Sunday's Show....

.....Left Mums, early Sunday morning to head for Taunton and Blackdown Limit Agility Show, I must admit I don’t normally do limits or any indoor shows (apart from local match’s) but as Mindy was up and ready to go I thought I aught to make the most of fenced in areas and the practice ready for the start of her agility career in 2010. So here we where driving to Taunton along small country lanes in the dark with the wind howling around us and the floods. Now, Ian had reminded me that he hadn’t moved the air box of the “Berlingo” higher up, so to be careful driving through any water!

Apparently they are really low to the ground and could easily pick up water from a shallow puddle, silly me didn’t check to see how high I could go………so I drove very slowly through many floods and so far we’ve been lucky.

We (Mindy and I) arrived at the venue early enough to get a hard edge to park on! As the yard was already full and people where beginning to have to park in the field!!!!

God I do hate muddy car parks, especially with an almost white dog!

Anyway on with the agility which started on time and ran very smoothly (I thought) all day, they had enough judges so they didn’t have to stop for lunch, even better……..

Mindy was still a little on edge, having spent the weekend without the others and at Mums, she was worried by people and dogs coming too close to her, People that knew her wouldn’t have noticed, but I did…….. Start line sits, where a little all over the place and on one set up she actually turned completely round to check on the young lad picking up the leads, before charging up the line after me….but we had no “chasing” whether that was because she was rather on the clingy side and didn’t start to enjoy the agility until after her second run. We had 4 class’s one agility and the rest jumping classes.

Her agility round was really clingy and she bailed out of the seesaw (at training on the previous Wednesday she lost a bit of confidence on that, so I need to get that back and this was her first time doing a seesaw in competition……it doesn’t look as bad as it felt, but when you know normally she runs to end and rides it down, you know it’s not quite right) so bailing out meant she couldn’t get her self back on line for the next obstacle and with being clingy the next bit went a little haywire, anyway I got her back by the end, still not her normal speed.

……..Round two - jumping, she was a lot happier, it was lovely round apart from her not liking the lead picker upper! and me getting in her way for the weaves and then trying to turn her too tight after the long jump, but hey, we can now do a round with ne not being worried about her running off, so I can now actually work her!

........Round 3 - that was a strange one, as we only did 5 jumps, she tried taking off for jump 2 way to far away (Picture to follow) and clouted it, but she ran a further three jumps then went real slow and went under jump five and pulled up lame, so that was it….any way she is booked in to see the chiropractor today, just to make sure, she's okay, although she walked out of the ring on 4 feet and has had 3 days of being sound……

May be we need to do more grid work?

When you look, closely in slow motion at the video, you can see, she only just hits this pole with her front foot, so whether it was a delayed reaction to the knock, that it took until futher on the course for her to pull up lame, I don't know.

So here are the videos from the day, and an extra one, as I was lucky enough to get offered a lovely Collie called Purdy (just gone G4) to run in the Helter Skelter, as poor Sue had pulled her hamstring…How could I say no! She is lovely and so willing……………

...and Here's Purdy's