Agility Trial!

Today the big dogs and I spent the day up in Ridgefield, WA for an AKC agility trial. I did my same night before routine of getting to bed early and having the truck all packed up. I was set and ready to go this morning. I wish I could say the same for my handling.:0/
First up was Bess in Open FAST. The whole point of entering her in the FAST class is to potentially burn off any zoomies that she might have and to work on contacts. Specifically not using the A-frame as a launching platform. The result was that she was great! She even got to open up a little bit and run, but still stuck with me. She nailed her down contact on the A-frame!! I didn't plan the most flowing of courses and didn't get to the send portion before the buzzer, so no Q, but a great run otherwise.
Next up was Heffner in Open JWW. It was a nice course and I knew that we could nail it. I had a great warm up with Heffner and he was pretty spunky getting to the line, but in a good way. Not in an over the top reactive kind of way. He was moving along really nicely in the class and felt like he was enjoying himself. Then something happened around jump #13. I think I managed to pull him off it. So we garnered a refusal. He had so much momentum when I pulled him around and I wasn't able to get him fully around the jump before he back jumped it. D'oh! Of course. NQ. Otherwise a great run.
Shortly after he ran in JWW Heffner was up again in Excellent Standard. This was another nice course that I knew we could nail. During the walk through I knew that I was going to need to be careful about the jump after the A-frame. If I wasn't fully ready for it I was going to screw him up. Even though it wasn't that long ago, I'm now starting to blank on what exactly we screwed up on. I think I threw him off for that first jump after the A-frame and then he knocked a bar on the jump after that. NQ. He just wasn't fully able to get a good landing and take off for that second jump. Otherwise he did really well and I'm still proud of him.
Next up was Bess in Open Standard. Funny story about this course. I almost forgot to run her in it. I got so focused on running her in JWW that I completely forgot about Standard. It wasn't until they were rebuilding the course and someone was asking me how our day was going that I realized I hadn't run her in Standard yet. Shortly there after they opened the course for walk through. Jeez! This actually ended up being the best run of the day. Bess nailed everything! Her contacts were good, she did her weaves all the way through and nailed her entrance. She was a little slow, but she stayed with me the entire time and we completed the course for the only qualifying run all day!
The final run of the day was Bess in Excellent JWW. It was a nice course. My only concern was that I remember to send her to the tunnel at #14 because that area was so similar to the Open course that I was afraid I might go on automatic pilot. Thankfully I didn't. Unfortunately I did manage to pull her off of #9 for a refusal and NQ. ARG! That sucked. Otherwise she ran great!

So that was today. A pretty relaxing day and I didn't even freeze at the trial today since the weather warmed up quite nicely. Now I'm headed off to finish up some cleaning around the house and take The Midget for a walk. Happy weekend everyone!