Agility Trial Day 2

Firstly, I have a few pictures from yesterday!! The above is one and below are the other two.:0)

I do in fact have video from yesterday (thanks Kennedy!!), but I decided that I'm going to save the agility videos for tomorrow. Kind of the perfect Movie Monday. I'll save the beach video for the following week (which saves me some time since I haven't put it together yet!!). I will, however, share the video that I bought from the professional videographers at the trial this weekend, when I get around to that course.
The first course of the day was Excellent Standard with Heffner. The course was nice and I felt like we had it pretty well, and we did. Until I botched it a bit in some spots. While I'm still happy with the run, I have to say that it's getting a little old that I'm still making these little mistakes that are costing us our runs. Frustrating! I'm more mentally there than I have been in the past. At least I feel like I am. I just keep doing these little things. ARG!! Anyhow, like I said, the course was a nice one. Unfortunately we dropped a bar on #6. After looking at the video, I did a quick movement with my left shoulder while Heffner was going over the jump and it looks like that's what caused him to drop the one bar. Blarg! And then I botched his weave pole entrance by basically not doing anything to signal it. Awesomeness!! At least my dog still loves me!

Otherwise a good run. And the run that had an unexpected event in it. Heffner has really been trying to pick up speed as he goes through the weave poles. In the process, the poles tend to take a beating. This time it was enough that he actually dislodged a pole and sent it flying! And that's why I bought the video. When I was viewing the video, the frame seemed to me to be bigger. But after viewing it at home, it doesn't seem as large and you don't really see much of the pole popping out. I'm hoping that if you're ready for it, it'll be easier to see. So watch for it! At the time I had no idea that it actually even happened.




After some waiting, both dogs were up in Open JWW.
When the course was all laid out it just felt so crammed together. While I was watching outside the ring I made this comment and a few other people agreed. There were huge gaps of unused space along both sides and the back of the ring. I was a bit bummed that things weren't spread out more so that there could be some real stretching out. Oh well. Heffner was first up and I have to admit that everything was kind of a blur. I know that we knocked a bar, but I don't entirely remember why or which one it was. I do know that he did NOT want to hold his start line stay, which was also evidenced in his Standard run. Otherwise it was a good run and we had fun!

Bess followed Heffner and she also had a good run except for one little blip on my part that caused us to go a fair bit over on time. She nailed her weaves and I celebrated too early. She got amped up, vaulted over #14, swung wide around #15, we incurred a jump refusal, and then it took extra time to get her around without back jumping, to take the jump correctly. Otherwise, good run.
Our final run of the day was Open Standard with Bess. It was a good run! Not clean, but an otherwise good run. Again, things are kind of blurring together at this point, but I believe we had a dropped bar somewhere? We did end up with a Q and 2nd place though! Yay Bessy!!

Ruthie also got to come along so that she could start getting used to chaos that surrounds agility trials. She's used to conformation shows which are generally quieter and more under control than everything that goes surrounding agility rings. She did good for the majority of the time and was actually mostly quiet, which was my biggest paranoia. I had visions of her doing her strangled hooker scream and other people around me shooting me dirty looks. Thankfully that didn't happen. Overall she was great and well behaved. The only problem she had was while I wasn't in our set up, but the people crating next to me and Kennedy confirmed it. Ruthie apparently doesn't like Vegas. As in rather violently doesn't like Vegas. When Kennedy would walk past our set up with Vegas, Ruthie would start barking and lunging from inside her crate. I was really surprised by this and I don't know why she would be bothered by Vegas. I'm sure that gradually she'll get used to seeing her, it's just weird! Aside from that, Ruthie enjoyed getting to walk around the grounds and meet lots of people.

We had a great time at the agility trial. My Cleveland Browns beat the Dolphins. And my fantasy football team won this week after our oh so hilarious league manager predicted that I wouldn't win a game all season!! It's been a pretty great day!!

I've got a bear of a work week coming up and I would really like to pretend that tomorrow isn't Monday! I hope everyone had a great weekend and that your Monday's treat you gently!