The WAO Experience

We had the most fantastic time in Belgium.  Compared with driving to Austria last year for the EO's the journey was pretty easy.   Our hotel was really nice, a bit oldy worldy but very comfortable and just under twenty minutes from the venue.  We had a chilled afternoon and met everyone in the restaurant for a meal in the evening.

On the Wednesday we had our first training session and I for one found it really helpful.  It was a well organised session and we had loads of time to cover all sorts of stuff.   It really made me feel positive about things and really up for the competition.

On Thursday we had the shorter and more formal training session and again this a good session with all positive vibes for me and Zeki and I think for everyone else too.  We had our team dinner on the Thursday evening and this was really good (even for us vegetarians!)    We also had our team photos taken in the sunshine at the hotel.   Thursday evening was also the opening ceremony and Zeki barked her way through most of it ... what a surprise.

 

Team England 400's

Team England Shelties

Team England

The venue itself was pretty spectacular and very large!  The walk from the outside rings to the main arena was quite a long way but it really wasn't a problem as the way the event is organised means that you know exactly where to be at what point.  There are three groups A,B, and C and all courses are walked and run in rotation.  It's a brilliant system which means you can watch all your team mates run and support each other.

Before we go on to the competition itself, here are some more pictures of Zeki  and her buddies:

Enjoying her antler

Exhausted

Room mates

Snoozing Herbie

Zeki and me

Zaz and Zeki

Herbie, Zaz and Zeki

The competition was just brilliant.  I loved nearly every single course that I ran with the exception of one which needed too many front crosses but even that was a challenge.  I didn't run clear on all of them but I am really glad that all the training we did prior to the event paid off in that I walked them with conviction and attacked them when I ran.  I can honestly say I didn't walk into a single ring and say to myself  "I can't do that".  Instead I just got on with committing the patterns to memory and then figuring out how I would handle them.  The training helped not only in handling terms but also in my ability to commit tricky courses to memory quickly.   My worst case was three courses to walk in a row but even that didn't throw me because once I'd walked them I knew we would be running them in the same rotation so I just concentrated on the first one and so on.  It really helped.

I made a bad choice in one course where I handled the weaves differently from most people in order to get up on the course, Zeki completed the weaves beautifully but I lost her over the wrong jump; in two other courses she ran brilliantly and I screwed up at the last but one jump.  A bit frustrating to say the least.  In our games classes we completed the snooker opening section successfully but then blew out in the closing section and similar in the gamblers.  We ran clear on three courses, one of our runs helping our team to get into the final.  All in all I was thrilled with Zeki and pretty happy with my own efforts.  We had the benefit of Tace helping with our dogs (and ourselves, if needed, thank you Tace!) and so they were really ready to run each class.  I also spent time warming myself up and found it really helped so I am going to make more effort on this front in my normal classes especially champ runs.   By the third day this was a necessity for me as my back had begun to seize up quite badly.  The ibuprofen and stretches kept me going!



The whole event was enhanced by our brilliant management team:  manager (Jo Rhodes); coach (Ant Clarke) and sports and canine massage therapist (Tace Allen-Hunt).

Of course I mustn't forget our team mascot Riley:

You can see all the course plans here.  Zeki and I competed in all of them and ran team agility on Friday.

Here are some videos taken by various friends, in no particular order.  Some are repeated but shown from different angles.



















The final video is a little compilation by Wendy Botto, thank you so much for doing this.  Also thanks to Bernadette, Lian and Colin for the other videos, much appreciated.

Zeki watching the final prizegiving, waiting for the people to tear past doing their lap of honour.  She loved that!

Sheltie Power

The closing ceremony was rather long but there is no way round this.  Several of our team got medals including clever little Tia (left above) with Marilyn.  Well done everyone and thanks for being great team mates and making it such a fantastic experience.  A really superb event and I feel really honoured to have been a part of it.

Final post before the WAO's in Belgium

We are almost ready to leave.   I am feeling really nervous but very excited at the prospect of setting off tomorrow morning.

We had our final training session at Leah's on Thursday night and at last we ran a tricky jumping course (from Scott Chamberlain, the US judge) clear on our first attempt!  Whooppee!   Below is the course plan, a good one to train on.

 On Saturday we got up early and headed off to Birmingham for Beacon Show where Zeki had a champ class.  Of course I desperately want to win that third ticket with Zeki but equally important to me was to run with positive mental attitude and run clear in a competitive environment prior to the WAO's.  I am glad to be able to say that we managed this.  Our first class was G1-7 jumping and it was a well thought out course which is very difficult for the judge when it crosses all the grades.  Normally I don't take jumping classes seriously but I made myself focus and we ran clear coming 3rd so that was a decent start to our day.

The champ classes were probably a little faster and flowing thatn is my ideal but I was determined to get into the final and we did this by running clear in both the jumping and the agility.  Our agility run was a little, shall we say, scary when I put in a cross which I didn't need and got myself into all sorts of trouble much to the amusement of everyone outside the ring.  However, I didn't give up and got out of difficulty to finish with a clear round.  

We were running late in the final at #16 so plenty of time for nerves.  I made myself work on warming up both myself and Zeki which made sure we were ready to run when it was our turn (this is something I really must focus on and implement when in Belgium) and also kept me occupied.  The course was a little trickier than the two qualifying rounds which was good.   I made a stupid stupid error in the little handling section after the weaves but managed to get through it, however it definitely cost me time and we came 3rd by just over a second.  That said I absolutely wouldn't want to suggest I could have won because the winning round by Jennifer Machon and her gorgeous little spaniel was sublime.  One of those rounds where you just think the dog is on rails and nothing is going to stop them.  I am just pleased that I was so close to the winning round with a bit of pilot error.  It makes me take stock and realise what a brilliant little dog I have in Zeki.  My job is to guide her better, she always gets things right if I give her the right information.  So, I drove home from Beacon happy that I had achieved my aim and run clear in my classes.  Sadly, I didn't stop to run my Crufts qualifier as I hadn't had a chance to walk the course and it was a typical Barrie James course, tricky with obstacle discrimination.  The sort of course I absolutely love.  The queue was enormous as everyone wanted to run once the champ final was over and I knew I had a long drive home.

I took Tidey with me to Beacon and we managed some really positive work around the rings getting her to focus on little tasks and her toy.  She managed really well and we didn't have too much screaming.

I decided not to go to Tunbridge Wells on Sunday as the show had moved indoors due to the wet ground conditions.  I am not good running on the sand at Ardingly as it's very uneven and wanted to go to Belgium with a positive feeling.

Tamzin stopped over Friday and Saturday night as she had a trade stand at Tunbridge Wells show and it was a bit cold and damp to camp (that rhymes :o) )  We had a good laugh and all made sure we put in multiple votes for Ashleigh and Pudsey in the BGT final on the Saturday night.  They won by a pretty huge margin and so deserved it.  Great to see a variety act going through to the Royal Variety Performance rather than yet another singer.  Well done to a fantastic team.

So, that's it for now.  Zeki is bathed and looks gorgeous and we are off tomorrow at about 9.30 am.  I don't think I will sleep much tonight.

When I get back I will report on the experience plus lots of other things to catch up with.  Bye for now!

Less than a week before we travel to Belgium!

I am both excited and nervous in equal quantities about the trip to Belgium and taking part in the WAO's.   We have trained on courses for a month now and so there isn't any more training to do.  Now it's about mental preparation and focusing on the task in hand.

We got together with a few friends on Saturday and trained over another course by the Danish judge Thomas Ammitzboll.  It was another good test.  After we had worked on that course, we removed the contact equipment and Leah added a couple of jumps, re-numbered and voila, we had a very difficult jumping course to work on.    Both courses proved really testing and highlighted areas to work on for future but importantly areas to be 'managed' for the WAO. Here are the two courses that we worked on.

I didn't run Niamh at all on Saturday so that I could concentrate on Zeki.  This proved worthwhile and thank you to Tracy for running Naughty Niamh who had a lovely time.  Here she is between runs looking cheeky and cute! I love her so much and it was great to see her running so well with someone else.  She looks gorgeous :o)

On Tuesday back at training we set up one more of Thomas's courses.  This time a straight jumping course.  When we had laid it out we were muttering that it was much easier than the courses we had worked on previously but then we thought perhaps we should run it before thinking like that.  This proved to be true as the course was subtly more difficult than it looks.  It was though, a little simpler than some of the stuff we have been working on and I think this was a good thing because although testing it proved to be confidence-building as it was just that little more achievable.  A really good course to train on.   After we had run it three times, Andy partially re-numbered and we worked on a second pattern.   This second pattern was a little trickier but I was really pleased to run it clear first time!  Yay at last I have run clear on a jumping course first hit!   Normally I run Niamh in the first class but this week I swapped Zeki into Niamh's class so that I had to hit the course untried with Zeki.  I'm really glad I did this as it is much more realistic.  I worked out by the end of the evening that I had run ten full courses (1-20) with my two dogs plus a half hour  puppy class with Tidey.  No wonder I slept well!

Here are the courses:

I have one more training session with Zeki before the WAO which is tonight at Leah's.  I hope I can keep running well with her.   I went to Vyne show on Monday purely to try to get some good runs under my belt but the weather wasn't nice and I found the ground very slippery.  This wasn't helped by the fact that I didn't have decent footwear for the conditions.  I have such trouble finding shoes that fit comfortably and tend to stick with my Salomons whatever the conditions.  As a result I was absolutely rubbish with both my dogs.

So, I have bought some new Salomon shoes and I think I will feel much more confident in wet conditions.   I am going to drag myself out of bed in the early hours on Saturday and go to Beacon show where I will run Zeki in a competition with PMA (positive mental attitude!)

I have lots of other things to blog about and will try to do this (to clear my mind) before we set off to the WAO's so watch this space!

More training for WAO

Last night we worked on an agility course by one of the WAO judges.  It was a really fun course with elements of difficulty and options for handling.   Yay, Zeki ran clear first time so I was very happy with that.  I need to achieve this same attack and success on a jumping course.  Am going to pack in as much training as possible before the event.  Working on these tricky courses for the past month has really helped me to prepare both mentally and physically.   Only two weeks to go now!

Some more pictures from my walks

Beautiful Tidal Wave proving she can sit and wait .....

In the distance you can see Andy to the right of the tree, with a little blob behind him (Kizzle), a bigger blob in front (Murphy) and to the left of the tree and bushes a little red blob (Pop in her Hurtta coat).  Becky must have been bhined the bushes!

The lovely house we pass on our walk each day

The Naughty Niamh in the mud, her favourite place!

Closer shot of Niamh, you can see the flood water behind her in the distance

The last bit of dry ground before we go into wading rather than walking mode!

Kick my toy or I will shout at you!

Last warning, I'm building up to a big bark here!

That's it, lost control of my mouth .....

The result of Naughty Niamh's mud games