As it's our club show we are often very busy helping out as well as running dogs. The show is excellently run by Den and Niki Keeler. It starts on Friday night when we turn up to set everything up. The rings need to be marked out, agility equipment set up, rosettes and trophies organised among many other things. We just help with the simple tasks!
On to the agility. Now if I said "we enjoyed ourselves" it may be a give away that we didn't do so well, so I wont say it. Storm started the day off with grade 1-7 agility. It wasn't the best of starts to the day as she missed the first jump. After that she was OK apart from missing the A-frame contact. If you read my post about our training day on New Years Day this wont be a surprise. But to give Storm credit, we followed it with an 8th place in grade 3-5 agility which was quite a tricky course for us. So I was was pleased with that. The two jumping courses we had afterwards highlighted a few areas where both myself and Storm need to improve. Storm needs to work in close proximity better and also learn not just to jump what ever is in front of her. This comes from having run at grade 1 for a while where the course are normally straight forward. Also we both need to practice slaloms. So, 3 E's and 1 clear, we've had better days.
Shadow was in one of those moods where she was very vocal with me. We started the day off slightly better than with Storm by getting eliminated on jump #2 by jumping jump #3 backwards instead. The latter part of Shadows run was much better, apart from staring at the camera lady half way round. The next agility round started nicely but we had a difference in opinion after the A-frame which again got us eliminated. Shadow wanted to do the jump ahead and I wanted to go into the weaves the opposite direction. The grade 5-7 jumping round was nice but it was a relatively simple course. The last grade 1-7 agility was OK apart from the flying contacts. So in a similar vain to Storm, 3 E's and 1 clear.
Doople seemed a little bit off today and didn't seem to be running with the same confidence she normally has. Needless to say she had the same number of clear rounds as I did with both Storm and Shadow put together! In the first agility round Doople missed and then back jumped but could have run forward better. She was also hesitant on the see-saw. The next jumping round again a bit hesitant but this time with the weaves. The next jumping round was a clear round where Doople ran nicely and seem a lot more enthusiastic. The final agility round was also clear but Doople was hesitant on the dog walk and said hello to the judge half way through, although still finished the weaves. Doople weaves were quite good today as she picked them all up and only made a mistake in one round.
We also had a chance to run Winnie and Zazu in the training ring. We ran Winnie of medium jumps and she enjoyed herself, even if she did seem a little distracted. With Zazu we did some more training on the dog walk and A-frame to get him used to different environments. He needed help getting on the dog walk first time but after that was picking it up nicely and was also stopping well. We still need to work on the release as he doesn't drive away. This wasn't helped by the improvised touch point we used: an empty treat bag. He would run down, eat the treat then carry the treat bag over the next jump. A neat trick but not quite what we were after!
After a muddy day we went back with a single rosette, Storm with 8th in the grade 3-5 agility. We aren't at a show next weekend but will hopefully be training instead.
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