And there goes June… July… and into August

The last couple of months have flown by. I’ll start with Lansdown…

I didn’t do Newton Heath for a number of reasons so Lansdown was our first show for 3 weeks. Scandal had a 3rd and 6th. Honey had a 6th in the Crufts Singles with Imogen. Tia loved doing anysize with Imogen, and got e’d as she couldn’t resist a goooooo tunnel.

Jed… was a total star! He seemed to gain in confidence overnight from Saturday to Sunday. In the main he can still be very distracted when he’s competing and I often feel his attention wander numerous times round a course… he is very immature, but already much better than when he started. He is still quite anxious on the startline with other dogs behind him, especially if they are barking and lunging. I try and lead out as quickly as possible as he holds such a good wait, even though he keeps checking behind him that he’s not about to get attacked. Novice Olympia, 265 dogs, he went clear and came 6th :-) a second off the winner, and half a second from a qualifying place, which I was super chuffed with! Then his ABC Olympia, 233 dogs, again he went clear and came 4th! Top 4 qualify, so Jed is going to the Olympia semis! This was his 8th show, and most of the dogs in the top 10 were grade 6 or 7, so I was really pleased with his place.

The following weekend at Tuffsbury he brought me back down to earth by being taken out of 4 out of 6 runs, all for different things! I know people say dogs aren’t deliberately naughty, but I am sure that doesn’t apply to Jed ;-) and it reminds me why I want him firmly in grade 3 for a lot longer! Ignoring me on his dw when I cued a turn, using the seesaw as a launch pad, unable to weave, and flying over the apex of the aframe all got him swiftly exited from the ring.

Scandal was a good girl making the champ final with a 2nd in G7 agility, and made the champ final, which I won’t go into detail on lol… On to Rugby, Scandal had a lovely run in the Olympia qualifier but took a pole 3 from the end. Again she qualified for the champ final but got marked on her dogwalk. I am 100% convinced she got it, but heyho it happens… amplifies the need for an up contact judge IMO so the judge isn’t expected to judge two ends of a 36foot plank in under 2 secs!

Jedlar was fabulous, with a 5th and 6th in G3 jumping, and did a beautiful run in the CSJ qualifier, apart from jumping out of his skin at the judge who was racing alongside him on the dw, and he fell off. His other runs were all good with just a pole in his G3 agility… can’t actually remember the other runs, just that he felt gooood :) 

And finally on to Weardale, our last show before EO. Scandal had two clears in the champ jumping/agility, which put her to run near the end in the champ final. I’d seen Chris Cole and Lauren do lovely clears, so knew it would be an ‘all or nothing’ run and it was. Scandal won by about half a second, so now has CC number 4! I just did a short course in the 6-7 agility so I could train her seesaw and dogwalk, which she did perfectly. The following day I just did the Olympia qualifier, one of the only courses I have run this year that actually resembled Olympia, thank you Toni Dawkins! And Scandals went clear and won that too, wooo!


Jed……. Saturday he acted like he had never done agility before, looking around, and just being useless in general. Sunday he pulled his socks up and won G3 agility, with a stop seesaw, by 1.5 secs… and was SEVEN SECONDS faster than 3rd. I obviously wish I had held my seesaw for longer, as he is not ready for G4, but had the 2nd place not been clear, I’d have had a job holding him for 7 secs… he’d have wandered off lol. Now I can see why some people just do a different course rather than having to hold contacts for ages.

Then it was EO, which I will talk about in a separate post. The following weekend I had just entered Jed and Honey at Diamond, as Imogen was hoping to be able to do the show and run Honey, but it wasn’t to be. So we left Honey at home as it was only a local one. Jed got taken out of his first run on the Saturday, and then bucked his ideas up winning G3 agility by a second, again with a held seesaw. He did a nice jumping run apart from wanting to miss a jump out. The following day I just did two runs with him. The first he was great, just took a pole, but ran really well. The second one he was super distracted and at one point trotted off looking for Garth, lol. I think he made it to number 14 before finally being taken out of the ring. Out of G3 with a bang…. Ahhhhh. I may be alone in thinking this, but I do think all grades 2-6 need to be changed to ‘3 wins, at least one of which must be agility’, to prevent flukey dogs getting the win to take them straight into the next grade (although maybe some owners don’t mind this). It still amazes me that he doesn't actually have to even DO an agility class, let alone win one, until grade 5. Anyway, enough on that. I will upload some videos and put them on here 'soon', however 'soon' that is ;-)