Day 1 Update!

We made it through day 1 of the NADAC trial (even though it was only two runs)!! Juggling the two dogs was a piece of cake!:O) Traffic heading down to Corvallis wasn't the best and even though I gave myself extra time, I still got to the fairgrounds later than I wanted. It wasn't too bad though because there weren't a whole lot of people entered tonight. I've decided that running Bess first is the best way to go. It just seems to flow best for me.


I should probably explain that the hoop obstacles are these arches that the dogs have to walk under. They look like this:

The course is set up with a combination of test hoops and non-test hoops. The non-test hoops are set up in a straight. The test hoops are set up into different patterns that you have to execute correctly. Each level has a pattern in which they have to complete the course. For novice (that's us!), you have to first go through at least three of the non-test hoops in sequence. Then you have to do one of the test set ups. Then you have to another two non-test hoops in sequence. Then another set of test hoops. And finally you head off to the finish hoop. As much as I wasn't sure about how "fun" this games course was going to be, it turned out to be actually pretty fun. There's some planning required by the handler, but otherwise it's running around and keeping up with your dog. Oh yeah, and NO TUNNELS!!!

Bess' first run went really well! She got a little bit of the zoomies going through the first set of non-test hoops, but that just meant that she got ahead of me when I didn't totally expect it. She listened really well in the ring and we had a mostly clean run. We did get faulted some where, but I'm not totally sure exactly where. I have a sneaking suspicion that it may have had to do with her mouthing her leash, which is a HUGE no-no. I thought that we were clear of the ring before she did that. Who knows!

Heffner was pretty distracted for his first run, which is pretty much his MO. We had to re-do one of the test sets three or four times before we executed it properly. His run was totally clean, but we went over on time. Not too surprising!

Bess' second run went a lot better. She had a beautiful serpentine! Her only bobble was that she went up to the timer and scribe to say hi for a quick bit. I have no idea if we were faulted or qed or any of that because we left before they had posted the results.

Heffner's second run went a lot better. He was a little more sluggish, but it was a clean run and we hit all the test hoops the first time around!

So tomorrow we'll see how they both did on the final two runs and we've got a whole big day ahead of us. I'm a little nervous at the amount of dogs who are supposedly entered. There were a maximum number of 500 spots for the trial and rumor has it that all of those spots got filled. Yikes! That's a whole lotta dogs! There also wasn't a photographer there today, but I'm really hoping there will be tomorrow. Either way, I'm bringing my camera and I'm going to at least make one of the onlookers video tape some runs for me!:O)