Ok, as I was saying!

I entered Solei for his very first big obedience show, over two days. On Saturday he was in Pre-Beginners (bottom class) and on Sunday I put him in both Pre-Beginners and Beginners (next class up). Pre-Beg is the only class that doesn’t involve a retrieve, and his retrieve is *very* dodgy – put it this way, in an unfamiliar environment he had yet to bring it back first time 😆

On Saturday it poured with rain the whole time I was there…I got soaked to the skin, very cold and came home early 😆 Soleidid a lovely round, and only lost 4 marks…he was lying joint 8th when I left and ended up just out of the top 10 – not bad in a class of 47 dogs! Though because he lost less than 10 marks he still got his first Certificate of Merit 🙂

On Sunday I wanted to work him in Pre-Beg early but the stays were at 11am and of course sod’s law, they stopped as he was the next dog to work! He was really fired up and focused, by the time we’d done the stays I’d lost him so put him away for a bit…then they stopped for lunch andit was a two hour break because of a meeting. Long story short I ended up having to work his rounds straight after each other, which does not sit well with Solei at all. He isn’t very confident anyway, and finds the chair bumping over grass quite scary so tends to jump out to the side and/or lag behind…he’s getting better, but he gets worse as the round goes on, so if I go straight from one to another the previous will be fresh in his mind andhe’ll tend to lag from the start.

Anyway, we worked Beginners first and he did the retrieve!! He wasn’t in the least bit interested in retrieving (or even holding it) outside the ring, so I really didn’t think he was going to fetch it. It wasn’t desperately clean, but he did it! That was the highlight of my weekend 😆 He’s come such a long way – this was a dog with zero toy drive that wouldn’t hold anything in his mouth and had zero interest in play.

Pre-Beginners his heelwork was as expected – laggy! Heel Free in particular was very expensive – he lost 11 in total andI think 7½ was on that – he ended up ages behind me at one point! Though the judge marked very strictly, andso even with that he was still 13th out of 47.

In Beginners, he was 7th out of 49!! Losing 6¼, so got a Certificate of Merit there too 🙂 Very proud of him for his first weekend of big shows!

The following Friday mum and I went up to Newbury, for Southern Counties Champ Show. Way back in November I’d booked a Travelodge room (yayfor £9 rooms!), to be only our second time away overnight in the last 10 years (and hoping Crufts would be a success, as we hadn’t been at that point!). I had a lovely day on Friday, watching the gundog and utility groups and spending money! Then we had an evening meal in Sainsburys cafe, and went off to the Travelodge. I can highly recommend it – despite being at the services it was a lovely place, much nicer than the Coventry one I’d booked for Crufts. The dogs had gone to T, and S was going to bring Elton up for me on Saturday. As it happened Solei was meant to have taken his Bronze Good Citizen Award at some point in the previous months, but the opportunity which was meant to come up hadn’t…and he needed to have passed it by the next week. So S brought Solei up as well, so he could take it at the show!

It’s always very strange to be at a show with a completely different group of people, so after Friday it was quite nice to be back amongst the “Papillon people” on Saturday! Elton had a 4th in Junior Dog, the dog that won the class going on to get the CC! Later he was unplaced in the Junior Stakes, but the placements all went to big names andhe got a good hard look and the judge even came back to give him a secondlook, so I was still very pleased with that!

Oh, and Solei passed his Bronze with flying colours 🙂

Just 6 days later it was off to Malvern for Three Counties! Elton was once again in the cards, getting a 5th in Junior Dog and then to my delight coming 3rd in a very large and diverse Junior Dog Stakes! The Stakes also had prize money and he won £10!!

Next up was a companion show, where the judge was a bit of a surprise – having judged the same show the year before! I’m not showing Solei this summer (bar obedience & maybe the odd brace!) and I didn’t want to put Elton in, so that left Darwin and Vale. I knew she wasn’t overly keen on Darwin – having had him under her last summer – but he has matured and as we were there I thought he could go in anyway. He suffered his first ever defeat in AV Non-Sporting 😆 coming 2nd.

Vale did AV Sporting pedigree class for fun (not being the right “type” I don’t usually do the pedigree classes with her) and was thrown out, so we returned to our usual favourite of novelty AV Veteran! Which she promptly won 🙂 She’s such a lot of fun to show and I’ll be very sad when she can’t do it anymore (this could well be the last summer I’ll be able to cart her round, she’ll be 11 in September)

Yesterday we went to an open show, for a change! My first general open show since Elton won the Puppy Group at the beginning of May. A friendhad been under this judge with her Phalene, in an Any Variety Not Separately Classified class, and she’d called her a Japanese Chin. So I’d thought very hard and debated much about whether to enter or not! Eventually decided I would, because I wanted to go to a show and we had Papillon classes this time, so at least she couldn’t mistake Elton for a Chin!

Sorry to say I was proven correct! She didn’t look at Elton, he was on the end of the line and slightly round the corner, and when she came down the line she didn’t even bother to walk all the way to Elton(!) He was placed last. I’d also entered Darwin, who fared slightly better – he was 2nd in Open, but behaved ABOMINABLY! I think he may well have been in with a chance at winning it, but he wouldn’t move properly and was obsessing with getting his head down on the mat. Dogs 🙄

Today we’ve just got back from another companion show, because it had obedience. It was very hot, too hot for Solei to want to work! Elton and Darwin both did the pedigree classes and Elton was thrown out, Darwin won AV Open! And then lost BIS purely because the judge thought he was too thin…she said as much to me. C’est la vie! He is a touch on the slim side at the moment, we’re working on it!

Solei and obedience….what can I say! I put him in two classes – for a change I thought he could do the middle and top classes, the top class having a sendaway in which he’s never done outside the house/garden. In the first class he blew the retrieve – there was a clump of grass (more like hay) in front of where the dumbbell had landed, which was so innocous you didn’t even notice it….unless you were Solei. He went out to fetch it, stopped at the grass, sniffed it, decided that wasn’t what I wanted him to bring back and ran off!! Ran out of the ring and ended up over by the pedigree ring, saying hello 🙄 I didn’t think he was going to come back, so I started off out of the ring to fetch him….I’d only just got out of the ring when he turned tail, came charging back into the ring and jumped up at judge’s (who had her back to him) legs 😆 Made her jump! It was actually very funny, you could almost see him “oops, sorry about that – got a bit distracted. But I’m back now, where were we?!” 😆 Grass suitably moved, I did the retrieve again and he was fine the second time. So there went any chance of placing in that class!

On to the higher class, and this time the failure was the send away. I was actually very impressed with him – got into the ring and discovered it was a really long send away. He went away beautifully, but then got distracted sniffing the marker, forgot what he was meant to be doing and recalled. So there went that! The judge wanted him to succeed, so we did it again – same thing happened. Did it a third time, and before I sent him the judge went and stood by the marker. When he got there, she tried to PUSH him into a down!! I was too much of a chicken to say anything, but I was so annoyed…you don’t just manhandle someone else’s dog without asking. Needless to say Solei was not amused, and he’s quite a sensitive dog so I just have to hope it hasn’t done any damage now! Especially as it was his first attempt at a send away in competition.

Oops, that was rather longer than intended…