Diamond Show and ‘Straddle’ ‘Gert’ ‘Clumpy’ ……..

………are some new words that we all learnt this weekend!

Which is fairly suggestive of how the weekend went! I don’t know how a show manages to create certain atmospheres – but Diamond certainly seem to win hands down on the fun and laid back atmosphere vibe. The show is a nice size, 6 rings, with everyone closely camped to the rings and therefore lots of time to watch the classes. This is something I miss at the bigger shows as it is nice to see different people run the courses you are running and to support your friends.

I say support your friends – some people obviously have a different view and like to heckle their friends on the start line! How rude!!

The 6/7 Agility started quite late on the day and it seemed that a fair portion of the audience as well as the competitors had decided to make the most of the lovely sunny weather and very sensibly had a cool drink in their hands to prevent from overheating.

This will be the point at which my lovely friend developed a new nickname for me – of which she chose to share with me and everyone else in the close vicinity as I walked onto the start line with Thai. The words ‘ Here comes Cider Sarah’ could be heard as I walked out – I then had to try and stop giggling to be able to release Thai from the start line – and completed the course fairly well – I can’t actually remember what he did wrong – might have been a pole? Nevertheless he did all the hard opening sequence. I decided to layer a jump which we never really do so he got a bit confused by that but still did as I asked. I then decided to go and get Cruze and rejoin the queue. This will be the point at which my new nickname was amended slightly. I got a little bit lost and as I turned found I was pretty much on top of the DW, I somehow managed to get one foot either side of it and still get Cruze into the tunnel and Pat’s new favourite word was born ‘Straddle’!!.....and I was to be called Straddling Cider Sarah for the rest of the weekend!!

My highlight of the weekend was collecting Thai’s 2^nd place trophy from Barry for his G6 Jumping and Barry asking if Thai was my blue merle and saying his weaves were awesome J I smiled for at least an hour after that J No one ever comments on my dogs and I was so pleased that a judge had said Thai was good – and this was about 4 hours after we had run J

Cruze went clear in the other G6 jumping judged by Andrew Dicker – it was handly in places, blasty in others and a fairly hard left hand weave entry – Cruze was lovely all day long and we both got it right on this course – another 2^nd place J Unfortunately I gave Cruze a late command on one jump where we needed a good turn, a left flick around the outside wing – Cruze landed right, went to come in, heard me say left and did an about turn, looked at the equipment on the outside of the ring and then came round – probably lost me a good second, so pleased that we still came 2^nd.

They were both good in the 6/7 Agility on Sunday as well – this was the sort of course that at the beginning of the season I would of felt over phased walking into the ring and seeing all the equipment so close together and pointing all in the same direction! But I walked it and was happy I could attack it. Thai just had a pole – completely my fault – spatial awareness again and I nearly fell over the wing while trying to push Thai left for the long jump. Cruze missed his see-saw contact – he can’t really work out how to slide a rubber seesaw – which is fair enough. This is the only gripe I would have with the weekend – and it is not directed at Diamond at all as other shows have also done this and I heard several people saying the same thing. I believe that shows need to either use rubber contacts or not – not have half the runs on rubber and half on normal contacts. I think this will really lead onto the fact that there needs to be a decision on whether the KC are going to put in a rule change or not.

I couldn't resist including this picture! My friends are so good at catching Cruze's personality! I am assuming there was a jump behind him - but it jsut looks like he is happy to see the weaves!!

Magic was amazing and had a flying round in the Olympia Qualifier – just unfortunately missing the weave entry which is a real shame as she was working really nicely.

I think Magic was certainly enjoying herself this weekend – she was a bit naughty in Neil’s class trying to do the see-saw, DW and A-frame all as one obstacle! She finally got a clear round last thing on the Sunday in the 4/5 Agility – but never the one to not stick something extra in she slipped and fell on her head and wasted a couple of seconds regaining her composure and working out which way was up! Still she came 4^th J She also had a nice run in one of her jumpings – just slipping in the weaves and missing a pole – she seemed to slip on the grass in places where it was cut and really short – she looked totally surprised and carried on in them but obviously was eliminated.

Diamond is definitely my favourite show of the year so far, it was up there in the top 3 last year and I’m already looking forward to it next year! Diamond certainly chose some bl**dy good judges for their show; Neil Ellis, Andrew Dicker, Martin Cavill, Barrie James and Lee Windeatt all set some really good courses – I haven’t enjoyed being in Grade 6 as much as I did this weekend and Dan enjoyed having some courses to test his handling and all the work he has been doing at training – all the courses were enjoyable and testing and most importantly – do-able!!

Well we have a weekend off this weekend to be ‘normal’ people – I’m sure we will get bored and do lots of training! Then we are off to UKA week the week after.  SWAG sponsors the UKA Nationals and I also have my first judging appointment. We also have 15 runs a day! So I suspect I will need a week off to recover afterwards!!

Forgot how to get into my Blog Account and Broke my finger!

Where have you been??!! I hear you cry!!!!!

It’s silly really I didn’t start my blog during the winter as I didn’t think there would be much to write about without shows taking place. Now I have plenty to write but no time to write it!

So I have missed telling you about SWAT (busy) ,Hinckley (a long way away), Thames (Very WET and broken bones!) and Newton Heath (even further way), Lansdown (Omnipro Final and SUNSHINE ) and then weekend just gone was Tuffley. So there you go that’s what we’ve been up to – see you next week with a write up for Diamond!

Neither of us have been particularly successful these last few weeks – but there has been some brilliance inbetween the C**P for all 3 of the SWAG doglettes J

SWAT was a LOVELY show, although a little too windy on the Friday for my liking! Thank you to the 5 other lovely people who helped hold our tent down! This was our first trade stand of the year – and very successful it was too. We were busy the entire 2 days and when we got home we both said we couldn’t really remember any of the show at all! So understandably neither of us did very well, and we couldn’t really expect any different as the dogs were pretty much abandoned until we shot to a ring with one of them, we also didn’t both go to each run so the routine was upended further. Magic never queues with Dan – she prefers to stand on the sideline with me and screech from there! They all got a place in the 1-7 Jumping and that was it! This is why we don’t do too many trade stands as we know our runs will suffer however we still really enjoyed the show and was also great fun to watch and sponsor Dairin’s Challenge on the Friday and Saturday evening.

Hinckley was a first time for us – another lovely show – and definitely a benchmark show – by this I mean if you want to know where you stand in your grade go to Hinckley and learn a hard lesson!

My hard luck story of that weekend was Cruze in Lee Windeatt’s Large Stakes Olympia Qualifier – clear until the very last jump (a tyre). There was a HUUUUUGE crowd around this ring, lots of people were going wrong in several different places.the 2 tunnels and Dog walk and Aframe were all kind of interconnected in the middle of the ring and you could only go around them not through the middle. I really enjoyed running the course and Cruze was Ama-zing – right up until I pulled him off the very last obstacle - GUTTED – still am actually and it was a month ago! It would have been interesting to know where Cruze stood between all the best dogs in the country.

Thames is usually one of my favourite shows but to be honest this year I can’t really remember much about it – other than it was very very very very wet on the Sunday and I broke my finger Sunday morning (although didn’t actually get to A+E until Monday evening to get it x rayed and put in a splint). This is another reason I haven’t updated my blog for a while as I am now only just able to type properly again and by teht ime I have finished at work the last thing I have been wanting to do is anymore typing one handed!

Newton Heath is another show we really enjoy. We both enjoyed running Cruze and Thai in the EO and Crufts Q’s. Dan ran Thai really nicely in the Crufts run. I was surprised to see how many handlers in this class over managed the weave entry. It was a 180 angle from the right from a jump that was more or less at the last weave (there were 9 weaves) a larger number of people than I expected ran all the way past the weaves called their dogs and gave them a straight weave entry. So I was really pleased that both Dan and I were level with the jump and sent both dogs to the weaves and they both got it! Big Smiley faces J Thai had a lovely run in G6 jumping – quickest by a second……………. And the last pole down! I thought maybe we had lost my fastest 5 faults dog – but there he was again! There were several plastic poles marking a hole/ditch to the left of the last jump just out of the ring – and this is where Thai’s toy ended up – he clocked his toy and was obviously concentrating more on how he was going to avoid the poles to get his toy then where his back legs were currently – another lesson learnt. I have to say I am learning a lot of lessons this season!!!! Along the same lines Magic has started to clock the bucket at the end of runs – or before the end of runs several times this month so something else we need to watch with her.

We would then normally have the last weekend of June off – and to be honest from my performance I probably should of done! I had a small tantrum on the Saturday didn’t want to run anything and refused to run Thai in his agility until right at the end of the class, a nice straight forward course, left Thai to it and just called him for the one turn he needed some direction on, a fast course like that with no pushing from me and he came 3^rd!!!!! Lesson learnt again – work every course and don’t be a baby!

Cruze wasn’t listening on  Saturday and struggled with the heat on Sunday. I enjoyed having a go at Barrie James’ Qualifier. Barrie is fast becoming one of my favourite judges, he provides testing courses but if you work it properly it shouldn’t be impossible. I got them both E’d early on by not calling enough to miss an early jump. I then really tested Thai’s 90 degree left weave entry – he failed – but I wasn’t surprised its something I know he struggles with and I really tested it by not helping him at all just to see what he did, he ran the rest really nicely. Cruze was a monkey and instead of entering the weaves shot back up the dog walk – however every cloud and all that – his DW was STUNNING – completely independent as I was still stood at the weaves, 2o2o and a rather quizzical ‘where are you mum look left to right’ and waiting for release, Barrie said what lovely contacts he had J I then released him, he still had no idea where I was so did a lovely scoop into the tunnel underneath the DW (another thing he is generally not brilliant at!) and then finally spotted me and came and did the weaves!

The reason we were at Lansdown was Dan and Magic had their Omnipro final on the Saturday evening. Dan was last to run and knew he had to go for it to beat the winning dog at the time; Tally and Roy had had a lovely round and Tally is a big powerful dog who eats up the ground. So off Magic went, absolutely lovely until she came out the 4^th weave. Dan carried on and let Magic enjoy her run – she had the fastest time and it certainly would have been close had she bothered to do those two little extra weaves.

Dan is in the process of ‘tweaking’ his contacts and changing how he rewards the weaves at training and hoping to do some environment training with her and go to a few places for some training to try and get Magic over her weave phobia, it is such a shame as this dog is so amazing, foot perfect at home and then just can’t seem to process the weaves in the ring environment.

Weekend just gone was Tuffley, lovely show and lovely venue. The dogs were in heaven – swimming and jumping – their 2 favourite things in the whole wide world.

Best result of the weekend was Magic gaining a 4^th in 1-7 Agility. Proof that this dog can do what we know she can achieve – we just need to persuade Magic now!

I felt sick watching Dan and Magic run in the Olympia Qualifier – she had been getting her weaves so far today………… and she got them in the Q – but she missed the middle part of a snake line as Dan was really pushing her and hadn’t quite given her enough time to pick it up. This was the first weekend Magic had been looking on form for a few weekends so hopefully a few good clears are just around the corner. Sundays Grade 4 Agility and Dan really pushed Magic, she absolutely flew, a second and a half quicker than the fastest dog………….. which would have been enough of a margin for Dan to let her do a 2o2o DW but he asked for a running contact and she missed the contact. Agility is hard sometimes you just never know what you need to do to achieve you goal. Sometimes what feels like your most amazing run will get you nowhere and other times what feels like an ok run could win you a class. You just never know! I stand by my belief that Magic is much better off in 4/5 this season. One of these reasons being a purely selfish one – I don’t want to be competing against her!!

Diamond this weekend. I actually looked at my running orders in the hope that all classes would be combined and I could then persuade Dan to stay at home instead. Unfortunately Diamond have provided us with an entire weekend of graded classes ;-)

So I was told to pull myself together and dive in with some enthusiasm that I have certainly been lacking recently. I am hoping Dan will take Thai for a few classes as they work really well together. I am also hoping Magic will get it together for an entire course or 2 over the weekend. As for Cruze – I just so enjoy watching him enjoy himself! It doesn’t seem like a year ago I lost him at Diamond as she bolted from a very ‘scary’ Deerhound and broke through the windbreak (like a lion in a circus breaks through the paper covered hoop!) and hid in the back of the tent with Dani until I returned! One of many funny events from Diamond last year – but most of the others can’t be written down without permission from other parties! ;p

So here’s to another enjoyable weekend and hopefully we can come away with some rosettes.