Cippenham Agility Show 2007

Supadogs is such a huge show. 12 rings of agility each day and agility for 7 days straight! I think I am pretty agility addicted but it is even too much for me! I was entered for 4 of the days and only ended up showing for 3. I am glad I did not compete everyday! It was muddy and wet for many of the days and the week didn't start out great for me on Saturday. But luckily we were not camping at the show this year (stolen caravan and all that!) and I was glad to go home each night to take a hot shower and collapse in my bed. But more about Super Supadogs later!

On Sunday instead of going to Supadogs I went to a more local and smaller (5 rings) show at Cippenham. Well that was a very good choice on my part as we did much better there. The reason may have been that I was more relaxed because the show was smaller. It certainly was not because the weather was any better as it rained there too! Anyway at Cippenham both Zen and Hex were little stars with each one winning all three of their classes! (Zen's classes had around 60 medium dogs and Hex's class had over 100 small dogs) I must say that was the greediest we have ever been at an agility show; winning 3 out of 3 with two dogs. 6 trophies and 6 red rosettes! This also put Hex 1/2 way towards her advanced status!

Here is a photo of the two winners smiling!

Who are now very bored with photo taking!

This show was made so much nicer because Liz was there with her mom and they set up ringside with a tarp over the cars and a nice dry place to sit and watch some runs. Liz even brought a super picnic with fresh salad and veggies from her garden. Now that's the way to enjoy an agility show!

The best part of the show was seeing Liz get her first ever agility trophy with one of her super Golden retrievers named Archie. Archie got third place in a jumping class of almost 200 dogs. What a fabulous achievement for a handsome SHOW bred golden retriever! Liz has been getting such nice comments from the judges on seeing both her goldens running with such enthusiasm and attitude. I wish I had some of those runs on video but it was too rainy to bring the camera out. Liz also did well in a subtly tricky ABC agility with a 4th or 5th place out of 100+ dogs. I think Liz was pleased to run some nice courses that actually required some handling challenges for her and her dogs. It is boring for some people stuck in Grades 1 and 2 to always have to run straight up and down courses. She trains her dogs well and loves to have some good challenges to be able to show off her dogs strengths. Her goldens will never beat the super fast Border collies on straight lines but they can do some nice work and love to show off on the more tricky courses. I really enjoy seeing judges that can design fun courses for the dog but that challenge the handler. It is a real science to designing those types of courses. Once I get my computer back I will try and post the ABC course as it was also the same agility course that I ran with Zen and Hex.

I will post more about Supadogs later; it was an action filled week of mud drenched agility!