Brilliant BATS

Nearly everything about the BATS show was just brilliant, a stunningly hot and cloud free day (not quite so good for the doggies but they were nice and cool in the car) and our first run of the day after boot camp - ending in a brilliant result. It was a grade 5 jumping course, quite a challenge but nice as it was very different to what I've seen before - but certainly not the typical style that I would expect us to get a good result in. Anyway we were running order 28 so didn't have to wait long especially as there weren't many people queueing, and using some of the knowledge that I'd hopefully picked up from boot camp - it was what I thought was a reasonable run - we went clear and straight into the lead and stayed there, resulting in her second grade 5 jumping win!!! Even managed to get the round on video thanks to Alex!

Our other runs weren't quite as good (not easy to beat!) but some excellent work in the novice qualifier by Kiah and brilliant contacts, unfortunately just a tipped wing of a jump resulting in 5f, and an E in the ABC class as our pull in didn't work quite as well as expected! So overall a very good day, really pleased with our second win (though at risk of sounding ungrateful, honestly I'm not) it does put us one step closer to grade 6! That is/would be a great achievement but I really like the challenge that grade 5 brings at the moment and I'd love to get a couple more good agility places too before we go anywhere.

The only negative point to the show - that seems to be appearing a lot more recently - is cars speeding through the show ground! I know it was a publicly accessible venue so there may have been a minor few of the 'joe public' people there, but the amount of people that we saw quite clearly doing a LOT more than 5mph on the way in and out was just crazy. Admittedly there weren't any speed signs but people should be more than well aware of it, if not by going to shows previously then by simple common sense! I don't understand why people need to go so fast, does it make them feel better? And to be honest it barely saves a minute or two, and I'm sure that if heaven forbid anything happened to end up under the wheels :( then they'd feel a whole lot worse. Slow down people, what's it going to take! So onto more positive news... that we are off to the Packington show this long bank holiday weekend coming, can't wait!!!