My Beagles...

Emma and Levi......are 5 months apart. Emma was born 3 November 2004 and I soon realised she needed a playmate. I was very lucky to find Levi within a few months of getting Emma, as I waited nearly two years for Emma!Levi was born 28 March 2005 and was the naughtiest puppy alive! Him and Emma immediately hit it off and became the best of Beagle Buddies.I desperately needed to find an outlet for my Beagle kids' energy, and ventured into the world of agility. It soon became one of my biggest passions, apart from the Beagle breed, and today Emma and Levi are both competing in the top grades. I made a friend in Slovenia, running her Beagle Xsara in agility, and she inspired me to start teaching them tricks. I'm enjoying it very much and hopefully this blog will be as entertaining and inspiring to others, as Xsara's is to me.

Monday, May 4, 2009

Playing catch-up... PART 3

Hopefully this is the last of the catch-up posts so I can start updating regularly from now onwards again. :)

We had 2 Non-Champ shows on the weekend of 18,19 April, with some mixed results. Both shows definitely marked the start of our winter show season, with the Sunday show definitely a WET one! We got drenched!

Saturday Chinzi had two 5-fault rounds, but ran good times. On Sunday she qualified in Contact, now only needing one more to move up to Top Grade! In Non-Contact we had a very tight and short distance to weave-entry so we missed it, something to train in the weeks to come! :)

The Beagles were average, each with a DQ on Saturday, Levi a clear round winning Non-Contact and Emma coming 2nd in Contact with a knocked bar. On Sunday they both ran good times in Contact, but with faults, Levi winning at 5m/s and Emma 2nd at 4.4m/s, very fast for her! In Non-Contact we had the same weave entry as Chinzi in Grade 2 and Emma took it BEAUTIFULLY, also managing a win at 4m/s, great for her! Levi missed the entry twice and came 3rd.

The weekend thereafter we went on a road-trip to Graaff-Reinet for the SADAA Regional Trials. It was so much fun with friend Rozanne and her Yorkie Rolo being our travelling partners. We arrived on the Thursday already and went for a fantastic walk in the mountains the Friday, photos to be posted later! The weather was cool & drizzly most of the time, but we and the dogs enjoyed it immensely.

Competition started on Saturday and although my boy Levi didn't win any medals he had the best performance overall he's ever had at an RT, remember, having to compete with 49cm BCs over 55cm jumps! He came 5th overall in his Midi group totalling 14 dogs of which about 11 were BCs. He ran the fastest time in Agility once (unfortunately missing a contact) and the 2nd fastest in Agility once (also missing a contact), so not getting placed, but to beat BCs, one of which is Chinzi's gradmother who was in SA team to win AWC a few years ago, that takes some doing! I was SO SO SO proud of my boy! He only had one unfortunate DQ because of being spooked by thunder & flags just before he had to run and he just couldn't listen to mommy and try to be safe at the same time. :( Still his best overall performance ever and one to be proud of.

Emma won mini overall, grateful for that, as we've come 2nd and 3rd many times before, but never managed to win it. She also won a Gold and a Silver in Jumping during the weekend. Along with two Jack-Russels, she was also in the mini team who came 1st.

Chinzi also had an awesome weekend with one Q each in Agility and Jumping 2, and mostly 5-faulter rounds for the rest, dropping a bar here and there. Along with her Boland Flyers Teammates, she won the Flyball to bring home another Gold medal. The team's best time for the weekend was 19.5sec, not their best ever, but still not a bad time.

Between Emma & Chinzi, they brought home 125kg of Montego Classic, our sponsors for the weekend. Thankfully I took a trailer!!! LOL! :)



3 comments:

Dughallmor Beagles said...

We were wondering what you guys had been up to....and wow, you've been so busy! Congratulations on all your successes....and that HUGE haul of food...should keep you going for quite a while!
We look forward to seeing you again soon.
Slobbers xx

Xsara and Tani said...

Wow, that's a lot of food!! Nice to read about your updates, now we're only waiting for a blog for Caili :)

TWa76 said...

Hmm... wondering if my one plus one conclusion is correct. Are you in WC agility team? Btw missing to hear about you guys.

Photos in slideshow courtesy of Gary Killian.

Levi pulling out front in Drag Hunt

Photos in slideshow courtesy of Nico Nel.