Party at the Ring! (Lansdown Show)

Lansdown Show is always hard work, the rings are extremely spaced out which means that there is a lot of walking to be done! A-SIT were running a Ring which meant that we did get preferential parking on the Saturday which made life easier....but of course running a ring did mean we were on our feet most of the day!

I am SO proud of my A-SIT Team, we once again provided a Judge with a smooth and effective Ring Party, there were no complaints, plenty of smiling faces, lots of laughs and the sun shone for us this year!...so there were a few pink faces by the end of it! With the money raised I am buying rubber chips for our seesaw and a new branded cover for our tyre. So thank you everybody you went out of their way to help. Our Judge Marie Douglas posted the following status:

'Home and sorted from a lovely lovely weekend at Lansdown , have to say a massive thank you to Lesley and her fab A-SIT team for the superb ring party, one of the best I've had.'

I hope you guys planning on working as hard next year as you will be MY ring party (I accepted an invitation to Judge Lansdown 2014 whilst at the show).

In other news..... Stitch has qualified for Crufts 2014!!!! When I was invited to join the Blackdown Team a number of months ago, I had hoped we stood a good chance (they were there last year) but now that we've made it I still can't believe it! It was afterall the first time we had run as a Team! And until that morning we still hadn't decided whether to put Stitch first (and risk him following the next dog out on the course) or last (and risk him getting over excited and blowing his contacts).
I am sorry Stitch and I have had to fill Anne and Stanley's place but I am glad we did them proud and it was good to have Anne cheering us on from the sideline and pugging Stitch full of black pudding afterwards! Our Team ran first, Zavvi had 5f on the Dogwalk, Tequila went Clear and Chilli got marked 5f on the A-Frame (I say 'got marked' because I saw her get it!) Stitch then finished with a Clear, so we finished with 10f and a pretty good time. Kidderminster managed to match our faults but beat our time...our disappointment didn't last long when we were informed that they had already qualified at Nottingham, which meant that this time 2nd place was good enough and we are off to Crufts 2014! We will be running on the Friday. Here is a picture of our lovely friendly team in running order.

Results:

Jennine & Ruby - 1st, G1-2 Agility (winning into Grade 2!)
Jennine & Ruby - 3rd, G1-2 Agility
Gill & Mollyanna - 3rd, G4-7 Agility
Anne & Chas - 4th, G3 Jumping
Stitch on the Blakdown Team - 2nd, Crufts Team Agility
Stitch - 3rd, G7 Agility
Hex - 6th, G6-7 Jumping
Hex - 22nd, Crufts Singles Agility
Hex - Clear, C6-7 Jumping
Gill & Kassey - 2 x Clears, Special Anysize Jumping

UKA Aldon

Matt got to play with Hex again at Aldon so I had to take the back seat again, although I don't mind when he is doing such a good job of walking courses and running her : )

Results:

Mike & Bonnie - 1st x 5!!!! Mike won 5 classes this weekend - whoop!
Gill & Kassey - 2nd, Senior Steeplchase
Matt & Hex - 3rd Novice Steeplechase

Super Weekend!

I'll let the results speak for themselves:

@ Golden Valley

Julie & George - 1st, G1-2 Agility. Winning them up to Grade 2!
Julie & George - 1st, G1-2 Jumping
Mike & Bonnie - 1st, G3-5 Agility
Mike & Bonnie - 3rd, Jumping
Mike & Bonnie - 4th Jumping
Gill & Kassey - 1st, G3-5 Agility. Winning them up to Grade 5!
Jennine & Ruby - 5th, G1 Jumping
Gill & Mollyanna - Clear, C4-7 Jumping

@ UKA SANDs

Matt & Hex - 3rd, Novice Jumping (Their first Clear Round together!)

@ Barnstaple

Stitch - 1st, C1-7 Jumping
Stitch - 1st, G4-7 Jumping
Stitch - 1st, G4-7 Agility
Hex - 2nd, C1-7 Collie Sprint
Hex - 3rd, G6-7 Jumping

Thames

I was really looking forward to Thames and was missing the DARL Rescue League Final which Stitch qualified for, to attend. The weather forecast was good, there were birthdays to celebrate and a Champ to get stuck into.

But the wind was higher than forecast and from the moment I unsuccessfully tried to set my 'garden' up, the show lost it's feel good vibe. Pat and Martin saved the day, helping me with the bits Mum usually did, this was my first camping show by myself in over a year and I was SO grateful for their help after what had been a long day teaching followed by the drive up there.

Hex was an ABSOLUTE nightmare. Usually Mum takes her while I queue, she takes her out of sight from the rings and keeps her calm, without Mum there and with the rings set up so that I had nowhere to take her away from any agility without losing sight of the ring myself, I had to queue with her. I very, very rarely pull my dog out of a course, I believe you should always end on a positive and that there is always something positive to take from a run, HOWEVER, out of Hex's 5 runs I pulled her out of 3! She had gotten herself in such a state queuing that she trashed most of one course, flew a seesaw and took an unsafe approach to a tyre in another and punctured my arm in the last. For her own safety (and mine!) I removed her from these runs before I had finished them. What a shambles!
There was also a mishap where I missed my Crufts qualifier with her because the ring party were calling 'anything' all day! Argh! Total pet peeve of mine. I didn't want to queue for any length of time with her because of the troubles we were having and because of the heat and yet every time I looked at that ring - huge queue and 'taking anything' - what is the point of running orders then?! When I figured the class must be nearing the end, I asked what they were calling to, hoping they'd say 'the end'.... 'O, we're taking anything'..... 'Grrr, I know but how many dogs do you have left to run?', ' We have Loooooaaads' was the response as she flicked through a giant pad of remaining tickets. 'Okay, I really don't want to join that queue as it is, I'll come back after I've had a cuppa and some cake'.
Next thing I know just as I'm getting myself together to get Hex out the tannoy comes on 'Ring whatever, calling to the end of the class...no wait, sorry, that's class CLOSED'.
What?! They never called to the end, how ANNOYING!

For the first time EVER, Stitch got E'd in a Champ Class - not happy as it was totally my fault. I put him back on the A-Frame in the Crufts Singles (obstacle 2), only to finish the rest of the course with a blinding run - whoops. He was a sod in the Olympia qualifier, barely touching the contacts and going wide off them thinking I was going to put him back on, but then did a beauty of a run in the Agility later that day and coming 2nd - the place we needed in the Olympia class. So many frustrations.

The highlight of the whole weekend was the BBQ we had at Pat's, great food, great company and a dog party to finish which I brought Hex too.

Results:

Stitch - 2nd, G6-7 Agility
Stitch - 5th, 6-7 Agility
Stitch - 6th, C1-7 Olympia Qualifier

Wye Valley

I was extremely happy to be setting off to Wye Valley with Matt in tow, although already missing my Mumma who had departed for France.

Matt was great setting up, although not so great at getting up in the mornings!
We got to see Gili, the future Mummy of his future puppy and the weather wasn't to bad so Matt had a good weekend, O and we had an Indian with our SWAT friends Saturday night, so he really was a happy chappy : )

Both Jennine and I made it into the Superstars Final on Saturday. Hugely scary for Jennine who's first KC Show it was; she now had to run under commentary with an audience but she coped really well, just under working a weave entrance. Stitch was one of the 6 dogs to go clear on the course which was made up of 2 rings and 24 obstacles, unfortunately I lost him in a tunnel in the final round. No cash prize for us : (
But it was really fun and great to have 2 of us representing the club.

Results:

Jennine & Ruby - 2nd, 1-2 Agility
Jennine & Ruby - 16th,
Hex - 3rd, 6-7 Jumping
Stitch - 4th, 1-7 Helter Skelter
Gill & Mollyanna - Clear, 1-7 Jumping
Gill & Mollyanna - Clear, 1-7 Agility

Nottingham

Nottingham - o, Nottingham.
When I discovered my tyre was damaged in the morning and needed to be replaced, I should have decided not to go, when we were 2hrs into the journey and someone passing us signaled for us to check our caravan and we found the skylight to have been ripped from the roof, we should have turned around and when we finally arrived exhausted after a 5 and a half hour drive (which was supposed to be 3 and a half hours) we should have known that it just wasn't going to be our weekend.

We knew we had shut the skylight before we left but the caravan is a 1985 model and the supports had grown brittle and the springs lose, so the high winds had managed to get underneath it and rip it out. I managed to work out how to get Mum ontop of the caravan (I'm wobbly at the best of times and not good with heights) by parking my van along side it, opening the window and having her use that as a step up, Mum saw about covering the hole in an old-school bin-bag manner which did the job :)

Voodoo managed to make it down to the rings un-escorted. He jumped into the van and as Mum let go of his collar for him to take the final hop into his crate, he span, burst out of our garden and ran the distance through the caravans to the rings. I was in my wellies and tried my best follow him, but by the time I made it to the rings he was flitting from one to the other until Laura Chudleigh caught him and returned him to me. Good job I hadn't taken his harness off, it made him much easier to grab!

I just couldn't get my act together in the ring, just a silly mistake in each one, a 5r here, a pole there and with frustration setting in things were never going to get better. I don't think I will be returning to Nottingham again.

Results:
@ Nottingham
Hex - 6th, G6-7 Jumping
Hex - 8th, G6-7 Jumping
Stitch - Clear,  C6-7 Jumping

@UKA
Jennine & Ruby - 12th, Beginners Steeplechase

Blackdown

Local show! Whoop! Lie-in (Well kind of) and 25min drive.

I only had one course to walk for Hex first thing and decided not to run it, it really wasn't a Hex course and I was still a bit wary of running her after the tumble she took at Cornwall a couple of weeks prior.
I did however have Stitch in the same course in Medium and we couldn't have done a worse job so glad I gave it a miss with Hex.

I'd only been at the show a matter of hours and I felt deflated and defeated, the show was seeming like somewhat of an anti-climax after my Champ runs at Vyne. I even debated going home, but decided to stick it out - the forecast promised rain, but it wasn't raining yet so thought I'd kick about until things got wet.

The rain never came, so I stuck about all day and glad I did! Hex only had 2 runs and she ALMOST had another of her G6 wins (just missing out to Tim Jones) and had a 5th in the Combined Jumping, only 0.3 of a second between her and some dogs I would never think she'd keep up with especially on such a blasty course.  Really pleased with her energy at the moment.

Results:

Hex - 2nd, G6-7 Agility
Hex - 5th, C6-7 Agility
Gill & Mollyanna - 2nd, C3-4 Jumping