May monthly diary from young agility star Lucy Osborne

The first show this month was held at Vyne on Newbury Showground. It was a Championship Show and Ben and I took part in the Championship Agility class.

Yet again Ben gave it everything and had a smashing round. He had great contact and good speedy turns. As we were still sprinting past the finishing timers, a friend outside the ring shouted 'in the bag!'

I was really pleased with the run, he had worked so hard round the course and I knew that it would have given us at least a good place. The presentation came and Ben and I received 1st place. I was over the moon.

The next class was the Championship Jumping class. Ben had another good round but unfortunately knocked a pole so we didn't finish in the placings, but we were still in the final with our exceptional performance in the agility class.

The final came and again we had a good round. The final consisted of an agility round and there were plenty of traps throughout the course, which is something that we both like as it keeps us on our toes.

Running second wasn’t quite the order we wanted as you don't get to see where people go and if they make the mistakes. It didn't really matter though, we had another clear round and a good time.

We were in first place right up until the second to last dog who really went for it and beat us by 0.02 points of a second. This left us in second place, I was a bit disappointed that we couldn’t keep our lead but I was happy with Ben’s performance and we gained our first Reserve CC.

We also took part in the Olympia Agility Stakes. In this class you have to gain a 1st to 10th place in each one of them to gain a semi final date.

Ben did a great run yet again with good contacts, although we lost a good two seconds on a few wide turns this still left us with a 3rd place. Ben really performed well and I was really pleased.

The next event was at Otley where we took part in a 6-7 Agility class.
We had a good run and used as a training round where I made
Ben stop at the bottom of each contact other than allowing him to run touch and
go. This stops him getting sloppy when we are really flying round.

This lost us a bit of time, but as it wasn't a qualifier it didn't matter as much. I was surprised to find that we had finished in second place, which was a great achievement, especially as we used it for a training run.

Next up was the 6-7 Jumping class and we had another clear round. However Ben almost did the weaving obstacle too early and I just managed to pull him off the before getting marked. Apart from that little hiccup we managed third place.

We also went to the Dog Vegas agility event and took part in the Agility and Jumping classes.

The first class was the 6-7 Jumping and this was another course where Ben could see the weaves before he actually needed to see them. The weaves are Ben’s favourite obstacle and it is hard to pull him off them. We managed a clear and gained fourth place.

We had another good run in the 6-7 Agility class; the course seemed really spread out which is something Ben prefers. He lets himself go and does what he likes best which is running full pelt around the course. This is what he did leaving me behind but putting us in pole position.

The Grade 7 Jumping class was next and it was a very tricky course. We did it well and I am so proud of the way he worked, he was so responsive and kept it tight and again no one could stop us. We finished in first place leading the class by over 2 seconds! I was really ecstatic, I couldn’t believe it. Ben and I were on top form that day and it was a really great day.

However there are ups and downs in agility and topping the last show was going to be hard. We found this out at the Nottingham Championship Show.

We won the championship jumping class but unfortunately it all went wrong in the agility and we were eliminated. We didn't manage to get
through to the final but still walked away with a first place from the jumping
round.

It’s hard not to be disappointed with the result from the agility but there are still lots of things we have got to learn as a team so we can be more consistent when we compete. Hopefully we can look forward to gaining plenty more excellent results next month!