Three Day Trial

This is my serious intense jumping face

Shesh it was like three weeks ago now or something.
Since our trial in Fredericksburg.
So some good things happened, some not so good things happened. I did things right, I made mistakes, but this is still a learning process and we're figuring it all out. So let's see:

Saturday:
DQ (Double Q)

Both runs were super fast and fun (Less detail this week on the runs because frankly I don't remember the details). Jumpers run was perfect from what I remember, Standard I took him over the wrong side of the triple (bad mommy) and we almost had a fluke there at the end, but it was still our first Q in open standard. So we left Saturday feeling good with a new title (which I was super happy about. If your in the Virgina area you HAVE to go to the capital cocker club trials. They have the best ribbons.)

All the other dogs don't have to down on the table, why should I?

So that meant our fist leg in Open Standard and or Open Jumpers title! I only have video of one run from this weekend. (Luckily it was one of the good ones) So here we go.



Moving on, Sunday:

Total disaster. I got to the trial like four hours before my first run (bad idea) and realized I might have a conflict (I've never had a conflict before. And I got to freak out because I've never run in excellent before! So I was a big giant stress pot. First day of a trial I've ever not had fun in agility. So I should have just gone home I guess. My runs ended up having to be about 5 minutes apart (GAH!). So I had to walk and remember two courses at the same time (never even done that in class before).

Look at me sit stay like a good boy.

We started with open standard. Gauis had a mistake right in the beginning of the run and I fell apart. Totally unable to recover. I'm sure my handling was atrocious from there on out and I was pumping stress hormones from every pore in my body. About three obstacles from the end Gauis said 'F*** this' and stopped running to sniff. I gave him a few chances by calling him but he ignored me completely. Now I don't care how bad I'm stressing out or how poor my handling is, that's just not acceptable. My stress is just another distraction, he's allowed to be slow but he has to keep trying. So I took him by his collar and walked him off the course.

As I was leaving the judge says 'Be careful!' in a warning voice. -Sigh- little dogs are treated with such kit gloves. All I could picture was my friend's dog Preacher (a 65 pound golden) getting dragged off the course practically off his hind legs for blowing a contact in front of the same judge earlier in the afternoon. He didn't say anything to her and I wasn't being anywhere near as rough with Gauis. Half wasy out the ring crew asked me why I didn't pick him up. I said 'Being picked up is a reward'. Besides Tracy Sklenar and Laura Derrett always say 'If you can't do it while training a saint Bernard, don't do it while training your small dog'


Anyhow, after that we had to race over to the Exc JWW run to try it again with only 5 minutes in between. We ran clean but it took us 52 SECONDS! OMG like pulling teeth. So obviously NQ. That seems to be the fallout of dragging him off course. His next few runs are REALLY slow. I think he's just making sure not to make any mistakes. But if he keeps trying that's fine, it's worth it.

Look at this weird ugly jumping form

The next day we started with Exc JWW. We made it around the course nicely we only dropped the triple (got a good picture of him knocking that bar too. Look at the picture below and you can see his back legs were hitting it). He was defiantly slow but much faster than Saturday. We were only two seconds over time. So since we're in Exc A (where you can have a time fault), that would have been a Q if he had kept the triple up.

I am so taking this jump down mom

The Standard Open run started off slow and steady, thought we were going to Q. Weave poles were like the 6th obstacle. Gauis started his usual slow and steady weave poles. Then about halfway through he picked up speed and I got all excited. I started saying "Yay! good boy! Great!" I thought hey we've got something here! He got to the end and suddenly squated and took a gaint dump. EMBARRASSING. Well that's an automatic NQ. He was picked up and carried out of the ring (Gah kill me now)

This picture was taken four weave poles before his 'grand finale'

Pretty humiliating but everyone was really nice about it. Apparently ever ones dog has done it once or twice. Hey, who says we don't end agility weekends with a bang :)