Just The One Day

 

We woke up to a reasonable morning and decided to make the journey to Newbury, thankfully it was just the one day show or I would have been reluctant to consider it, knowing previously what the weekends had been like!! It has been difficult for the organisers of all these shows and I am grateful that they could keep this show running, though there was a bit of reorganising the ground required. As we got there quite early, we parked at the front of where the dayparking was (on a hardstanding, just in case!!) and took the dogs on a nice walk, in the wind but also some almost sunshine wow!!

Through reading my running orders and having two courses up first and my third and last after just 60 dogs, I realised that we could quite easily be home by lunch time, depending on how the courses were running - and I wasn't far wrong!! Due to the ground conditions, the forecast not being too pleasant and lots of people just deciding not to bother, the classes were running quicker than normal, and struggling for dogs, so we ran our first two courses sooner than expected. It was soooooo unfortunate that we had a silly refusal in the ABC qualifier, just down to me really, as she came out of a flat tunnel and I should have kept my arm out, but so pleased with her and the way she was listening to me. Well done to Jason and Stihl who had a faultless run to win it, it was a fantastic run and I'm glad we saw it!! Our second run was a really unusual course with a go round (which I really like!) and lots of space, but control too, and opposite ends of tunnel - which again I really like as I know we can usually do those really well!! So after walking and working out a way to do it... again stupid handler error and we ended up with another refusal, damn!! Very frustrating as Kiah was again fantastic completing weaves to nothing, the go round, the wrong end of tunnel and the long go on successfully mastered, so very pleased with that, Kiah that is, not me!!

Our third course was ok but nothing too exciting, and as I was walking it, the typical British weather struck again, and it started to rain, not sure I really was too surprised. Again they were struggling for dogs, and even more that the weather had deteriorated, so we got in almost straight away... Not sure it was quite worth waiting for as Kiah was nuts, so we were eliminated by obstacle four!!! The picture of 'Super-Fly-Ky' is just a reminder of how lovely it was last year at the same show!! So we had a look around the trade stands on the way back, bought the dogs some yummy fish skins, and Risk about four new toys (as he likes to shred them), and made our way home before the worst of the weather hit. It was so nice to be able to get away so early, and so with four very tired doggies, Alex and I went and got a bite to eat as a very late lunch, and went to the cinema, very enjoyable and a nice way to end the weekend!