Harry and Mindy's UKA NFC Day!

I had two shows to go to this weekend, indoors at "the Grange" and indoor at Barguse.
What a beautiful day, travelled up on the Saturday in my Berlingo with Aly and her two dogs, we did most of last year together on the further afield shows, so nothing new!

First time I've ever been there and no rain! no mud either, well a little in the gateway to the field exercise area....Aly made us our ritual bacon baps for breakfast...YUMMY.

Anyway we had two agility runs and two jumping, really I was only going for the agility....
we started the day with a helter skelter, OH dear, as there were only 13 in the class and we where parked a little way from the rings I chose to take both of them in, giving someone else to hold the one I wasn't running, done it before....But unfortunately both dogs weren't happy at all, I had slow, un-confident, unmotivated dogs, came out feeling rather deflated, although I have to add I don't usual do helter skelter or steeple chase, I don't like standing still, not with my "Smalls" anyway, it was nice to have a breather running Red, but that's another story!
this behaviour continued in the next two runs with Harry leaping off his contacts on the dogwalk, so I stood still and Harry popped his back feet back on and the very kind Judge let me re-do the whole thing, only for Harry to leap off again, I stood still, he backed his feet back on and we left the course! this happened again on his next agility run to be repeated the same way for the fourth attempt to be a beautiful but slow 2o2o....
I didn't bother to take them for their next run and just took them for a nice walk around the fields with a friend and her wee dog!

Anyway Sunday arrived and I had all night ummming and arrring to think why/what was the problem and came up with, I would run all 4 of my runs at the UKA Not for Competition and boy was it fun, take a look at the video, 3 of the runs are on there, Mindy's first one, you can see she is still not happy looking around, not focused on the first jump or where I was, but by her second run she was wagging her tail and raring to go, that's the speed I get at training but not the speed I get at home, so we still have a long way to go to get that....Harry seemed to recover quickly and I'm sure he would have run it for real just fine, but I didn't want just FINE I want FAST! and boy where they both fired up at the end of each of their runs.....

I did find it hard, watching loads of people not running with toys, watching dogs that where unmotivated, slow and nervous being forced around a course which they really didn't want to do, why cant these "expereinced" handlers see that! yes they may have got round and got a ribbon or points or whatever it was that has motivated their owners to drag them around...I dont know.
I hope to god if anyone saw me with a dog like that they would have the guts to come and talk to me...Did I tell them, NO.......enough said.

Anyway I came away from that UKA show BUZZING with excitement about My PUFFS, they gave me everything they could on that day....LOVE THEM