Wow…what a weekend 😆

On Saturday I had two shows I wanted to go to…there was an open show where none of my dogs were entered but S&T had entered two dogs in each class and as T was at home with puppies I went down to help S. I needed to leave by 1:45pm – preferably about 1:30pm – to make it to the second show, which was a companion. We were quite a long way down the judging order but most of the classes before us were tiny, so in theory it should have been more than doable…problem was we had the slowest judge ever! Judging speed actually wasn’t too bad but they were wasting so much time after the dogs had been placed and in between classes. Eventually as it got nearer to 1:30pm it became obvious she wasn’t going to finish in time. I really didn’t know what to do;  I really wanted to stay and show the dogs (one of whom was Sarah) but I knew I was running out of shows for Solei too. Then my decision was made as the steward came over and said the judge was stopping for lunch! She still had two more breeds to run through before us too, so I decided to leave.

Thankfully it was worth it!

Darwin didn’t show terribly well but got a 5th in Puppy. Jeanie absolutely showed her socks off and got a 2nd in Junior, behind the eventual BIS winner. Solei was in Non Sporting and was absolutely terrible on the table – he found a smell and refused to stand so I ended up stacking him and holding him there like I would a puppy! – and not very good on the stand but moved well…at least he did something right 😆 and came out with a 4th. He also got a 2nd in Best Mover. There were toys as prizes for every placement so I got a ball on a tugger which I let Vale have (not something I’d feel comfortable letting the Paps have), two squeaky toys and a ball on a rope 🙂 Oh, and two ProPlan sunshades for the car! Then….Jeanie ended up as Novelty Best Puppy in Show! Absolutely *gorgeous* rosette, one of the nicest I’ve ever seen. So I was glad I went, if disappointed about Sarah & Tyler.

On Sunday I went to another companion show (not making a habit of two in one weekend 😆 just happened to be two weekends with two local ones) and…wow, what can I say!

There was no Junior class so I debated for the most of the hour I had before entries had to be in about what to do with Darwin & Jeanie! Usually I would not show Jeanie if there was no Junior class, but I wanted to show her after the previous two shows when on one occasion the judge had actually told me she preferred Jeanie to Darwin and on the other Jeanie had done so well and I think again would have beaten her brother! So eventually I opted for Jeanie in Puppy, Darwin in Non Sporting and poor Solei up into Open! It was very hot and Jeanie decided it was far too hot to keep her tail up properly which was a shame after she’d been going so well…she showed well otherwise and got a 3rd. So I thought I’d got that wrong again (if I enter Jeanie it should’ve been Darwin and vice versa) but I was to be proved wrong!

The classes were enormous and Darwin’s Non-Sporting class had 18 dogs present. I was sitting in the ring looking round at all the bigger completely mature dogs as I had this 9 month old puppy sitting on my lap and thinking he hasn’t got a chance! Bless him, he pulled all the stops out for me and showed better than he ever has. These companion shows are really helping, he’s so much more confident than he was at 7 months. You could’ve knocked me down with a feather when he won the class! Second time in 3 weeks he’s done that to me 😆 Poor Solei was in a class of 28 and he showed the way he is showing at the moment….he was good on the table but had a hell of a job to get his attention on the floor cos all he wanted to do was sniff and when I pulled him away that of course made the tail go down! I ended up holding his tail manually at one point. He was the first dog to go as well which isn’t too good when there are 27 other dogs to see…has to be a judge with a pretty good memory when there are too many dogs to move them all together or move them individually again and you have to remember what you saw (without notes) nearly 30 dogs ago! He didn’t place 😉

Then I had to take Darwin back in for Best in Show, not expecting anything…..and he went Reserve Best in Show!! He was slightly “unlucky” in that Best in Show was also a Puppy, otherwise he’d have been Best Puppy in Show too! He beat well over 50 dogs and this is where the fact I *did* do the right thing comes in….because BIS was the winner of Puppy if I *had* put Darwin in Puppy he would have been 2nd and thus not able to challenge for BIS – so he couldn’t have got RBIS 🙂 I actually got it right for once!

Solei had his agility lesson this morning. He’s doing quite well though he did the dog walk properly for the first time today and had a little go on the seesaw (nowhere near full height). He did the dogwalk a few times beautifully, then did the seesaw which was very scary…so after he’d had a couple of goes she wanted him to do the dog walk again because sometimes they think the dog walk is going to move like the seesaw and they refuse to do it. Solei got up the up bit, then decided it was very scary, might move like the seesaw and jumped off at the highest point (about 4 1/2 feet) which wasn’t terribly clever! Scared me and I hope he doesn’t repeat that 😛 Other than that it was a good lesson. He’s started weave poles too, though he’s only running through them in a straight line (channel weaves) at the moment and not actually doing any weaving.

Tomorrow we have a day off, Sunday another companion show where I’m hoping Solei will make his obedience debut and then Monday is my 21st birthday! Sunday will probably be a terrible let down after last weekend, but hey ho – it’s all good fun 😆