Stour Valley

The weather was awful when we left for the show on Friday but I decided to go anyway as I was ring manager on the Saturday and had booked camping, when I got there I got soaked setting up the garden but had been allocated a lovely spot right by the rings so not far to walk and I could keep an eye on it while managing.

Saturday was a day of cloud, heavy showers and wind but everyone just got on with it and my ring party were fantastic, they were a mixture of Sevenoaks club members and people who just offered to help and we were looked after really well by Stour Valley with a packed ring box of tea, coffee and biscuits plus a box of sweets and in the afternoon lovely posh cakes. Andy Longley was a great judge as he did what has told and trotted off between each class to do his presentations :)

Once we'd finished for the day we left Angela Lucas to tweak her course for the next day and a couple of friends joined me for a cup of tea, suddenly Angela shouted 'it's coming' and ran for her van, there was a clap of thunder and you could hear the rain coming towards us and it was as if someone was chucking buckets of water at the camper and this went on for most of the night.

On Sunday I walked a course and really felt that I had to ask the judge why he felt that he needed so many pull throughs, his answer was because it was a 5-7 class and that if he could get his grade 3 round it we should be able to get our dogs round. My point wasn't that I couldn't get my dog round the course just that why did he think that we would enjoy a course that didn't run smoothly for the dogs just because it was a 5-7 class. I did have a go but managed to eliminate Dudley at jump 10 by not waiting until he was committed to the pull through before moving off and making him back jump.

Results wise Dudley got a 3rd in grade 5 agility, Suzi got a 7th and a 10th in her jumping classes and Tom and some very nearly clears. I was really pleased with him as he had some brilliant bits in all of his runs including great contacts and lovely weaves but he was let down by his handler more than once.

Stour Valley was a great show with and excellent venue that drained really well and even though we had all that rain the going was always good and you could hardly see where the dogs had been running in the rings and I hope that Rob let's them use the venue again next year.