Interclub Challenge

Saturday, 23rd July 2011

Cocker Conspiracy 2011

On Saturday, 23 July the annual NSW obedience teams match day was held at the Blacktown Canine City Centre beautiful, but soggy, grounds at Glendenning. In this event clubs nominate teams of obedience triallers who compete against each other for the honour (or headache!) of organising the next year’s match day.

Each team must consist of five separate dogs competing at four different levels. This year’s NSW Cocker Club team, Cocker Conspiracy, consisted of Elaine Temby’s Haylen (Watervaal Winfrey Konexshun) doing CCD, Alana Hopson’s Coco (Cadbilly Coco Supreme CCD) in Novice, Anne Lewis’s Alvin (Watersmeet I'm Harry CDX AD JDX SPD SD GD) and Patricia Looker’s Raglan (Ch Robmond Pantheon Blue CD) both in Open, and Patricia’s Kinya (OC Kingsway Double Jeopardy AD JDX) in UD. Alana and Elaine also took Cadbury (Runcorn Choco Delight CD) and Hope (Acijay Never Lose Hope) as reserves. We all competed in different rings against fifteen to twenty other dogs.

It was Haylen’s very first time in the obedience ring, but you wouldn’t have known it – he performed with blithe confidence ending up with a very nice score and 3rd place in his ring. Alvin and Coco had a few hairy moments in their performances but overall put some good scores on the board and ended up coming 5th and 10th respectively in their highly contested rings. Kinya, who had been brought out of retirement to participate, revelled in being back in the ring and showing the youngsters just how it should be done ended up 4th in her ring. Raglan, well the less said the better, he got totally distracted by the smells on the breeze and the activity and ended up coming a sad last in his ring – needless to say he’s in the dog house!

Overall Cocker Conspiracy came a very creditable 10th place out of the 32 teams that competed on the day. Amongst the nine breed teams competing we placed 4th – one of the border collie teams featured in the run off for first place. We were pretty pleased with our performance.

We’d like to thank the Cocker Club for continuing to support our entry in this competition so that we can show just how capable our special breed is. We’d also like to say a huge thank you to Liz Giles who agreed to let us use her name on the entry form as a steward despite the fact that she has never owned a cocker. She then ended up in the busiest ring running around in the blustery cold conditions to keep it running smoothly for most of the day – thanks, Liz, we would have been stuck without you.

We are looking forward to making up a team for next year’s event. With so few cockers competing in obedience it’s always a challenge finding dogs at the various levels, so we’d love to hear from any other club members who may be competing, or thinking of competing, in obedience who would enjoy the fun of being part of the team this time next year.

Patricia Looker