Raven at Perth Royal 2005

Monday September 25th 2005
Trial #35 - PERTH ROYAL SHOW.. Well I had hoped we might be able to break our Royal jinx this year but not to be unfortunately. However considering last years performance compared to this year I was absolutely impressed with our improvement. We did some good work out there and I am sure Raven and I will crack the Royal in the future. Masters Agility was first and after micromanaging her through some very tough bits and finding myself on the wrong side of her once, we were on the home stretch when a tricky threadle was the last challenge and unfortunately she took the 2nd part of it the wrong way - other than that we would have made it! Open Agility she took the bar of the spread down in a hurry to turn back to me as she knew that after the spread there was nothing (course was nested to Masters), Masters Jumping she took an off course that I just did not see coming! Other than that the run was fantastic and I was very impressed with her distance work. Open Jumping, our last course of the day and Raven very uncharacteristically, went past a jump that I had front crossed to turn her onto - she flew by me in the smallest gap, it astonished me really! So a bit of the fluke faults happening - a couple of handler errors as well - but she and I really enjoyed ourselves today. She kept just about every single bar up, did great contacts, held her table nicely, and I got the best lead outs ever this year. So much to be pleased about but heaps to work on as well. Below are some great Royal photos taken by Tim.

Perth Royal Teams Run Off

Raven on her flying way around a jumping course.




























PERTH ROYAL SHOW - TEAMS EVENT 23/09 (Jasper above - 1/2 brother to Tag)
Well today was one of the most exhausting (yet fun at the same time!) days I've ever had at the Show! Raven is in a 4 dog team named THREE'S A CROWD (yes ok I know 4 dogs and threes a crowd doesn't compute but the "Three" refers to number of handlers - sometimes we're also known as Two's Company because it is just Robyn and myself), and thanks to several factors today I ended up running 3 out of the 4 dogs in this team! Plus the agility and the jumping were TWO rounds each! 16 rounds in total for one four dog team and I ran 12 of them! The team - Raven, Saffi (CH WINPARA ICEE RED ADX JDX), Tag (CH WINPARA SECRET OBSESSION ADX JDX) and Deb Hyde's Jasper (OB CH BRYNBANK DANGEROS LIASON ADX JDX). Tag has NEVER run with me in a trial and at best we've had about 4 practices together at training, however I had to end up running him for 3 out of 4 runs! Luckily Robyn made it back from the Breed ring for 1 of the runs and ran him clear, and I managed a clear in Jumping with him, however we had more than a couple off courses in our other runs! I ran Jasper for the 1st run in Agility and he did very well, we had one wrong tunnel entry and one bar down and that was it - Deb ran him the other 3 runs with only a bar down in 2, and a couple of missed weavers in the other. Raven was a star pretty much all day apart from her very first run where she was more than a little amped up by the crowd and just couldn't wait till the judge said go on the table! She got called for a slightly suspect colour on the dog walk in her next run and in jumping she was an absolute star - I over handled her in one area (must keep mouth shut!) and caused her to take a bar down and in the last run of the day we both were in sync and ran a clear and very fast round. I am very pleased and proud to say that Threes A Crowd made the cut this year and got into the finals with the top 6 teams for both Agility and Jumping. More than a little surprised about the jumping since poor Saffi is having difficulty with the spread jumps of late due to middle aged spread creeping up on her! But she tries her heart out for me and that is something I will always be proud of with her.
Saffi is directly below and her son Tag is underneath.

Gosnells Dog Club Agility Jinx

Trial #34 September 10th Gosnells Dog Club - Again another clubs' grounds that we never manage to go clear on! There was no fixing that jinx today! The positives of our runs were that she kept all her bars up in both agility runs and did really nice contacts (I have included a pic below) the negatives (which we wiil not focus on!) are that she dropped a bar in both Open Jumping and Masters Jumping and she popped the last weave in Open Agility. The biggest negative was me! running the Masters Agility course and not even realising till we got to the end that I had missed about 5 obstacles out! Luckily we stuffed up before that anyway but I'd have been a bit annoyed with myself if we'd done everything clear and I thought we'd done the whole course! LOL!!! Dearie me sometimes I wonder if I am ever going to meet Raven's demanding high standards as her handler! LOL!! I take solace in the fact that we really haven't had a trial like this since way back in July - 2 months ago actually! Still have not figured out why I remembered the course a different way!

A Team of Two

Trial #33 September 3rd Rockingham Dog Club -Today was an all round awesome trial. To be honest we have competed at these grounds on a number of occasions now and not gone clear and I was not expecting any greatness today - how wrong I was! After submitting our top ten cards for the National Team selection I was delighted to find out at the announcement before the trial that Raven and I have been selected to represent WA at the Nationals in October! She shared 3rd spot amongst 6 dogs! This was an achievement that I really thought could not be done at the start of the year so to say I was proud of my little girl would be an understatement!

Our day was capped off by another historic moment for us in our Agility careers - Raven took out 1st PLACE MASTERS AGILITY AND 1st PLACE MASTERS JUMPING today! And our runs were very close to being perfect and felt extremely smooth. That gave us leg #6 of our JDM and I was absolutely over the moon with my girl and her efforts today! That JDM inches ever nearer! I felt today that we were the best team we could be - she was in sync with me and I was in sync with her - she did her job and I did mine and we both did them well. Such a great day deserves some pictures so I have posted some below - thanks go to Darryl Bourne and Tim Abidin for these great shots.