Rosettes all round!

Well, we may have had to get up at 6am (which really felt like 5am due to the clocks changing!) to get to the agility competition yesterday, but it was definitely worth it! Second show of the year, and another really good day for Finn and Willow.

We went up to the UKA Waverunners show at Newbury, and as is always the case with UKA it was a brilliant little show. We love UKA, and their Standard jump height! The weather forecast wasn’t promising, but it stayed dry all day in the end, and the sun popped out briefly a few times from behind the clouds, so we couldn’t really have asked for more.

This was Willow’s first time competing in Novice Steeplechase, having won up from Beginners at the Valentine’s show. Mum was a little nervous about how Willow would cope, but the first course was really quite nice, and Willow was on fine form! Willow’s first run of the day is usually a little tentative and anxiety-laden and it takes her a run or two to gain her confidence, but she was firing from the start yesterday and did a lovely Clear Round in her first ever Novice run! She then did a nice run in Beginners Jumping, just stumbling over her weaves slightly but otherwise flying, and a lovely run in Beginners Agility, just tackling the dogwalk with a little too much confidence and missing the down contact! We then realised mum had somehow missed walking the other Novice Steeplechase class, and that they were about to close the Standard height class, so mum went rushing over to the ring while I grabbed Willow from the car, and suddenly found herself thrown into the ring, not really knowing where the course went! Luckily it didn’t seem to matter as they found their way around the correct course and Willow gained her second Clear Round of the day! All the Grid Work we’ve been doing finally seems to be paying off and Willow’s confidence is much improved. She’s never going to be as fast as Finn, but she seems to be enjoying it a lot more now and is starting to turn into a nice little Clear Round dog. And mum’s been working hard on fine tuning her weaves and contacts to build more confidence and speed in to them over the last few weeks, so maybe next time out she’ll be bringing home even more rosettes!

Mine and Finn’s day seemed to get off to a slower start – by lunchtime mum and Willow had done all of their classes, and we’d only done the Beginners Jumping class (a couple of poles down, and he just didn’t see his weave entry), and had to wait till the afternoon for our two Beginners Steeplechase classes. And typically the Standard height class in both ended up running at the same time, so having waited all day we then did both our runs within the space of 10 minutes! Finn did a fab round in the first class, just tipping a pole down after a tunnel (he had four poles down in total all day, and all of them were on jumps after tunnels, so he's obviously not getting up quick enough, so we'll have to work on this!), and he would have been 4th if the pole didn't come down. And then we went straight over to do his other round, running first in the class, and he did a fab Clear Round! It felt really smooth and I was so pleased! Several of our friends commented on what a nice round it was! We then had to wait around for 2 hours for the prize-giving to see if he'd been quick enough for a place, and I was delighted to discover we'd got 3rd place! That's one up from our 4th at the Valentine's show, so we're heading in the right direction! My jubilation was slightly marred by the discovery that the show organisers had somehow forgotten to pick up the box of 3rd place rosettes, so having waited 2 hours we didn't actually have a rosette to take home, and instead have to pick it up at the show next weekend! Slightly anticlimactic, but never mind! That's 2 shows and 2 Clear Rounds so far this year, so all the changes we've made to our training and show routines seem to be working. Through calming Finn down and only training with food instead of toys we have definitely lost a bit of speed, but what we have gained is a calmer state of mind where he can actually think clearly and put a bit of thought into what he's doing, so that's definitely an improvement!

All in all a good weekend, and huge strides forward for both of our two! It's a constant up-hill struggle with both of them, and we have good days and bad days, but yesterday was most definitely a good day! There's a vid of some of the runs below...it should be available on YouTube shortly!

I've got a load of other things I've been meaning to blog about for a while...the brilliant Border Collie Rehab workshop we did with Kay Laurence a few weeks ago, the very exciting Four Paws plans that are starting to come together...but there just isn't enough time in the day at the moment!! So for now, that'll have to do!

Wags and woofs,
Shelley & Fantastic Mr Finn xx