Another jam packed agility/flyball weekend!

Had a busy sort of a weekend. We were at Wyre agility on Saturday, Faith was entered but I decided not to run her as I still don't feel that she's ready and am in absolutely no rush to get her out yet. I did get her measured though along with Kitten and Teal and came out with one of each!! lol Faith is Large, Kitten is medium (by quite a margin!) and Teal is small. I had thought Kitten may be borderline but there was plenty of daylight under the measure so she comfortably measured medium. Suprisingly Teal was much tighter and just made small but since she'll be 3 in April I don't think she's likely to grow any more! Her training will start in earnest in the New Year but I want to get Kitten up and running in flyball before we start any agility training with her. We had a nice day catching up with everyone and watching the classes. I got to see Wren run for the first time and despite no clears she was looking great!! Here she is with Joy in the 3/4/5 graded agility...I think you can hear my 'oh Wren!!' as she goes clear but runs past the last jump!! It was quite a long way out from the penultimate jump for a baby dog to pick up though really and just shows her 'greeness', with more ring experience I think she's going to make a really nice little agility dog :)



I got to watch Bryn (Faith's brother aka Bryning Truly Special) running and he had some lovely runs (especially once Brenda had run off her aching leg that had her hopping round the early courses!). He went clear and placed 8th in the 3/4/5 combined agility class beating some good grade 5 dogs along the way and placed 17th in the graded 3/4/5 agility with 5 faults (the course Wren was running above). What a good boy! I also filmed Veronica running Kite (Kes's sister) in the 3/4/5 jumping...annoyingly E'd as she back jumped a fence instead of coming through a gap. She placed 13th in the same combined 3/4/5/ agility class as Bryn.



Also got to spend some time having a cuddle from Chief and Sika (Eabha's brother and sister) and Josie and Ice (both Mac daughters)...here's Josie...



I love her blue eyes, they're much clearer than Mac's with no touches of any other colour anywhere...very striking!

We left Myserscough and met up with Trish to head over to Doncaster, we were meting Paul and Alison at the Travelodge where we just chilled out with some drinks and X-factor and had a meal together ready for racing at the Northern Racing College the following day.

We had a leisurely start with tea and muffins and walking the dogs on the frosty field behind the travelodge, maybe a bit too leisurely as we arrived just in time for the start of racing and were straight into Div One with the Demonz. We weren't expecting much, the dogs have all dropped their times since the summer and we haven't been running that well over winter, we were seeded 6th in a 7 team division. This tournament is held in an indoor riding arena where the runback, lanes and box area are laid with turf. Back to the usual line up of Dylan, Bailey, Lexie and Mist and we even had Dylan back running start dog as we've finally cured the intemittent ball dropping (hurray!!). We diagnosed that the ball dropping was a result of anticipating his ragger because he doesn't do it when he doesn't get his ragger. However, without the ragger Alison couldn't catch him and having the ragger in her pocket and pulling it out at the last minute wasn't helping either...he still knew she had it. It was actually Ethan that made me think of it...Eth will hold his ball and carry it around the run back area after his run and is often reluctant to give it up but will ignore all the loose balls on the floor. However, as soon as you have another ball in your hand he spits his out straight away and tries to grab it because yours is instantly more desirable by the simple fact you have it! It occured to me that Dylan only really wanted that ragger because Alison had it so we tried leaving the ragger in the ball bucket at the back of the runback...he has to race Alison to the bucket, she obviously has a head start so will get there first and has time to grab the ragger before he does but he will hold onto his ball until she gets there...the ball he already has is more desirable than the ragger until that point! Not a single dropped ball all day. So simple and so annoying we didn't think of it sooner!! Misty was off form in the morning, just didn't seem to be extending over the hurdles properly, at 8 years old she is the oldest dog on that team so maybe a night sleeping in the van and the fact it was so cold had affected her?? Bailey and Lexie also seemd to struggle for grip in the blue lane sliding into and up the face of the box a few times...it was all a bit messy. We still managed some low 18 sec times and beat the Kiddy Minsters despite the fact they ran faster than us but then lost to the Crazies, a race we really should have won...that's the way it goes sometimes! We won our afternoon races with relative ease and the outcome of the division all rested in the last race of the day between Crazies and Kiddies (1st and 2nd seeds)...if the Crazies won it would be a 2 way tie for 1st place between them and us which they would be awarded because they'd beaten us and Kiddies would be 3rd. If the Kiddies won we would win the division, they would be 2nd and Crazies would get pushed down to 3rd. We couldn't help willing the Kiddies on to win and they duly obliged and beat the Crazies giving us 1st place in div One...yay!!!

Division Two however was a different story altogether! We came 3rd and 5th with the Racers and Pawz as we were totally struck by the curse of the cockers!! For the first time ever these two teams had to race against each other, each team contains a cocker...the lesson we learned from this is that you can't run a cocker on a team I'm not running in!! While they will both run for Gemma, and Drake will run for other team members on occasion too, they won't do that if I'm running on the other team...what a pair of babies!!! lol Drake just kept running to me and Teal just refused to run...it was mayhem! It was a shame for the Racers who were top seed in that division and were storming it until that point. Teal lost the plot on the blue lane after that...that's the unpredictability of spaniels I'm afraid!! We were well and truly 'cockered'! lol Another lesson learned anyway and I was really pleased with the way the teams ran (apart from the obvious!)

Other events this weekend...Vicki and Diesel (Bryning Don't Stop me Now at Ruffs) had a good day at EABCC Open Show as he won Puppy Dog and Best Puppy in Show :)

Vicki and Diesel after winning Best Puppy (pic courtesy of Giruff designs)

Our Locheil reli's also had a great weeked. Susi and 15 month old Comic (aka Locheil Walk Like a Man, Kitten's brother) won Junior dog, Best of Breed and was shorlisted in Group 1 (this is a huge group in the FCI system!)...this now also makes him an Austrian Junior Champion. One of Mercys’ pups Maya (aka Locheil Eclipse Of The Moon over Taranza), owned by Alison Cheney won her class, best puppy, best of breed, Pastoral Puppy Group 1 and Pastoral Group 1 at Exonian Open Show at only 7 months old! She then went on to win her class, best puppy and best of breed again at Dorset County Show the following day! Way to go!!