Bridge House

The day dawned wet and dreary but the BBC promised that the rain would be light and gone by early afternoon, well they were right about it being gone but not about the amount.

Thomas was the first to run today in his G1-3 Agility and I thought that it was pitched more towards 3 than 1 as there was a wrong end of tunnel with the added draw of the dogwalk and I was hoping to cross behind him in the weaves to pull him into the tunnel and block the dog walk but had to change this and push him into the tunnel which actually worked well, I'm lucky that he is quite good at obstacle discrimination so didn't even look at the dog walk. The reason I changed my mind was to ensure I gave him loads of space in the weaves and I felt that I would get right on top of the weaves and crowd him if I tried to cross behind. As he took the jump before the weaves I sort of half checked my stride to allow him to get to the weaves before me, this worked and he went straight in, I could see that his nose was starting to drop so I said 'Yeah' in a high pitched voice and he suddenly speeded up and did them really well and quite quick. The rest of the course, after the tunnel, was on a slight curve to the finish so I kept my arm up and said 'Go' and took the risk of slightly cutting the corner which paid off and he got a really nice clear, unfortunately, the collapsy tunnel had been left outside the ring but with the open end facing in and in line with the finish and Tom ran straight in, I felt awful as I hadn't spotted this before we ran and although he didn't care I would have been terrible if had been butted up against something hard. I was chuffed to bits to find out that he had come 2nd and even more chuffed to realise that if I hadn't held him on his dogwalk we would probably have won as he was only half a second slower than the winner.

I decided not to do the open agility with either him or Suzi as it was still raining and Suzi would not have been impressed by having to get out of the car in the rain but ran Dudley and Suzi in the 4-7 agility which had a Go Round as the finish! Dudley worked really well but missed his dog walk by a toenail then went on to get a perfect go round in quite a respectable time for him. Suzi was like a wild thing and took off like greased lightening nearly catching me out and was going really well until the dog walk and even though I was behind her, because I couldn't catch her, she missed it by about three slats then went on to whizz through the weaves and completely ignore the 'Go round' command (Naughty white dog!!)

The sun then came out and Dudley reverted to his old self of 'it's too hot to do agility' and practically walked round his jumping course and went in and came out the same end of the tunnel, OK so I probably called his name too early but I would have thought with his experience he would have know to keep going but there you go that's terriers for you. Suzi once again went like the clappers and finished just one out of the placings, she worked so well and even though I had a head start on the home straight she came past me and had to wait for me at the finish unlike Duds who took his own sweet time and gave me the chance to have a cup of tea and a sandwich while waiting for him to finish :)

Tom's last run was G1-3 jumping and was a nice course with some handling but also lovely and smooth, I didn't call him at one point and he got a bit distracted but as soon as I said his name his came straight away and after hanging back from the weaves and 'Yeahing' again he managed a clear and finished in 6th place, very encouraging as without the slight diversion he would have definatly come higher.

Thanks to Bernadette for putting up with me keep talking about myself and her new car is lovely.