Saturday was a little weird. Dylan wasn’t running at his best, stuttering a little through certain jump sequences and just generally floating around and distracted. We were E’d in the Jumping Qualifier, and then came 3rd in everything else. I’m still not quite sure what was going on! Kim finished out of the placings in her two jumping runs, but she was the top Medium in the Steeplechase and was less than a second of Dylan’s time, so her times are reflecting how much she’s cranked it up recently.

Had the most fun with both dogs in the Triple-A, this is Kim’s perfect game! She did a kickass run and finished 2nd in the Novice, and actually would have come 2nd in the Graduate too, beating Focus’ time. Anyone who knows Focus will appreciate how good that is! Dylan came 3rd, and I think that’s the only time Kim’s beaten him when they’ve both been clear. (Incidentally, the dog that beat them both to 1st is a Large KC Grade 6 dog, so I think they did pretty well!)

Sunday morning was a bit of a disappointment, still not jumping with extension or confidence. The Novice Plus Agility was a nasty little course, very challenging and filled with traps. Dyl got half-way around before shooting off into the wrong tunnel, but worked his contacts beautifully. The Jumping was better, but stuttering again, and he finished just out of the placings in 7th. Didn’t bode well for the Sunday afternoon Agility Final! I’d put Kim NFC in Introductory again and she loved it, despite getting E’d in everything anyway, so she was pretty much a write-off for Sunday.

The Novice Agility Final was actually quite a nice course, tricky sections but much easier than the Primary! Wasn’t really my kind of course, I didn’t feel very confident going in with how to handle the softer traps, and that’s where we lost it. I wasn’t clear enough with Dylan and he skipped the weave entry, and after we’d got 5f I kind of lost it and we got E’d. I wish I’d held it together and pushed on with 5f as we still would have been placed 7th barring any other mistakes.

Monday morning was even worse, if possible! Both really nice Novice Plus courses, really suited both me and the dogs. The Jumping was a super-lovely flowing course, but Kim had a pole (what the hell Kim?! Since when do you knock poles?!) and then (again) I sent Dylan into the wrong tunnel. He finished up measuring his jumps anyway, which left me in a total panic — not what you want with the Jumping Final in the afternoon! Novice Plus Agility was a big, open course, really nice, and Kim decided to do the dogwalk three times before actually thinking about listening to me, at which point she flew around and made it look so easy. Dylan also got E’d, but was jumping beautifully, very confident and very smooth, lovely fast contacts, another “what the hell” moment.

The Novice Jumping Final was a truly wicked course, all pull-thrus and call-offs and a really tough weave-exit. We wasted what felt like forever but was probably only a second or so whilst I tried to send Dylan through 5-6 (he wanted to jump, I wasn’t clear enough that I wanted the tunnel!), were a bit scrappy around to the weaves, but then nailed everything after the weaves, with lovely jumping and lots of drive and we did good. I’d watched a couple of the Mediums go clear, and our friend Moss did a cracking run just before we went in. I was guessing Moss for the win, with Dylan maybe in 5th, or 4th if we were lucky. If we were really lucky, I thought we might scrape 3rd. Somehow though, we came 2nd!

Mollie was the real superstar though. She got a 6th in Veteran Jumping, which is no mean feat at BAA – the Veteran classes are incredibly popular, there are usually around 50-60 ex-Graduate/Masters dogs in there, compared to our stumpy flyball dog who doesn’t actually ever train anymore and has never done any proper competitions. Anyway, with the points from that, she qualified for the Veterans Final! Which was hilarious, we got E’d. Mollie was wound up through the roof, ran like a complete lunatic and spent half the time barking at me. So much fun, love running my crazy old lady.

The dogs are all still flying about at flyball, but I’m looking forward to finally getting back to agility this weekend. After a nailbiting couple of weeks, Dylan has qualified for the Agility and Jumping Finals, and I’ve purposely kept Kim out of the Qualifiers to make sure she doesn’t qualify (although there is a chance she might get called up anyway, unfortunately …). I sound like a horrible person trying to make sure that my dog doesn’t qualify, but the Novice has only 15 dogs in the Final, and I can’t concentrate on Dylan if I have to run Kim as well. And Kim might run brilliantly if she did qualify, but she might be tired and bored and not want to play, and it’s not worth taking someone elses’ spot.

We’ve been having some fun recently exploring some new walks, and August has tumbled away without anyone even noticing. Mollie’s eyesight seems to be getting a little worse; it’s hard to say exactly what makes us think so, since there is nothing specific I can explain. Just a feeling that she can’t see as well as she could. Dylan has had some issues that I’ve posted about before, but I finally feel like we’re getting a handle on this and I’m very pleased with the progress we’ve made so far. It’s really just a patience game now, and I don’t want to go into too much detail in case I jinx it.

Really wishing the flyball points would go up sometime soon, I am hoping Kim had got her FD-Gold, and I’d really like to see if Dylan is anywhere near his FD-Silver. I thought we might get it before the end of the year, but now I’m not so sure.

What a meandering post! It’s the terrible rainy weather getting me down, lets all hope for an Indian Summer.

I feel like the title of this post should really be “That was Unexpected”, since the whole show was definitely so. I went hoping to see how Dylan would measure up in Grade 4, and let Kim have a blast in the 1-7 classes she had. I suppose I did achieve that, just not quite in the way I thought I would.

Kim did have a blast in the 1-7′s. The Jumping was a lovely course, really spread out and with just a wrong tunnel entry to challenge. I would have been quite surprised if Kim hadn’t gone clear! She cruised around, didn’t fire on all cylinders but she enjoyed herself and made it look super easy. And then she came 1st … great, says I, but no more wins please Kim. She had a Jumping win from High Peak, so another Jumping win would have taken us to Grade 6. Which I wanted to avoid!

Graded 1-7 Agility was a difficult course for Open, very tight spacings to start and a really awkward soft weave entry. I handled the start badly and was way too far behind when Kim hit the weave entry, so she popped out to check where the hell I’d got to. She doesn’t weave away from me (there’s always something to work on!), and then I tried to send her back in from a stupid angle before finally getting my head in gear and setting her up properly. She flew around the rest of the course, did beautiful running contacts on the dogwalk and aframe, so we finished up with 10f — and 2 time faults, grr. We probably wasted only 4-5s at most at the weaves, so to get time faults was a little frustrating. Still came 1st though! Only Grade 6 won with a clear, Grades 4 and 7 both had faults and nobody from Grade 1-3 even got around. Too hard for a 1-7, maybe?!

Sunday’s 1-7 Agility was a lovely fast course, and Kim just blitzed around again, came 1st, and took us to Grade 6. Scuppered all my plans there for her having a few relaxing retirement runs in 3-5 classes! Kim does like to do it in style though, three wins in one weekend. (Annoyingly, last course of the day was Doc’s really nice 1-7 Jumping — probably the only real 1-7 type course of the weekend — and we blew it with a 5f as Kim skipped past on the weaves).

Dylan was not so good. Felt like we’d gone backwards 6 months, 12 months. We badly crashed a jump in the first (very difficult!) C4-5 Jumping class, and although he finished that course well, I wonder if it through him off for the rest of the weekend, but that sounds like a fairly bad excuse. He also took the first pole in the second class of the weekend too, which upset him, but again he finished the course well and I thought he would improve as we went on. Famous last words. First agility run was clear but slow, slow creepy contacts and no real drive at all through the whole thing. No where near the placings in that. Second agility was better, much more driven, but we were E’d at the start.

Again, thought things were going to improve for Sunday … notsomuch. CSJ Qualifier was a fab course, I loved it and tried to push Dylan since I thought he would like it too. He was way too slow over the first section and after we dithered after the weaves, I decided to hold his contacts since I thought we’d be well out of the placings anyway. Aframe was nice but dogwalk was disappointingly slow. Finished 19th. Untidy clear in the Jumping and well out of the placings, and then a shockingly bad run in the other Jumping class; Dylan was measuring jumps and should have gotten a refusal, but apparently the judge was very generous. His jumping improved in the Derby but we were way too wide at one of the turns to get placed, although we finished 19th again.

Much to think about, not least what I’m going to do with Kim now!

I didn’t quite get the points I wanted from the EMDAC show. Dylan needed to be top-8 to qualify for both the Agility and Jumping Grand Prix Finals, and we are 13th in the Agility and 8th in the Jumping.

So, we’re comfortably into the Jumping Final on that, but not the Agility. We’ll be a strong chance for Reserve but I won’t know until a week before the show, and I really wanted to avoid having to try and qualify on the day.

In a weird twist of circumstance, I’m desperately trying to keep Kim out of the Finals! I never thought she’d have a chance to qualify, but she’s 13th in the Jumping League which means she might be called up as a Reserve, and if she runs like she did at EMDAC, she might even qualify on the day in her own right.

Either way, it looks like both dogs will be going up to Graduate next season on Auto-Promotion. I thought I might have got away with keeping Kim in Novice Agility, but she’s had 2 wins this season which will push her up. So Finals weekend will be Kim’s BAA retirement party, and I will bring a cake!

Hmm, where do I start?!

Thursday. Thursday … happened. EMDAC always run the Thursday classes in the evening, usually starting around 5pm and finishing around 8:30-9. It’s usually fantastic, running on cool summer evenings and under the floodlights. It started so well …

I elected to run Kim NFC in Introductory for Thursday. I can take a toy in Intro classes, and they are smooth, fast, flowing courses, which I thought would be a good way to see if I could get Kim running again. She was a little surprised in Agility when I got the toy out, and so we made a bit of a mess but had a lot of fun, which was the intention! Intro Jumping was a super-fast up-and-down thing, and Kim just went out and crushed the course. She ran like a 5yr old, proved to me she is physically fine, and loved it.

Dylan threw in some good runs, ran well in the Novice Plus Agility and finished 2nd, just behind Lottie.

And then it started to rain. Dylan finished his last run at 11:15pm, and I know some people didn’t run until 11:45. And the craziest thing? Nobody really complained. We have clearly lost the plot, us agility people.

Friday was a better day, only occasional rain and done by 5pm. Mollie had her first run and got E’d, which was hilarious and I apologise unreservedly to the judges for making such a hash of their lovely courses all weekend.

Kim was back in Novice and although occasionally loping around at cruising speed, she ran with more enthusiasm and speed than she has for a long time. She pulled off a 2nd in Novice Medium Helter Skelter anyway, and generally just made me smile.

Friday was split classes by height, so Kim and Dylan were running over the same courses without being in direct competition. Dyl did a smooth but not astonishing run in the Novice Maxi Agility, and came 1st – the course was difficult but nowhere near impossible, so I was surprised no-one else got around! Still, first win towards Graduate Agility, go Dylan! Kim got 5f in the same class for a refusal, my fault as usual and it was a shame as she’d have been well up there.

Kim was 2nd in the Jumping and then 2nd in the Up-and-Under too, what a good girly! Dylan was 2nd to Tri-Dylan in the Jumping, just like Kim (!) and just wasn’t fast enough in the Up-and-Under (think we were 4th overall?).

Novice Triple-A was a bit uninspired and I wasn’t much feeling it, so went in and held all Dylan’s contacts, and then got him E’d. Oops. Kim ran it fantastically though, until I pulled her off the last straight and got 5f. Oops againn!

Saturday was slightly crazy, both dogs were running the same courses again but with split results, but Kim just upped her game. Her run in Novice Medium Agility was blitzing, I was so shocked I burst out laughing and then got her 5f for a refusal. Oops! Dylan got E’d, but he had a really nice run, I just made a mess of it.

The Novice Jumping course was horrendous, all call-offs and tight spacings, and I knew I had no chance of getting Dylan around. I figured we’d try the first bit and then see what we could do, which resulted in an E, of course! Scratched Kim straight off, she would have hated it.

Novice Triple-A was a lovely course, really suited both my dogs. Kim was running clear until she got to the final jump-weave-jump combi, where she steadied for the weave entry and then spotted her lead and ran straight past the poles and over the final jump. Pure naughtiness, but I should have been watching for it!

Dylan also ran it beautifully, and then did the same as Kim and popped his last 2 poles in the weaves to get his lead. Arg! The lovely Rae Blythe, who was judging, came over and spoke to me afterwards though to say what a shame it was, because he really did run it fantastically.

Steeplechase to finish, super-fast course that both dogs enjoyed, although I think they were both a bit confused! Dylan was 2nd and Kim was 3rd.

We were back to combined height classes on Sunday, which turned out to be a low to high day; I walked Dylan out of the Novice Agility, because he was being such an idiot. It was a shame as he did a lovely dogwalk, but he was floating about like a complete idiot and ignoring me, so out he went. Fetched Kim for the same course, and she whipped through and won it by nearly a second. Kim = awesome.

Novice Jumping was an interesting course, really spread out and using every corner of the ring, but still really nice. Kim was slow to start and then picked up, Dylan ran it ok but not fantastic. Dylan was 2nd, Kim 4th – I really though Kim was faster!

Kim was 4th again in the Helter Skelter, but she was easing up a bit by then. Dylan did a beautiful run, and then skipped the last jump to get his lead. Arg!

The British Open Championship was in the afternoon. The Agility was a bit of a killer course, but I felt moderately confident that Dylan could handle all the tricky sections, and he did. In fact, he did an amazing run, blew me and everyone else away, and finished 3rd. I nearly died! He beat some really good dogs that we can’t touch usually, so I was so pleased.

The Jumping round was a straight speed course, a few traps but nothing truly horrifying. Dylan’s run was amazing, he was sharp and tight and then he ran past the last two jumps to get his lead. I nearly cried. Brought him back around to collect the 5f rather than the E, but that was our hopes dashed. I felt like such an idiot too, I should have asked the lead person to leave his lead outside the ring. We finished 10th overall, and I think we’d have been pushing for top-5 if we’d gone clear in the Jumping. I’m still a little disappointed but Dylan stepped up three gears for me and so I’m still proud of him.

Finished off by running both dogs in the Time Gamblers, placed 6th (Kim) and 7th because they were both too fast. Heh, can’t complain about that! Had it been a normal class they’d have placed 1st (Dyl) and 2nd, which is kind of awesome.