CPE Agility Trial Day 2!

Today was day 2 of the CPE trial in Wilsonville, OR. The morning stayed pretty cool. Cold enough that after sitting on my butt for an hour doing the time keeping, I was actually shivering while listening to the briefing for one of the courses that I was going to run. A few hours later the clouds burned off and the sun shone through. Things warmed up a fair bit, but thankfully it still wasn't hot. Bess got two more Q's today! One in Fullhouse and one in Jumpers! Unfortunately, those are the two courses that we ran that I didn't snag someone to video tape us. It's soooooo convenient when you have a non-competing friend around to record for you!:) Here's a general run down of our courses:

We started off our morning with Fullhouse, which could have gone either way. The first way is that she could have had the zoomies and raced around the course making it difficult to acrue the necessary number of points (you need at least three single points obstacles, two three point obstacles, and one five point joker and however many other obstacles you need to hit to fullfill your point requirements for your level) in the time that we had allotted. I REALLY wanted to Q in this class because we only needed a Q in Fullhouse and Standard to finish her level 1 title. I had mentioned before that I was tempted to bring the scooter with me to run her around a bit before the trial started. However, a short while after I got home I took the dogs out to this private foresty area to run around and chase some deer and what not. Poor Heffner got ditched at home once again (sucks to be a heat intollerant dog!), so he needed to let loose. They both ran all over the place! So when I got up this morning, I kind of thought that she probably wasn't going to be quite as peppy as she was yesterday. And I was right!! But I'm getting away from the run.

It was really a pretty good run. I wish that I had remembered to grab someone to record it, but oh well. I'm seriously starting to think that recording the runs is bad luck. But I really want those videos!! Anyhow, we Qed in that and I was very pleased with her because she totally stuck with me throughout. When we click, things juts go smoothly. When we're off as a team, that's when it's not so pretty.

Our next run of the day was Jackpot. I do have video of that. A friend of mine who takes lessons from the same instructor that we do, was nice enough to tape us. Today they were running all levels tall to small and Bess and I were the very first ones out on the line. I'm not sure what my luck was today, but I had a few courses where I got out there "early" and had to wait while some problem or other was figured out. Unfortunately on this run, Bess decided that she needed to run out of the ring and go visit Vegas. Somehow, these little things always seem to surface at trials and not in practice. She's never run out of the ring before. And she knows Vegas, but still, they had they're crates next to each other for crying out loud! It's not like she hadn't just seen her. Thankfully that was the only time that she ran out of the ring. Kennedy felt really bad, but it wasn't her fault. She was just standing in line waiting for her turn to go in the ring. Bess just for whatever reason got so distracted that she didn't listen to me. I have a feeling that she's going to be going into heat soon. She's "due" at the end of this month and she's already been having some behavioral changes that happen when she's getting ready to go into heat, so I'm going to just chalk this stunt up to that. At any rate, we got an NT for that one. You gotta keep your dog in the ring at all times. Makes sense!;o)



Next came our Snooker run. I have video of it, but it's really not that long because we major faulted before we hit the sequence section of the course. I didn't swing wide enough around a colored jump after Bess took her final color, and she took another colored jump to get to me. Automatic DQ. :( It was a different type of Snooker course (and if you're getting all sorts of confused with the different games classes, you can look up the rules on CPE's web site, but I gotta admit that the rule book isn't always the best way to go to figure things out. Being at the trials and watchign other people do it makes sooooooooo much more sense!) with some interesting angles to hit. Not my favorite, but that's okay!

After Snooker was Standard. I was also really hoping that we'd Q on this run so that her level 1 title would be completed since she Qed in Fullhouse. Unfortunately that was not to be. I didn't set Bess up well enough on her entry to the dog walk and then I went ahead of her when she was unsteady, so she bailed. The judge asked us to go on to the next obstacle. She did well on the rest of the course and nailed her down contact on the A-Frame! That's something that she likes to pull out in trials. So I was happy that we nailed that! Here's the video that one of Kenedy's sons took of us:




And our final run of the day was Jumpers. Things were getting a bit warm and we were the last class of the day. Bess did really well and stuck with me. We had a bobble going into one of the tunnels where she shot past the entrance, but I got her back and got her in. Then I lost myself on the course temporarily, but thankfully got it back together to finish the course with a qualifying time!!

One more agility weekend down in the books! Phew! I started looking through my competition spreadsheet (I seriously need this to keep all the different events, results, judges, registration numbers, and locations straight and not totally overbook myself!!) and realized that Bess and I are going to be hitting up some good sized dog shows over the next three weekends. Holy cow! I have yet to do three weekends in a row of dog shows, and ones that I'm going to have to do some travelling for to boot! Oy! I think I'm going to be one tired chica by the end of Sept.!