A-Frames and Trec

It was so nice to have a let up in the rain over the weekend! Last Friday I took the dogs to Quad Paws again to do three classes with Brodie. I would have run Brax but the weather was not nice enough and she is a bit of a diva! Brodie did a jumping, agility and games class (snooker) and clever puppy won them all! I'm so pleased that we managed snooker as it was quite a tricky set up and we were the only ones in beg, novice and senior who did it in time!

On Saturday I had a lot of training to catch up on at the field as I'd had to cancel a few sessions during the week. What a great bunch of enthusiastic handlers and lovely motivated dogs :) Matthew and I also did a bit of work with Brooke as she has just started doing the A Frame. We only did it low a few times as she was getting it quickly. She did do full height but I have no video of that yet. This was Brooke doing the low A Frame with a couple of obstacles before it.

On Sunday I went with my friend Kate to a Trec competition with the horses. It was soooo much fun and Max and Speedi were awesome!! We had to do a 'control of paces' section first which is to canter as slowly as possible and walk back as fast as possible through a 100m corridor. Kate's mare Speedi is an Spanish horse and is great at cantering very slowly and walking very fast!! Next we went off separately for the obstacle section. This involved things like rein back between two poles, opening and closing a gate, weaves poles (horse distance apart!!) leading them up a step, through a trailer and riding through a narrow corridor. It was all set on Keysoe's cross country course so there was big canters between each obstacle! We also had to jump a ditch, log, hedge, step up (with a ditch), go through the water complex and over a bank. The nice thing about Trec is you can miss out anything you don't want to do. Max and I gave up at the gate as the time was 10 mins to do 16 obstacles so I knew I couldn't waste time. In the afternoon we had a 12km ridden orienteering course and we only got lost once! Lots of lovely bridleways and places to canter :) There are checkpoints and each section is timed and has an optimum pace so you have to guess how fast you are going. We had such a great time and so did the horses! We haven't had the results yet as one pair got lost and hadn't got back until after we left!

The other exciting news is that I have the possibility of running someone's dog at agility both in training and at competition. I'm soooo excited about it as she is a stunning young dog who has got the basics and loves to work. It will be good for  me as a handler (as running Brodie is like putting on comfy slippers bless him!!) oh and just a bit of a difference from the shelties...! More about her at a later date :)