Could not have asked for better weather here at the show.
The courses are proving to be very typical British courses – twisty, bactracky, and super naggy. They are crazy mean courses.

They run an agility and a jumping course each day and the combination of the 4 runs are tallied and a certain percentage of the top dogs run in a finals called the Dina's Classic. It does not really go towards anything but it is still fun!!!

The first day we did ok in the agility course and had one oopsie in the jumping round. We got a second place in the agility class.
The second day we did really well on the agility course and nearly made it around in the jumping.

My good friend Smiffy's the catering wagon is here!!!! Yumm Yumm!!!! Couldn't wait for my fried egg, cheese and onion baguette !!!!

Daneen & Masher  have made it into the Dina's Classic Finals that will be run later today. What fun.

The dogs in need show is two days of classes and one day off with the Jr. and the small and medium finals run, then 2 more days of classes and the large DINAS finals run on Sunday.

Most people use this week as a holiday so the day of rest is really nice. You can sleep in or take the day and go do other stuff… that is unless you are in the finals today. The finals started about 9:00. They split the juniors up into 12 and under and over 12. It was really cute to see the juniors out there running with their dogs. Some of them were quite good too!!!

Masher ran in the finals which combined grades 6 & 7. They had a smoking run!!!! They won the grade 6&7 small Dina's Classic tournament!!!!

I had technical issues with the video so was unable to get the run 🙁 It was lovely tho!!!

Later in the day they had a 5 K walk that all the proceeds go to the Macmillon nurses. They are a group of non profit hospice nurses.

 What a nice guy and the food is really really good!!!

 First place in the second day grade 6 DINAS Challenge agility run. This run was MR. Toads Wild Ride!!! I could not speak for a few minutes and just stood there with my mouth open.

The DINAS Finals Small and Medium were so much fun to watch!!! Mashie smoked the grade 6 and 7 times 🙂

First place and winner of the 2012 DINAS Challenge Grade 6 Small

 Nice to see a familiar face. Jeri is the local I Love Dogs rep just like my good friend Deb Harpur….. and the similarities are mind blowing!!!! ( maybe not this outfit )  I forgot to pick up salad dressing at the store so for one of the dinners salad was on the menu…. they use salad cream….. TG Gerry had good ol Blue Cheese Dressing in her caravan. She was a life saver!!!

 Went for tea at Tracey and Pauls. What a nice spread and yummy too!!!

Went out one of the nights with Jeri, Bonny and Kristy. Much to Daneen's dissmay it was Indian again 🙁

We traveled to the next show which is Dogs In Need. It is a large show with 13 rings held at an agricultural facility. It is sort of like our Fairgrounds but mainly used for animal events.There is a grocery store less tan a mile from this venue and seems that everyone hit it before they went into the show. We stopped to stock up on supplies and down every aisle there were agility people with carts filled to the brim. The store sold out of soda and the beer and wine selection were slim pickings by the end of the week 🙂

Every direction you look at all you see is a sea of caravans, gardens, trailers and tents. This set of shows seems to be geared more towards children or at least there are a whole bunch of them running around. There is a play area, and a whole slew of stuff for juniors to do – like their own classes and a juniors training session after the show.

There are some of the same vendors that we saw at the KC Festival and some new ones. There are vendor politics just like back home 🙁
Some vendors are not here … guess they got on someones bad list and were not invited.

There is a little store here on the grounds and it carries food essentials such as bread, milk, butter etc. Clever I think !

There is 6 days total at this show. 4 days of classes and 2 days of finals. They have Championship classes to qualify for crufts. You have to be in grade 7. You need one champ ticket during the qualifying period to qualify for Crufts. You need a total of 3 Champ tickets to earn your Kennel Club Agility Championship !!!  – There are only around 12 Championship classes throughout the year – In the Champ classes you run an agility course and a jumping course and a certain percent of the top combined run in a Championship finals course. Very fun and very exciting to watch!!!

Daneen and Masher ran in the Dina's Classic today. It was one class of agility and one of jumping. They got thru the agility just fine and nearly made it thru the jumping class. The jumping class was wicked.

At the KC festival they had a disco night and we did not go but the music went on until the wee hours of the night and funny that the announcement for the disco night said "come enjoy the music and make sure to bring your own bottle"

There is entertainment every night here at Dogs In Need. They had yoga at some point and the Juniors training session at 5:00 and BINGO!!! at 8:00!!!!
I am so excited!!!! We are soooo there!!!!

 Dogs in Need Agility Society or DINAS is an agility event held every year for the last 21 years and all the proceeds go to charities.

 'Beautiful artwork at the entrance of Trinity Park

 There are acres and acres of fields and walking paths with magestic trees.

 Winning a second place in grade 6 small dog agility day one of DINAS Classic

Bingo there was VERY different !!! And NOBODY called BINGO when they won !!! A little weird but fun 🙂

There were about 500 people playing bingo, it was a nice turn out.

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.

So due to very bad weather we did not go back to the SWAT shows and packed up the caravan to head out to do a training day then off to the KC Festival.
The food this time around has been better but still no taco's- sorry Daneen 🙁

 Daneen and Masher got to join in training day sessions.

 The drive to the KC Festival was beautiful.

My choices at the pubs has been Idian food pretty much every time 🙂

The KC Festival is HUGE !!!! IT had to be moved at the last minute and they found a beautiful venue to hold 18 rings and a kajillion caravans!!
The weather is lovely and the courses are more than a little crazy.

I just love how they RV it at shows here. Everyone here sets up gardens and visits with each other sharing food and drink. It seems to be a more family friendly sport around here, Lots of junior handlers and way more bloaks running dogs here than in the States.

Daneen and Masher ran 3 runs today. 1 grade 6 jumping and the KC British Open Agility and Jumping.

Their first run was the grade 6 jumping- the course was ugly the run was not so pretty. Backsides of jumps, pull throughs, threadles and serps 🙁

Their next 2 classes are the two main classes that count here at the KC Festival. They take the highest scoring dogs from each height to go to the finals on Sun. The top 3 in the small division get invited to Cruft's.

The  British Open Agility was first. They had a lovely run and through some tricky bits. Masher has been running very well. He tried to stick his teeter but just could not hang on to it. The weights of the teeters are very different here and the contacts are not rubber here at the KC festival. He was a really good boy. They incurred 5 faults 🙁

Their next run was the Open Jumping. They had a good clean run and took 3rd place out of 137 dogs. Not too shabby.

They did not post times for either of these runs so we did not have a clue how they did until they presented the awards later in the day.

We thought there was no way that they made it into the finals with 5 faults. What a nice surprise  when they posted the list of dogs that made the finals and Masher and Daneen made the finals 🙂 Yeah!!!

What a long day !!! This completely dwarfs any local trial we have ever been to.

The queueing system here is pretty neat. They assign each dog a number for every class. They will open a ring for walk through then they announce " Ring 4- grade 6 agility – up to number 40. So you then go to the ring and tick off your number with one person at the ring and then go stand in the que. So there really is no real run order. As you get closer to the front of the queue another person will ask what your number is and take your scribe sheet out of a little book and hand it to the scribe. Now you are in the hold so to speak. Also interesting that they only have one person jump setting the entire ring and the ring crew is called the ring party. They also never say the dogs call name. You check in and are called by your name and the dogs Kennel Club name.

Tomorrow is day 2 of the KC festival and should be another exciting day of agility.

 All the makings for our garden. Char- They have the king of all bucket's O'Crap!!!! We have got to get one!!!

 Almost all done with the garden – They called Daneen a master Banger !!! heehee -They said she got those fence posts in in no time!!!

Interesting toppings for baked potatoes 🙂

 Here is the ring schedule for the first day of the KC Festival.

Some of the trophies

The weather was  much better today. We got a few sprinkles but all in all a really nice day. They said it rained until about 7:00 p.m. at the show site yesterday.

There are 2 classes – agility and jumping. There are 7 grades. Classes can bejudged either by divided by grade or combined with other grades. Graded classes are better because you are running against dogs of your same grade. Combined classes include dogs from other grade levels.

So say you are in grade one (baby dog level) you would be better off running in a lower graded class – say grade 1 or grades 1-3.  If you are in a higher level – say grade 5 or 6- you would be better off with a combined grade class such as – combined 1-6 – so these are usually not as "challenging" as a grade 6 class because it is combined with the lower grades and the courses are easier for the baby dogs. Of course this is all theory 🙂 Some of the courses we have seen so far have been not so very nice.

We are finding out that there is difference between international courses and typical Brittish courses.

Not really liking the typical Brittish courses. Daneen came here to compete on challenging courses and that part is fun…. but am finding the Brittish courses to be pretty much making everyone nag their dogs through the entire course. The courses are not flowy and don't really let the dogs open up any. It is pretty much all yank here and yank there twisty turny ugly and VERY tightly spaced.

The shows are MUCH less rigid than they are in the US. Daneen was walking her fisrt jumping course of the day. After, she walked over to me and said " Come walk this – It's Fucking ridiculous!" So I went out there and the first 3 obstacles we were still cool , after that it kinda just went bizzarro…. 1 to 2 ok, 3 to 4 no problem, 4 to 5, Daneen said " the OTHER side of 5" OH.. ok, that is weird… 6 to 7, 7 to ………Where is eight???? I stood there looking for it for a few minutes, then Daneen pointed across ring !! WTF???? What is it doing WAY over there???? She quickly added "Oh, and it's the backside of that jump too" So you get the idea.

Very different from easy peasy flowy one challenge per course courses in America.

Their first class of the day Mash hit the first bar they had moments of brilliance and a slight oopsie here and there…. tho they got thru most of the hardest parts.

Their second run of the day was Combined grades 5-7 Agility. There were a couple of pull throughs, a tricky weave entry, threadles.  The run was not the prettiest run but they made it thru and won the class !!! One win down three wins to go.

You need to win first place from 2 agility and 2 jumping classess to movee up to grade seven.

The third run of the day was grade 1-7 jumping –

This one was a masher course!!! looked more like our steeplechase course courses back home. It had one tight bit in the start and the rest was run!!!!

They got first place for that class too. It was pretty. Interesting that the local dogs do so much twisty turny stuff that a full out running course with a huge go on at the end found most of the dogs turning into their handlers questioning the running full out….. kinda sad 🙁

It is really fun to be able to observe several full days at a show and I can't wait to see how different this little local show is to other larger shows that we will be going to later in the trip.

People get away with ALOT more here in the UK as we saw at this show. We saw a TON of training in the ring. Toys at the start line, cookies being pulled out of pockets after a run. The other thing I observed is that there were lots of people being harsh to their dogs. I will wait to see if this was a "this show or club" thing or if this is what I see through out the trip. This did not make me very happy. At home I can count on one hand the people that are nasty to there dogs and scream at them. Here it was worse 🙁

Treat for me … They are holding a conformation show at the same site that the agility is being held. It is a benched show. They have split all the groups into four days. The first day was gun and something else and today it was I can't remember what they call the groups here but it was herding and working 🙂 Funny that some breeds look equal or better to breeds in the states and other breeds look almost NOTHING like the same breed in the states. The Rough Collies here look NOTHING like the Collies back home… they look almost like a different breed. Yet I saw other breeds that were lovely, like the Border Collies and the leonberger's (Spelling ??? too lazy to look it up now)

I think I might miss the Dalmatians and the Papillons if the weather is really bad 🙁

Weather forcast for tomorrow does not look good. They are calling for torential rain 🙁

 The weather gods were not so nice today. It poured pretty much all day. The locals say it was just showers and that it never actually rained. Well it was coming down in buckets!!! We were miserable and soaked to the bone. Thanks to Sharon for lending us rain coats… without those we would have been in a world of hurt. The drive to the show site and the actual site are beautiful.

 I found this a most interesting way of wheeling the course.

 Daneen walking a course. They don't give out course maps!! 

It was really chucking it down by the time Mashy ran. He and Daneen did well on the course. They got through all the tricky parts. Mashy did a little WHEEEEEEE off the teeter, but all in all it was a nice first run….. and only run for the day. Everyone either crates out of their tent, RV or car. Nobody sets up a canopy or crates by the rings.  So we were all hanging out by the car -freezing and sopping wet – and we can see the rings from where we are. All the rings were empty like they had all gone to lunch. Good thing we checked because who knows how long we would have been standing there waiting for Daneen's classes to be called….. They cancelled the rest of the show for today!!!! Just as well I suppose. We will be better prepared for tomorrow's show 🙂

 I wanted to post a photo of my new wellies.  I needed something waterproof and this is pretty much all they had at the show. I tried to get Daneen to get a pair…. but I guess I knew THAT would never happen 🙂

Now that I look at this photo of my snazzy boots it really just looks like a pulled a Reagan from the Excorcist :0    I didn't I swear!!!!

Changed the name to Bed & Tea…. and tea tonight was yummy!!! Tried Yorkshire pudding for the first time…. really good but don't let it fool you, it has NOTHING to do with pudding!! It's mor like a little pastry boat for gravy.

Dollar and Dime are starting to really move around and the growling and playing and biting each other 🙂

 So the weather was just lovely again today. Got some more training in. Worked on pull throughs, threadles and serps. Mashy looked good. We are heading off for the first day of showing at 6:00 a.m.

The forcast shows showers where we are heading. Hope the weather men are more like the weathermen in CA and get it wrong 🙂

 The weather has been wonderful since we have arrived. We were a bit worried as it had pretty much been raining nonstop here in England since May!!

We headed out to the training field to work the dogs and the words just can not describe how beautiful and lush the countryside looks!

Daneen was a bit worried with the jump height Mush has to jump over here but he is a really good jumper and didn't even think twice about the height. He looks good.

 We were so excited to see the Dancer x Puzzle puppies. The two boys are beyond adorable!! Dancer is a great mother just like her mother is. I can not even tell you how amazing it is to hold little Mashy grandpups!!! They are two weeks old now so they should start really moving around during the weeks that we are here.

 Getting a little tune up and giving Mashy a little warm up before the whirlwind show tour.

 Masher was happy happy happy!!!!

 At the training facility there is no proper loo…. someone that shall ramian nameless failed to warn me of this wicked plant called Stinging Nettle. TG I only brushed against it with my two fingers and didn't back up into it!!!! WOWZIE!!!! OH SUGAR, does it sting!!! I first thought that it had left a bunch of little stickers in my hand but it didn't it just stung the crap out of it. It burned and stung all night. I was told that a plant called DOC plant always grows close to stinging nettle and PWSRN looked but I do not think she looked all that hard.

Starts with a fast little dog a goal and a dream and an 11 1/2 hour flight :) 

I have always wanted to experience Crufts and we are one tiny step closer to that dream…. Hopefully at the end of three weeks we will be a huge step closer…. either way we are on a incredible adventure.

When we were in England last year we went to a local agility trial. What fun it was, the show was huge and the courses looked fun and challenging. Daneen said she would have loved to run Masher on some of those courses. So this year instead of attending the WAO we thought it would be quite the little adventure to travel and trial throughout England and try to get qualified to run at Cruft's!!!

The AKC sends a handler and dog every year to compete at Crufts…. but it will always be a large dog….  so we are going to give it a good go and try to qualify on our own.

The Kennel Club has 3 jump heights and 7 levels in agility. The American Kennel Club has 7 jump heights and 3 levels. In order to move up to the next level you need to WIN (not just Q) 4 classes. Not only do you have to win first place in your class, the classes have rather large entries. And when you do finally move up a level they don't do next day move up's…. it can take as long as 4-8 weeks for the KC to approve your move up.

We are lucky to not have to start at level one with Mushy, so Daneen and Mush will start at level six.

So the plan is to hit 14 shows in three weeks :)  The goal is to move up to grade seven and hopefully win some Cruft's qualifier points as well as have a whole lotta fun along the way!!!