Puppies went to ringcraft for the first time last Tuesday! Elton handled it like a pro, he wasn’t as settled on the move but he was so happy 🙂 Lacey was actually much better than I thought she’d be and was pretty good on the table and gorgeous on the move the first time, though not so good the second (probably tired). The other two boys were pretty bad 😆 and Polly stayed at home. I’m having them all to stay tomorrow 🙂 Along with Storm, Wallace and Igor. Should be an interesting fortnight!

Decided to be a bit different this weekend! Not a companion show in sight.

On Saturday we went to a small fun show…only novelty classes. I wanted to get the puppies out, now they’re able to go on the ground! Interesting class selection, they had an AV Non-Sporting and AV Sporting even though it was novelty, so I put Darwin in N-S and he was 2nd. As it was Novelty and not being judged to standard I put Vale in Sporting and she won it!! From there on followed a fantastic day. Solei was 4th in Best Trick and 3rd in Musical Sits (to my great satisfaction, as he beat a lot of the more traditionally obedient breeds 😆 ). Vale added to her tally with a 2nd in the Irish Brace (with Elton..), a 4th in Fastest Sausage Eater (let the Lab side down, but it was pieces of sausage on a tray and she was unlucky in that hers were very scattered which made all the difference – there was only a second or two between 1st & 4th) and a 1st in Waggiest Tail! She then got Reserve Best in Show!! Solei also tried the fun agility course and came 4th in that (we won some more minijacks… 😆 )

On Sunday we were to another fun show, but in previous years it’s always been a proper companion show with obedience and although this year they’d dropped the pedigree classes and gone for just a fun show, they’d kept the obedience classes exactly as you’d expect at a “proper” show. They had Starters (Heel on Lead, Recall, 30 sec Sit Stay, 1 min Down Stay), Triers (Heel on Lead, Heel off Lead, Recall, 1 min Sit Stay, 2 min Down Stay) and Improvers (same as Triers but with a Retrieve too).

I took the usual 5 of Darwin, Solei, Vale, Lacey and Elton but I decided Darwin should have a break cos he’s been doing a lot lately (although he enjoys it 😆 ) so it was just Solei, Elton and Vale showing. They were the most *enormous* classes I’ve ever seen in my life….Prettiest Bitch took more than half an hour to judge. I entered Elton in Most Handsome Dog, Vale in Veteran and Waggiest Tail, and Solei in Starters Obedience….then decided what the hell and went back and put him in Triers as well 😆

And this was where the fun started! The novelty classes were taking so long to judge I decided I’d work Solei’s Starters round before I took Elton in (2nd class). So I walked him around a bit to settle him, decided this was as good as it would get and entered the ring…sat him beside me and waited for the command to move, started moving and the chair crawled forward at the pace of a snail. I was trying to work out what an earth was happening (it was fine before I went in the ring) and eventually realised it was conserving power because mum had obviously forgotten to charge it (it can only be done at night now because of Darwin & his wire fettish) and my battery was dangerously low! So I thought Solei’s heelwork was horrendous (though to be honest I wasn’t really concentrating on him, more worried about the chair!) because he couldn’t work out why on earth I was going so slowly. Though his recall was lovely and both stays were perfect! He ended up coming 3rd 😀 Which was wonderful cos we were competing against lots of the more “traditional” obedience breeds and there were around 15 dogs entered 🙂

Crawled over to the novelty ring to take Elton in, he was unplaced and the judge said to me afterwards he needs to grow into his looks 😆 I said I couldn’t agree more, he’s ugly as anything atm but I wanted to give him some ring experience! I’d arranged with mum to bring Vale over to me so I didn’t need to move (Veteran was the next class) so we swapped dogs, and luckily I knew the ring steward so she moved Vale for me…though it was a shame because she doesn’t move as well as she does for me, she doesn’t even move as well for mum. She was thrown out too!

I was in two minds as to whether to take Solei in for Triers or not…eventually decided I’d give it a go, cross my fingers and hope! Luck was actually on my side for once as they had so many entries in the obedience it was taking so long they’d decided to abandon the Heel on Lead and just do the Heel Free, Recall and Stays. So that was one less bit of walking for me to do! I’ve never done Heel Free in competition with Solei before, when we’re in a building he’s brilliant but on grass he usually wanders off because he doesn’t like the chair bumping, so on a hard surface he works much closer to me whereas on grass he works a good few feet away so it’s very difficult to keep the contact and concentration. I was sure he’d bugger off, cos he had when we’d done pratice outside the ring! To my delight he was brilliant. He started to lose concentration a couple of times but he stayed more or less with me the whole time 😀 I was absolutely over the moon with the round he worked! The only dodgy/funny bit was the ring was on a slope and as we were going up the slope my chair decided it couldn’t possibly manage anymore and stopped….luckily at that moment the command to “about turn” came 😆

Vale was 3rd in an enormous Waggiest Tail class….and to round off the day nicely when the obedience results were in Solei had come 6th in Triers! 😀 I couldn’t believe how good he was in both obedience classes, in the previous few days he’d been being a bit stupid and I honestly thought it would be a disaster. It was doubly nice because there was a proper companion show on the same day and I couldn’t decide which one to go to because it had a really nice class classification but no obedience….whereas this one had an awful class classification but obedience! So if the obedience had been a disaster it would’ve been so much better to go to the other.

I was starting to give up hope with Solei, he’s been such hard work and he’s so challenging…I was actually considering even giving up taking him to obedience classes for a while. Those results were exactly what I needed!