Well a week has past since our return from WAO  in Britain but we jumped right into 6 days with Susan Salo (pardon my little pun). More on SS later. First I thought I would comment on WAO. I thought it was a well run event with absolutely fab courses from the judges. Challenging yet fair . . . loved, loved, loved all of the courses. I think my dogs gave me their absolute best. The highlights included Feature winning 3 of the classes (2 standard and 1 jumpers). I think it was one of Canada’s strongest teams ever at international events, I was proud to be a part of it. We had dogs that could compete for gold at each of the 4 jump heights (and congratulations to all of my teammates that earned their way to the podium).

Feature on a “victory” lap for one of her three class wins.

The only downer to report was that I think I was a step behind in most of my handling throughout the weekend. For some reason I uncharacteristically did not trust my dogs as much as I usually do and my second guessing resulted in a lot of “E’s” over the weekend.In particular I feel badly for Encore, she was amazing all weekend; no faults on contacts or weave poles and not one bar down but we got eliminated on every course we ran. I won’t give you a bunch of excuses for my performance only that I really didn’t take the time to prepare as I wanted to.

My face says it all at the end of day one.

Still it was great to be back in the UK, I had a wonderful time teaching and we had an even more wonderful time visiting with friends. The positive spin about not doing your best at an event like this is that you come home with tons of lessons on how to be a better competitor and a better partner for your dog.

Tomorrow I will post some videos. Today I am grateful for time spent with friends.