Diamond

It was my first time doing Diamond show in Bristol, and I have to say, I really enjoyed it. Mainly I think, because they had good judges, I enjoyed running all 3 of the courses I ran today, so thank you Andrew Dicker, Barrie James and Martin Cavill.

I had figured that Saturday was going to be a rather messy and late night, so had hoped that my runs wouldn't be first on today. Wronggg, two first on, and one mid morning! That hasn't happened all year! Not that I am complaining as it meant that we could get away by 12 and I was in bed asleep by 2!

So walked the two jumping courses, walked them both wrong, and it took me 5 attempts before i managed to walk Barrie's course correctly, and it wasn't even that complicated!

After how great Scandal behaved at Lansdown (out of the ring), my hopes of a repeat of this were dashed when she behaved worse than she has done for months, launching herself around at the end of the lead like a total hooligan, getting her tooth caught under my watch and making all her gums bleed, and just making me wonder why I had got up at 7am at all. Mum came with me to the show today which was highly amusing, she hasn't come to a show for about 4 years so I found it very funny having her with me. She was very good and queued for me so I didn't have to, which was quite lucky as I think i would have murdered Scandal :)

So, first up (9.30...) 6-7 Jumping, once Scandal had slightly calmed down from her wild child antics she behaved very nicely, near-ish to the ring while mum queued. But she still wasn't as focused as she usually is - asked her to sit on the start line and she completely ignored me, just looking round the ring and seeing if she could see any dogs working in the ring in front. Got her into a sit and then we were off... my poor brain just couldn't keep up with my legs, let alone Scandal, who was flying. There were two bits that I so nearly messed up (one was number 3... great start!) the first bit I ended up working from behind and Scandal doing it all by herself and the second right at the end (where my brain had shut down completely) and just wasted a bit of time getting to number 17 as I was about 3 miles away from where I was supposed to be. Still, Scandal was a fabbidy girl and lovely and speedy.

I went back to the car to die for a bit, and then felt a bit better so wandered back to the rings. I seem incapable of dressing for the weather and had a 3/4 sleeve top on and it was soooo hot, but looked so flipping cloudy a few hours before. Luckily the clouds kept covering the sun so it wasn't too hot before we left. That didn't help my mood :)

Anyway they finished the jumping and I wandered over to see where we had come as Laura asked if we had won it and I didn't think we had but thought I'd have a look anyway... well she did and won it by quite a margin too! Yay! 2 down... 2 to go.

Barrie James 4-7 jumping up next and Scandal was blistering, up until a pull through at number 15 where my legs got tangled and I ended up in a heap on the floor! Cringeee.

Last class was Martin Cavill's 6-7 agility. I did tell Martin initially at this course was way way toooo hard, apart from the last 3 jumps that were in a straightish line. Then when most people had left the ring, I re-walked it and told Martin that actually, it wasn't quite so bad and I quite liked it now. :P

I think this was one of my favourite runs I've ever done. Scandal absolutely flew. I left her to get on with stuff and concentrated on saying the right commands and getting into the correct position, and trusted her to do her job and she did. However... lovely dogwalk, to wrong end of the tunnel at 13 into the weaves 14. My brain forgot what we had to do after 13. And I ended up in a heap on the floor again. Ahhhhhhhhhhh. Scandal was foot perfect, and bless her, while I was lying on the floor, re-placed herself into 2o2o very happily, good little girl :) so once I had picked myself up, we re-started from the dogwalk and she absolutely tanked the last bit, the fastest she has ever gone, and I even dared to pull off the weaves a little :)

Scandal is amazing me so much right now, we are getting to be a team and some stuff we are doing is looking pretty cool! Considering all we have trained in the last two weeks is wing wraps for 2mins, on two occasions, and my head was in a different planet for all of today, she did very well. I am finding it hard to get the motivation to train at the moment, just enjoy the long walks we do, but I am determined to train at least once, hopefully go crazy and train twice, this week.

I hope also that Imogen will be at Rugby and will run Honey in her first champ... fingers crossed :) x