So sorry we have been a bit quite of the blogging front of late. There has been a lot going on in the world of 1st World Dog plus mum has also been busy with that work stuff that she does (or whatever it is when she leaves the house without me). The good news is we have been going to lots of agility trials over the last few weekends… we just haven’t had a chance to write up blog posts about them… so here we go with a summary….
Let’s start with Sutherland… Now this was a few weeks back now. The weather was HORRIBLE! Cold, rainy and windy. In fact at one point mum decided to move into my crate with me and give me cuddles… I think it was less about cuddling me and more about her wanting to stay warm and day. She even took some photos with “crate-cam”…
Oh so the agility runs down there at Sutherland. Well RQH Jumping we had an awesome run. Great moves on mum’s behalf and I was firing. It was PAWsome! Except no one managed to get it on video.
The rest of the day was varied. My JDX run had a couple of faults and an unfortunate DQ jumping the bar from the wrong direction.
ADO was the tale of 2 runs… I broke the start (ahhh…. the start line stays) but we did things a bit differently to a lot of other people when mum ran down the exclusion zone using blinds (most others did front crosses or rears) and it worked really well for us (except where mum nearly tripped over her own feet in the 2nd last jump, spoke and because I looked at her I dropped the bar).
And then there was AD…. Yeah I think that might be all mum wants to say about that one. Mum and the judge were laughing afterwards that she had said “when you are ready Mel… not Bodhi”… I just took it as a sign we were ready to go and I went.
So despite the weather we still had some fun runs and saw some friends have some great runs too. Here is a quick video run down of what we did get on video. A special credit to a little friend Jilla. Jilla was only given a month to 6 weeks to live… well 6 weeks ago now. Sutherland was the last trial her mum had entered her in before she got sick and her mum decided that given she was still running around happy she would let her run. Well run she did and Jila got a quallie and it was the quallie she needed to get her Masters Jumping title. It was very special as it still seeing Jilla about today, not running,but supporting her family and friends at the trial and looking as spritely as ever.
And then we headed up to the Central Coast a fortnight later. This time the sun was out but it was seriously windy…. to the point that the wind was knocking off bars (and even an entire jump) before I had even got to them on the course…. How can I be Cyclone Bodhi if the wind has blown the bars off before I even get to that part of the course! Watch closely the ADO run on the video and see if you can pick which ones I knocked and which ones the wind blew off before I got there (hint: the 2nd last jump is where the whole jump blew over).
Besides the wind there were some great runs…. our JDX run 1st up was a cracker. I was on fire.
And our Novice Agility run was Ohhhh So Close. Now we got a quallie in Novice Agility waaaayyyy back in our very 1st Agility trial… and we have never had a clean run since. I have always been giving mum something for us to work on… contacts, weave entries… and this time… the table! Ok so I may have skidded off the table in other runs but this run it was the only thing that I did. Everything else was perfect… yep…. just came out of the weaves, jumped onto the table and then… well skidded off the other side. When I hopped back on I stayed there very nicely and then continued on with a great run. Oh so close…. it gives mum hope we can do this.
And then the RQH Jumping run…. did someone say yoghurt jumps??? Yeah one of my mate’s mums has the best yoghurt drops. These things are like little power boosts…. well that is how this story is going anyway. My mate’s mum gave me one just before I went into the ring and watch me go…. I am off… bars are down… It is on… and then after the first 6 jumps it seems to wear off and we finish off the run with some nice stuff including a “reverse spin”.
We had lots of fun, nailed all my contacts and weave entries and had a great day. Here is the videos from the Central Coast.
We are also lucky enough to have one of our agility friends taking some photos of me that day…. check ’em out…
And finally today at Manly…. weather was a gorgeous winter’s day…. perfect for catching some rays between runs.
We went in hopeful… we are sitting on 2 quallies in Novice Gamblers and had Gamblers 1st up in the catalogue. We like Gamblers it is fun. While mum plans a course for the “opening” it is all about getting as many points as we can in 45 secs and we go hard. If I use a bit of independent thinking in that opening sequence that is ok… it just means mum just needs to think on her feet. Racking up the points in the opening has never been our issue. The challenge for us is normally keeping all the bars up in the “close”. That is a short sequence of obstacles where mum is outside an exclusion zone and we only have a short period of time to do it. Again time has not been the issue here… until today. Yep got enough points in the opening, did all the obstacles in the close (including the contact on the A-frame) but because I got a little distracted by the scribes table on route it turns out we ran out of time… opps… next time go directly to the finish and do not pass by the scribes table. Sorry about that mum.
We missed videoing the Novice Agility run but the good news is… I didn’t slide off the table. Instead dropped a couple of bars and missed the weave entry…. all things I did perfectly the weekend prior.
Excellent Jumping was fun. Mum and another friend spent a lot of time during the course walking looking at the different ways they could handle a tricky bit in the middle. Mum decided she would try a “nose grab” and blind. Our friend decided to try a tandem turn. We like this Euro handling stuff we are learning as it gives us lots of different options as to how a course can be handled. After a little visit to the judge to say Hi at the start we headed off. Great start except mum’s idea went a little off plan when I missed a jump on the way to the “nose grab”… she just didn’t quite line it up as well as she had planned. But the rest of the run was awesome with some nice blinds and a great home run.
RQH Agility was lots of fun too with straight fast lines… although they can be problematic for mum when she needs to get me into the opposite end of the tunnel to what is at the end of one of those straight lines. OK so I took the “wrong” end.. but what can I say… it was straight in front of me. Mum could only laugh. She had run as hard as she could to get down their and pull be around the other way…. just not quite enough.
And here are some of the Manly videos.
We have another trial again next Saturday and hopefully mum gets this work stuff under control so we can spend a bit more time doing fun stuff together.
Oh and did I mention that I got to finish today with Tim from Both Ends of the Lead loosening up my muscles and we also won a very cool doggie blanket in the raffle.
Bodhi
1st World Dog 