Finn's Second Show

We made it to Worcester for Finn's second show at the weekend, after lots of panicking about fuel prices and the state of personal finances. Incidentally I filled up at our local petrol station at £1.22 a litre, prices enroute ranged upto £1.32 a litre. How can this variation in price be justified? The round trip was 270 miles and I used just over 1/2 a tank. We went up on Friday night, camping at the venue, with other members of Cantref Gwaelod, the agility club we belong to. (There is a legend attached to the name which I will tell you another time). We had stopped at Halfway, one of our favorite stopping places, on the way and Finn had a good run in the forestry there. After putting the tent up we had a walk with Beryl and Tansy, a red merle australian shepherd, and then had dinner.

Finn was really good in the tent overnight. I took his new favorite toy, a fairly lifelike mallard whose quack mercifully didn't last too long! When I woke up in the morning he was washing it. After breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon and homemade bread there were courses to walk, for those people who had entered all the classes they could. Somehow I missed entering one, so I didn't have anything to do for most of the morning, except watch. Finn found this very frustrating as he thought he could do it much better than anyone else!!! Eventually my first course was ready to walk. Oh my God, what had I let myself into I thought on the first walking,but after going round and round several times I thought Hey this is a nice course and was really looking forward to running it. About 1/2 an hour into it, long before our turn came (our running order was 194) the class had to be stopped as the judges wife had fallen in another ring and had to go to hospital, naturally the judge went with her. Another judge was found,the course altered and re walked and the class restarted. It was well after lunch when we finally got to run. Of course we were eliminated but he tried his best which is all I ask of him (apart from expecting him to enjoy himself of course). He fell off the dog walk because he didn't steady himself properly, but it didn't phase him and he went back and did it properly, even getting the contact at the end! Then went on to fly the see saw! The second class was a lot simpler and after totally demolishing the first jump and getting E'd for backjumping he did a lovely round.

The rain which had been threatening allday finally came down just as we were having a final run round the exercise field before coming home, so the tent was WET. We left the field at 5.30 and arrived home without stopping at 8.45. Apparently it had been wet all day at home!

I've just been back to the garage I filled up aat on Friday and diesel is now £1.26 thjat's 4 pence in 4 days.

Here are some early morning pictures around the showground, taken at the same venue 4 years ago when I was competing with my 2 previous dogs, Jax and Kelly.