Bank holiday washout!

What promised to be a long weekend of Agility with lots of runs turned into zero!

We quit this (Sunday) morning and went home, defeated by the weather and poor drainage of venue. Feel so sorry for Wyre club, they worked so hard to put on and run the Champ W/E.

But we felt that the conditions were not fair to our dogs, both being muddy all day and slippy ground conditions. 

Jude returns to competition, 100% weaves, Jaidi consistency and our G3 Agility win!

August is arguably the busiest show month in the UK with extended events such as KC Festival and DIN. Our month started at Scunthorpe weekend, always a relaxed show in a nice showground.

Jaidi

Based on previous week (see earlier post) we had high confidence of a CR with Jaidi (at Scunthorpe show). Although this didn’t happen, we had ~75% success with weaves, so had a real confidence that we had overcome our primary training issue.

Therefore I used the training time between that show and the 10 day marathon of competition that is International Agility Festival and DIN to start Grid program using method proposed by Mecklenburg. Our goal was to reduce ‘poles down’ when jumping in extension, the objective of the training was that Jaidi makes ‘better’ jumping decisions actually on the course.

As I had done so much extension work at foundation level, I knew I would have to return to more ‘collection’ work after first season of competition, but after just one week I was pleasantly surprised at the results.

We had our first CR at Festival, then after a run of 6 consecutive Agility rounds with 1 pole down, 2 further rounds with no poles down (other ‘novice’ type faults) we won G3 Agility. What a great way to finish 10 days Agility, particularly 1 month ago I wasn’t sure if we would ever get the weaves correct in the ring!

Now we have a ‘free’ month before he can compete in G4, so time to build for 2012 as I will have some time off competition in winter months (I don’t like the early starts and cold days).

Jude

Additionally I was able to run Jude at Scunthorpe and she had a nice clear and won the jumping. First rounds at Festival were not great as our timing was out leading to eliminations. However over the weekend we found our competition feet and won a class.

At DIN Jude was a star again, finishing 2^nd in the Classic qualifiers (behind World Champ Dizzy Wise) so a very creditable performance over 4 rounds. In the Champ qualifers we went one better and finished 1^st overall (for the 3^rd time this year in Champ). Unfortunately 5F meant no place (in the final). However it was won by Denise Wilkinson and Jexie for the 3^rd time making her an Agility Champion, which is a great story for all that know them.