Thomas' First Show

Friday night I drove to Grantham and stayed in a Travelodge which was also a first, I wasn't sure if Tom would bark all night or settle down and sleep I needn't have worried as as soon as he went in is crate he was asleep.

Well off we went to the UK Arena and our first Dog Vegas show where we had to collect our running orders from the secretary, another first. The format of the show is that you get 2 runs in the jumping and agility classes which was great as it means you get to run the course again which is something I'm sure all agility handlers have wanted to do at sometime or another.

Tom's grade 0 jumping was first and was designed for young dogs between 15 and 18 months and didn't have weaves which was a shame especially after all the work we did last week but was a nice flowing course with no real traps and I'm pleased to say that he got a clear with his first run with a time good enough to get us a 3rd place which put me on a real high and made me perhaps slightly over confident with his next run. As you'll see from the video he needed to turn left with me crossing behind which wasn't the problem it was me completely forgetting to use my arm at all and I just shouted left which although it worked made him very wide and catch a whiff of something interesting which in his 2nd run took his attention and caused him to get very distracted and sniffy. I decided to to just carry on and have to say there were some parts of the second run that were much better than the first including his finish where he flew and finished 3 jumps ahead of me.

His agility started well even though his dogwalk could have been better as he slowed down right at the top, the rest was good until I stepped across him into the collapsy tunnel and pushed him past it, you'll see what I mean in the video and what happened to training him well watch the second dogwalk you can almost see the red mist that came down:) The agility was not a great success partly due to me and partly due to his sniffing, his 2nd run was a complete write off as he just ran about and wouldn't come back to me, it only seems to happen where there have been any horses and sometimes in training when he get's tired or confused by what I'm telling him.

In conclusion I was really pleased with most of what we achieved at our first show, especially his 3rd place, and in all 4 runs there were bits that were excellent and bits that were awful but mostly I came away really positive.