Agility Club - Starters Challenge

We qualified for the starters challenge over a year ago at Wellingborough 2012 and Ive been sooo nervous about it ever since and it was finally the day over the weekend! We were lucky to have Rhoda come along with us which was great for the support and definitely kept me from worrying so much. Thank you!! Im very lucky to train with people who have qualified themselves so got lots of bits of advice but oh my god I was nervous. Its seems to be a J9 thing to do well in the starters after Rhoda and Matthew both having done it and done well with Brax and Brodie as well as Paul and Chester winning it a couple of years ago! So I really wanted to do reasonably ok. We also had Chantal and Savannah the lovely tri sheltie bitch who is great in the final as well so it was really nice having someone else we knew in it too!

We finally got to the show after having to take a bit of a detour going the wrong way around the M25 because of an accident, first up was sheltie team. Rommy wasn't in it but Rhoda and Toad were with some other great shelties! I always love watching shelties run (obviously lol) so it was really nice getting to see a whole team of them :). They had 15f in the end so didnt qualify for crufts but I enjoyed watching them anyway. Maybe Rommy will get to have a go one day!

I'd entered Rommy in a couple of classes 3-5 agility and 4-6 jumping in the day as I knew the starters wouldnt be till late afternoon/evening. I know he needs to run some of the crazy off before he settles for some good runs. Unluckily enough the only 2 runs were on at exactly the same time and even though it was expected to rain it was blazing hot so by the second run his brain was gone. He ran the jumping first which was a really fast flowing course with quite a few trappy bits and a pretty tricky weave entry. My only really aim was to just send him in the weaves and hope he got them and he did! was so pleased I forgot I had to pull him off a jump after and got him E'd lol. Ooops oh well, he was a good boy bless him! The agility wasnt good but he did a lovely seesaw and the first time doing his running aframe to weaves in the ring and he got it perfectly so not all bad :)




We had A LOT of waiting to do after that as the final wasnt on till 6-6:30ish but I got to see champ! I have definitely been living under a rock somewhere because I hadnt seen Champ before in person and it was great! so many amazing dogs and handlers. the courses looked reaallllyyyyyy hard but it was really great to watch :D. I was really pleased in the end that a sheltie won the medium ticket! go shelties :D. One downside to watching the champ was the size of the crowd and it got me really worried about the starters. It did look like it was going to rain by then so I was still hoping a lot of people would leave and not bother staying to watch.

So after a lot of waiting it was raining and the starters was on, it was a really nice startery course and Rommy was on 5th and I was just really hope he didnt run out the ring... Turns out he didnt (YAY!) but he didnt go clear. He missed his weave entry because he was too busy looking at the judge in bright pink hahaha. Silly puppy lol. But I didnt give up! I kept running like everyone had told me too and as there was only 2 clears he ended up 4th! Bless him he tried so hard and he really did love the crowd. I think he thought he had a fan club lol.


For being such a good boy I bought him a hoof. Hes only ever had a hoof once before but i thought he deserved one and omg he loves it! He wont leave it anyone for fear of me steeling it lol. Wow it stink!
:)