Where do I start... Thames 'treat' their instructors to a training day at the end of the year, as a thank you for helping throughout the year. It's usually freezing but always a good laugh. This year we had Dawn Weaver and Nancy Hudson. A bit of an odd pairing but oh well. Dawn took the agility section and Nancy took the jumping. It was a good day, and Pie was suprising quite good...!
Since that training which was the 29th I think, I had said to myself that I wanted to do certain this in training. Leading up to Christmas I hadn't had a chance to do anything 'proper' training. By that I mean, actually achieving something from the session instead of doing/practising the stuff I knew I could already do. However, work was hectic and I was working right the way up until Christmas Eve and then was back in the office of the 30th and New Year's Eve, and by the time I get home, it's too dark to train.
Then we got hit by all the snow, which meant i was working from home, which was lovely as I could walk the dogs in it. Pie and Paddy love it!! Kip will be 12 in March, and his fit and healthly but I could tell the cold was getting to him. We had about 6 inches here, and then another few the following day. I've never seen so much of it. It was all very pretty but just not practical, as I couldn't go anywhere and was stuck at home. I will post some pictures on here some other time, but they are on my facebook, if anyone wants a little look.
Right back to the important stuff! Laura and I were meant to be going to Wilmslow but it got cancelled because of the awful weather, which was a shame, as we're both chasing wins. Thankfully Ribble wasn't cancelled yesterday, so I headed down to Laura's Saturday evening and got to hers at about 10.30 for her to tell me that the alarm was set for 3.40 am!! Took just over 3 hours I think to get there, which whizzed by with me having my signature snooze on the way ;)
My first run was the pairs. Laura managed to walk it wrong about 3 times, but luckily I told her she was going wrong ;) I went second as I thought Laura could do with the wait practise ha ha! She managed a clear round with some baaad handling (:p) and then we went... OOOOPS! Pie went in the wrong end of a tunnel, but the correct entrance should of been visible but it had moved and so Pie thought he'd do the wrong end... Apologes Laura.
It was the first chum of the season and the course was nice. Pie got marked on his dogwalk, which I was pretty certain he got, but I'm not going to complain about bad judging (unlike Laura!) and I just took it on the chin. I trained the rest of the run, but P did something a little strange on the see-saw. It was almost he did a hand stand!
On the way up to all the shows, Laura and i always have our 'clear round quota'. Well on Sunday, Laura's were 2 clears, and mine was 1 clear. She managed 3 (8th in Chum and 3rd we think) and I managed 1 which was a win wahoooo! We won Grade 6 Agility by 2 seconds. I always say that I just want a clear round, and that's honestly all i wanted. From the video you can tell i'm not pushing at all, I was just casually jogging around. Here's the video of our 3rd win towards Grade 7. Just the 1 to go... which can be either Agility or Jumping.
