Quick Catch Up for the Birthday Girl

Ivy turned 3 a few days ago which still doesn't seem possible.  This year I went with an 'ivy' theme for her cupcakes.  It took ages to make all the ivy leaves out of fondant but I was happy with how they turned out - not so pleased about the colour though and next time I will try a different method of colouring to get them darker.  Originally I wanted dark green on pale yellow but it wasn't to be .... thank goodness for Plan B. They did get a big paws up from all the dogs though.

Happy Birthday gorgeous girl !

We leave for Nationals in the morning, driving to Canberra first (I am ignoring the weather forecast which appears to have lots of minus signs in front of all the numbers) and then heading up to Sydney on Tuesday.
It's going to be a bit lonely, as most of my friends have pulled out, but I am still looking forward to having a good time with my girl.  Looks like it's 'Boys Week' at home for Liam and the kelpies ..... I am not thinking about what the place will look like when we get back.

I feel totally unprepared for these Nationals - not helped by no training for a week due to the weather here - but strangely enough I really don't care.  We will be winging it with our A Frame (one session at full height and no box does not make for a good A Frame performance) but that's just the way it is.  Canberra is my 'let's see what the hell she will do in a trial' run and if it is too awful then I have no problems pulling her out of agility at Nationals and just running jumping.  Planning on doing the A Frame as many times as humanly possible in Gamblers too.  So while preparation has been nothing like I planned and has almost been non-existant, at least it means that I will be more relaxed as I am not expecting to be competitive at this stage. I am hoping that the experience gives me an idea about where we want to go from here in the next stage of our training and some more goals to work towards.  Also looking forward to seeing some awesome dogs from all around the country.   I will try and update from Sydney if I get the chance.

We had our club trial a couple of weeks back, this is the smaller club that I belong to, still a fairly new club with very few members, and it was awesome to see our small trialling contingent do so well.

From left to right : Dean and Koto (3rd place Novice Jumping), Emi and Niah (1st place Novice Agility), Col and Cindy (Masters Jumping pass), Lynn and Ace (2nd place Excellent Jumping) and me on the end with Atilla (3rd place Masters Agility) and Ivy (1st place Excellent Jumping)   I think Liam needs to learn how to use the zoom on the camera though !

Very happy with both Ivy's jumping runs - we had two bars down on the one before she Q'd - one before and one after the tunnel, which are pretty common bars for her to take and something we are working on, but I actually thought it was a better run.   Plus it was a full second faster than the qualifying one too. No video this time though so will just have to go with my feeling that it was better.



Ivy guarding her 'loot' - especially the edible part !

Have had a big blonde moment in regard to her passes though - thank goodness I sorted it out the night before the trial or I would have been really disappointed.  I was sure we only had one pass to go for JDX, as according to my trial diary we had 4 already.  When I got my cards out to check, I could only find 3.  So after a lot of 'what is going on here ?' and hair pulling (mine not Ivy's) I finally found a Novice Agility pass paperclipped behind one of her Jumping certificates that I had mistakenly recored as an Excellent Jumping pass.  The embarrassing thing about this is that I now have 4 Novice Agility passes and after all my whinging last year that I was never going to get out of Novice Agility ..... well I actually did have 3 passes a couple of weeks before I thought I did, oops !   I have never done this before ... alternatives must be :

1. I am getting old and forgetful.

2. Ivy has had so many one bar down runs where she still came 1st (both in Novice Agility and Excellent Jumping) that it starts to become confusing about which ones are passes and which ones are not.

Hmm, lock in number 2 Eddie !  That's my story and I'm sticking to it!