CPE Agility Weekend

Before I get into this weekend, I had to share Bess' Rally Excellent titling picture! We got it in the mail yesterday.:) Now on to agility!

Our first class of the day on Saturday was Jackpot. All levels were running together and there were three Jackpot options, but you could only choose one to complete. I picked the one with the teeter because I knew that both of my dogs could handle it and then I'd make up the difference in points after that (you could do the jackpot at any time and didn't have to wait for the buzzer). First up was Heffner. I got him out too early and we were standing around waiting (he was the first dog on the line) for longer than I would have wanted to otherwise. Once the course had opened up for walking, I walked what I planned to do and then went and grabbed Heffner since we were the very first dog up. Unbeknownst to me, the walk through had gotten split between tall dogs and small dogs. Only, the two walk throughs were held back to back, so the total walk through time to get through everyone was closer to 30 min. That was really annoying. And for whatever reason, each group was given a really long time to walk the course, so we stood around waiting for quite some time. In that time, Heffner and I both got a little cold. So when we actually got to start our run, he knocked a few bars while we were running around. As I sent him over the first jump for the jackpot, he knocked that bar and our jackpot was negated. No Q


Next up was Bess. She was staying pretty calm and I felt good about our chances. She was nailing her jumps and then I sent her to the jackpot. She nailed the jump and moved nicely away from me to take the teeter. Nailed her down contact. And then as I was sending her over the final jump to nail our contact, she got the zoomies and tore out of the ring. She did come back to me, but that was it for that run. Oh yeah, and somehow I forgot to take her collar off (CPE doesn't allow you to run with a collar on). D'oh!
Next up was Snooker. It's a games course that I actually like. It keeps you thinking and you really have to work your handling. The course that we had on Saturday though was evil. It doesn't look too bad until you realize that three out of the four red jumps are all close together on the start line. There were sooooo many dogs that didn't quite do a threadle and took two consecutive red jumps and thus ending the game. It was very interesting to see so many of the more experienced handlers playing the game as safely as they could and really slowing down around those jumps. There were not a lot of Q's on that course.

Heffner was actually doing fantastic on this run. Really staying with me and going where I wanted. Unfortunately, I didn't plan our course terribly well and didn't utilize the 7 point A-frame the way that I should have. This bit me in the butt in the end. I didn't do a good job of getting Heffner over the #5 jump and into the 90 degree turn to the tunnel and he knocked a bar. So that ended our run. Unfortunately, I hadn't planned a good enough course for us to have enough points prior to that. We needed to make it through the tunnel in order to have enough. Oh well.

Bess was up after him. She was going really well and I had a better game plan for her. Until our threadle didn't work so well and she took a second red jump. D'oh! But at least I remembered to take her collar off!;)

Next up was Standard. For this class I was going to have to hustle a little. Both dogs were at the same level and same jump height. There were a total of four dogs at our jump height, which left only two dogs in between mine. It ended up working out totally fine since both were crated inside and I had warned the gate steward ahead of time. Heffner ran beautifully and Qed! I was really pleased. Bess was doing okay until the weaves. She tried to by-pass them entirely and it took us a few tries to get through them. Then as she came out of the tunnel she took off zooming across the ring. She didn't actually leave the ring and I did get her back and finish the course, but it was an NQ.

Our final class of the day was Jumpers. The dogs were in different levels, so that aspect was easy. The courses were quite nice and both dogs sailed through with nice qualifying scores. I did have to restart Bess on her weaves, but the second time was the charm.

Because it's starting to get late, I'm going to leave off with the recap of just day 1. I'll finish updating about our much better day on Sunday tomorrow. But before I do that, I'll leave you with a couple of pictures taken of the dogs and I tonight after our run. The rain is back and no amount of "clever" timing on my part was going to position us for running during a break in the rain. So I put the dogs' rain coats on and off we went! Heffner was pretty enthusiastic throughout the run, Bess not so much. She's not overly fond of running in her rain coat and I think she was less than thrilled at the amount of flooding on the paths that we were running on. You tell me if she looks pleased.;)