Catch up

Kind of lost interest in blogging a bit now… plus just don’t seem to have enough time to do it. Sooo here goes, roundup of the last month or so.

Gillingham – Scandal got into the champ final again – yeayyy! Got e’d about 100 times in the actual final, I got way too excited and handled like an imbecile, poor Scandal… but we had fun, and got our monies worth of the expensive champ class :-P

Then our next show was Chippenham – I must admit I was not realling feeling it for this show – had had 2 days off work that week, the dogs hadn’t trained since Gillingham, I felt sooo dizzy in the morning – every time I did a front cross when walking a course completely lost my bearings, didn’t really bode well.

Scandal’s champ jumping didn’t really go to plan – she missed her weave entry and then ran round a jump. She did a nice round in the agility and came 5th – didn’t seem nearly as fast as at the beginning of September - she seems quite flat after her season so I think it’s hormones. We didn’t get in to the champ final, however it’s definitely given me the champ bug for next year :-)

I ran Honey at Chippenham, which apart from 1 run at Gillingham and the semis, was her first show since KC Fest – I have to say that after having struggled all year to get any kind of bond with her, in the last month she has improved so much as a pet (nothing agility related) that we are actually getting on pretty well. She’s on lead for most walks so doesn’t ruin them by running off, and now has something that resembles manners – e.g. doesn’t barge out of as many doors, waits for her dinner, and just generally does as she’s told more often than she doesn’t.

So back to Chippenham, Champ Jumping she was clear, and motored from about halfway round the course and even gave a couple of excited yips, think she was about 4th in this. The champ agility she did a lovely round with a great dogwalk (the lure of being homeward bound) and finished 2nd. She qualified for the final in 2nd place, so ran penultimately. She was doing a beautiful round, then I sent her into a tunnel and off I ran, instead of collecting her, so she put in another jump on her way to me. Silly Char – Honey’s done so well this year and has qualified for every champ final I’ve done with her bar one, and then I’ve messed up every champ final bar one. It’s hard as I have to push her harder as she still doesn’t tend to ‘give’ unless she has to, but in doing that it's out of my comfort zone so my timing's not great. We’ve done 1 training session in the last 6 weeks and she was crazy, she’s going to have until the middle of November off agility and then we’ll start training for Olympia.

Last week I went to the WAO tryouts with Scandal, probably not the best prepared for it as we had only trained once in the last 6 weeks or so, I only entered it as a last minute thing, I don't particularly want to qualify for it as I don't think Scandal would be ready for that level of competition at the start of next year, but thought the tryout day would be a good experience, and it was. We ran 4 'drill' type exercises and then 2 courses, we didn't do too badly but there are certainly a lot of things that I've taken home to practice! She was also lacking her usual spark, again I think hormone related. I think she was about 8th overall in the 650 height, out of 20 or 30 ish dogs (can't remember exactly how many). Like Honey, she is now on agility-rest until mid November.

Yay for the fact that we now have no shows until the UKA Finals and then Olympia, love having my weekends back! x