Hi There

Last weekend was to be Kilties first trial, I'd entered her and Ruby in the DAWG indoor show. We'd entered Starter 2 and 3.

But on Wednesday night we had a huge storm, the thunder and lightning scared the hell out of Kiltie. The next day I took her outside for some training and she couldn't sit, or go down. After a little investigation I discovered her lower back was causing some pain. The vet thought it was muscular, and gave us some rimadil and prescribed a few days rest - bugger!

So I went with Ruby anyway. To my surprise she didn't stress out, we had a clear round and came 8th - yahoo! The venue is only 20 minutes from home and we had 3-5 hours til our next run so I went home and got the other 2 dogs. I'm not sure what went wrong but the second run for Ruby was slow, we had 4 goes at the weave, she would stop and stare at the judge, I'd have to take her back to start. I'm not sure if having the other dogs there was the problem, or the fact that there was 4 tunnels in the course, or just that it was too late in the afternoon.

One thing I did observe during the day was that the senior courses were a lot more open, with a lot less traps than there used to be when I competed in Senior with Shaggy. I can remember one course I did with him where there was no clear rounds, we came second with 10 faults and there were only 5 runs that weren't disqualified. The weird thing, is that I think I prefer tough courses. It gives us a challenge and sorts out the teams that have worked on handling and have the confidence the run the way they train. After all senior is the top echelon of our sport in NZ. Of course the flip side of the coin is that the teams that constantly fail at senior find it extremely de-motivating.  

After a few day rest Keltie seems fine now, I'm releived that my girl is feeling better now!