End of the year wrap-up

I can't believe its nearly Christmas already..
Last weekend we had our last trial for the year, a double header. I was pretty pleased with the Red Dog. Her 1st run (masters jumping) was not great, it was a hard course for us with lots of big long distances then hard turns. I couldn't really get there in enough time to show the turns properly so we got a lot of W-I-D-E turns. But it was a clear run (albeit messy!) and she got 3rd place.
The 1st agility run was really nice. She knocked a bar that might have been caused by my late blind cross out of the weavers, but the rest was really  nice, I was very pleased with her. Run below:



Her 2nd jumping run was awesome! Tight and fast, apart from one misread/late tunnel threadle that meant she went to the wrong entry before I called her back. 1st place! Her 1st MJ run, I was very pleased. No vid of that one, sadly. Last agility run she missed the AF/tunnel discrim and took a bar.
So she is off for her summer break now.. my parents get back today and she will be going to live with them again. I will miss her, but won't miss having one less dog to clean up after..

She has had an amazing year with agility, I am very proud of her. Her highlights were:
Winning Novice Agility at the Western Classic
Winning Open Jumping at the State Trial
Winning heats in both Excellent Agility and Jumping, winning Strategic Pairs and getting into 3 finals at the nationals in QLD
Winning Open Jumping at the Royal show
Wins in both masters agility and jumping having only just gone up into the class.

I love love LOVE this dog to pieces. She is just my sort of dog and I am very much looking forward to our continuing journey. I am looking forward to hopefully getting a daughter from her when the time comes.

Tex continues to be hard work, frankly. He is currently enrolled in the Bogeyman course in the Fenzi school. We are working on being able to use personal play/low value food play in different areas as a barometer of his stress.. unsure if he is getting any better really. I would definitely *never* get a dog for performance over the age of 8 weeks again. Just too hard with the baggage when other people have brought them up.
Here he is with his best friend:

Ink and Shimmer will continue to be (high maintenance) pets. I want to try and do some herding with them but everything around Perth is very expensive and far away. Hopefully they will get to do some more next year. Shimmer in particular seems to be quite good.