Variety has been the name of the game for Jasmine and Flyte over the last few weeks. We’ve been out and about to various Kennel Club and UK Agility shows and a Canine Hoopers UK show.
Being based in the East Midlands gives us a great central location and most weekends there is an agility event happening within an hour’s drive from home. April has seen us ping-ponging from county to county taking in shows in Leicestershire, Derbyshire, Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire in all weathers – that’s Britain for you!
After a slightly wild start to our runs at the Spring at Market Harborough Show, Flyte became more focussed as the day wore on finishing the day with a Grade 7 Jumping win with Jasmine coming fifth in Anysize Steeplechase. The glorious Easter weather certainly suited us and Team Flyte didn’t put a foot/paw wrong all day at the Adams Easter Show getting placed in all three of our runs coming home with two wins and a third place. Lincoln show a week later, on the other hand, was a little disappointing performance-wise when we managed to get eliminated in all three of our classes – ooops!, one of which was the Low 550 National Jumping Cup qualifier. The degree of difficulty in the courses caught us out a little, certainly testing our skills to the limit, but we did enjoy running them all the same even though it now means more in the way of homework! Jasmine on the other hand managed to save the day with a fabulous fourth place in the Allsorts Jumping. We ended our agility show run with a day out at the WOF Agility Centre UKA Show and despite the freezing temperatures and rather forceful winds, Flyte put in some good performances getting a third place in the Novice Agility and Jasmine a lovely clear round in the Casual Steeplechase.
At Easter we also found time for some Hoopers competition with Jasmine making her debut in the competition ring. She was an absolute star finishing in first place in both her Veteran Hoopers and Veteran Tunnellers classes – who says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks! Flyte worked brilliantly too getting a second place in her Tunnellers class and yes we made a couple of tiny errors but that’s because I was pushing the boundaries to see what we can and can’t do distance handling-wise under pressure in the competition ring. We are not a million miles away from where we want to be so hopefully over the summer we can just tidy up those loose ends and start nailing those clean runs.
Well after all that activity it’s time for us to take a break and recharge our batteries ready for the next stage of the competition season. The Satnav is set for a very different county ……. Cornwall here we come!!!
Maria, Flyte and Jasmine