Today all I want to say is that me and Volt are going to Luxembourg! We will take part in the team and the individual events... if I had won the lottery, maybe Chaos would have been going as well, he really did perform well over the weekend of the Try Outs (he walked away Reserve South African Agility Champion 2014), however without the added pressure of competing for a spot on the team, things do have a very different dynamic.
Volt and me had a bit of a roller-coaster ride leading up to the Try Outs.... for the whole year I have been very concerned that Volt is just 'not right', but the vets and physios could not find anything wrong. Then 10 days before the finals, the chiropractor saw Volt... and FIXED him ten times over. He fixed him so much that Volt quadrupled in speed, leaving me jogging behind with dust in my eyes. Literally in every single training session leading up to the finals me and Volt dq'd... generally spectacularly because I was not used to him running The Flash.
I decided that I would take it as it comes, in actual fact I couldn't care less about our result or whether we would go to Luxembourg or not, I was just happy I had my super speedy super Sheltie back.
The first course was a very enjoyable technical course and Volt was running so amazingly that I did not foresee our elimination AT ALL. So we started off on the back foot. In the next round we had 5 faults due to another timing error on my part. Admittedly I ran my last two rounds a bit more carefully, but still very happy with how Volt handled it all, finishing 2nd in the third round and winning the last round.
And more importantly we qualified as the second highest qualifier for the South African Agility Team (highest qualifying small dog). So now the FUND RAISING and preparation for the World Champs begin!
Chaos was beyond amazing the entire weekend, after a dog walk fault in our first round, he managed 3 clears to become the Reserve South African Agility Champion. SO proud! This amazing dog has given me everything he possibly could in the last 8 years and he keeps on giving more, getting better and stronger. He really is my heart and my soul!
I am really looking forward to seeing many of my international Agility friends in Europe in September. And making some new ones! And now I would like to introduce you to Team South Africa 2014:
