A bit of a treat

This is the worst term for teachers and students. It's long, hectic, exhausting. By this stage of it practically everyone is either ill or is about to be ill, or is vaguely recovering from having been ill, and feeling rather fragile, stressed and bad-tempered. And if anyone is feeling smug (on occasion that'll have been me then..) it strikes over the holiday instead. Great! For the first three or four years in teaching I developed nasty bouts of bronchitis, and was warned if I didn't take to my bed it'd become pneumonia. It was a real shock to my system having never had anything worse than a cold or mild flu since childhood. We are all booby trapped daily by disgusting germs on every pen, desk surface, piece of paper, exercise book, door handle, loo handle and sneeze droplet. Yuk. At least the small bit of agility training I do is outside and most of my pet classes customers don't come along to the hall when they are ill. I cunningly make them do so much running about and quick thinking they don't risk it unless they are in the peak of health ;-)

For 4 years out of the last 6 I have spent the entire term Trying Not To Get Really Ill. Or more to the point, Trying Not To Be Really Ill Before Or During Olympia. Getting out with the dogs for a couple of hours every day is good for them as well as me based on the premise that a blast in the elements will frighten most germs away! Needless to say I have had differing degrees of success in this endeavour. But we blew Olympia this year Nellie and I, so I have indulged myself with a couple of winter shows to add to the relentless pace of this time of year. Why not?

Dartmoor weather was lovely. Neil was judging so we all turned up the night before to help set up, shot out for a pub meal and then spent the next day supporting each other's efforts in and out of the ring. Iain got to scribe most of the day which he enjoys and we even got to sit in the sun outside the van over lunch.

Nellie worked beautifully - in both courses. We worked together well in the agility but I took my eye off her for a nano-moment to check where I was in relation to a jump, and consequently got her a refusal. She won the jumping though.



Archie had an Anysize and came 4th against the cohort of 50+ Large, Medium and Small dogs :-)



This weekend: a double treat. Being part time, (thank God) this year I get the whole of one Friday in the two week timetable completely free. We will still not arrive at shows next year early as Iain doesn't have the day off... This time of year I usually combine doing some work with a jaunt in the New Forest, or the coast if the weather looks really promising. But he too took last Friday off and we made a day of going for a lovely walk all over Hod and Hambledon Hill iron age forts for a couple of hours (sorry forgot to take pics but have included an old one of all my bunnies!)and then driving up through Dorset to just into Somerset to investigate new chicken housing arrangements.(More on that in another entry. Bet you can't wait!! :-) )

And this last Saturday - to North Downs. I can't ever recall going there before although Iain assures me I have, just once. He knows it well as he was born in Guildford and we took a few minutes before we drove home to go and see the house his parents bought when he was 'on the way' and in which he lived until he was 17. He hadn't been back to it since then.

Again Nellie worked beautifully in all of her four runs, and I believe I did a good job of directing her through each one apart from making one small mistake in three of them. But she came 2nd in one of the jumpings. Ironically this is the one where I probably made more errors - including misplaced footing jump 7 to 8, and not turning my shoulder cleanly enough on the pivot on the 5th jump from the end so she went out wide off the wing.



The other best thing, apart from having fun with my dogs and being around friendly agility faces, was the fact that from the moment we left home to drive to each show, until I reached home the evening after, work didn't enter my mind for even a moment.