Olympia or bust.

People not updating their blogs for weeks at a time seems to be a running theme at the moment, I follow a couple of blogs and nearly all of them have been abandoned until recently, I put this down to the intense end we all have at the end of the season which leaves us with very little time.
So I do apologise for slacking, but I also point out that I'm not the only one!!!

So the Olympia Semis... a distant memory from September. I had so many near misses on the qualifiers, at least 3 5-fault runs with a qualifying time, but it was not meant to be and it allowed me to focus my attention on Mum who had managed to qualify right at the start of the season with Stitch. I was so proud to be there as her Groom, she looked an image in purple in her new A-SIT 'Experiment 626' polo shirt (thank you Sew What!) and smart black trousers, Stitch looked pretty smart to following a tidy up from Jo.

We arrived in plenty of time and watched the end of the Junior event before the warm-up was set up for the Mediums. To be honest it wasn't a very challenging course, but we figured 'well it is a warm-up' and Stitch did a nice clear finishing 7th or 8th.
Disappointingly the actual Semi Final wasn't much more challenging, although there were traps there, if you got the dog on the right line there were a number of straight lines which really favoured the collies, the only real trap came at the end trying to get your dog in the correct end of the tunnel, but because the jump before the tunnel was a panel jump, the dogs didn't see the wrong-end trap and not ONE dog fell into it. Mum did another nice clear with only one slight hiccup and finished 15th out of 36 - the top 10 qualified. NEVER have I heard of a clear at an Olympia semi not going through to the Final, but in the mediums this year there were 21 out of 36 dogs clear.

Obviously I was gutted for Mum and she was upset, but she really kept her nerve and to get 2 clears under that kind of pressure is really impressive and I was very proud, we weren't even sure how Stitch would cope with the environment; despite being a Grade 6 we must remember that he is only very young and that this is only his first season competing.

Here are the vids from the Semi's; the warm up followed by the Semi:

The following day we were at Prestbury and Stitch came 7th in the C1-7 Jumping and Hex came 11th in the G6 Jumping even with 1 naughty wide turn before the tunnel and a face plant on the jump after that! lol. We also got to try out one of the more difficult weave entrances we've been practicing check it out: