Oh dear, haven't written anything down for a week and now I've lost myself! This'll just be for the boys, I'll cover Ria next time.

After some thinking I took Solei to agilty last Thursday - very controlled, and with nothing he could fall off and do himself any damage. He was so good! Especially to start with, drive and enthusiasm that don't usually go with Solei....wish I could bottle it :-)

The next day I took him and Elton to the park for a bit of obedience practice before the show on Sunday. His heelwork was a touch laggy, but his attitude was super! I actually managed to get him interested in toys and was able to reward by throwing a toy and then having a game of tug :-) He was enjoying it all so much, he even wound himself up to the point he took off in a couple of large uncontrolled circles lol and then came back once it was out of his system!

Elton wasn't quite so positive, his attention was all over the place and he was almost impossible to work with. However, we did manage some progress with stays!

On Saturday I wanted to get Elton out again because I really wanted to run through the whole test he was meant to be doing on Sunday. I did some stay and recall practice in the garden in the morning, which went well. Then I took him out in the afternoon....oh great! He was terrible. Couldn't run through it because he was being such a little sod, so ended up abandoning it and crossing fingers for the show :-P

Sunday dawned fine but windy. The show was on the edge of Dartmoor, so very exposed and the wind was horrendous. The show was in the weirdest little village, an estate in the middle of nowhere with no-one about and sheep and ponies roaming loose! Bit creepy lol

Anyway, Elton and Solei were both in the Pre-Beginner Stakes, and Solei was in Pre-Beginners too. Solei had been drawn to work 3rd in the Stakes, so I got there early. Bless him, it was so windy Elton actually got blown off his feet at one point. I've never seen him do heelwork quite like he did then, and I'm sure a lot of it was due to the wind....he's not the biggest of dogs!

It was....a bit of a disaster! The stakes are a special class, a mixture of the Kennel Club Good Citizen Scheme Bronze Award and the standard Pre-Beginners obedience class. One of the exercises they use from the Bronze is the gate, only the gate was too narrow for a wheelchair. The judge wouldn't tell me what was acceptable, so I had to guess and I didn't guess very well - Solei lost 3 marks, even though he did nothing wrong. So it must have been my method! We also lost 2 on the exam, which was again my fault. End result a not very acceptable score lol

On the plus side I'd learnt what I needed to improve on for Elton - kind of! I was expecting him to be terrible, and IMO he was - but I've always thought Elton is REALLY good when he's concentrating and working to his potential, so apparently Elton's terrible isn't so terrible lol. I fixed the exam issue (cos I knew what the problem was) so we were clear. I tried a different method for the gate which was slightly more successful - we only lost 2! lol

The stay for the stakes is only 1 minute long, but a minute is a very long time when you're in the ring....Elton stayed :-D Such a relief after the previous weekend.

End result, Elton tied for 9th/10th place! So we had a run off, which he won :-D Can't believe he beat Solei, and got a 9th place (28 entered). I just so want him to get over this go back to the Elton I had 6 months ago :-(

The Pre-Beginner stays saw the only rain of the day - just after we'd set the dogs up the heavens opened! Luckily it was just a shower, and soon stopped. Poor Solei has done lots of stays in the rain lol so he wasn't bothered, if unamused!

Then I worked his PreB round.....and I had the not-seen-on-grass Solei! He was wonderful....his heel on lead was superb, his heel free was not quite as good (not unusual - the longer heelwork goes on the worse Solei tends to get cos it gets scarier lol), but still not bad....his recall was gorgeous, but above all his attitude was fantastic! He wasn't *quite* as good as his other "light bulb" moment on grass last July when he had a 2nd, but close to - he ended up 8th, and they were only placing to 6th - he was only ¾ point out of the placings, which was a bit galling - but he got one of two judge's special award, and I was so pleased with the way he'd worked which is the main thing.

So from a bad start, the day actually ended very positively!