This is such a long drive. Thankfully it’s worth it, because I love the proper Northern shows. Everyone is so friendly!

I had a borrowed dog for this show in Katie’s Jet. Jet is a complete maniac and I haven’t run her competitively since her first KC show at South Durham, since when she’s become 100x more crazy fast. I said back then that running 2 dogs was hard, but it’s actually been a real struggle for me just to run one dog in the past couple of months. The wait between runs just drags on and on!

The Graded 3-4 Agility was an … interesting course? I really liked it, but I might have been a bit more hesitant if I’d been running a genuine baby dog G3 in there.

Jet set off like a rocket, and did one of the best dogwalks I’ve ever seen her do. Katie will be very proud to know that all the training paid off! She ran right to the end, no creeping, but unfortunately I was so overwhelmed by this I was thinking about the wonderful dogwalk and not where we were going. So Jet didn’t turn for the jumps, and turned for the Aframe. Oops! We carried on and did the Aframe again properly, and then again at the end. You can never have too many Aframes, apparently!

Dylan did some lovely lovely contacts in this run, and I couldn’t have asked for more in that respect! He also nailed the turns and generally made it all look pretty easy. Just one thing letting us down, and that was his jumping. More on that at a later date, but suffice to say we came 4th, just less than 2s off the winner. Time that I feel we could easily have made up with fluent jumping! I can’t complain too much though, a 4th is still a 4th and we’re fast approaching his Agility Warrant now so any placing is a bonus.

1-3 Jumping was a bit of a lost cause. I didn’t like the course, too many pinwheels, so I didn’t really walk it properly and then made the same mistake with both dogs, oops! They both popped the last 2 poles on the weaves, and Jet missed the weave entry because I tried to handle her like Dylan … which I already know doesn’t work!

Thankfully I do learn from my mistakes occasionally, and I handled the Graded 3-4 Jumping completely differently for each dog. Made my life more difficult, but I just couldn’t see how I could get Jet around without poles if I handled her like I would have Dyl or Kim. It almost went to plan as well! Jet did a cracking run, but I panicked at the turn from 14-15 and didn’t cue the turn smoothly enough, so Jet slowed right down, and then she jumped completely the wrong way over 16 and we lost loads of time there. I think that was the only real example of miscommunication all day; both my dogs would have read my cues as a rear cross, but Jet isn’t used to running with me (and me with her!) so she didn’t understand what I was signalling.

Dyl’s plan went … to plan, really! Again, just a shame about the jumping. He finished 9th (24.190), and Jet was 13th (24.934). Winning time was 21.215, but second was 23.534, so not a bad finish for either dog.

Huge congratulations to Cat and Gypsy for going Grade 3 – who says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks?! – and to Tracy and Mac for winning out of Grade 1. Can’t keep the Aussies down … also to Julie and the gang for their lovely pink rosettes, and to Paul and Farley, who has no faith in his dog and didn’t even check to see if he was placed in his last class. (He was, sandwiched between Dyl and Jetly in 11th!)

As many of you will have heard already, Kim was diagnosed with a heart murmur at the vets during her routine annual checkup and boosters. I didn’t post about it immediately because it took me a while to get my head around the idea that my beautiful girly could no longer claim to be in perfect physical health. I realise I can’t wrap her in cotton wool but I was already thinking maybe now was the time to stop pushing her at agility and flyball and let her pick her own pace, at least until she’s fully tested and we know the full story.

Kim though, with her normal attitude, apparently doesn’t care or doesn’t listen to warnings about her health (or anything else, for that matter!) and told me not to dare think about retiring her just yet.

Our first run of the day was Combined 1-4 Agility, nice course with a few fiddley bits but basically exactly what I’d been hoping for when I’d chosen to enter a show with 1-4 classes. (Kim and I tend to do better on trickier courses). We had a lovely run but I thought we’d missed our dogwalk contact — still do, actually! — plus we had several wide turns and Kim was definitely not firing on all cylinders so I was pleased just to get a clear. I thought it was a good start to the day and we’d really have our chance later in the 1-2 Agility! When I actually went to check the results to get my time for Kim’s AW points I nearly burst into tears, her time was 4 seconds clear of the dog in second place and she won me into Grade 3 by beating not only Grade 1 and 2 dogs, but Grade 3 and 4 dogs as well.

Here’s the video from her 1-4 Agility.

http://www.undermybed.co.uk/images/otley14agility.wmv
OR go to http://uk.youtube.com/user/kayanem

We then went on to win the Combined 1-2 Jumping with a “fairyhead” run (as Emma calls it!), and the Combined 1-2 Agility with 5 faults (knocked a pole on the spread). In our final run of the day, when Kim was freaked out by the thunder and only half-listening to me, she still managed a 3rd in the Combined 1-4 Jumping.

Dylan met his baby sister Kai again, who is just stunning; the photo doesn’t show how huge they both are! Emma and Bailey were also doing their first Medium 3-5 classes. Bails had a particularly awesome run in the 3-5 Jumping but her clear didn’t count as the course had the cloth tunnel taken out mid-way through the class as it was getting too wet, so Emma had to re-run and got E’d. Looking at the final times and Bailey’s original time, she would have been 3rd … not a bad start Ems! A few other friends also had some good placings, so all in all a really fab day.

Final note though, on the Agility Warrant points added in from today Kim now has 196 points … so close to being Return of the Kim AW(B)! We aren’t doing another KC show until the end of August at Northern Week, but hopefully we’ll be able to get those last few points there.

EMDAC

Kim and Dylan at EMDAC this time, but just for one day. Both were entered for 4 runs each but I ended up pulling Dylan from both his agility classes, he’s still not confident on the seesaw. He made up for it by having a decent run in the Helter Skelter (got E’d!) and an absolutely cracking run in the Jumping, got E’d again but I was so pleased with him, he really attacked the course, got his weaves perfectly and really focussed on what he was doing. Progress has been made!

Kim appears to have found at least part of her crazy again, as she was enthused all weekends about her runs and even if she wasn’t running up in 4th or 5th, we had some good moments. Primary Jumping was a simple course with 12 weaves, and her weaves are too slow at the moment to get us any really high placings on a course like that. It was nice to run though, and we did go clear and placed 16th, top Medium dog so not too fussed! Helter Skelter was her best run of the weekend, we came a very surprising 5th out of 90+ dogs! Our agility runs … well, the less said the better I think!

Waldridge Fell

Just Kim at Waldridge, lovely showground and a lovely show! Just a shame about the scheduling, it was too much all at once for both Kim and I to keep our cool.

We started off with a clear on the Graded 1-2 Agility (bit rough but we got round and Kim was working her contacts nicely), and thought, oh-so-briefly, that we had it in the bag … and then Bailey stepped on course and put in one of the best runs I’ve ever seen her do, it was absolutely paw-perfect and she nailed everything. Emma and Bails won the class by just over 2 seconds, and into Grade 3! I’m so pleased for both of them, Bailey can be a little terror when she wants and Emma has had to work so hard with her! Kim came 2nd but as the class only placed to 1st she doesn’t get any agility warrant points for it.

Things went downhill from there … Waldridge Fell had changed the ring plans on the morning which meant the classes were not in the order we were expecting. Because the class entries were so small in the Medium classes, we were walking the courses and then running immediately — no time to watch anybody run or walk back to the car to collect dogs! That meant I had to have Kim out and ready whilst I walked the course, which doesn’t work for her as she gets bored and tired. Immediately after we ran the Graded 1-2 Agility, we had the Graded 1-2 Jumping, although Emma and I didn’t realise that! We missed the course walking and so I had to run it blind, having watched 2 dogs run before me! Kim hit her weave entry and then paused to sniff something and missed the next pole. She was working and focussed so it wasn’t stress-sniffing, so I’m not sure what caught her attention and I wouldn’t want to speculate! We finished up with 5 faults but won the class anyway by 14 seconds.

Immediately after that we had to walk the Combined 1-2 Agility class. The results from the first class still weren’t out so we didn’t know if Kim or Bailey had won it, and I couldn’t decide whether to push Kim for speed or be careful to get her contacts on the course. I wasn’t that keen on the course in the second class anyway — it was the same judge and the equipment stayed in the same place, only the numbers changed. Kim doesn’t like repetition but she actually ran it quite well, just a shame about the handler! I should have layered a jump in but I tried to go around it, and ended up pushing her past the jump she should have done. Refusal … and now we’re stuck in Grade 2 still!

Immediately after that (and I do mean immediately!) the Open Pairs class was calling for Mediums, so Emma and I walked that and then queued with Kim and Bailey whilst the judge took a quick coffee break. Whilst we were in the queue for Pairs, we suddenly realised the ring next to us was running the Combined 1-2 Medium Jumping, so we had to desert the Pairs queue and go and run that, despite not having walked that one either! Kim threw in a nice clear and came 1st again, by just over 3 seconds.

We then ran Pairs and Kim and Bailey both went clear in a decent time, but we had some seriously tired dogs on our hands. I think they finished 4th out of the Medium pairs. I’ve never asked Kim to run 5 full courses back to back in training, let alone competition, and she was exhausted. I’m so proud of her though, she gave me everything she had to compete under circumstances I know that she doesn’t like, and I let her down on the 2nd agility course.

I have to admit I’m really disappointed that we’re still Grade 2. I came home so pleased with Kim at EMDAC and so downhearted from Waldridge Fell. It reinforced all my reasons for not doing Kennel Club shows — Kim won 2 classes this weekend, but they weren’t difficult wins and there was no achievement for us. We may be 1 Jumping win closer to Grade 3 but it feels frustrating slow — Kim has already won 3 Jumping classes, beating dogs from higher grades to do it, but we won them as Grade 1′s so they don’t count. She came home from EMDAC with lower placings but I felt like we’d achieved something, we beat a lot of good dogs, have some more points towards the League Tables and the Dog of the Year awards, and hopefully are on our way to qualifying for the Finals in August.

Enough about that, I make enough arguments for BAA shows as it is! Kim was much better this weekend in herself, she was bouncy and tugging in the queue and running smoother on course. She got a handful of AW points too so we’re an inch closer to the 200 points. We aren’t competing again in agility for 6 weeks/2 months, so we can get some proper training done and come back refreshed for the middle of the summer season.