Ok, as I was saying!

I entered Solei for his very first big obedience show, over two days. On Saturday he was in Pre-Beginners (bottom class) and on Sunday I put him in both Pre-Beginners and Beginners (next class up). Pre-Beg is the only class that doesn’t involve a retrieve, and his retrieve is *very* dodgy (as I seem to mention in every post...) – put it this way, in an unfamiliar environment he had yet to bring it back first time :lol:

On Saturday it poured with rain the whole time I was there…I got soaked to the skin, very cold and came home early :lol: Solei did a lovely round, and only lost 4 marks…he was lying joint 8th when I left and ended up just out of the top 10 – not bad in a class of 47 dogs! Though because he lost less than 10 marks he still got his first Certificate of Merit :-D

On Sunday I wanted to work him in Pre-Beg early but the stays were at 11am and of course sod’s law, they stopped as he was the next dog to work! He was really fired up and focused, by the time we’d done the stays I’d lost him so put him away for a bit…then they stopped for lunch and it was a two hour break because of a meeting. Long story short I ended up having to work his rounds straight after each other, which does not sit well with Solei at all. He isn’t very confident anyway, and finds the chair bumping over grass quite scary so tends to jump out to the side and/or lag behind…he’s getting better, but he gets worse as the round goes on, so if I go straight from one to another the previous will be fresh in his mind and he’ll tend to lag from the start.

Anyway, we worked Beginners first and he did the retrieve!! He wasn’t in the least bit interested in retrieving (or even holding it) outside the ring, so I really didn’t think he was going to fetch it. It wasn’t desperately clean, but he did it! That was the highlight of my weekend :lol: He’s come such a long way – this was a dog with zero toy drive that wouldn’t hold anything in his mouth and had zero interest in play.

Pre-Beginners his heelwork was as expected – laggy! Heel Free in particular was very expensive – he lost 11 in total and I think 7½ was on that – he ended up ages behind me at one point! Though the judge marked very strictly, and so even with that he was still 13th out of 47.

In Beginners, he was 7th out of 49!! Losing 6¼, so got a Certificate of Merit there too :-D Very proud of him for his first weekend of big shows!

I came away from the show freshly inspired and with a couple of new ideas. Having put them into practice, just a week later Solei was doing this...

Wow. I really never thought I'd see Solei with a dumbbell! That video shows the sit & hold as well ;)

The next weekend Elton attended a championship show and was placed 4th in Junior Dog, the dog that won the class going on to get the CC. Oh, and at the same show Solei passed his Bronze Good Citizen Award.

Just 6 days later it was off to another champ show! Elton was once again in the cards, getting a 5th in Junior Dog and then to my delight coming 3rd in a very large and diverse Junior Dog Stakes! The Stakes also had prize money and he won £10!!

Next up was a companion show, where the judge was a bit of a surprise – having judged the same show the year before! I’m not showing Solei this summer (bar obedience & maybe the odd brace!) and I didn’t want to put Elton in, so that left Darwin and Vale. I knew she wasn’t overly keen on Darwin - having had him under her last summer – but he has matured and as we were there I thought he could go in anyway. He suffered his first ever defeat in AV Non-Sporting :lol: coming 2nd.

Vale did AV Sporting pedigree class for fun (not being the right “type” I don’t usually do the pedigree classes with her) and was thrown out, so we returned to our usual favourite of novelty AV Veteran! Which she promptly won :-D She’s such a lot of fun to show and I’ll be very sad when she can’t do it anymore (this could well be the last summer I’ll be able to take her round the shows, she’ll be 11 in September)

Today we went to an open show, for a change! My first general open show since Elton won the Puppy Group at the beginning of May. A friend had been under this judge with her Phalene, in an Any Variety Not Separately Classified class, and she’d called her a Japanese Chin. So I’d thought very hard and debated much about whether to enter or not! Eventually decided I would, because I wanted to go to a show and we had Papillon classes this time, so at least she couldn’t mistake Elton for a Chin!

Sorry to say I was proven correct! She didn’t look at Elton, he was on the end of the line and slightly round the corner, and when she came down the line she didn’t even bother to walk all the way to him(!) He was placed last. I’d also entered Darwin, who fared slightly better – he was 2nd in Open, but behaved ABOMINABLY! I think he may well have been in with a chance at winning it, but he wouldn’t move properly and was obsessing with getting his head down on the mat. Dogs :rolleyes: