Barking Mad Indoor Show

Back to Keysoe this week for our club show, Barking Mad Indoor show.  We had a busy Friday night again   helping with the set up, but it's worth it come Saturday.  I was running Shadow (small G6) and Storm (large G3), while +Susi Cooper was running Doople (small G3).

First up for the day we had Storm running in grade 1-7 jumping.  This was a relatively tough course, especially for the lower grades, and showed with the relatively low number of clear rounds across all the grades.  We both ran a really nice, clean round and it was so satisfying running a complicated course successfully.  The fruits of our labour was a second place!  Across all the grade we were fourth fastest which is brilliant.  After this we had two agility rounds.  We have decided to start training contacts in the ring, so making sure we stop at every contact, rerunning the obstacle as necessary, and praising lots when she's in position.  So that meant that we weren't going to get any clear rounds in agility.  Hopefully after a few shows of this she should start to act the same at a show as she does in training.  After a few contact obstacles she was beginning to stop at the bottom.  The last jumping round, grade 3-5 jumping, was interesting to see how Storm was listening and reacting to my body movement.  The downside was my timing was wrong!  I turned too soon a few times and pulled her off the jumps, but I'm pleased that she reacted the way that she did.  We  had a good day overall and ended with a 2nd place.

Next up we have Shadow.  We started with a relatively simple grade 6-7 jumping.  She ran nicely and we went clear, but as it was quite straight we just didn't have the legs on the faster dogs.  The next grade 6-7 agility was trickier.  Unfortunately, we missed the A-frame contact and also the weave entry.  I needed to give her a nicer run into the weaves.  We did manage the complicated jumping section that most others failed at so all was not lost.  The grade 5-7 agility round was tough.  And keeping true with a theme at the shows for this year, we were eliminated after the first jump! There were some good bits (tunnel under dog walk) and some bad bits (tunnel under A-frame).  The last round we had was grade 1-7 jumping.  This was a different course to the large grade 1-7 jumping, but was equally as challenging, not helped by the fact that we didn't manage to walk it!  I gave it a go any way and we ended up with a first place, not bad!  It was a good end to the day with Shadow.

Last but not least was Doople.  Doople also ran very nicely today.  First for her was the grade 3-5 agility where she ran forward well, we'll gloss over the debatable dog walk contact!  Doople did get a fourth place overall, any placing with Doople is always a good run.  In the grade 3-4 agility that followed she did catch Susi out by running faster than expected.  Unfortunately, Doople promptly forgot how to weave.  She ran straight past them a couple of times with out noticing.  The grade 3-5 jumping had a similar problem.  Both sets of weaves were right hand weaves.  By that I mean that the dog is on the right hand side of the handler.  The dog always needs to enter the weaves with the first pole at their left shoulder.  This is something that we need to work on, but Doople is always far more confident with these at training.  The last class was the grade 1-7 jumping, the same class that we managed not walk for Shadow.  I ended up running this as Susi thought that I ran Shadow in it well before, so I did.  We worked well together, especially considering I haven't run Doople for a long time.  The only problem we had was again the weaves.  This time it was more my fault as I haven't practised with Doople.  She ran everything else really well though.  Doople ended the fay with a fourth place.

We always like going to the Barking Mad shows.  The show is well run and the courses are always a challenge, which is what we're after.  All dogs ran very well all day so we were both very happy by the end, albeit tired!  The day ended with us loading a truck with three rings worth of equipment, what fun!