Perth Royal 2007

Well the Royal Show started yesterday here in Perth. For those of you who don’t know the Royal is probably one of the bigger events on the calendar. It is one of the big three I suppose, up there with the State Titles and the Western Classic. It is a massive agricultural show that also has lots of side show alley rides, hundreds of show bags and lots and lots of exhibits. There is every kind of event from show jumping to dressage, sheep shearing, pig diving, to wood chopping, cat shows, cows, pigeons, poultry, sheep dog trialling and so on. In the agility trialling end of things there is a teams event every year – in Agility and in Jumping plus the usual Individual Classes and this year they have decided to include two of the games events; Gamblers and Strategic Pairs. Back in May I had been positive and felt sure that Raven would see another Royal and indeed she has! Yesterday was the Teams event – Cypher was in one team called the Master and Apprentices and Raven was in another called Could Be Brilliant. They got four runs each – two of agility and two of jumping. One of the attractions of the Royal event is that only one ring is run so you are really able to watch everyone else run unlike most trials when you usually have to be somewhere with a dog most of the time. It’s certainly one of the nicer things. Every year though it seems there are a lot more drawbacks for those competing. This year the RAS (Royal Agricultural Society) decreed that no one was permitted to bring their own shade (be it cabanas, umbrellas or whatever) as an extra marquee would be available for competitors. Well there was an extra marquee and still there was not enough room – we had people and dogs parked in the sun as well as those in the new marquee having to vacate to the back of it once noon passed due to the sun shining directly into it. They were all squished up in a very narrow area at the back between the marquee and the fence. We also had more restrictions placed on the unloading and offloading of cars meaning we needed to go up to an opposite gate to the agility area in order to be able to drive in and unload. These two things combined with the substandard equipment always brought out for the Royal tends to leach all the excitement and fun out of an event which should be and could be one of the biggest drawcards at the show and showcase to best effect for the public the absolute blast the dogs and handlers can have on an agility course. I think though I will always go to the Royal – as much as Raven turns up her feral meter whenever we run (I am yet to have a decent start line at the Royal with her and this is after 5 years mind you) I can see she absolutely loves the cheers and clapping of the spectators and laps up the attention from them. She’s an absolute rocket to try and handle and I often fall short of her demands on course I must admit. Whilst she is a super fast dog at most times, at Royal time she seems to step up a gear or three and unfortunately my handling and getting info to her in an expedient manner seems to be quite lacking. So we go without any expectations except for one – that we will have the best fun. Yesterday she certainly more than fulfilled that one. She had a few bars down and a few off courses but for the most part she handled well for me apart from one laps of attention in a jumping round where she thought she’d prove how well she could keep the jumps up by doing about 6 extra ones with me standing there waiting for her to figure out that we actually were not going the way she had just so gracefully indicated. She came back and we got back on course. No matter as our team had already bombed anyway so I wasn’t the least bit concerned. Cypher’s team did very well – we won the Jumping event being the only team without any DQs. Cy had one fault in each round as he dropped one bar (oddly enough the exact same bar both courses). His team mates pulled off 2 clear rounds plus a couple of rounds with just one or two faults each. In Agility he again had one fault in each round – got called for a pretty close a frame contact (think that’s like only the second or third in his career) and in the second round he fell off the middle of the dog walk. Yes the flat plank middle bit! Unbelievable really but may have had something to do with the fact that I had given the command to ‘contact’ a bit early, a bit loudly and a bit too close to him. We think he may have just glanced at me to see where I was and he mis-stepped the plank. Landed on his feet so no dramas but of course it incurred a fault. However he did well in that he didn’t DQ at all. A couple of team mates did so we were pretty much out of the running I believe. So all in all not a bad effort and lots of fun to run. Took Spryte with us and she had her first taste of the atmosphere at the Royal. I did a bit of target training work with her in the breaks. She was quite curious about the crowds and the people, especially the little people her size however when I put the target down she didn’t hesitate and went straight to it. I worked her for a five to ten minute session then put her away again. Photos below are from yesterday. Tomorrow we go back for the individual classes.