Dogs In Need Show

Well what can I say...

It has to be one of the best Dogs In Need Shows in a long while, with such amazing weather (and a smidge of rain) and great results for both Rusty and Ziggie.

We arrived at our campsite which is only a few minuites down the road from the actual show. After the caravan was set up we headed out for lunch at a local pup, the "Hungry Horse" which was very yummy!

The whole week was rather successful for both Ziggie and Rusty. Between them we walked away with many top 10 places over the week ranging from 1st place to 9th place. Rusty and Ziggie both got enough points to qualify them for the Dogs In Need G6/7 Final on the Sunday, and they actually qualified high up the points tables. Ziggie was surprisingly 3rd in the grade 6 table and Rusty lead the grade 7 table finishing in 1st.

The Thursday of DINAS is always the day off which we had a really nice chilled out day. We found a lovely little park that we walked around for a while just to give the mutts a bit of a run around without burning them out before the final days of competing. Resting your dogs is very important, otherwise they are all burnt out before they hit a decent age and it is possible for them to get injured if they are pushed too much. Ok lecture over...

The Finals day had eventually arrived, and in the morning we had to fill out our commentary cards which is always a laugh. This was Ziggie's first every G6/7 Dogs In Need Final, we have been in the Junior Finals here aswell though. I am a soo proud of Ziggie actually qualifying for this final and I am pleasantly surprised as this was my secret aim of the weekend. Now all I wanted was to have a lot of fun and to make sure everyone now knew how good my 9 year old doggie is. In my heart I knew that even with the best clear Zig could pull out of the bag we would be unlikely to get into the top places. The doggie that would have the most chance is of course our fantastic Rusty. She has the pace over the other dogs but as always it depends on the day!

The great photo of Ziggie was taken by a great photographer Trevor Greenslade, whose photos can be found at www.flickr.com/photos/agilityphotos

Ziggie was running 5 from the end and Rusty was running 2 from the end. My little Ziggie ran her heart our to produce a lovely clear, and to me we had already won even though her time was about 3 seconds slower than the winning time set by Nic Jones. Rusy's run was awsome and great to watch, it was just soo unfortunate that she picked up 5 faults on the A-Frame. Overall, we all had a great week away and I am proud of all of the achievements over the week. I took loads of photos of various classes over the Dogs In Need week which can be found at... www.flickr.com/photos/cleverpups

Some of my favourite photos that I took at this show (including the one of Rusty at the top of this post) are;

KC International Agility Festival

The KC Festival was held at a new venue this year, in the grounds of the beautiful Kelmarsh Hall which became the location of the companion dog show that was held on the Sunday.

It is possibly the largest agility show with 19 rings, however it didn't feel that big considering. Some of the people in the helpers camping were even as far away as the non-helpers camping. Luckily we managed to get camping in this kinda seperate area almost like the overflow camping, but we were not too faw away from the rings and it was cool as we were right on the edge of the exersize area.

Rusty and Ziggie managed to get a couple of places over the 3 days of the show but really it was a great start to the begining of our Sunny Agility Holiday.

On the saturday there was a jumping training ring so we took advantage of this to give Tia a little bit of ring experience which she seemed to really enjoy and she is really starting to show a lot of potential. Tia was hilarious whilst we were relaxing at the caravan when a gust of wind blew a roll of kitchen towel out of the door. Tia jumped but then started running around the garden with this roll, luckily it was almost finished but she had a great time playing with this new toy of hers.

On the Saturday afternoon where nearly all the classes had finished we were asked by a judge to run Rusty around it to see how it runs. It was great fun and I got to run Rusty around which was awsome! We actually stayed on the KC Festival Site until the Monday so that we could travel to the next camp site in preparation for our next show, Dogs In Need!