CPE Trial Day 1

First of all, let me just say that this trial has been a blast so far! It's at a new location that I haven't been to before and I was a little skeptical. But let me tell ya! I LOVE this location! The trial is hosted by the Dogs At Play Agility Club in Eugene, OR. They have a wonderful, fully enclosed, outdoor ring with actual grass! There's plenty of room indoors for crating on matted floors. And they had a food vendor selling great food for actually reasonable prices!

Part of the reason I was skeptical about this trial was that it didn't start until 10am. If you remember my post about the NADAC fund raiser that we did two weeks ago, the trial took FOREVER and that one started at 9am. However, this trial had a smaller entry and things really just cooked right along. I was totally loving it! And the club members were all super friendly and helpful. And the judge is one of my favorite agility judges (Candace Rapp) to boot!

Bess was being very calm and well behaved in her crate, but she usually does that so that I totally look like I'm crazy when I talk about how crazy she can get. I got her out of her crate and she got REALLY excited and started playing tug with her leash. Unfortunately, the location of this trial doesn't really allow for much off leash burning of energy. They did have one fenced off area that the dogs could be let off leash in, but it wasn't too big. So I just figured we'd wing it and see how it went. Once we got outside and were waiting for our first run of the day (Fullhouse), she was actually acting really calm so I thought we might have a pretty good run. Bess had other things in mind!

Once I released her from the start line, she just shot right off and start zooming all around the first few jumps and obstacles. Spinning out on the grass and generally have a grand 'ole time enetertaining those watching. I did get her to do a few obstacles correctly, but then decided to just end the run and call it good. She got a round of applause for her entertaining shenanigins, and we went and played tug a bit.

Her next three runs were AWESOME! We ran Standard, Wildcard, and Colors. And I am very proud to say that we had qualifying runs in all three and they were all completely clean to boot!!:O) She did sooooooooo well!! We did have one little MINOR zoomie bit in Wildcard where she decided to go see the judge, got overly excited, and ran smack dab into her. So we got another bit of humorous applause for that. Needless to say, Bess made quite the impression today!

While we were there, I had to check out one of their special bathrooms. It's called the Batroom and I LOVE it! I want one just like it in our house! They've themed the little bathroom in Batman stuff! It's so neat!

Tomorrow we're going back for the second day of the trial and I'm really looking forward to it! We're running in Standard, Snooker, Jackpot, and Jumpers. I'm hoping that I can keep her focussed enough that we don't have our first run of the day be a total zoomie fest! Either way, we'll definitely have fun. I didn't really try to get anyone to video us today, but I'm going to tomorrow. So I will hopefully have some good clips.:O)