NZDAC 2024 Reviewed

This year’s Upper Hutt NZDAC was the 26th national agility event I have attended since my very first NDOA in Auckland in 1997. My NZDAC prep this year was almost farcical in the number of last-minute things that went wrong, culminating in me hitchhiking up to Christchurch to buy a new vehicle three days before I left for the North Island, so it was a relief to finally make it to Upper Hutt on Thursday afternoon.

Gold Stars

For the most part I really enjoyed myself in Upper Hutt despite the weather, thanks to:

• The committee. Running an NZDAC requires a lot of planning and effort. This year it required a bit more – the courage to be the first committee to ever partially cancel an NZDAC due to weather. I think the committee did a very good of negotiating the situation and I agree with about 80% of the decisions they made (you can’t please everyone eh). I am on the committee for Cromwell 2025 and can only hope things go more smoothly for us!

• The volunteers. It was great to catch up (briefly) with some of my old Zone 3 mates, and to meet a couple of new ones. I’m in awe of how tireless and cheerful the volunteers in my rings were, given the long days and the rain and the mud. I’m sure everyone slept soundly on Monday night after the venue had been packed up!
• The judges. This was surely not the weather the judges were hoping for when they picked out their outfits for NZDAC. Thank you so much to all of you for being willing to stand out there in the elements for hours on end, and for rejigging courses on the fly to suit the conditions.
• The ring surfaces. Yes it rained. Quite a bit. And there was no shortage of mud – by Sunday morning there was a nice oozy puddle next to my van that swallowed up my feet every time I got out. One of the vehicle exits was already pretty cut up on Friday afternoon, and some high-traffic areas near the ring were getting quite tricky to walk through by the end of the show. But inside the actual rings the ground was green, and I felt pretty stable running in my soccer boots. Even after 5 hours of Jumpers A, there was visible trail of paw prints showing where the course went.
• The trade show. I don’t think I managed to make it to all the stalls, but I got to most of them and gave my credit card a good workout. It was nice to meet some vendors that I hadn’t seen before, and there was a good variety of stuff on offer. Able particularly enjoyed all the cuddles and treats he got at the stalls. Well done to all those vendors who made the best of a bad situation, and to those who couldn’t pull it off but popped some specials up on the Facebook group for us to enjoy.

• The venue. What a lovely setting! It was fantastic to have so much space to move around and let Able run around. I saw my first tui within ten minutes of arriving, and heard morepork calling every night as I drifted off to sleep in the van. Definitely one of the most picturesque NZDAC venues I can recall.

Coulda Been Betters

• The weather. First of all, this was definitely not the worst agility nationals I’ve been to weather-wise. There was no fire engine pumping water off the field (1999 Invercargill) and the inside of the rings was not an utter mudbath (2008 Feilding). It wasn’t miserably cold either – in fact this South Islander felt a bit too warm sleeping in the van overnight, and didn’t use half of the bedding she’d brought along. I had my first run on Friday morning in the dry, and there were decent find periods on Saturday and Sunday morning too – at one stage I event considered putting sunblock on. But the wind on Friday was pretty tiring, and after three days of fairly persistent rain and sloshing around in wet socks, I wasn’t actually that sad that the final day was cancelled.

• The communication. Jude Taylor did an amazing job as MC for the event. When I was near the rings and not running, I could hear the announcements clearly. They were fairly audible from the camping area when it was not raining too. But at such a large event it’s a given that not everybody will hear everything that’s announced, so it would have been good to have the more important things posted into the NZDAC Facebook group promptly. For example, I somehow missed the announcement on Sunday that the show was being canned and that we had to vacate our campsites that night, and only found out a couple of hours later when my neighbours clued me in.
• Camping facilities. It was a very long trek through the mud from my campsite to the showers, which meant the squeaky clean feeling only lasted a minute at best. The water stations, showers, portaloos etc weren’t marked on the map that was sent out to campers beforehand, so it took me a couple of days to figure out where everything was. At over 170 campsites I suspect there were a few more of us than expected, and I realise that portable showers can only go where there’s water available for them, but it would have been nice to have facilities nice and close to my campsite for those 1am trips to the loo… On a similar note, some tables and chairs near the food trucks would have been handy too.
• Prizegivings. I’ll be blunt, I struggle to concentrate for the full length of an NZDAC prizegiving these days. The stage was a great idea – getting everyone up high without taking as long to climb onto as a truck trailer. It was a good decision to postpone Friday’s prizegiving. Perhaps not such a good idea to hold Saturday’s prizegiving during the nicest weather of the day when we could have been getting through the afternoon set of classes. I would have liked to see a contingency plan in place (e.g. a marquee) for more sheltered prizegivings – definitely something to think about for future events.

• Whingers. Yeah, I know, I’m whinging about whinging. It’s impossible to please all the people all the time, and at a large event like an NZDAC it’s pretty much guaranteed that something will happen that you aren’t thrilled about. Add some grouchiness due to the weather and lo and behold, the whinges were coming thick and fast on Facebook before the event even kicked off. There were nearly 400 people entered – if everyone pops one their one pet peeve up on social media, that’s a lot of negativity to wade through. Thank you to those nice people who did put appreciation posts up though!

At the time of writing there are 355 days to go until Zone 5 welcomes you to the Cromwell – here’s hoping for good agility weather!