Stilbaai Weekend

On the 10th of January, we all went on a road trip to see Kooikerhondjes in Mosselbay. After our visit to the breeder and litter, we stopped over at Stilbaai, where the beack walk and swimming was tremendous fun for all the dogs.

Leiv busy with his hole...



Chinzi swimming...

Dogs on the horizon...

Levi, admiring his work...

Chinzi, asking for more swimming...

The Kooiker litter...

"My" girl...

Should I get her, or shouldn't I... THAT is the question?! :)

New Year's Beach Walk

We went for an early morning beach walk with some friends on New Year's day... it was also brown BC Jessie's birthday, she turned 6. Here are some pics from the beach & also on the field where we had breakfast afterwards.

Table Mountain

Levi seeing a bird floating...

It's MY seaweed!

Chinzi swimming...

Emma enjoying a back scratch...

Chinzi

Emma - caffeine junkie

Emma's work - don't leave car doors open with Beagles around!

Three brown BC friends, Jessie the b'day girl on the left

Beagles

My family

The gang, not posing...

The gang, posing...

Summer walks

Here are some photos taken on our latest summer evening walks...

Why so few of Levi and so many of Emma you ask? Well, Levi is mostly on his own mission and does not like posing for photos, it is very difficult to get him to sit/stand still for long enough. :)

This tree must have been very inetersting...

Three hoorays for our BC sister Chinzi who is finally sprinting again after 3 months of rehab after she severed two toe tendons on her right hind leg!!! She will also be having her 2nd birthday tomorrow, happy b'day Chinz!!! We love you to bits! Beagle licks & kisses.

Some Photos

KUSA weekend on 15, 16 November in Malmesbury...

Emma with all her rosettes

Boland Show (black & yellow) - 3rd in Contact, 2nd in Non-Contact

HHKC (blue & white) - 2nd in Contact, 2nd in DJ

BRVKC (black & pink) - 2nd in DJ, 3rd in Contact & Non-Contact

The other rosettes are 2nd places for two of the Dog Jumping National rounds and the last one a 2nd place for Overall National Dog Jumping Placing over the weekend.

She also came Second Overall in Agility (Contact & Non-Contact combined) for the 3 shows, but recieved no rosette/prize for that.

See why I call her my little miss "consistent" :)

Levi with his 3 first place rosettes, all QC's towards Championship status, which saw him become a Contact and Non-Contact champion on the same weekend!

With my boy, it's all or nothing! :) The blue rosette was his last QC needed in Contact to make him a Champion and the two pink ones he won in the same show, both disciplines, becoming a Non-Contact Champion as well.

SADAA weekend, Boland Regional Trials on 22 & 23 November in Malmesbury

My boy managed one3rd place with a bronze medal, but I am very proud of him having very fast BC's as competition over 55cm jump heights. He also ran a very fast Jumping round which saw him only a second off the best BC's times. Unfortunately he knocked a bar there, which made him move down to 10th place. Along with his team mates Dylan (Linda) and Ivan (Hannes), we won the midi/maxi team event, therefore the 1st place rosette! :)

Emma was consistant once again, running some very good times in extremely hot conditions. She managed 5 placings from 6 rounds, coming 4th with a clear round the last Jumping round of the weekend.

Her placings included her first ever Gold medal, a Silver and a Bronze, with another two 3rd placings without medals. Along with her mini team mates who both won the National Event in their size categories, she won the mini Team Event. They were Tiger (Ansie) and Garro (Marlize).

LEVI BECAME A DUAL AGILITY CHAMPION!

NEWSFLASH - This past weekend Levi won 3 Qualifying Certificates, two in Contact and one in Non-Contact to become a Champion in both disciplines! Needless to say, I was ECSTATIC, and still is!!!

The saddest part about all this, is that I only have one of his 3 brilliant rounds on video. :(

Emma also fared very well with 3 clear rounds, 2 x 5faulters and one DQ. She came 2nd overall and Levi 3rd.

Summary of results:

Show 1 - Contact - Emma 3rd, Levi DQ / Non-Contact - Emma 2nd Clear & Levi DQ
Show 2 - Contact - Levi 1st (QC), Emma 2nd Clear / Non-Contact - Emma&Levi DQ
Show 3 - Contact - Levi 1st (QC), Emma 3rd / Non-Contact - Levi 1st (QC), Emma 3rd Clear

It was a very hot weekend in Malmesbury and I wet Emma with ice water before each run, which seemed to have helped. She performed better than expected given her history of going extremely slow when it's hot. She even ran one Contact round so fast, her time was only 4 sec slower than Levi's! Now that takes some doing! :)

I am very very happy with both doggies' performances and look forward to another weekend of 6 rounds each coming up. This time it will be under SADAA (IFCS) so Levi will have to jump 55cm instead of only 45cm, so not expecting him to do so well with BC's as competition, but we are still going to go out there and have some fun.

Emma qualified for the Nationals this coming weekend, but she is up against some very stiff competition, so not hoping for any miracles, also just going out to have fun and do our best.

Here are some rounds from the weekend...

Emma's Contact Round Clear, 2nd to Levi...

Levi's Contact Round where he became a Contact Champion...

So sad that I didn't get the Sunday's Contact round, as that was really a good round, as well as the Non-Contact one, but my "camera man" at the time had some technical difficulties. :)

Thanks to Chantal for recording these two clips.

2 from 3 for Emma on one day!

Emma stole the show at our Champ show yesterday when she won 2 QCs! She beat very strong competition in the Contact to win the QC, her first in this discipline and MUCH to my surprise! Levi DQ'd due to my "too-slow" handling AGAIN! Emma also won the Dog Jumping QC, her 3rd in this discipline, but unfortunately two under the same judge, so she doesn't qualify as a Champion quite yet. Nonetheless, it was an Emma day. :) In Non-Contact Levi ran as fast as he's probably ever done, but unfortunately we DQ'd on a tunnel. Emma stepped in a thorn again and refused a jump, whereafter I DQ'd her to take the thorn out first, but thereafter she also ran a beautiful round.

I recieved Emma's Non-Contact Champion Certificate from KUSA on Friday, so photo's of my little Champion will follow soon. It's also her 4th birthday tomorrow, but more about that later. :)

Getting up to date...

We had 3 shows/trials during the while I've been MIA... :) Not having very good results, but here's a short summary of what went down over the last couple of weeks...

We had an Open Show on 11 October on our grounds where Emma normally finds the bird poo more interesting than the agility obstacles... however, she was the only dog to not get disqualified in the Contact round, so got a first place there, albeit with two missed contacts! :-o She had a refusal, turning back in front of a tunnel to visit some bird-poo, as well as a knocked bar in her Non-Contact round, but still coming 2nd there. Levi had two DQ's on this day, very naugthy running off in the first round, but at least working in the second, although we made a mistake.

Next show was a Club Trial on 18 October in 30 degree Stellenbosch heat, and Levi having to jump 55cm as SADAA falls under IFCS not FCI. He however made me very proud by getting his last qualification in Agility 2, winning the midi group and moving up to Grade 3. In Jumping he also managed a clear round, but unfortunately only getting a 3rd place due to having to run against much taller BCs. Little Em ran clear in Agility, but in the Jumping round she refused a tunnel as the dog before her peed insided it and the blistering heat made the tunnel fumes too much for her! LOL! They washed it out and was allowed a re-run, but by that time she was so tired from having to almost run it for the 3rd time, she just said, why on earth do you want me to do this AGAIN, no no way! :) Of course I couldn't blame her. Was just disappointing at the time, but quite funny afterwards.

On Friday 24 October, we had a Championship, top grade only show. It was lovely and cool by the time evening arrived as we had a very hot day of flyball behind us. Levi caught me SO off guard by taking off like a rocket, that I was just too far behind him from the word GO to even think of catching up... we managed about 8 obstacles when he took the wrong jump after the dogwalk and we DQ'd. ALL the other mediums had faults, and Emma ran last, just having to run clear within time to win the coveted QC. The time was set quite high, and the only dog having gone clear, and more or less same speed as Emma normally, had 1 time fault, so off we went, all out! Being evening cool weather, Emma was MOVING and unfortunately so much that we missed the dogwalk contact, so thereafter we pushed for time even more, as we had nothing to lose. She then missed the A-frame contact as well, but ran the fastest time of the day and still came 2nd. Not too bad under the circumstances. :) In the Non-Contact, a very complicated course, I made a bad error with Levi, resulting in another DQ. I also took my eyes off Emma for a second and we also DQ'd. Well, it was fun nonetheless and we just WISH we could have more evening trials in summer, it was LOVELY, especially for the Beagles, working much faster than at any other time in the day. Anyway, I guess we can only dream...

The 26th came and we had another Club Trial... not one to speak much about... thorns made both my Beagles refuse to run the Jumping run, after which the ring was moved to another field. I made a handling error with Levi, resulting in a DQ and Emma again missed 2 contacts, but still managed a 1st place in that round.

So as you can see, not very good results over the last few weeks, lets hold thumbs this will change in the next few weeks. :)