Crufts 2009 Team CSJ!

Well what a year once again for our CSJ Agility Team!

I think this years crown has been returned to the amazing Toni Dawkins with both Minx and Kite winning the Championship classes, and Minx also taking the Singles Title!

Toni David Amanda and Lee also secured for the second year the team title, sporting their lovely pink CSJ tops

David Munnings and Dobby set the international stage alight with their superb win in the International Agility

Congratulations this was quite an achievement when some of the best of the world were competing!

Leah Gardner was also flying the flag in the Crufts Singles,

and not forgetting Stuart Harmes and Binka qualifying for the international Agility final and coming a respectable 7th!

Here's a few words from each of the team:

Toni Dawkins Writes:

How was Crufts for me this year?

Not bad really, in fact pretty fantastic! I went with plans this year and nearly every one worked for me.

The first was to get Lee’s dog round clear in the team, not an easy task as I have run him three times this year. To add to that just before Crufts lee had been trying to get Bold to power more over the jumps, great as that is exactly what he did! Trying to turn him this year was hard but he is always such a good boy for me and I trust him completely. I got my two clears and our team of Amanda Pigg, Dave Munnings, Lee Windeatt and I won for the second year running.

I have to apologise now to Miranda Frankham, I messed up our mini/maxi pairs as my mind was on the team, I gave Minx a late command, getting us eliminated. I promise to do better next year if you will still have me.

Friday was singles day and my plan for the morning semi was just to go for a safe clear with both dogs. You don’t need to win the qualifying round just get in the top 5 mediums and top 8 standard. I went the long but safe way round the last few jumps (for my dogs) and made sure all my contacts were good and Minx was third, Kite fifth. The final of course is different and I did run to win, stupidly though I got soo excited when Minx ran that I drove Kite up the first line like a mad thing and almost sent her over the wrong jump when I suddenly remembered I needed to turn her! Poor Kite, she still ended up fourth but I did let her down there.

You learn something from every run though and there was no way I was going to let myself do that again on Sunday. The plan in the qualifiers again is just to go clear and not to win. Every time I ran Minx first and then Kite so I just calmly swapped dogs and tried to forget about what Minx had done until after I had run Kite. No it wasn’t luck that Minx stopped in the jumping round, I stopped her to get into position for the final few jumps. My plans worked as both girls qualified for the final! Now I was excited as I love finals, the all or nothing runs are always the best.

Minx again ran first out of my two and was a star, as she had been all week and won the ticket. Of course I was excited but had learnt from Friday so once again swapped dogs and thought about Kite, I even asked a couple of people who tried to congratulate me not to until after Kite’s run as I had to focus on what I was doing. When I ran Kite I just let her dictate the speed and float around as she loves to do, so everything was neat and perfect. Only Dave was to follow and yes his young dog can now beat Kite but I knew it would have to be a good run to do it. When Dobbie missed the dog walk everything went mad around me and it took me a while to realise that Kite had won the large championship at ten years of age.

When it finally sunk in that both my girls had won their champ classes I just cried as I really couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t be prouder of their performances at crufts this year and both won in exactly the same time too, how strange is that?

So I had thirteen runs at Crufts with three different dogs, twelve of those runs were clears (sorry again Miranda) seven of those twelve were 1st places.

We have a lot to live up to next year!!

Crufts 2009: From David Munnings

Wow....just back from Crufts 2009 and what a great time we had! 6 wins out of 8 classes!! Firstly we won the team event on the Thursday, i was running my old dog Billy, he is 11 years old and still a winner! The team was me, Toni, Lee and Amanda, we won the morning semi final and the evening final! Thats 2 years in a row now....keep it up guys :)

The Saturday was the international event with Dobby, there were 22 competitors from different countries which included numerous champions and...the World champion from America! So some pretty tough competiton. Dobbywon the first jumping round but i meesed him up in the agility. But we went on to win the final in the evening beating the World champ who came 2nd i think that has been the best part of our career together so far, knowing we had beaten the best....World championships next, fingers crossed we can have a repeat performance!

Sunday was the Championship class, Dobby won the jumping round and the agility round, but unfortunately i messed him up in the final again! But luckily Toni won it with Kite so it was still a CSJ victory!! Toni really deserved it, Kite is a very special dog :)

Thanks to CSJ for my sponsorship, my dogs love it and do great on it! The amount of comments i got on how well my dogs looked was amazing...especially at a breed show!

From Leah Gardner

This was mine and Herbies first Crufts and I wasn't sure what to expect. I had been told the dogs don't cope well on the surface, but Herbie is a careful, sure footed dog so I had every faith in him. True to form he was great, handled his nerves very well ( a bit better than me!). He worked extremely well, not slipping at all. We got to the 2nd to last obstacle and a split second decision made me question the way I was going to turn him. Sadly this hesitation cost us dearly, putting us into 10th place when you needed to be 8th or higher to qualify through to the final. I'm sure if we are lucky enough to qualify again that things will be different now we know the way it works and how Herbie will cope on the surface. Any way Herbie spent the rest of the day cheering on his follow CSJ friends, and cuddling everybody he met.

Stuart Harmes and Binka

.................Some stunning agility once again Fantastic

Well done to the whole CSJ Agility team for yet again dominating the stage at this world class event We are very proud of you all!

Ann