Another busy weekend!

Blimey we've been busy lately! Each weekend seems to be packed with doggy activities, and I never seem to have the time to write about them in between work and Four Paws stuff! I've managed to steal a few moments at lunchtime, so here's a report from this weekend!

Saturday started bright and early with our two agility groups, our Beginner and our Foundation courses. What a fab bunch! The people are lovely, the dogs are coming along in leaps and bounds, and the sun always seems to come out for us! What a great way to start the weekend! Did a little bit of training with Finn and Willow afterwards, but didn't want to overdo it as they had a show on Sunday.

So Sunday brought with it a trip to Yeovil for the independent Sherborne Vale show. What a lovely little show that was, ideally designed for emerging youngsters just starting to compete. And how nice the organisers were - they were perfectly happy to let us drop Finn and Willow down to the Medium height category as both have been struggling with the introduction of full height jumps over the last few weeks (until this point they've been jumping at Standard as we've been doing UKA shows and didn't want to push them as they're both so small and still so young, and Willow loses confidence when she hits poles down, and Finn still seems quite physically immature). Our first class was the Jumping round, and Finn set off at his usual mad pace, but unfortunately a late turn command from me resulted in an elimination which was a shame, although he still thoroughly enjoyed himself!! Willow was up next, and bless her, she fell to pieces in the ring. The mad barking spaniel in the queue in front of her seemed to be too much for her to cope with (she's still finding the proximity of others at the shows hard to cope with), on top of the knock to her confidence she seemed to take in training this week when she knocked a few poles, and she went into meltdown mode. She's such a sensitive little soul! A nice walk with Finn seemed to cheer her back up, and for the Agility class we made sure she was kept well out of the way while I queued for mum. willow was much happier on the Agility round and zoomed off, getting all 3 contacts (and doing a seesaw for the first time in competition!) and securing a lovely Clear Round! A long wait for the prizegiving eventually revealed that Willow had got 9th place - unfortunately the rosettes only went to 8th!! A fab Clear Round though, and particularly pleasing after her Jumping round!

So, the last class of the day was a Steeplechase round (although the course was really a helter skelter and circled around on itself). Theoretically a nice course, although there were a few tricky turns. Once again Finn set off rather enthusiastically, and somehow managed to completely crash a jump. It didn't seem to put him off (nothing does!), but it was enough of a distraction to cause me to loose track of which particular loop of the course we were on, and we got a bit lost! Ooops! Willow then followed and was doing a beautiful Clear Round until the last few jumps were she suddenly got startled by someone sat a little too close at the side of the ring and missed a jump. Nevermind, it's all a bit of fun!

A pleasant day of competition, and yet another Clear Round for Willow! Really not bad going bearing in mind that was still only her fifth show! And the photographer chap even managed to get a couple of lovely shots of Wills that mum bought to put up on the wall. Somehow Finn never seems to get photographed!