Darlington & Acremead...another long haul weekend

Last busy weekend of the year with a 520mile road trip to take in Darlington Champ Show, being held at Newby Hall in North Yorkshire on Saturday followed by flyball at Abingdon in Oxfordshire on Sunday (despite there being a flyball tournament on in Darlington too!! lol)

Dogs were bathed on Friday night in between watching ‘Strictly’ and catching up on my e-mails/facebook etc. This was the scene underneath my desk...

the two lone feet are Ethans' since he was right in front of my chair and under my legs then my old WSD Spud (aka Nanny Spud lol) with Travis draped over him and little Wes curled up on his feet. Wesley is our newest addition who arrived from Scotland earlier this week. He is from the same breeder as Squirrel, my friend Paul Fitzsimmons (Glendream), and they are actually cousins.

Eventually we got everything packed and prepared for the weekend but it ended up being a rather late one to bed (for a change!) followed by a fairly early start, although I didn’t have anyone in the ring ‘til Limit dog and judging wasn’t starting ‘til 9.30am I wanted to get there in good time so I could have Spark out around the rings and get him settled before his class, so we didn’t have a repeat of last weeks’ performance! We arrived just before 10am and got set up and sorted. It was another hot day so I got Spark prepped and then walked him round the rings and sat in the shade by the James Wellbeloved stand and watched the judging. He’s still dropping coat so a lot had come out after bathing and more again on grooming in the morning, I do think Spark is one of those dogs that often looks better for losing a bit of coat (like his dad) and was happy with how he ‘scrubbed up’. The judge was from Denmark and this was his first UK appointment so I wasn’t sure what he’d do, I do wonder how these foreign judges cope with the big entries here though, they’re around 5 times bigger than the biggest entries on the continent so that’s a lot more dogs to assess!
Limit dog was the largest class of the day with 18 entries and some nice dogs in there so I wasn’t sure how we were going to get on but Spark redeemed himself and I was really pleased with the way he went. No repeat of last weeks’ giddy shenanigans (good boy) and he didn’t even seem to mind being picked up by his tail while being gone over (!! See the video). I was really pleased when he was pulled out for the shortlist and more so when he placed 3rd, he’s really starting to mature and look the part now and I’m happy that he’s holding his own in these large strong classes, I think it’ll be another year before he’s really at his best though, we’ll see.



Mouse, well…what can I say…she is one very ‘foody’ little dog and had not forgotten about last weeks’ tasty delights from the boxer ring, the result being that she just wanted to move round the ring with her nose glued to the floor the whole time…arghhhhh!!! It’s very frustrating because when she did get her head up and move properly she actually moved really well. She got binned anyway.



Dottie was in Limit bitch again so wasn’t in ‘til late afternoon, this was a relatively big class but she went really well, received a lot of nice comments ringside but got binned, just not flashy enough for this judge I don’t think…hmph…just look at the way she moved in the vid though...love this dog :)



We left the show around 4.30pm and headed straight down to stay with Joy and Becca (again!), we had another lovely meal and evening with them (thanks guys) but were very sensibly all in bed for midmight! Joy and Becca left for Trent Park agility early doors and we left later to drive the 30 mins or so down to the flyball at Acremead kennels. We had a lovely day at the Mad Mutts show, it was so small and friendly and relaxed. There was only me and Drew running a team that consisted entirely of my own dogs, having 7 competing at the moment I had to draw straws and decide who to run and we ended up with Mac, Faith, Lexie and Teal and stuck to those four. My old friend Pete who used to run with us a few years back before emigrating to Spain was in the country and came over to see us and lend a hand which was great, it was lovely to see him and great to have an extra pair of hands. Sharon and Richard from the High Flyers also came over and helped us out too even though they didn’t have a team entered (aren’t flyballers just the best people?!) and we had Nat from Bristol on the line and keeping us in order. It was a fun day and we came 2nd in Div 3 with a fastest time of 19.54 which had actually broken us out…oops! I’d entered the Demon Racers on a submitted time of 20.05 to ensure we got to run on Sunday but knew it would be close (if you submit a time you cannot run more than 0.5sec faster or you break out and automatically lose that leg, break out 3 times and you become ineligible to compete). We managed to ‘hang lose’ and not break out again but lost a crucial race against the Bassetts on lights (doh!) so missed out on that first place…ah well…c’est la vie!

Squirrel ran in the Mutts Intermediate team and did really well, they ran best of 5 legs in a 7 team division (the most running she’s ever done) with wings instead of full netting and she was great, running with lots of dogs she’d never met before and running either start dog or in a later position with no problems…clever parson! There was a photographer on site who got some lovely pics of her, I’ll see if I can find them and post the link.

Made it home for around 10pm and promptly fell asleep exhausted…what an exhausting but fun weekend!