Dogs in need 2010

Another year of Dogs in need has passed and juagain this year we had a lovely week camping.

I headed up to Suffolk on the monday to set up and collect my entry passes but then had to head back to work that night. Tuesday night after finishing work I immediately set off back to the showgrounds with the knowledge the gates would shut at midnight, only to hit the worst conditions I have ever had to drive in (short of a blizzard) - parts of the M25 verging on being flooded with poor lighting and torrential rain. Talk about scary! I eventually made it to the showgrounds at 12:01 thankfully just as the gates were being locked. That just set the stage for the rest of the week.

Anyway, onto the agility..
We missed tuesday because of work and wednesday we ended up only doing half a run. I missed our jumping run (for once not on purpose) and then headed into aglity only for Tooheys to act like he had never seen weaves before - to the point he actually rammed one of the poles and knocked it out of the base. I stopped our run at that point.

Thursday was rest day and an opportunity for a few of us to head off and do some training (thanks again Trudy!) aka remind him what weaves and contacts are. Thankfully it all seemed to come back to him and we got some nice work in with other dogs in very close proximity. At one point I handed Tooheys off to Lisa to handle purely out of curiosity to see what he would do - and trust the little bugger to show me up and work better for someone else than for me.

Back to the show..
Friday brought no clear rounds but some nice work none the less. Our jumping (1-7 ABC) course had 2 lots of 6 weaves. The first lot had a slightly tougher entry which Tooheys nailed beautifully and then we get to the second lot with a straight easy entry only to have him look at them blankly.
In his jumping run I didnt get into position and missed putting a front cross before the Aframe which caused me to pull him off the next jump, but it was otherwise a nice run and he had a perfect 2o2o dogwalk contact. For the first time in competition. Yay!

Saturday we were most of the way through a very nice agility run in G3 (and again perfect dogwalk!!) when Tooheys spotted one of our trainers in the adjacent G6 ring and decided it would be more fun to chase her ( yes and her dog) than it would be to do the seesaw. One way to totally embarass youself! And to add insult the judge then called me back into the ring as I was leaving - with me thinking uh oh - only to ask me if I wanted to finish our run... hmmm let me think...

We were very lucky we the weather, every day was forcassed to rain and turned out instead to be sunny. In between the agility we had a great time walking - Tooheys had a great time being out with his doggy friends even if it did mean tolerating (or not!) a pesky terrier puppy - socialising, and generally just chilling.