We went to Monmouth at the weekend for the Wye Valley Agility Show, Beryl arrived just before lunch to pick us up. Finn was very excited all morning as the pile of camping stuff in the hallway grew bigger and bigger. He kept running in and out of the house to check if she had arrived yet and when she did finally turn up he squeezed through the hedge to go and meet her. It's only about a 2 hour drive, but we had to pick her caravan up en route so it was about 6 o'clock by the time we got there.
Setting up camp, Beryl has the caravan we are in the tent.
Finn is supervising and guarding the bottle of blackberry wine.
I had put some sausages and beans into a wide necked vacuum flask so I didn't have to do any cooking, so after a quick meal we had a walk along the river and into the nature reserve next to the camp site. I actually managed to keep Finn out of the water,(I told him he wouldn't be sleeping in the tent if he got wet)
In the morning it was down to the job in hand, after breakfast there were courses to be walked, although I didn't have any early runs and took my time getting ready.
Walking the course.
Finn worked well in 2 out of 3 of his runs although we are still chasing that elusive clear round! I don't quite know what happened in the 3rd one which just happened to be the only one of the weekend that I managed to get any one to video. The lure of the tunnel underneath the dog walk was just too much! When I first started doing agility with my previous dog, Jax, it was quite a popular set up, but Finn has never come across it before and it was just too tempting. After I got him back on the dog walk and over the next jump the wind gusted and blew about 3 jumps over, the judge called stop, but I didn't hear him and carried on, after all we'd already been eliminated, and Beryl turned the camera off and missed the rest of the round.
Tansy doing the whole course.
Cooling off in the river afterwards. I don't know what the building in the background is, but the lower level looks like a derelict warehouse with a new, modern building on top of it.
After a hard day it was time to relax and catch up with some old friends. This is Misty, Finn thinks she's rather nice but they were both too tired to play properly!
The ruins of Monmouth Castle, just across the river to the camp site.
There was a quiz that evening andwe managed to get a team together and guess what... we came second! There was only 1/2 a point in it!
The next day we had 3 early runs, so no lie in for us. Up at 6 for a run round the field before breakfast and more course walking. There were 2 fairly straight forward courses and 1 complicated one. Finn was working well- shame about the handler! On the first one I nearly went wrong right at the end, but just managed not to mess up completely and in the second I just couldn't seem to get in the right place at the right time to get Finn over the jumps smoothly. The complicated one ran really smoothly and we only had 2 poles down. We did all 3 one after the other with no rest in between so Finn had a well deserved swim afterwards as a reward.
Shakin'. See the droplets of water, he does like sharing!
Please throw another stick Mum
We had quite a long rest after that, but our last class was the brace, were I had to run both Finn and Tansy. Beryl had to stand in the middle of the course with Finn while I ran Tansy round the first 10 jumps, then I had to change dogs and run Finn round the second half of the course. It was good fun to finish off a really nice show. Thank you Wye Valley dog club for organising a lovely show.
A last dip in the river before going home.
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