The Sydney Royal…. I went, I had fun, I tried…. I pooed!

Mum & I went to the Royal Easter Show over the weekend. The Royal is an annual event. It is a big event. It isn’t just dog agility…. There are lots of other animals there looking their best. There is an audience. I must entertain the audience.

Well mum and I went along to do our best (and for me that was entertaining them).

We got there bright and early both days. On a big event like this they do a vet check on all of us before we start each day. I of course passed with flying colours.

Saturday we had 2 runs.

The 1st run up was Novice Agility. Here is a video of my run. Actually not a bad run. A couple of course faults but as the 1st run out in a super exciting environment mum was pretty happy.

The 2nd run for Saturday was the Excellent Jumping. Everyone kept talking about where to lead out to. Mum laughed. Something about “Start Line Stays having gone to sh*t”. I don’t know what she is talking about. I’m just really motivated and have lots of drive. See – check it out. I have been really consistent with this drive at lots of recent trials. But anyway back to this JDX run. There was something about mum wanting me to go one way. I decided to make up another course in another direction. Well that was the start of the run. The judge did that thing where he makes a cross with his arms. Hmmm DQ.. fair enough… so let’s have fun now. Well then I had an awesome run in the 2nd half of the course. Here is my JDX run if you want to check it out.

THEN Sunday morning we got up and went back again… phew tired before we even started but don’t worry I still got excited before we went onto course and was really driven at the start line.

1st up on Sunday was Gamblers. Gamblers is LOTS of fun. For most of the time there is no set course. While mum does walk the course before we run and has a plan it is pretty fluid. The idea is to get as many points as possible in the Opening Sequence (you have to get a minimum number of points but I find that pretty easy).The Opening Sequence is a set amount of time (usually 45 secs). And not only can I make up my own course but there are also no faults for popping weaves or dropping bars (you just don’t accumulate points for that obstacle). Then a whistle goes. When the whistle goes it is time to go over and do “the gamble”. The gamble is a series of obstacles that mum has to do at a distance from me (staying behind a line marked on the ground). Hmmm turns out if you get a fault in this part than you don’t get the gamble. Oppps dropped the 1st bar in the gamble. Mum may have called me a “little name” and then apologised to the viewing public (we have censored it with music for our video) but I know she still loves me. So close but so far…. Here is a video of our Gamblers run.

Then we got into the Open runs. These are a bit harder but we always give them a go anyway as they are a good opportunity to practice some of the harder moves in a trial environment and also Opens have a distance challenge.

The 1st of the Opens was Open Agility. Well mum was actually a bit excited about this. The distance challenge was straight out of the start line and my superb start line motivation and drive (i.e. lack of a start line stay) meant I actually got most of the distance work done before mum caught up. Just missed the last one. From there we had a couple of little faults but really liked the tunnel challenge… oh and missed the end. But what mum loved most about this run was watching it back later and seeing my tail wagging pretty much the entire course. I LOVED it! If you want to check out my tail wagging ADO run here it is.

And then last but by no means least. Open Jumping. Before we went in the ring I was hyped. Nana and The Toddler had come to watch us and I was ready to go…. pulling mum like a crazy dog to get started. Our turn finally came…. I took off…. and ran to the other side of the ring to have a poo. Yep I was that excited. No privacy out there so the crowd cheered (appreciate their support at this crucial time) and then that was it. Hmmm turns out that relieving yourself in the ring is one of those arm crossed DQ things. No more running and jumping at The Royal for me.

A big congrats to my mates who had lots of awesome runs and got to take home some pretty ribbons. Despite the lack of pretty ribbons for me we had an awesome time, tried hard, gave some new moves a try on course…. and well we entertained the crowd and had fun.

(And yes we missed getting a video of the Opening Jumping)