Oops…I’d completely forgotten about this, not quite sure how I managed that! I suppose because my last post was so exciting I wanted to let it sit as the newest post for a while 😉 and then I got out of the habit!

I got confirmation of Elton’s Junior Warrant back really quickly 🙂 So he’s officially had letters after his name for a while now.

Other than that, things have been fairly quiet on the showing front! We went to South Wales KA champ show on the 8th October, where Elton got a 3rd in Junior Dog & a 2nd in Graduate Dog. Closely followed (2 days later) by the South Wales Pap Club Champ Show where he had a 3rd in Yearling Dog & 2nd in Phalene Dog. Neither judge was particularly good for Elton so that was ok.

The following weekend I’d entered an open show with Elton, but South Western Gundog Club was the same day so as Elton now had his JW (and SW Gundog was half the distance!) I opted to give him a rest and went to the gundog show instead. I handled a Clumber to Reserve Best of Breed and a Golden Retriever to 3rd in the Puppy Stakes, so that was fun!

The 23rd/24th was meant to be a weekend of two shows, but on Friday afternoon the garage rang to say the minor repair the car had gone in for actually wasn’t, and not only was it not safe to drive, they couldn’t get the part until Monday. I was absolutely gutted because that weekend was two shows I particularly wanted to do, and of course to add insult to injury I could have got lifts with so many people if it weren’t for the chair.

I suppose at least it was fixed for Midland Counties on the 30th; another I wanted to do, because I thought the judge liked him. He got a 2nd in a good sized Yearling Dog class, apparently a very close decision and on another day could easily have been the other way round (that’s what the judge said!)

On the 14th November little rocket man turned eighteen months old….can’t believe he’s a year and a half. Where’s it gone?! He decided to celebrate his half birthday in style as we went to Minehead open show and he won Best of Breed in good company, going on to 2nd in the Toy Group!

Now, winter is well and truly here! Though we’ve been in our little bubble here and have hardly seen a flake of snow. Though the show in Dorset I’d entered last Sunday was cancelled due to the weather – rather disappointing because Darwin was entered and his outings are few and far between at the moment!

Other than that, not a lot to report I don’t think! Christmas is fast approaching, obedience is over for the year, and I’ve been resting Solei since he went funny back in the summer. I’ve just started taking Elton to obedience, and I’m very pleased with him, though it is needed! – he has quite a good grasp of commands, but we’ve never taken them out into a more distracting environment so that’s what I intended to work on by taking him! He loses all concept of heelwork, though to be fair that’s partly because we’ve done very little work in the right chair – his heelwork to a manual chair is very good! (Fat lot of use that’ll do…)