Surreal Weekend

When Dog Vegas put out a plea for Judges on the Agility Forum Ann thought why not volunteer and have a weekend away in Norfolk as we hadn't been for over a year.

The first setback came when Ann contacted Gill from The Limes (see 21/07/2009) and found out that she wasn't taking bookings this year.  Luckily she found this lovely little pub in Watton (www.the willowhouse.co.uk) that was more than happy to take us and the Dogs.  Better still it was less than 30 mins drive from the venue:)

Next set back - the weather forecast predicting 2 months rainfall in 24 hours really caused havoc!!  Ann and Mark left about an hour before us and took over an hour and half to get out of Nottingham due to the number of roads that were flooded and impassable.  Luckily, with that knowledge, we were able to plan a route that didn't take us so long.  Eventually they arrived at the venue with us not far behind them, we set up Ann's first course, walked the Dogs then settled in for a lovely meal at the Willow House.

Saturday was Ann's first KC Judging appointment. In total she had 9 different courses to design (some classes including the same dogs) and she did a brilliant job, her courses went down very well. 

My role was to be her scrimer all day.  A job I love to do but doesn't give me much time to think about running my dogs.  In fact I rushed walking Kiros's course and missed a whole chunk of it!!  Never mind, he enjoyed the run and thought he was clear!!

Reno's runs:-

Jumping Graded 3-5 - Judge:- Rebecca Wheetman - Reno struggled with the straight Jump-Weave start, hitting them to fast and coming out at 2nd pole.  Good run after that.

Agility Combined 3-5 - Judge:- Eileen Wischnea - For us this course was a little too hard, aimed at the top end of the grade range with obstacle discrimination and pull throughs etc.  Reno got a bit confused with everything being so close and took the wrong line on a couple of occasions.  Having said that his contacts were excellent and gave me confidence for our next Agility run (I'd already walked the course so I knew it suited us)

Jumping Graded 1-3 - Judge:- Ann Miller - Obviously a lovely course ;-)  Had a slight weave issue.  No idea why so I E'd us by taking Reno back to the jump before the weaves.  From there we ran well until near the end where the box issue raised its ugly head again!!!  Reno started to follow me around the corner of the box but then spied a tunnel entrance and whizzed off to do it!!

Agility Graded 1-3 - Judge:- Mandy Surch - I almost missed running this one!! I could see the ring from where I was sitting scrimming and suddenly realised that there were only 2 dogs left in the queue.  By the time I'd grabbed Reno and ran to the ring the 2nd dog had just finished its run. We went clear with a bit of a wide turn between 2-3 and an almost disastrous turn between 16-17 where Reno turned the wrong way - then back to work on the ring thinking we may just get a placing.  I didn't realise the presentation for this class was taking place until I heard our names read out in 1st place!!

So Reno is now Grade 4.

We'd already decided to have a day sightseeing etc on Sunday and I'm glad we didn't go to the show as it was bound to be an anticlimax after Saturday.

Instead we took the dogs for a lovely forest walk in the morning and visited the St Georges Distillery (the only English whiskey distillery) in the afternoon.

We left the Willow House after a lovely breakfast on Monday morning still not quite believing how perfect our weekend had been :-)