Happy, happy, happy :-D

Went to a midweek conf show last Wednesday, there was a good entry of 17 Papillons and Elton only went and won Open and Best of Breed! There were some really, really nice dogs there so I'm ecstatic. Unfortunately on this occasion (relatively unusual for an open show) our breed judge wasn't doing the group, and the group judge didn't share her views - but hey ho, over the moon with his BOB :-)

Ria got 2nd in AVNSC, despite a slightly hairy moment when I thought it was going to clash with the toy group - which did neither of us any favours, I think she may well have done better had we not both been a touch frazzled! (I was rubbing off on her..oops)

Then that evening I still went to agility - I think Ria was a bit tired really, she wouldn't engage with toys at all - only food. The show had been held on a large show ground and she'd had 5 very good runs round it at intervals throughout the day! Coupled with going almost straight from the show to agility (5 minutes at home in between, to drop Solei off).

We had a fun tunnel relay at the end of the class, she was first to go (we thought that would be wise given she was very likely to get higher and higher the more dogs that ran!) and we actually did it without incident :-) (and our team won lol)

I was very pleased with Elton....he did slightly varied things to the rest of the class for almost the whole night because the confidence just isn't there post whippet (PW), so have taken him back a bit...but he didn't shut down completely at any stage, and he even did a tunnel at the end :-) He used to have a "tunnel gear" - he can be quite a fast little dog and he loved tunnels and used to be even faster the moment he entered a tunnel - then PW he wouldn't go near one, so for him to go through one was good progress, even if it was very slow.

Had another show (obedience/breed) that Saturday (so just over a week ago now) which was a bit of a disaster on most levels - breed ring was small, grass was long, Elton mucked about and didn't show well. In the obedience, Solei opted not to come with me on heel free again and had a major blank with retrieve (we got there eventually) whereas Elton was beautiful in everything else but wouldn't retrieve (am not all together surprised - as it was a fairly new behaviour and not yet a very confident one it's broken down now he's more anxious PW). I also put him in Novice and trained that. However, am well pleased with the fact he did Novice stays on his own (without Solei) and didn't break :-) and then did his Beginner stays (with Solei) and didn't break there either! Ria had a 2nd in her class (beaten by a Weim), and beat the Kooiker that took Best of Breed at a recent major championship show! So rather ecstatic with that too ;-)

Have just been to this weeks agility classes - interesting week, turned up at the equestrian centre to find they'd resurfaced without telling anyone and we couldn't use it. Luckily they have an outdoor venue not too far away (the one I'd been taking them to on a Saturday morning prior to Ria coming in season), and it was a beautiful evening - so we all went out there instead! Really impressed with Ria - although she'd been going up to the venue before, we were in a small fenced off section alone - she's never worked in the main area alongside other dogs. Tonight she did, and she was such a good girl, despite all that was going on around her. She only went running in circles :X once, towards the end of the class so I think concentration limit had been reached!

It was nice to have Elton in a different environment - I felt more comfortable about going off and doing my own thing whilst we were waiting, he showed a small amount of interest in toys on a couple of occasions, and it was also lovely that there were only four dogs in his class, and I know all the people very well (3 of them are in Ria's class, and one is the mum of one of those) which helped a lot for relaxation (for me lol).