26/07/2026
The difference a day makes.....
There comes a time, when competing that the old reliable has to step aside and allow the youngster to take the reins.
This year I was in the lucky position to be able to choose from 2 of my dogs to run as part of Team Ireland in The Eurochallenge at the Gamefair.
For right or wrong I chose Yeats....
Just 4 years old. Still very young for a Chessie but there's a lot I like in his attitude to training. If we were lucky enough to get the course right, then I thought he might have a credable chance of a solid performance.
It is a 2 day competition with 7 retrieves per dog on each day. An hour under judges instruction each day and off lead and under control for those hours. Aside from the retrieves, ( which were challenging), there are so many other things for a dog to contend with. Scurries running behind the competition ring, tannoys, clayshooting in the background, people and dogs walking around outside and the oppressive, heavy heat of an English summer. It is a melting pot of distractions for any dog let alone a young novice dog. Our team this year had 3 dogs under the age of 5 and only one of them had run in the Eurochallenge before.
Day 1 did not go our way. We had some great retrieves, particularly thanks to our team mates but Yeats lost his way on some blind work and we finished the day 6th out of 6 teams.
Day 2....going in as the underdogs but more relaxed and looking forward to treating it as a good training opportunity . A different set of retrieves and more settled into the atmosphere Yeats put in a storming perfirmance, along with our team mates and we were delighted to finish our day as 4th Team. An incredible comeback after day 1.
Yeats scores out of 20 on Day 2 were:
20, 14, 20, 16,11,20.
We know our blindwork needs work but what an exciting challenge to look forward to that next year these young ones will be more than ready to take on the challenge. Thanks to our sponsors Dubarry Ireland, our judges and all the organisers for a competitive course and of course our team mates Felicity Higgs Dan and Jim Collins.
