Newton Heath

I had just entered the Saturday of this, as I've had sooo many shows in June I figured I'd want a day off (which I did... good decision Char :))

Didn't enter Honey either (another good decision!) and I wouldn't have taken her anyway - she ate something Thames weekend and was really, really ill. She is better now, but is still looking pretty anorexic. Luckily she hasn't got any shows for another couple of weeks so she should be fine by then :)

My alarm went off at 4am but on hearing the rain promptly turned it off and went back to sleep. I got an email through at 5am and had the wrong setting on my phone, so it beeped and woke me up. It had stopped raining, so I got up, and managed to leave by just before 6.

We only had 1 run first on, Grade 5 Jumping. We arrived at 8.28 and luckily our ring hadn't started yet, so I was able to walk it several times. It was a lovely course, and to top it off, it was sunny, so good moods all round :)

Scandal did a really nice run in this, listening really well and felt really controlled, with me only having one retard moment when I got in the wrong place when I sent her into a tunnel, making the next two jumps a bit wide. Still, good enough to win it by a good margin :)

Then the 3-5 Novice Olympia, fab course IMO by Dave Deaville, pretty spread out, more like the course you would get at Olympia. Scandal felt lush in this and I think this is the first Olympia qualifier I have ever enjoyed running. The seesaw was near the end and as she went up it, ran to the end, she slightly glanced over her shoulder to see what I was doing and lost her balance and slid off the side, when it was about a foot off the ground. Just one of those things, we needed a bit of luck on our side. But actually I am so happy with how she ran, it doesn't matter.

We then did our last every G5 agility and it was a very flowing course. Started out with 2 jumps, seesaw, jump in a straight line, into wrong end of tunnel. I decided I'd test Scandal's wait, so ran out to the 4th obstacle... beautiful wait. "Go, go, seesaw seesaw". Scandal - beautiful sliding seesaw, stop...go. I was like, ummm, what are you doing Scandal! She has never self released off the seesaw like that! Perhaps her coming off in the Novice Ag made her think seesaws were fine to choose when to release. Anyway I asked her to lie down next to the seesaw and then we were off again and wowww she just flew. Beautiful stop on dog walk, lovely running aframe, nice weaves with me leaving her in them and pulling off to the side, check stride on her turns, couldn't have asked for anything more. Except a nice seesaw ;-) sooo pleased with her, having so much fun x