All Clear

Posted on November 6, 2010 by Leanne

Dylan officially has the all-clear, as of yesterday, and so I’m looking forward to Tailwaggers tomorrow!

It looks like the Novice Plus classes are going to be quite competitive, they’re double the size of last years so I’m just hoping to get Dylan around the courses with the same enthusiasm he’s been showing lately. I’m not too worried about him as he’s being doing Novice Plus courses for a while, the only difference now is that hs points will count towards the Graduate League tables instead of Novice. When we start doing Graduate Plus courses, then I’ll get worried!

Jet is still in Primary so should have a blast! I’m out to win with Jet, on Katie’s instructions. Jet has already won two Primary classes (one Jumping, one Agility) but because everything is “reset” after the end of the season, her wins don’t count towards progression anymore, so we need to start from scratch.

This is something that I hate about BAA. I actually do despise this rule, it really irritates me! I can understand points being reset for the new season but I think dog’s should be able to keep their wins. The reason I was given for this rule is that it should be perfectly possible for a good dog to get 2 agility or 2 jumping wins at one show if they can’t do enough shows (!). I understand that the points system is trying to encourage “loyalty” to BAA shows, but it really annoys me that because someone can only afford or find time for 1-2 shows a year, they miss out on feeling that they’ve achieved something. I would very much like to put forward a proposal to change this rule, but the BAA is not run by a committee and has no official procedure for proposing rule changes, or any way of members voting on rule changes anyway … which is leading me on to a whole other topic altogether.

End of rant, see happy face.

End of Season

Posted on September 4, 2010 by Leanne

The Promotion tables have gone up for the 2010/11 BAA season, and Dylan is happily into Graduate in both Jumping and Agility. This doesn’t bother me since he’s going to be doing Novice Plus classes all winter anyway. He finished 3rd in the Novice Maxi Dog of the Year, which I’m thrilled to bits about, I thought he had no chance! He only moved up to Novice from June, so got most of his points in Primary. Primary points are worth less than Novice, so it just shows how well and how consistently he’s done. Good boy! He was 10th in the Novice Agility League and 9th in the Novice Jumping League, so very respectable there too.

Kim has gone into Graduate Agility on wins, which I couldn’t avoid, but she’s fallen into the Voluntary Promotion section for Jumping – we haven’t got any Novice Jumping wins – and I’m not going to apply to move her up. It means she will get a few runs next year at Novice, thankfully! She finished 8th in the Novice Medium DOTY League, which was reasonably good considering she amassed all her points over the summer since I don’t do the winter BAA season with her. Despite getting her wins in Agility, she has generally done better in Jumping, and finished 13th in the Novice Jumping League, and 18th in the Novice Agility League.

I did hesitate about doing anymore BAA shows after this season – I’m not happy with various things, which I’ve gone on at length about before – but I’m at least going to do the winter season with Dyl and then see what happens. I like the four day summer show just because it’s a good training show, and if I think he’s in with a decent shot at qualifying for Finals or even the Dog of the Year, I’m not sure I’ll be able to resist. It’s kind of difficult because there aren’t many other Finals for us to go for; in KC terms, Olympia and Crufts aren’t suitable venues for Dylan to run at even if we could qualify, and I don’t fancy chasing the Adams or CSJ Qualifiers up and down the country.

Maybe I’m just lacking in ambition!

Leagues & Qualifying

Posted on July 25, 2010 by Leanne

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!