Easter faults!

We spent Easter at the beautiful Duncombe Park for the second year, enjoying Hare n Hounds Easter Show.  And the story of the weekend was faults, faults and more faults!  I couldn't seem to get anything right with Freddie on Friday.  His eye seemed to be really off the ball.  He was focused in the queue but seemed very distracted in the ring.  But really thinking about it, I reckon I just wasn't working hard enough to keep him to task, so we picked up Es all round. 

Darcey was at her first outdoor show, and was still a little nervous since being attacked, but for the most part was a very good girlie.  She kept with me, did everything I asked, just very very slowly.  We had lots of clean runs, but her best performance of the weekend picked up 11 time faults, which I think says it all!  Lots of 'aaahs' at her cuteness toddling around the ring though.

And I am very pleased to report that Jasper Doodle, my goofy babyish big lad, had his first big boy clear round in his jumping.  Not fast enough for a place, but the fact that he concentrated and got round a whole course was amazing.  Now we just have to do the same at agility, as he seems to have developed an aversion to the dog-walk.  We will train this weekend with it on full height and see if we can make it fun again.

Freddie's (or rather my) performance picked up as the weekend progressed.  On Sunday we came very close to a clear round, but picked up what I thought was a very harsh refusal so ended up with five faults.  But on Monday morning we finally had a Freddie-worthy clear round performance and picked up 9th place in Grade 4 agility.  At least we had one rosette to bring home.

And of course on Saturday I judged.  I enjoyed this immensely, and really loved watching all the dogs.  The small and medium classes were slower than I would have liked, and I will remember this when designing courses in future, but my courses got a very good reception and I was pleased with how they ran.  I had small and medium agility graded 1-7, large agility combined 1-7 and large jumping graded 4-5.  The last class was my favourite, fast and furious with some brilliant runs.  This was my course plan: