Supa Zenny!

This was Zen's week for sure! It was not what I expected and I must admit I thought it was going to be HEX who would win the Supadogs final! But I underestimated my Zen as usual...

So we went to Supadogs for three days; one of them being the qualifier day for the Friday finals. There was ALOT of rain and alot of mud but it was still a good week. Zen struggled a bit against some of the faster medium collies but she still pulled off one 1st place, two 3rds, two 4ths and one 6th place. Hex was a superstar and came away with one 1st, two 2nds, one 3rd and one 4th. The funny thing is that both of them got a 1st over the same jumping course and got E'd over the same jumping course!

On Tuesday, the qualifer day, both Zen and Hex ran clear in the qualifer jumping and agility classes. There was 165 small dogs in Hex's classes and 128 medium dogs in Zen's classes. These clears qualified both of them for the Friday finals! Hex was actually seeded 1st in the finals for having the highest placed double clears of all the small dogs!

These were the trophies on offer for the Supadogs 2007 Finals. Aren't they gorgeous? I took the photos so that I could mentally picture one or two of them in my house. haha I have my own version of a mental management program!

We arrived on Friday for the finals with NO cheering crowd! Dennis was home putting up caravan security thingies and Lisa was home preparing for our long trip up to Hinkley. So it was me, Zen and Hex all by ourselves! Luckily Sue also qualified for the finals with her Novice dog Millie so that I had Sue and Barry to sit with, video and cheer for each other.

Here is Zen and Hex in my little car waiting to run in the finals.

My old girl Pax qualified for the Supadogs finals twice. The first year she got 4th and the second year she got 5th and we always missed out on the good trophies. Last year Zen qualified for the first time but ONE knocked bar in the second round put us out of the trophies again! I was determined this year to win one of those Supa Crystal trophies! I was so focused on Hex winning as I did not think Zen would win on the flat out open courses against the faster and larger border collies. But luckily one of the judges put up a suprisingly tight little course that just suited Zen down to a tee.

Unfortunately that tight little course caught out Hex and I and she got Eliminated on the first round. Boo hoo. She did redeem us by flying around the second round agility course and she was over 3 seconds faster than any other small dog in the final. Of course it was a bit of coulda, woulda, shoulda! She ended up in 7th over all in the small dogs finals.

Here is Hex flying in the finals.

Zen won the first round which put us running LAST for the final agility round. No pressure! I liked this photo of her even though it was taken from behind her. It shows her grace and drive.

Here are some cool photos of Zen jumping. Notice how her front legs are crossed and she seems to be turning in the air over the jump. She is so incredibly agile.

In the agility round I played it safe and actually held her contacts! Sue thought that was quite funny but I had the champ show the next day and that was more important to me. Luckily Zen had been in the lead from the first jumping by around 1.5 seconds (I found out later) because one of the super medium collies had a faster agility round by a full second. So in the end Zen won the Medium Supadogs Finals by a nice margin of .5 seconds! Whew!

Here is a photo of a happy me and a Zen who hates having photos taken after agility!

Finally here is a photo of Sarah Osbourne's Touchango Top Gear (Tig) with Zen. Tig easily won the Supadogs Novice Final which was a fitting end to his fantabulous Novice career! Sarah and Tig also train with Lesley Olden so we wanted to take this photo for her. Lesley has kept us on the right path in training our dogs. I must say that Sarah looked as cool as a cucumber in that final! Way to go Sarah and Tig!