She came 7th in the end with 5f.

The Grade 3 Agility was an interesting course but nothing Kim couldn’t do. The 9-10-11 was a tightly spaced flickflack, probably a foot of space between the wings. I got into completely the wrong place and indicated Kim to do a push-out, which she did beautifully through the smallest gap in the world, and then came over the back of 11. Oops! She flew around the rest of the course though and nailed all her contacts.

Final class on Saturday was the Graded 1-3 course. I walked it and I knew Kim would love it, and she did. She bounced all her jump combinations and really made all the jumping look easy, but she was a smidge tired and hot and so paused at the top of the down ramp of her dogwalk, and her seesaw was hesitant and it lost us too much time. We came 3rd in the end and got those last 4 points (plus a few!) to make up her Agility Warrant Bronze, which was my aim for Saturday anyway. So, once I’ve sent off her Record Book, she’ll be Return of the Kim AW(B). I think she finished in about 30.–s, not too far off the winners.

Sunday was a lot like Saturday. Started off with a lovely Grade 1-3 Agility, really nice course that looked very simple but was actually very deceptive, the jump angles caught a lot of dogs out. I haven’t done a very good job getting that across on the course plan! (Speaking of the course plan, I annotated it for someone and forgot to save the original, so apologies for all the squiggles and notes). Kim had a cracking start and I had a panicked moment where I did a very risky blind cross to the dogwalk and had my back to her for what felt like ages, but it paid off. Unfortunately I then made the same mistake I always make and checked she was getting her dogwalk contact, and then turned to look for the next obstacle and pulled her in front of me. We got a big fat R and I was gutted looking at the times; Vicki and Pippa very deservedly won with a time of 25.308, and Kim’s time was 29.0– and I know we could have made up at least 3 seconds without that refusal. As ever I have to keep reminding myself not to think of the What If runs.

Kim’s final Grade 3 Agility had the was the one course all weekend I didn’t like. Too many pull-thrus that just weren’t necessary to make the course difficult, and the dogwalk entry was potentially very awkward especially for the “baby” dogs in the class who didn’t have the experience or the confidence to pick it up. We got a big E on that one but Kim was laughing at me and just having such a good time as I let her fly around the rest and she just had fun with it, which is all I want from her.

Last class was a big, open and fast Grade 1-3 Jumping course. This was probably the only course I was actually disappointed with because I thought it was perfect for Kim, but we were left waiting on the line for too long (the dog and handler before us made a total hash of it and then tried to fix it and just made it worse and just took ages) and we just lost our focus. She went clear but she was running in a safe middle gear, not too slow but not stretching or pushing for any kind of speed. I think she finished 5th in the end, beaten (amongst others) by Vicki and Pippa, and Sarah and Willow-Beagle, both of whom are Grade 4 now anyway.

Really chuffed with Kim this weekend, she was happy and naughty and running fast. It’s so much fun running with her when she’s like this, she laughs at me a lot and pounces on her lead when she comes over the last jump which is always a sign she’s happy. She’s not as fast as she used to be (last year she would have blitzed that first agility course in about 24-5s, although we would have missed all the contacts!) but as long as she’s still willing to try, I’m still willing to let her run.

Dylan

Lanky boy did not have a weekend to remember. Negatives? He argued with me about weave entries in every class (apparently the second pole is where you go in, not the first), he crept on his contacts, he made up new ways to tackle the tyre, he was incredibly lazy in one class, he was barking in the queue and ignored me a lot. Positives? Well, everyone who saw him (including some people I didn’t know) said he’s got bags of potential and everything wrong was fixable. He didn’t break his wait all weekend, he didn’t pop out of his weaves once we’d got in them, he had no problems with the difficulty of the courses. He wasn’t afraid of seesaws and did them perfectly, and the interesting tyre interpretations got fixed.

Basically it confirmed everything I already knew we had to work on. I am not going to enter him in any more KC shows though until we have a least some of these issues fixed, as it’s just a waste of money and time. He’s doing the Introductory classes at EMDAC over the winter which will boost his confidence and hopefully get him a little more focussed as I can run him with a toy, and we’ll assess again in a couple of months.

There was one class where he did show some of his true colours, the very last class he did, which was an interesting Grade 3 Jumping class and probably the most difficult course Dylan had all weekend. He got E’d at the weaves as we had to have several attempts at the entry but he did the rest nicely, responsive and fast and turning neatly. Proved to me I wasn’t wrong to think he could have done this weekend anyway, but I’m still going to stop entering him until I know we’re sorted. To be honest, he’ll probably just skip Wyre in December since I don’t do many KC indoors anyway.

Big congrats to everyone who was placed this weekend, especially those with top-3 placings:
Alice & Sammy (Jammy Sammy)
Liz & Percy (Danissica Boy of Cha Cha)
Vicki & Pippa (Ruffs Kyria Kalli AW(S) Beg EX)
Emma & Bailey (Bailey’s Bouncing Back)
Iain and Sarah & the Bonwillan Beagles
Helen & Lucy (Jakovall Silent Noon)

For those of you reading via the http://www.undermybed.co.uk/ url and not GoogleReader, you might have noticed updates all weekend on how the dogs were doing via Twitter. (It’s on the sidebar). Feedback wanted — did anyone actually read it?

YB is always a small, friendly and local show; lots of flyballers present, which helps!

Kim

Kim had her last set of Primary classes today. We had a really good day, she was a lot more motivated and enthused than she had been for the rest of the summer season, noisy and tugging and listening. She dived for her lead at the end of every class too, which was just fantastic! (Not in a training sense, it’s incredibly annoying, but I also love to see her happy and wanting to play after a run). Her Primary Jumping was a nice course and she ran it well, even though I had a bit of mad improvisation in the middle when I realised I was in the wrong place to do my planned front cross for the weaves and had to throw in a blind cross instead. I’m getting way more confident about using blind crosses, they do work fantastically if you get it right. Anyway, Kim came 7th, and top Medium, which was nice!

Primary Agility was another nice course, although the ring was pretty boggy underfoot and it included quite a nasty Aframe call-off. Didn’t think we’d get past that bit! Kim was a bit too crazy for her agility and it was fairly messy, quite a few wide turns, a pause on the downramp of the dogwalk and a bit too slow on the seesaw, but she still came 2nd! We were just beaten by another Medium, Sally, who is a lovely little dog and she has really come on the past few months so really chuffed for her and her handler.

I love running Time Fault and Out, and Kim seems to enjoy it too. We got a pretty poor score this time though, we only did 11 obstacles before Kim missed the dogwalk contact! We actually ended up completing the rest of the course as it was the fastest way to the last jump, Kim kicked into crazy-fast once she’d heard the whistle. She did an awesome seesaw as a result! TFO is a lot of fun to run and watch, it’s my favourite Games class.

Finished up running straight away to do Primary Helter Skelter, which I don’t like doing with Kim — she needs a break in between, we never get as good a run immediately after running elsewhere. Which is a shame, because it was a Helter Skelter course I thought she’d really go for, big open spaces and plenty of work-away opportunities. She actually had a pretty good run, not flat out but she enjoyed it and apparently she came 4th! We left before the Games results came out because I didn’t think we’d got anything, so really chuffed. [ETA: Bit of a shocking result all around! The winner was miles in front of everyone else, but Kim beat some fast dogs and was only 2s off super-fast Charlie dog!]

Dylan

Introductory Agility was first for Dylan, a straightforward course but I wasn’t too sure about the seesaw immediately after the Aframe. I hadn’t really clocked that it was a lot like a Power and Speed section though, and Power and Speed is Dylan’s favourite so he was super happy with it! He had a nice run, not on full burners but it was the first run of the morning. Held all his contacts and he didn’t find the dogwalk as scary as normal. Somehow we came 10th in that, very pleased with him. Emma and Bailey put in a cracking round, Bailey did the Aframe in 3 strides and flew the apex which was hilarious but she has such gorgeous running contacts she nailed the contact anyway! They came 2nd which was fantastic, so pleased for both of them.

Natalie’s Intro Jumping course was pitched towards the bottom end of Introductory but it’s still nice to have a blast around. I set Dylan up but he broke his wait; I was really annoyed at myself for not going back and requiring a wait from him, but then again I know if I had, he would have got worried and stressed and even though he might have gone clear, it would have been a overly-cautious clear as he doesn’t like getting things wrong. Not sure what I’m going to do about that, but it’s something to think about, anyway. Because he broke his wait I was in the wrong place so we had a messy start, and then I lost all spacial awareness and ended up layering in the central pipe tunnel whilst Dylan ran the top line … and by layering, I mean “nearly falling over”. But he overcame the bad handling and finished up nicely and came - wait for it! - 10th. The winner finished in 15.64 and Dylan finished in 18.76 so not too bad.

I don’t think we should talk about Dylan’s TFO round but it we had one huge positive so I will! We completed 3 obstacles successfully and then Dylan forgot what weaves are. He was nailing his weaves at the BAA Finals so not sure why we’ve regressed here. Anyway, whistled on the weaves but Dylan had set off for the tunnel by then. I moved off and called him to bring him through the obstacles to get to the last jump but the boy was having none of it. He flew up the dogwalk, absolutely no hesitation and then nailed his 2o2o at the end before thinking about actually looking for me. I have to admit I was trying not to laugh at this point, especially when the judge said something about Dylan having a great dogwalk. So apparently the thing with the dogwalk is for me to be 20ft to the left and telling him to do something else, then it’s not scary at all and actually it’s a lot of fun.

Dylan finished with his last ever Intro jumping class, Helter Skelter, with a bit of an awkward weave entry so I stopped Dylan before it and made him come right in to heel before letting him try, and he nailed all 6 before flying the rest of the course. I think he really hit into something near to top gear on the Helter Skelter, I was really pleased with him. Apparently he came 11th so well chuffed! We’ll have to see how far off the winner he was, considering his weave issue. [ETA: The winner was well in front with 21.49, and Dylan finished in 29.13, but we wasted 5/6s at the weaves which would have put him in the top-5. Not too shabby!]

On a very serious note, I’m beginning to think Dylan is either cursed or has a fetish. So far in his limited career, he’s had 4 10ths, 3 11ths and a 9th. He was clearly aiming to be 10th with the 11ths and the 9th, which would have made 8 10th places (out of as many clears, basically!). Are we doomed to get 10th places forever!?

I’m not really complaining, I’m just happy we get placed at all. What is weird is that looking at Kim’s results from last year, you’ll note she got a 7th in Introductory Jumping and a 2nd in Power and Speed (agility) at Yorkshire Bouncers, and a 3rd in Helter Skelter (4th this year). I think Kim likes this show!

We set off very early on Saturday morning for the BAA Finals Weekend. Kim had qualified for the Grand Prix Primary Jumping Final on Monday, and I wanted to get some last points in for her in the hopes of being promoted in Agility as well as Jumping next season. Dylan was there for the experience again, I have to admit I didn’t really want him to get placed in anything because I wanted him to stay Introductory for another year! We all had a fab weekend, the show was a bit quieter than last year but the classes were still big and the competition was still good, and it was nice not having to fight for the best camping spots!

Dylan

Dylan had a weekend of 5 fault runs, but he is still improving so much every time we compete. We’re still sorting out our start line routines and he made a couple of baby mistakes that should be easy enough to fix.

On Saturday he had a so-so run in the Agility, and went clear but with held contacts we didn’t get anything. The Snakes and Ladders course was nice but I thought the shortcut was too difficult for him, there was a very sharp angle to the Aframe and with our creepy contact issue I wasn’t going to risk it. He set off nicely but then decided to try and bounce the jump-stretch and splattered himself in the middle of the stretch instead. Oops! We kept going and he had a lovely run, probably our best so far apart from the 5 faults, and looking at his time he again would have been up in the top-10 even though we took the long way around. Clever boy! He grazed his paw as well when he paddled the stretch and so now he has a lovely bald patch to show for it.

Video: http://www.undermybed.co.uk/images/baafinals01.wmv

The Helter Skelter was a fair run but we got E’d, not too fussed as it was my fault and he worked nicely. Finally the Introductory Jumping Qualifier, it was a hard course and but somehow we went clear and then somehow we came 10th which meant somehow my little baby dog had qualified for the Grand Prix Introductory Jumping Final! We actually had a daft little spin after the second tunnel which meant we dropped 3s or so off the time.

Video: http://www.undermybed.co.uk/images/baafinals02.wmv

Somehow we also qualified for the Starters CleverDogs Final, which was a big shock! We ran our CleverDogs Qualifying time back in March at Carlton Towers, the one and only time Dylan has done CleverDogs. He didn’t get much chance to do any more as we drew Kafka (Cories Affka) in round one, and my inexperienced little boy was unsurprisingly outclassed by a Grade 5, Olympia qualified Kelpie! What was surprising was that he kept pace with Kafka until the tunnel where I pulled him off the entry and had to resend him, and then he only finished a hurdle behind at the flyball. Maybe Dylan is faster than I thought! We lost the second leg too and so ended our CleverDogs career, we had fun and in the end came 5th out of the 8 finalists.

Sunday and Monday offered 4 Open classes each, but when I entered I decided not to enter all 8 classes with both dogs because it would have been too much for me to walk and run first thing in a morning. So I entered Kim in 1 Jumping and 1 Agility each day, and Dylan in 2 Jumping on Sunday and 1 Agility and 1 Jumping on Monday.

Dylan’s second Jumping class on Sunday was harder than the first and to be honest I wasn’t sure he’d get around. The weave entry and exit wasn’t the easiest and there were plenty of places to make mistakes. Anyway, he nailed his weaves as he did all weekend, and although his run wasn’t super fast it was clean and clear until the last fence. I don’t know what happened, but he refused and I was absolutely gutted! He would have been up in the top-10 easily. He ran in the same class as Kim for the other Jumping, and we had a refusal at the weaves (my fault!).

On Monday I walked his courses and by the time I’d got to number 8 on the Jumping I’d decided not to run him in it. It was a very UYOA course, constantly naggy and I couldn’t find a smooth way to handle it at all, and I wasn’t willing to knock Dylan’s confidence by trying something so hard with him. His agility was a really nice Open course, but I lost his attention whilst we were setting up and it all went downhill really.

The Grand Prix Jumping Finals were on Monday afternoon. At Finals Weekend all the other rings run in the morning only and then are shut down whilst the Finals run so everyone can watch. We walked the course and I didn’t think it was much of a Dylan course, although I thought we could probably get round. I would have liked to see 6 weaves instead of 12 as I thought the weave entry and exit were really tough for Intro dogs, 6 weaves would have made both entry and exit a lot easier.

Dylan and I ran 5th out of the 20 and we were ok until the weaves. Dylan missed the entry, I think due to a mixture of inexperience and bad handling on my part, and the suddenly realised there were a lot of people watching him! My poor shy boy found that a bit offputting and we ended up making a right hash of the weaves and got E’d in the end. He finished the course beautifully though and did the flick flack perfectly.

My prediction was right about the 12 weaves though, as we weren’t the only ones to make a mistake there. Mabel (Bekkis Masquerage), the hot favourite, also missed the weave entry, and a lot of the other dogs either popped out or missed the entry. Dylan ended up with the 20th rosette but I’m still very proud of him for getting to the Finals at all.

Apparently he really likes rosettes with writing on the tails because that’s what he got all weekend!

Kim

We had a bit of a rubbish day on Saturday, mainly because I wanted to at least go clear in the Primary Agility Qualifier and either just get points or, ideally, qualify. No such luck! Kim missed her dogwalk contact. We had a nice run in the Primary Jumping Qualifier and somehow we came 4th, which was a bit surprising! Equally surprising was her 10th in Snakes and Ladders; we took the shortest route but we had a bit of framegazing on the Aframe and we basically walked around the course at a snails pace. I can only presume nobody else took the shortcut successfully!

Kim came back to a bit of form on Sunday and went clear in both Open classes. Finally a clear in agility, whoo! She finished up 19th in the Open Agility and 12th in the Open Jumping (out of 170+ dogs), not too shabby. Monday was definitely our day though, my dog finally got her crazy back.

I loved James Denton’s Open Agility course, it was exactly the kind of thing Kim likes, a straightforward opening sequence and then plenty of wide open spaces for her to stretch her legs in. She set off well, but after jump 4 it was like the switch was flicked and I got my crazy little dog back with all the running in her legs. She finished up flying, and came 10th in the end, beating a lot of good dogs including her friendly rival Moss.

Video: http://www.undermybed.co.uk/images/baafinals03.wmv

Open Jumping was her last run before the Grand Prix Jumping Finals in the afternoon. I’d been working ring party on Ring 2 for 90mins in the morning so I knew we had to run clear under 20 seconds to be in with any chance of a placing, it was a big, open and fast course that the Graduate and Masters dogs were blasting. We had a bit of a slow start but finished up nicely in 20.88, I didn’t think we’d be quick enough and I was right! We got a rosette for 28th in the end, but there were 72 clears!

Video: http://www.undermybed.co.uk/images/baafinals04.wmv

Finally we had the Grand Prix Primary Jumping Finals in the afternoon, and I think running Dylan first took the pressure off Kim and I quite a bit. I walked it the course on my own, and then with Maria who runs Kip, another Medium, and then with Sylvia who runs Molly, a Maxi. We all wanted a wait start to get us into position but I didn’t think I’d get it with Kim, so I walked it two different ways depending on whether we got that wait or not.

I missed most of the Maxi dogs running as I was behind the scribe tent trying to keep Kim cool and relaxed. I knew that Kafka had gone clear as well as a few others, so the pressure was off as I didn’t think we could beat the Maxi’s! As the last few dogs were going I booked in, found out I was going first which somehow didn’t surprise me! I normally hate going first in the Mediums, I always feel rushed to get on the line and go but I’d promised myself I wouldn’t do that this year. I took my time winding Kim up and playing with her, and I actually didn’t feel nervous for once. Maybe I’m getting my head around this Finals lark! Set her up and she bounced straight back up as soon as I stepped away but that’s a good sign normally, so I put her back. She held her wait!

As soon as she set off I knew we were in for a good run. She was fast and responsive and I really did have my girl back, and we were clear until the final turn on the home straight. I was too far behind and panicked, shouted left too early and she spun to check with me before taking the jump, but it didn’t get marked as a refusal and she was clear!

(http://www.undermybed.co.uk/images/jumpingfinals.wmv)

I’m still smiling now, I took her off to play and didn’t watch the rest of the dogs run because I didn’t care if they all went clear and fast and beat us! As it turned out none of the other Mediums went clear so we knew Kim was on for a placing, it would just be which one. Nobody gets to see the results until they’re announced at the presentation so I was more nervous than I had been waiting to run! I was walking about at the back of the hall with Kim to try and keep her quiet and me calm, which wasn’t easy as they didn’t read out our names for 5th, 4th or 3rd! Eventually she got her 2nd, and we went up to collect our trophy and rosette. The wonderful Kafka came 1st.

I have to congratulate everyone else who was there and did brilliantly as well. Vicki and Pippa (Ruffs Kyria Kalli AW(S)) came 4th in the Introductory Agility Final, and 3rd in the Introductory Jumping Final. Our fellow Primary Medium Rasha Beagle (Bonwillan Dizzy Blonde) came 2nd in the Primary Agility Final (go the Mediums!), and Sylvia’s fab little Molly (Molly Coddled) was still in the top-10 of the Primary Jumping Final with 5 faults, she had a cracking run, so unlucky to miss the weave entry! Jean’s lovely little Cav Emma (Baby Boo) also ran her socks off in the Primary Jumping Final despite being exhausted and came 4th, as well as winning the Primary Mini Dog of the Year. Speaking of, we were all rooting for Anne and Moss (May Be Moss) to win the Primary Medium Dog of the Year but she was pipped at the last minute by somebody else, so disappointed on her behalf! Hopefully she can take home the Novice Medium next year. Leah Rumsey also qualified for the Junior Handler Finals, shame she wasn’t there but flyballing at Drax … maybe next year!

Finally, a big congrats to Alice and Sammy who won out of Grade 1 at Dog Vegas on Friday, they won’t be in Grade 2 for long!

I’m just sat watching the Olympic Showjumping, and we’re doing pretty well! Two riders left to go. It’s the nearest thing to agility in the Olympics and it’s interesting to see all the beautiful fences and the way the course is designed. I’d like to see more subtle course design like this in agility, although I know that we obviously don’t and can’t have quite the variety of fences and jumps. Still, there are plenty of judges out there who just don’t appreciate that they can use things like Walls and Brush fences, or even double jumps, and so they don’t crop up as often as I’d like. Personally I’d also love to see some filler elements (UKA use these, and I’ve seen Adams provide a kind of bone-shape on occasion) and maybe even some differences in the jump wings, even if it doesn’t add any extra challenge for the dogs it makes it more interesting for the handlers and spectators!

I love walking a course and finding something a little out of the ordinary for me and Kim to tackle! Michelle Ainsworth at Otley used a double jump in the middle of the 1-2 Agility course and it caused several problems due to the spacing and and the angle (Kim knocked the second bar, but I didn’t give her the right command. I usually use a “jump” command which indicates that the obstacle is bigger than normal, but I totally forgot!). One of our other judges at Otley (whose name I sadly can’t remember!) used a brush fence as part of a long line of jumps in the Combined 1-4 Agility and subsequent classes and it also caused a few problems, with handlers just assuming their dogs would take it and then the dogs were running out and getting refusals. A couple of years ago at Shrewsbury, when Kim was a Large, Jo Glynn set a fab Novice Agility course with a Wall and a Wishing Well, and it added a greater element of difficulty than throwing in a pull-thru would have done.

Ben Mayer has just come into the arena to jump the third round for GB, on a lovely big mare called Roulette. Absolutely fab round, but unfortunately just one fence down. Arg!

There’s a particularly interesting line in this Olympic Showjumping course of two big oxers followed by a narrow vertical plank fence. A lot of horses are getting the plank down because they’ve done these big extended jumps and then have to shorten up and collect. I wonder if dogs could be challenged by something similar? I’m thinking here of maybe a double jump followed by a stretch (long jump), and then a single bar into a tunnel? I’m sure a lot of dogs would get the single down unless they were handled and/or trained particularly well.

I think there are a lot of opportunities for creating a more subtley difficult course design rather than filling a course with pull-thrus and UYOA handling and I think judges don’t always appreciate that. I love course design but I don’t have the patience or attention span (or the thick skin required!) to be a judge. I’ve said before how much I admire and respect the people who do have the talent to judge, but I’m not one of them. I just wish some of them would think a bit more about their courses, or maybe even ask someone else to design them (someone who isn’t competing in their class, obviously!).

Aww, I guess my Showjumping viewing is coming to an end. The great John Whitaker has withdrawn Peppermill because he has a stiff back, which is a bit of a disappointment all round. That leaves us with 16 penalties and it’s only the top 8 teams to go through … fingers crossed we aren’t pushed off the list!

NB: Thanks to www.aprilmagic.co.uk, adamsagility.com, agilitynet.com and for the photos used here!