We Needn’t Have Bothered

I’m at the East Of England Showground today, near Peterborough. Yes, it's another dog show. L joins me for the day out and I even manage to blag her a free ticket. It’s a full country show type thing, so there’s an admission charge for non-competitors.

On the competition front, things start well and Doggo seems up for it on a difficult course until he goes over a jump that he wasn’t supposed to, he should have been doing the A Frame. It may have been more my fault than his, he was going for it and I just didn’t have tight enough control of him. On his next course we get our combined acts together and we get a rosette for 10th.

MD in the typical fashion he has now adopted, follows a good first run with a bad second one and then rounds the day off with another good one. Although none of them are clear rounds, he does seem to be making progress and he’s undoubtedly getting quicker.

In their final runs of the day and for the first time ever the two dogs compete over the same course. This is because it’s an open class, that means open to all grades, you don’t get many of these. Doggo is clear in 27.4, MD has just five faults (a pole down) in 28.7. So not much between them time wise but MD at the moment is a bit wayward and hardly takes the shortest route. So I expect him to be going faster than Doggo fairly soon, though we still need to cut the faults out.

We head home mid-afternoon, all runs complete and as it starts to rain. Well first I give MD a quick run out in the practice ring. He’s a dedicated dog, training in the rain, not that I gave him any say in the matter.

We are back in ample time to head in to town to watch the England match, we needn’t have bothered...

At least we rescue the evening by having a good meal in Scruffy’s, including an awesome cheeseboard.