Rugby Agility Show

We had a nice weekend at Rugby in the new caravan. Everything seemed to work so that's good!

I'm not keen on the venue, it's not so bad when all the competitors start to arrive but it isn't very nice before that. We went up early to help set up the show and so we were one of only three caravans on the Thursday night. You get a few unsavoury characters around and I don't think I'll go early again.

We both had some good and some not so good runs during the weekend.

First off Kizzy: she won her G1/4 jumping on Saturday with a really good round. It was great because Karen and Todd won the medium class over the same course so they sort of had their first Obay Sweep! Kizzy is continuing with her strange behaviour in respect of the A-Frame. She appears to be deliberately avoiding the obstacle in the ring. She did it three times at the weekend and Andy felt quite despondent about it. He took her in the practise ring on Saturday and did all sorts of A-Frame combinations and she didn't miss a beat. It is most peculiar why it seems to happen in the competition environment. After consultation with Gran'Ma Obay the plan is that we'll get Kizzy checked out by a physio to establish if there could be a mechanical reason for her doing this. If she's given the all clear then we can put a training plan into place to overcome this glitch.

Naughty Niamh was a very un-Naughty girl at the weekend! She ran clear in four out of six of her runs. The two that weren't clear were pure bad piloting errors on my part. Although clear we didn't get placed in the KC Olympia because I made a bad handling error at one point which cost us a huge amount of time so I decided to train the last two contacts. She was brilliant as usual; just me!

In the afternoon on Saturday I helped to facilitate a training session for some of the people who are off to the European Open Finals this coming weekend and in doing so I missed a run with Niamh so Andy ran her for me. He got 12th place in G6/7 jumping which is excellent considering the company she was in. It was quite a tricky course and Andy said he over steadied her in a couple of places, he hadn't realised how responsive she is to her "steady" command!

The training session was good fun and I really hope it helped create some team spirit. Andy is going out as part of the support team for these finals and I really hope they do well and above all have a fabulous time. Good luck to them all but especially my friends: Leah & Herbie; Bernadette & Hex; Lisa & Chi and Helen & Henners. Go girls!

On the Sunday we were clear in the team and also in the Crufts qualifier which was an unusual and tricky little course. It ran nicely though and I really enjoyed it. I'm not sure if we ended up in a place, as we were 15th after we ran. Again, I'm pleased with that as the competition at Rugby is very good and it is a G6/7 class. I could have saved some time at the end had I remember to used her "go round" command but I forgot. I'm glad Leah was watching as she was able to point that out to me, I wouldn't have realised! Doh!

In the team on Sunday, Mand ran Murphy for us as Leah was concentrating on the Champ class. I think she did a brilliant job with him. He is not an easy dog to run and Mand has never run him before. They looked good. He was bad and wicked on a couple of his contacts but she stopped him on the ground, the pattern was easy peasy for them! Thanks for that Mand.

Zeki had a boring day on the Saturday as my time for her was limited. I wasn't too upset though because she'd had a massive walk on Thursday evening and again on Friday. Come Sunday though it was very different. She had lots of time round the rings and I really enjoyed showing her off. We did little bits of training with food and tuggy and I was badgering every other person to put their hands out and take her collar and then reward her with a tit bit when she didn't back away. She is getting much better at this. I adore this little dog, she is such a character and so up for everything.

Must not forget, Andy also ran little Poppy for me in the Any Size (when I was doing the EO training). This is very important to me so I hated missing it. Anyway, they came 10th. Good old Pops. I hate to say I got over excited on the Sunday and got her eliminated (yes, in an Any Size).

I had lots of time round the rings making sure each of my dogs got time out with me. We watched the champ classes. Zeki was pretty good except when a couple of noisy dogs ran and then she went mad! I had to hang on to her. All three finals were brilliant with three very worthy winners in Toni, Bernadette and Nicky. Up the girls!

We left Rugby around 5.30 pm and got home about 8.00 pm, a bit late for a Sunday evening and we were really tired. Still, we had a good weekend and really enjoyed ourselves.

Dennis took some good photos over the weekend so hopefully we might get to post some of them in due course and also he videod Kizzy's winning round which was nice. We'd decided to take a weekend off from videoing which makes a nice change!