Well, dear reader, finally we have good news to report! Our princess the beloved Sen, has earned herself a bit of Kudos! Yes folks, Schipperkes have arrived to WA agility. It is a pity only one of them, but however it was fun fun fun!
Sen, Miss Novice Jumping (300) 2013
Madame attended her first ANKC competition on the weekend. Not a brand we usually go for as it has funny stuff like "wee saws" which are miniature see-saws. I was not sure what Sen would make of one because she has never seen one in her life, but she took it in her stride. The theory goes that "dogs are dumb and cannot tell the difference between a dogwalk without slats and a seesaw". Hmm, as you can imagine that that was not an idea birthed by agility people.
Anyway it was a very fun night, with a superduper start during which Sen pleased the mama by starting with a win. Yeah baby! we needed a boost. I'm still getting used to a dog that is actually fast and independent (yeah like I learned her hey hey), so I am causing huge amounts of hinderance to her. I'm a bit stuck in Bigi micromanagement mode, but I'm learnin!
She cruised to a win in Novice Jumping. I had somewhat over-entered her, in novice jump+agility and the two open classes. The second class of the night was Open Agility. She made the distance challenge look easy-peasy but then mama screwed up a tunnel enty handling and it it was all over pavlova.
No worries, and on to Novice Agility. This I believe resulted in a +10 result, but things here are neither organised nor transparent and so unless you qualify you don't usually get to see the placings etc. I was way pleased with myself in this run. I saved a tunnel refusal and something else that I cannot remember now after a few glasses of celebratory wine. I was happy it was not NQ.
Then Open Jumping. The distance challenge (for those in Finland or not addicted to dog sports, it means there is a line on the ground that the handler stays behind, while sending the dog to obstacles on the "other side"). In this particular case it involved sending them over a near jump, then to New Zealand, and then to another jump. I fully expected that this was beyond us as we have done scant distance training, but madam at last reached, say, Macquarie Island and damn near got to the NZ mainland. Truth is I should have pulled her out of that run as she was already over-tired. Man those jumps are big for her - it is a bummer being close to the bottom cut-off for a height class but so it is. All the other Mini dogs seemed waaaaay bigger.
There was somewhat of a severe lack of small dogs. Clearly the colonials have not yet learnt that all breeds can do agility, and the scene is disappointingly bc-centric, but perhaps not so much so as ADAA. A few greyhounds were spotted (yeees!) and there was at least a bit of breed diversity.
We also discovered a new great walking park! Hooray, somewhere to spend those hours waiting for competitions to start. There are many ways to spend it, including swimmng in duck ponds until you smell like a sulfur works!
The walk was looong and Bigi was not up to it, so I did what all self-respecting small dog owners do when you have no pram available, and just perched him over my shoulder. This was very entertaining for other park users and no doubt did not do much to advance the cause for equality for small dogs.
