CPE Agility Trial Day 1!

Today Bess and I were at a CPE agility trial in Wilsonville, OR. I LOVE having trials that are close to home! Since it was outside, we shared some tent space with Vegas (another great dane) and her mom Kennedy! Today was pretty overcast so we didn't really need it today, but tomorrow the sun is supposed to come out and it's supposed to be much warmer. We all got there plenty early to set up the tent and get our little area all nice and cozy.

Bess was getting to try out Heffner's new soft crate to see how it compared to the soft crate I have for her. She especially enjoyed the skylight!
Kennedy made us some GREAT signs for our tent area to declare our breed pride!:o)


We ended up having some visitors! That's Stever (Kati's boyfriend) on the far left, then Kati, then my mom, and finally my dad.:) Steve was snapping pictures (which will be forthcoming!) and Kati (who is barely starting to get over pneumonia) was nice enough to video.
I'll give a general run down of the courses that we ran today along with the video. The first course of the day was Jackpot. This was a nontraditional Jackpot course. You had to use one of the three "bridges" to get from side to side. You also had to do at least three of the bridges in order to get your Jackpot points. The course is basically one that you make up entirely on your own depending on what obstacles are out there and how many points you need to acrue for your level. Bess had lots of energy for the morning part and while she didn't have the all out zoomies, she was a little more amped up than I would like. She had a harder time focussing. But we did manage to get a Q on the course!

The next course of the day was Colors. I had some bad handling that made things look sloppy and we also managed to knock down two bars. In Colors, one knocked bar is an automatic DQ. So after the first knocked bar I knew that we were done, but we finished the course. This was also the Bess' problem with the tire jump. For whatever reason, she just wasn't wanting to do the tire jump today. Hopefully it'll be a bit better tomorrow!

Our Standard run we don't have a video clip of. Well we sort of did, but since we spent such a small amount of time actually on the course, it's not really worth posting. Bess went through the tire jump and we were headed to the A-Frame (something she doesn't normally do) and she went around it. If I had been able to get her back to the A-Frame I think we could have squeaked by with a Q. Unfortunately, she continued on past the A-Frame and right over the final jump, stopping the time clock. D'oh!

Our Wildcard run started off rough. We had to start on the tire jump and she went throught the uprights the first time. I did get her through, but our next few jumps were rough because I was off and not getting her set up and over them well at all. We did finish the course rather well though and got a Q.

Our final run of the day was Snookers. This can sometimes be a rather challenging course depeing on how it's set up and the angles of everything. For the lower levels it's not too bad because we don't have that high of a point value that we need to achieve. For the upper levels, it'll be tricky. Our Snookers run was definitely the best of the day. We ran out of time during the sequence and had to go to the table, but we did manage to accumulate enough points, with one point to spare, to Q!

It was a really good day! We got three more Q's added on, and hopefully tomorrow will be another good day! I may try bringing my scooter out there with us so that I can work her in between runs to burn off the crazy energy and keep her a little calmer and more focussed. We'll see!