BEATING THE HEAT:
TRIALING IN THE SUMMER IS EXPENSIVE! By the time you get all the things to keep the dog safe...geeze..I could have taken a trip, to some beach location, what was I thinking trialing instead of that? The funniest thing was when I checked on Breeze and she made a little ice nest, she had taken all the frozen things in her crate and piled them all around her. She was laying against a frozen 2 liter bottle, she had the ice pods under her and had one between her front legs on her chest. She was laying her head on the other ice bottle. She had the rest of the ice pods all against her other side, I do not know how that could have been comfy but she looked great.
The temps were over a hundred at 2:30pm when we left the trial so I knew in the middle of the day it had to be hotter then that. I had taken the advice AC gave and brought a few frozen liter bottles of water for the crate. I also had four ice pods from clean run under the crate pad.
http://www.cleanrun.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=product.display&Product_ID=1889&ParentPage=sale. I had put a wet cool coat on Breeze http://www.cleanrun.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=product.display&Product_ID=918&ParentCat=152When Breeze was outside I put a reflecting coat on top of the chilly coat http://www.cleanrun.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=product.display&Product_ID=1380&ParentCat=152. I had my Ryobi fan blowing over the frozen bottles, so I am sure that helped. Anyway, I got a sprayer bottle on the way to spray Breeze's coat down when it started drying and of course there was the power boost to give Breeze to replace the "stuff" she lost in the heat and while she was running http://www.cleanrun.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=product.display&Product_ID=2429.
That list of things that I got for our hot weather trialing does not include the cooler I bought to keep enough water in for me, and the two cooler thermas things for Breezes water, one so I had enough water to dip her coat into and so I had water to wash her down with, the sun screen, the hat I bought from petsmart on the way to the trial for protection from the sun. I also got a couple of umbrellas from Costco and a couple of metal umbrealla holders, then the cart to haul all that stuff and of course bungees to hold everything onto the cart, does it ever end? YIKES, writing out all I invested is shocking, LOL.
Now here on a commercial they would list out all the expenses involved in trialing... they would hold up the little blue ribbon and say the first place ribbon.....priceless-of course with a picture of the person hugging their dog and their dog looking so very proud and happy. LOL, well, no "priceless" ribbons for us, just the knowledge that we made it out of there and had some fun on the last day.
OPEN JWW
The open classes started around noon, which was hours earlier then they had started open runs yesterday. Right before the jumpers run was going to run a gal sprayed me with the neatest sprayer, it seemed to have magic water! I had felt so poopey but after the spritz I actually felt pretty good. I was over checking Breeze and she came out of the crate jumping up and down and barking and chasing her ball. She looked terrific. I decided to go ahead and run Open JWW even knowing the course had a tunnel to the weaves and we had almost no chance the way Breeze has been doing the weaves of getting that. I made a plan to go and make a fast, happy run, work the start line and just try to get Breeze running and driving ahead. Well, it was a fun run and Breeze had a good time, she had no clue what to do with those weaves, but....hey we had fun. I did not even try to fix up the weaves, they were not going to be fixed at that trial and usually if we restart them she always does them well but not this weekend... she went around a jump and I did not fix that because at this point I only wanted a fast and happy run after the runs that seemed so sad for Breeze yesterday. Breeze thought she was a super star and thought we had our best run, so that was the whole goal. Only two people Q'd in open JWW, so I was in good company.
OPEN STANDARD
As soon as we got out of the ring from JWW Breeze looked great and she had ran happy and fast, so we ran over and had to run into the standard ring. I was sure we were only doing one run, but Breeze looked so good and the weaves were not until the end of the course, so I thought we could work on the contacts and the start line only had a short lead out so I thought that would be terrific for working the start line. It was a fun course. As we hit the end of the dog walk and then ran down the line of jumps of course the dogs built up a ton of speed, and you had to hit the tunnel on the off side. Breeze was way ahead and did not turn and twirl, so VICTORY, because it is hard for her to read a long line of jumps and keep going- she read what I was showing from behind and turned and hit the correct tunnel entrance. On the second tunnel this is where a lot of people in excellent and open missed because if you did not keep the dog in handler mode and if you let the dog go into obstacle mode they took off into the chute. Well, We got that just fine. It was a good run until it was all over in the weaves. We never did get those, Breeze actually hit the entrance and got five poles then sort of went over two and caught one, I think we went back and retried and she just hit a couple of poles so we went on, we already knew the weaves are now totally broken, so yep, adding that to the list of things to work on, LOL.
Anyway, so I met my goals and we had some fast and happy runs. We kept the judges doing the YMCA dance with not doing the weaves, but hey, it was so much better today then yesterday so I will take it.
BREEZE HELD HER START LINES,she was SOLID, and she was happy so I am so glad we did not have to take any time off trialing with the horrible runs of yesterday as our last memory. :-).
I talked to Daneen Fox about what was going on in trials with Breeze and I. I met her when I got to go to world team tryouts and she is always so helpful, a very nice person. Anyway, Daneen was jump setting so she watched our runs and she said that she just thinks I need to train in a higher mode and that is why things are falling apart in trials. At home or in our classes Breeze is happy and comfy and not totally amped out of her mind. She feels the key is to get her over the top and excited while we are working on those weaves and then to get me to quit flinging my arms around, LOL. I am better at the arm flinging then I used to be....but apparently still have not left my flinging ways behind. Daneen suggested coming to a few of her classes during our break from classes here and she said she would help us out. The classes are pretty far away, but I think we are going to go for a few times to be able to keep working while the classes here are on break. I think these last two weekends have let us know we are not quite there yet, getting there, but not quite there yet....LOL