The weather has been perfect and today was equally beautiful. All 15 rings were going strong until late in the day.

The British Open final , which is a Cruft's qualifier, was held today. Since Daneen and Masher are in grade 6 it was the only chance this trip for them to get qualified for Cruft's 2013.
They had a very nice run all except for one little oopsie 🙁

So now we pack up camp and head to the next set of shows which are Dogs In Need. 2 days of shows one day off and then the next set of 2 shows.
Even tho keeping an eye on 15 rings is nearly impossible I am happy to report that I have witnessed minimal harshness with dogs at this show.

At the KC Festival they have a really cool competition called the Nations Cup. It is a team that includes 3 handler/dog teams grouped by countries. Since there were no other handlers from the USA, Daneen and Masher were put on a team called "Rest of the World". Daneen got to wear the Rest of the World bib that one handler from each team gets to wear. Kinda fun.
USA's own Carrie Elks DeYoung was the judge and she had some very nice courses. The competition consisted of one round of agility and one round of jumping in each of the jump heights – small, medium and large. The combined score from both of those team rums determine the placements.  It was fun to watch.
Daneen and Masher had a cracking good run as the announcer put it 🙂 The rest of the World team that Daneen and Masher were on came in 4th place overall in the small division. Not too shabby 🙂

Daneen pretty much already got what she came to do this trip so the next set of shows she can just concentrate on practicing her handling on tough courses to better prepare her for this type of agility in the future.

 Here is a photo of a money spider. When we aere at the first set of shows – these tiny baby spiders kept landing on us and crawling all over us. First couple of them we brushed them off with a ewww – but after we were told  they were money spiders and that they bring you luck with money… well tha was a whole different story…. "come here little spider"  🙂

 Waiting to run a very tricky course.

 They did very well on the course Daneen was worried about.

 Carrie Elks DeYoung judging the jumping part of the Nations Cup at the KC Festival

 I tried to get a photo that gave some sort of perspective or idea just how big 18 rings of agility is. None of the photos come close to showing that,

 This was Mushy winning First place in one of his classes.

I saw a ton of iffy teeters here during the competitions so far. I guess since it is a win based system the judges are more forgiving with teeters, In true American form Carrie was calling most of the teeters 🙂

 This was fun- we enjoyed the Nations Cup!!!

 Waiting for the awards presentation for the Nations Cup

Such a good boy Mushy!!!!

Everywhere you looked was just a sea of Caravans, tents and gardens 🙂

 This is the view from the show site

 Pub night!!!

At the pub they had a game called skittles. Each person takes a turn and stands in the opposite corner of the room and then they chuck this wooden puck like thing and try to knock down as many of these pegs in three trys. Daneen and Mandy were in the next room playing this skittles game and all of a sudden we hear a huge bang followed by lots of giggles. The pub owner said " What's going on – Everything allright ?" in the most most you are so busted mom tone. I guess someone got a little competitive and chucked the puck thing so hard it bounced off the glass door :0

It has been very cool to be here in England while the 2012 Olympics are going on.