Sigh! Solei mated a bitch on Tuesday 22nd and managed to come back on three legs. Not sure what he's done, but obviously no agility for him on Thursday....am hoping we can avoid the chiropractor again! He's seen the vet who could find nothing wrong and said his pelvis was ok, but not sure if he'd be able to detect it or not? Either way although he's much improved he's not right enough for me to feel comfortable about him doing agility, so that's that til next year & probably another Chiro visit :-(

Shows the other weekend were good. On Saturday Ria had a 3rd of 6 in AVNSC Junior, and Sunday we FINALLY did it!! She was in AVNSC Puppy, which happened to be her and 3 Spinones, so I didn't think we stood a chance of even getting through the class. Well...Ria won the class and Best AVNSC Puppy, beaten by another Spinone for Best AVNSC, and then PUPPY GROUP 2! Over the moon :-D finally conquered the puppy group!

Then had an "interesting" agility session with Ria on Wednesday 30th. Her focus is still crap, really need to work on it and I want to try and get hold of Control Unleashed. We started work on the see-saw - letting her bang the end down, which she actually got comfortable with much more quickly than I thought she might. She's still all over the shop in general, had a very uncharacteristic moment where she ran off to another dog and just stood there barking at it - barking at dogs is nothing new, but she's usually the one running away from them! Never in her life has she run TO a dog before. She is a bit unpredictable with other dogs (nervous, fine with dogs she knows but will air snap at dogs she's unsure of) so I hope that's just a one off cos she's being weird in general atm (or maybe the agility just totally blew her mind and she'll learn to deal with it without doing that!)

So after disgracing herself in lots of other areas, Ria then impressed everyone with her tunnel prowess. Including me, actually! I had a tunnel at home for a month back in the summer (see August posts) and did quite a bit of work with her, including sending her to the tunnel from funny angles and blind entrances, but she's done so little since I was impressed at how much she remembered! She was doing some lovely blind entrances :-)

Then after the high of last weekend, this one was just a disaster. On Saturday we didn't get in the ring til gone 5pm (and I thought 4 was bad :-P) and the rings were completely covered in blue carpet - Ria was being a little sod and wouldn't stand and wouldn't get her head up off the floor - though moved quite well. She also shoe away from the judge when she got near her bum. She got a 2nd of 2, but the IWS that beat her went on to win the puppy group under the same judge, so we probably wouldn't have had much chance even if she had behaved!

Sunday was worse. There was food all over the ring floor, thought it was because of the Labs but actually I'm not so sure the bit that caused the main problem wasn't grated cheese and given we were by the stewards table and they hadn't stopped for lunch...
Anyway, Ria wasn't concentrating, all she wanted to do was get her nose down on the floor and eventually the judge came in as soon as she paused...she wasn't ready, and she barked and backed off. Judge didn't get to go over her so needless to say she was last! Judge had been looking at her before we started so that was frustrating, but I was mortified - I think from ringside it would've looked as if she'd tried to bite the judge. Really not good.

In other news I also have Ria working for a ball at home - excitedly. Whether this is novelty or not not sure (tried a ball before and she wasn't interested) - but I hope its not XD