Chippenham & Gillingham

We had a lovely long weekend. We offered to help set up the rings so were allowed to camp from the Thursday. It was a really nice break and the weather was great. We had lots of nice walks with the dogs and had a really chilled time.

On Saturday Andy worked Pops in the champ class. She worked really well and but for one mistake in the jumping round and a knocked pole in the agility did the best she has for a long time in this class. I ran her in the Crufts Senior agility and she was fantastic. I should have made a cross at the dog walk but didn't and caused her to mis judge the run onto the dogwalk otherwise her round was brilliant on a very tricky Ian Fraser course - I do love his courses! Although they are tough they always run well and you really have to work hard. I worked Niamh really badly on the Saturday, it was nearly 4.00 pm before she had her first run and I had switched off a bit. Poor excuse I know! We got 13th in the G5 agility which we really shouldn't have achieved as we had at least two refusals that for some reason didn't get marked. I was amazed we had a clear round let alone a place!

On Sunday I was more focused and Naughty Niamh did a lovely round to win her last ever G5 agility. She also worked brilliantly in her last jumping round but due to pilot error was E'd. Sadly (for me anyway!) no video. Andy wanted a weekend off filming so he could actually watch Niamh work rather than film her. Boo!

Murphy was bad on Saturday but better on Sunday. He did a fantastic G6 jumping round just knocking one pole right near the end of the course. He was just 1/100th of a second of the winning time. Why couldn't he leave that pole up! Andy is very disillusioned at the moment and is seriously thinking of retiring Murphy and just concentrating on Kizzle.

As for Kizzy, well she had a wonderful weekend as always. She played round the rings and went out in the exercise area with Andy where they practised their targets and set up routine. She spent all the evenings just mooching around while we sat out with friends. She didn't wander off at all and is quite happy to just potter around.

We could have stayed over on Sunday evening but decided to come home as Andy is very busy work-wise. We kind of wished we had stayed though. The journey home was awful. The A303 was very slow as was the M3. It was 8pm before we got indoors which is a bit later than we'd hoped for!

Now we have a free weekend coming up. I decided not to enter WBSD show as the classes for Niamh were combined 6/7 and I thought we might be over faced. Instead we're waiting until the following weekend for Paws in the Park (nice and local for us) where she'll have grade 6 classes (scary!)

We have a new A-frame being delivered to our training school tomorrow. Our old one was damaged by a fork lift truck moving hay into the barn where it's stored. Our land lady was very cross with the farmer and is making him pay for a new one! A good result as ours was ex-hire and we've had it for nearly 14 years. That said, there was nothing wrong with it.