Yet more holiday....

From Thornthwaite we travelled south to the Lune Valley show. Sadly no videos of the agility! Loved this show, and had some really joyous, fun runs with Zazzy who is enjoying her agility more and more (some great results too: two agility wins, plus three seconds, a third, a fourth, and a fifth!) and also joyous runs with Kaydee and Becky in the allsorts, they really loved it. Kaydee is looking great, her muscles are much more balanced, and she is flying round the low jumps (she went round one course in 15 seconds - now I appreciate the difficulties of running a dog at medium height!!). Shame there is nothing to bridge the gap between allsorts (low jumps and tunnels) and the grade 7 courses which are her only other option at KC shows. I had great company and was well looked after (in fact thoroughly spoilt!) by Bernadette and Dennis, Nancy and Andy, Anne and Tony and Sue and Mike who were camped near by. I had my first taste of bananas BBQ'd with curleywurleys (not sure how to spell that though!) and snickers bars. Plus many other very naughtly but very tasty things! I stayed on a couple of days after the show, for the 'bit in the middle', where we got together for some agility training along with Pete and Margarate Jennings, and Norman Stokoe, which was really fun as well as interesting. A couple more walks, up Gummers Howe:

and lastly found my way to the top of the big hill that overlooks the showground (forgotten what it is called though) (and forgot to take the camera too) on my last morning.

I then left for the Tuffley show (Berkely House, Gloucestershire). Another fantastic venue.

I really enjoyed my weekend at Tuffley as well. Zazzy again was running really well, but I made mistakes. In her KC qualifier I said 'go' thinking she would move off the A-frame with me, but she was very good and went straight on just like I have trained her, I should have said 'left'. Think I just about recovered quickly enough that she didn't realise my mistake, and despite that elimination she carried on smoothly to do a really good run over the rest of the course. She impressed me with her run round a very tight and tricky course, but seemed to stumble in the weaves and missed the last weave pole. I was later told she had spooked at the judge who was rushing very close by over the cloth tunnel to get to the A-frame. So more distraction training needed! She did a good run in the CSJ qualifier, just missing out on going to the final by less than 0.2 secs (top 2 qualified). I chose to play it safe and front cross to prevent her going down the more obvious end of the tunnel, and lost a bit of time by giving her more ground to cover than necessary there.

Got home Sunday night, and Monday was very lucky to be able to train with Dawn Weaver, Toni Dawkins, Polly and Karen. A fabulous day. Deece's sisters (Galaxy and Lotus) are looking phenominal already, you can really see how slowly and carefully Dawn has taken the first stages of their training, lots of shaping and attention to detail! I was a bit embarrassed to reveal my comparatively rough half started efforts with Deece! Toni made us laugh by saying she can't be doing with all that shaping stuff, she had just plonked Kite on the end of the contact plank and told her she was good. There's probably a bit more involved than that I bet! Toni's baby, 'Cute', is also looking absolutely fabulous. I took the opportunity to do some fast pulls to the 'wrong end' of the tunnel with Zazzy, and got Toni to stomp up and down by the weaves while Zazzy ran through them. Shame I can't have another go at those courses now that I'm ready for them!! I'm really happy for Toni about her move to Belgium, although at the same time sad that we are 'loosing' her. However she promises to come back for a week every month for the foreseeable future, I hope she will be able to keep to that! One last thing I have noticed is how much better Deece is moving - balanced and co-ordinated - follwing our hill walks. I can really see why Silvia Trkman rates her trips into the mountains so highly for getting her dogs physically prepared to do agility.