Early Easter

This year Easter and the very welcomed four day bank holiday was quite early, the the major first show of the season that we do - nice and local again, and a real danger that the show could be called off, a complete repeat of last year and the threat of rain and cold weather ruining agility - one show at a time!!  Thankfully the week before the show managed to stay mainly dry which really helped, even though the show had to cancel most of the camping, and move a couple of rings around to accommodate the suffering soft ground, but it was great that the show could still go ahead.

We were doing a bit of ring party, mainly on the Saturday and a little on the Sunday, bad show to pick helping out at as it was bitterly cold and windy especially the first day!!  The dogs were in the best place in the van with their jumpers on.  But it has to be done, I have nothing against helping a little as long as everyone does their bit - which never happens - I can understand that some people can't help due to personal reasons but a large percentage of people can and won't.

Just a quick mention for my little dude Risk, he is still doing ok in his training, seems to have mastered the aframe properly now, and hs happy to run down it 9.9 times out of 10, he gets what I mean and is also doing well with his going over jumps rather than under, similar success rate so am pleased with him there.  We are still mastering the weaves, or trying to (!) a little tiny bit of practise every day and he is getting better... most of the time.  His confidence is very low at agility and especially new or difficult things like the weaves, so we keep it positive - but sometimes especially if he is tired or hasn't eaten (typical boy!) there's no point in trying more than even one or two jumps as it is very unproductive!!  But very little and often seems to be a good way for him to learn.

So Kiah and Davy were both running this weekend, Davy had some fantastic agility rounds and has really turned a corner, he has toned up (Davy!) and is doing agility because he enjoys working with Alex rather than just 'because he has to' and is putting the effort in.  There were some real if only runs and a couple of silly moments from Alex - like running past the last jump!!  It was a great helter skelter course where Davy was running fantastically well, and Alex had to speed up and lost track of where his dog went - around rather than over the last jump!!  But also there were a couple of times where Davy got his weaves first time, instead of going in pole two, and was good on most of his contacts - as long as Alex keeps practising them, and a real increase in speed, so there is real promise there.

Kiah was my little star this weekend, our very first run of the day was grade 6 agility, a bit of an unusual class - I mean something that we don't always see week in week out, quite often there are similarities in courses and they can get a bit samey but just sometimes you get very 'different' skillsets required, and they seem to be the courses we do better on.  Anyway we ran reasonably early in the class, and it was messy in places, especially the weaves as Kiah wasn't listening and shot out the tunnel looking for me rather than listening to my weave command - but the good bits were fast, and we went into 2nd place - I can't quite believe it but we stayed there.  We even managed to get it on video, which is rare - its lovely to see what good things happened and still places where we can improve. We got a lovely trophy and the other benefit of the 'easter' show is the easter egg too (for me, bought pigs ears for them!) - clever girlie!!