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Report from a very proud Team Leader...

Getting to the 2024 International Mixed-Breed and Paragility World Championships (IMCA/PAWC) event in Portugal was going to be the furthest that Linda Croxford and the UK Agility Team had ever travelled to an international Championship since becoming Team Leader in 2015. Altogether It would be 1,231 miles to the venue - not including the tunnel crossing - from her base in Whitstable (Kent). It was going to be three days of coach travel with two hotel stop overs en route with 23 dogs on the way out and 24 dogs on the way back! Unfortunately, 10 days before leaving, Linda found herself in hospital - not once but twice - with a large kidney stone. Could she survive the trip and the pressure of five days of competition?

Where to start?

The pain in my back was unbelievable, but I was determined to make it to Portugal with the team.

When the kidney nurse said, 'You're due to be going away, aren't you?'

I replied, 'Yes, to Portugal.'

She promptly replied, 'I don't think so! We won't allow you to fly like this.'

I said 'That' s good 'cos I' m not flying. I'm on a coach with 23 dogs!'

The look on her face was a picture, but I was very grateful she then said that going by coach was acceptable, if they couldn't blast the stone away.

Talk about last minute panic. The first treatment of 1,000 laser jolts on the Tuesday didn't work. Thankfully, they were able to fit me in on the Thursday to have a second lot of 1,000 laser jolts to be fired into my spine, targeting the stone. Luckily for me, this time it worked as the team was due to arrive the next day to load up the coach!

It's not an easy thing to select a team and four of us went through each individual's achievements from the try outs late on the Sunday evening. At the end of the try outs, we had a good idea of whom we wished to invite to join the team. It is important to understand that the choice of team is not just done by the results on the tryouts as I also trawl people's Facebook videos and their posts of achievements, etc. leading up to and after the try outs. Some of you will also see me liking the posts of those people who were very close to being selected or where we thought that one more year in higher competition classes would benefit them before being selected. Once the selection has been made, I hope everyone is going to get along and have a great time at the championships. My philosophy is that if everyone is enjoying themselves the dogs will work as well as they can.

Getting there
Nine team members and their grooms decided to drive themselves out to the event this year. Laura Mackay joined us for the first time this year, coming from Scotland. Miraculously she was able to reserve a ferry with an overnight room that would take dogs. When we tried to book this route, there were no dog accepting rooms available so we had to drive all the way on the coach. Other team members did the same drive – some over three days like the coach while others spent two very long days driving.

Once again we used Barnes Coaches from Gloucester with our regular team driver, Jason, who is now classed as a member of the team and comes to watch the team daily. He is a great help to me and is in involved with everything going to and from the venue. He is absolutely brilliant in that he knows our annual routines of getting the cages in and secured first and then everyone's luggage. And boy, there was a lot of that this year!

This year was brilliant as we were able to leave the coach under cover in the main competition hall, allowing us to have a UK Team area for all our cages and bits together while dogs couldn't see or hear the competition going on behind them!

I'd planned that we would do roughly did 400 miles each day. It's not easy finding European hotels that have 15+ rooms and that would take 23 dogs as well as have the facilities to park a 61-seater coach - all at a reasonable rate. I spend hours after returning from one championship looking at hotels along the planned route for the following year.

Our first stop was in Poitiers, France. The hotel management was lovely, but they had no evening meal facilities and no lift to the first floor so tired members had to drag their overnight cases upstairs. It was a clean hotel, basic but the pricing was good. The location, however, was in the middle of a business estate so not the best of places to be able to walk dogs. We were lucky in that there was a Burger King just down the road, so the evening meal was sorted for most of us. The hotel owner was very helpful and phoned through an order to a restaurant which he kindly drove to collect so others could have something other than burgers!

On the second day we drove straight through from France to Spain. The hotel was nice but having to unload outside the hotel was not fun. Although the hotel had an unloading bay, they flatly refused to remove their own hotel vehicles which were parked there illegally. The local police seem to have an arrangement with them to provide 'perks' such as hot refreshments and breakfast etc. As there were always police around, we were dreading the possibility of getting a ticket for parking to load and unload where we did. It's in situations like this that I know I have a 'team.' Everyone was helping everyone else in the most efficient and timely way to get everything off the coach so Jason could drive it to the parking area up from the hotel.

The less said about our experience with the Spanish hotel the better but, if I could have cancelled our booking and taken another hotel on the way home, I would have!

The third day of travel from Spain to Portugal was, in fact, actually quite good as it wasn't all on a motorway. Jason had found a back route which cut off quite a bit of time, passing through lots of little agricultural villages. It was lovely even if the road was like being on a big dipper!

So, on the third day and 1,231 miles later, we arrived at our hotel in Portugal at 5pm. The general conclusion from the team was that 'the travelling wasn't as bad as they thought it was going to be.' Unfortunately, three team members travelling out together had an issue with their van in Spain so they had to take it to a garage to be repaired which, of course, was a worry for me as obviously we didn't know if and when it would be back on the road again. They were able to find a good garage and mechanic who got them on the road about five hours later than planned and they arrived late that evening.

One plus for us was that, for the second year, we managed to book a nice hotel within a short walk of the venue.

The show
This year the IMCA/PAWC Championships were being held in a large open-sided venue in Beja in a ring with juta grass surface. Regrettably, the organisers hadn't received the standard of grass which they believed they had ordered which we are used to at the AWC and Crufts. The padding underneath the grass wasn't great but, the organisers did the best they could. As the length of the grass was shorter, it did cause quite a few of the really fast dogs to have really wide turns due to the sheer speed of travel. They just couldn't control their speed on turns.

This year's team definitely didn't disappoint. Each year I don't think we will better the 'team atmosphere' of the previous year's team. but we definitely did this year! A more supporting unit of a team to each other would be hard to find. Whether someone did a fantastic round and podiumed or blew out, the team was there to support each other. I was so proud of them all.

This year we started as we quite often do – quietly with a lot of 'if only runs' – a pole off two from home, a loss of connection on an otherwise perfect round or a very wide turn due to the surface, losing precious time. Then the second day, we started to pick up and had some brilliant rounds, finding the podium on several occasions.

About the author...
Linda Croxford started her agility career in 1984 with her parents' dog, a little crossbreed called Gemma. She caught the ‘agility bug’ when she went along to Dartford Dog Club to have a go with her obedience trainer's collie.'

She then joined Dalerose Agility School which was run by Tony Veal. One of her first instructors Jeff Bolton. She is still close friends with Jeff and his wife Chris, and they live local to each other.

Linda also met her husband Adrian at Dalerose, and they competed up and down the country for many years. In 1998, their son Daniel was born into the agility family. He is now 26 years old and running his own very successful club.

In her 40 years of agility, Linda has been a competitor, judge, trainer and show organiser and since 2015, she has been the UK IMCA & PAWC Team Leader. She is very proud of the achievements of the teams over the 10 years of her being the Team Leader.

Her health took an unfortunate turn when she was advised by medical consultants not to run any longer which she found really depressing. However, with the ParAgility event, she is still able to take part.

Linda runs her own club in Whitstable four nights per week and continues to organise the agility shows at Paws in the Park and the IMCA & PAWC UK Team. She also manages a very busy kennel and hydrotherapy business.

Photos: Various members of the Team

First published 20th October 2024

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