The idea of DIN is a doggy holiday. A week of agility, with profits being donated to rescue groups. Each dog is restricted to 2 runs per day, regardless of how many they are eligible for, which while it doesnt sound like much by the end of the week is plenty! And makes for a very relaxing week. The organisation of this event was amazing, but they've had many years of practice.
Unfortunately the weather wasnt what we asked for. Camping in a tent in the rain is not much fun. My canopy was damaged (and thats an understatement..) in the gale force winds on the first day which left us without much shelter. And the winds only got worse the following day. The sun came out at the end of the week (I am still perplexed as to how I got one sunburnt ankle but nothing else) only for it to poor with rain on sunday, the finals day.
So, how did we fair?
On tuesday I chose to enter Tooheys in the ABC classes rather than grade 3. He had a brilliant agility run, which I still havent come down from..He overstrode the dogwalk contact (didnt jump off early) giving him 5faults., but otherwise a faultless run. His time would have put him in 4th place, and that was against mainly grade 5-7 dogs, so I'm pretty chuffed.
His jumping run that day was again a nice run, with just one pole down due to a late call by me on a tight turn. We did waste a little more time on a difficult weave entry on that course though.
Wednesday we ran Grade 3 classes. We had a disastrous agility run - breaking start line stay, flown contacts, spinning before the weaves - but then quite a nice jumping run which was a clear round, our first clear round in this country. We didnt place at all, again due to time wasted before the weaves, but I cant complain.
Thursday was our day off. It was finals day for the small dogs, so instead we went for a drive to Sizewell to give the dogs a long run on the beach. Us and many others. And then onto Aldeburgh for icecream. Everyone was issued with armbands to get into the DIN showgrounds as it is a private event, and it was quite funny running into people with armbands wherever we went.
Back to agility on friday, on which day we had more ABC runs. Again we had 2 nice runs with one fault each run - a refusal in our agility run where Tooheys responded promptly to my 'back' cue but forgot to take the relevent jump first, and popped out of the weaves early in our jumping run.
Then finally on saturday we had another disastrous G3 agility run (much the same as wed), and then another clear in G3 jumping. This time he ended up in 14th place. I know it doesnt sound like much, but thats 14th out of 150 dogs, I could have pushed him harder, and to put it in perspective the 7 dogs in front of him were all within 30 seconds of each other. Quite different to what we get at home!
Sunday was finals day where we got to chear on both Kai & Indy who made it through.
Overall I'm extremely happy with how Tooheys ran, he didnt have so much as an inclination to worry about what was going on outside the ring when he was in. Our most consistent problem for the week was out dogwalk contact, but theres no suprise there given I know we need to do some training. His weave entries werent as good as normal, but thanks to a training session on the monday (thanks Trudy..) his weaving itself was fantastic.
So, more photos...
Waiting to get into DINAS:
Chilling out:
Near the rings:
The ideal transport around an agility show:
Sizewell Beach - you probably dont want it mentioned that theres a nuclear powerplant right on the water front & my dogs drank so much sea water they made themselves sick:
Hollie & Macy pretending that everythings ok
In the woods, near the Suffolk showgrounds (the only time the dogs were still enough to get clear pictures):
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