Monday 8 October 2007

Southdowns - Judging

I am playing catch up here as have got a bit left behind!

An early start to go and Judge at Southdowns - one frustrating bit was that there was some temporary traffic lights 5 mins from the show and at 7am-ish we were sat at the lights in a Q for about 20 mins argh! I hate having to hurry to sort out my course (hence prefer to judge at a weekend show!), luckily we had left in plenty of time and I had enough time to fine tune the course,they actually delayed judging as so many competitors got caught up there.

Below is the course (more of less!) that I used for small 3-5 Combined and Large 3-5 (2 parts), lots of people said they enjoyed the courses even people who did not go clear and for me that always makes it worthwhile. One unfortunate part was that it poured with rain for about the first hour and that was then the smalls were running and some of them were not happy about the weather with one dog running back to its car and one refusing to get off the start-line!


The last class I had was Large Combined 4-5 Jumping, I was pleased with how this ran, most of the faults across both classes were due to the plastic jump poles and in this class a few handlers did not realise that if they ran down the left of the last 2 jumps unless they had a good direction command or were up with the dog some dogs came at the last jump at an angle and ran by, most people saw this and crossed behind the last 2 if they could not be there but it was a shame to see a few good runs spolit by a run by at the last :(


Roger did ok with Josie and JaiJai in Joyce Hazels part of 3-5 Jumping coming 5th with JaiJai and 10th with Josie.

Funny for the day - walked Fleet at lunchtime and he ran off with someones ball on a rope and would not come back....its a bit of a pet hate of mine when people throw toys in a small area - I know I should have a bit more control of Fleet in this situation and its something I am always working on but when a ball sails past his nose for him its very tempting!

It was a long day with nearly maximum number of dogs entered (435) so it was nice to get home and have a rest!

1 comment:

Hudsondoglets said...

Great idea to publish your courses. They look good to me and very suitable for the level.

I know exactly what you mean about ball throwing in exercise areas. Really annoying to say the least and downright dangerous in some cases.