Happy 7th Birthday to my amazing Spaz! Chaos has never done anything other than give me his all, he might be weird, he might be strange, he might be baffling, but he is my heart and my soul and us two weirdos 'get' each other! I really love this boy with all my heart and look forward to spending many more birthdays with him.
I have tons to say about this weekend, which will probably come out in quite a few posts, the good, the bad and the ugly. I have to emphasise that I had such an enjoyable weekend! The best away weekend in a very long time, thanks to good friends, good jokes (even if some belonged in the gutter) and good support.
Say hi to the new South African Dog Jumping Champion 2013 - Chaos!
This is a bitter sweet victory... lets start with the sweet part. Chaos managed to come back from an injury, after 3 months of rehabilitation and win the SA Champs. He poured his heart into the weekend and ran a wopping 15/22 clear round rate, that is a 68% consistency rate. This trophy (which by the way is a year older than me!!!) is actually the main reason I became involved in dog sport in the first place. Watching the SA Dog Jumping Champs in the early 90's is what lead to me the sport, back then it was my dream to win this trophy and now it is in my house! How is that for a 7th Birthday present?
The other side of the story though is not as nice as I might want it to be... despite objections, this event (which being a National Championship and all, should really be prestigious) was held in conjunction with regular shows, where entries were open to all dogs, while only certain dogs would qualify for the championships. Thus in two of our three height categories, the South African Champions did not actually win the class. The class in fact was won by a friend with his brilliant young dog (and rightfully so)... so I think both myself and him should feel cheated, luckily we kept it in the family and in my mind he is the REAL SA Champ :) The other disappointing thing was that the results ceremony was completely neglected (mainly because we had to wait 3 hours for the this), with hardly any handlers left by this point (thank you so much to my friends that insisted on staying, even though I don't blame those that left, as I wanted to leave myself). When they did eventually get around to it, they managed to get the results wrong (twice) and even when they did get it right, there was no ceremony (even the judge had left at this stage), so I basically picked up my trophy and left. For a normal event this would be fine, but for a National Championships? I have to say I am not too impressed...
Regardless of all of that, my boy is SA Champ (kind of)!!!! Very proud of him! Thanks to all my friends for their support!
I did however comeback rearing to train and since the boys are resting, the girl gets to work...
