And The Crazy Reigns Supreme!

Today Bess and I headed up to Ridgefield, WA for an AKC agility trial. Standard and JWW were all that was offered. The trial started later than normal since it was a Friday and there were less people entered. It was hard for me to try and gauge when would be a good time to show up, so I picked a time and figured that regardless I would be able to watch some good runs. Before we actually headed out for the trial, I stopped off at some soccer fields to let Bess out to run for a while. We went running last night and she was full of piss and vinegar for the first half. That's when I figured we were going to be in for an interesting day today. I thought that taking her for a romp would help. I tossed out the idea of taking her on a little hike because I didn't want her injuring herself right before the trial. I ran her around for a good half hour. And I mean RAN! We did sprints back and forth and she loved every minute of it! I figured that should at least take the edge off, so off to the trial we went.

After much waiting and watching of some good runs, our first run was Open JWW. Since we have zero Open JWW legs, I decided that I was going to try out a few things that we had been working on in a trial setting. The plan was to do a lead out pivot between jumps 2 and 3 and then to do a rear cross over 9. Nothing fancy, but we have never done a pivot of any sort in a trial and my rear crosses with Bess have not been successful up to this point. I am thrilled to say that BOTH moves worked!! She totally nailed it! The down side is that once she started jumping she literally threw herself into it. Her jumping was quite chaotic. My friend Elane videoed us (I may have video later to share depending on how well the quality comes through) and I got to review it right after the run. Her jumping didn't look as out of control as it felt on the course, but she definitely was not really paying attention to how she was jumping. We also had a refusal on her weave entries, something that I have GOT to fix before Rose City in a week and a half. The end result was an NQ. However, I was actually thrilled with her run. We a couple of very successful maneuvers and even though she was a bit crazy, she held it together for the run.

Next up was Standard at the complete end of the day. They were running small to tall and they ran all of the Excellent levels classes first and worked their way back. We were one of the last few dogs to run. I made sure to jog Bess for several minutes, I warmed her up over the practice jumps, we worked on some focus games, and we just kept moving in general. She was nice and calm. Even though she was excited to go over the practice jumps, she kept it together and didn't go zooming off. When I put her in a stay at the start line, she held it. And then I released her. Once she went over the first jump, she got this total crazed look in her eyes. I knew that didn't bode well for me! We did make it through the course. However, there were a few of courses due to some zoomies. There was a wrong course when she decided to zip around and take the wrong end of the tunnel. Basically, she had a ball. Needless to say, the run was an NQ. ARG! And we only needed one more Novice Standard leg!! Standard is seriously going to be the death of me with Bess. I think the contacts and the table give her too much time to "rest" and get ready for take off.

Even though it was an NQ day, we did get plenty out of it and it was fun regardless. I didn't end up getting home until after 7pm. I got the truck unpacked, fed the dogs, and then spent a little time in the garage packing meat. Oh yeah, did I mention that it's a meat packing weekend? Oh what fun! I really had no choice though. The dogs didn't have enough food left to last beyond the weekend.

Tomorrow Bess and I are headed out for another fun event. It's going to be Bess' first skijoring race!! We're entered in the recreational skijoring division, which is a two mile course. It should be good for her because she can just go crazy and run. Lets just hope she pauses long enough to allow me to get back on my skis when I fall!