Last weekend Brody and I, once again, travelled away for a dog show. We left school by about 3.30, but unfortunately the motorway traffick really slowed the trip.... we limped past Sylvia Park about 5.10pm! So we arrived in Kawerau (totally in the middle of no where!!) about 8.30pm, and had to pitch the tent in the horrible volcanic ground, with the monster mozzies, in the dark.... Luckily Roy was being lovely and held the torch for me!
From club there was Chris and Sybill (see the photos to the left), Lise & Roy with Bessie & Bruiser, and Karen with her dogs.
Saturday was our first ever time in Novice, so it was very exciting and scary! Of course I didn't watch how they were doing the numbers properly, so got Brody out far to early, and then when we went in the ring, he was all laggy. So we started training pretty quickly with our heelwork. But I was happy with his recall - only 1/2 a point off for a crooked sit, and he did his first ever dumbell retrieve pretty well!!! Only 1/2 for mouthing, 1/2 for a crooked finish.
After competition Lise and I took the dogs for a swim in the lovely clear stream down the back of the camp site. The water was great.... but very cold! It took some convincing to get Bessie and Brody in, and Bruiser refused! Lise and I even went for a swim too, it was very refreshing.
Sunday I was a little more relaxed, as we had already trained on Saturday, and usually Brody isint so good on the second day. Also it helped that I turned up at the ring to find that I had to go straight in so not much time to warm him up!
His heelwork was pretty good, I was resonably happy with it, and he did a nice recall and retrieve (some slight crooked sits etc).
Then we had the stays. Pretty much the most drama filled stays I have had in a long time! As we walked away in the sit stay, all you could hear was "time, time, time....". Out of our half of dogs in the stay, there were
only three left at the end of the sit stay! About 10 dogs broke!
Wow, and Brody didnt break! Then in the down stay, I could pretty much see Lise watching Brody and having heart attacks... the stewart even came up at the end and said that Brody was really unsettled, and looked like he was going to break. Wow, stressful!
Brody and I were then told that we had to do a runoff (WOW!) with the dumbell. I was just so happy that Brody had a good round! We did an ok retrieve, and ended up second! Not bad for our first Novice competition!!
proof), lots of cows and chickens, and other things to get into!
Then we had dinner, and a few more games - including a weave challenge, where they set up 48 weaves and timed how long it took to get each dog through, which was fun! Brody actually did pretty well, getting through then all to pop out two from the end, but he was a bit slow. The photo is of Rachel and Quest. 