GUESS WHAT WE DID TODAY.........CRICKETS FIRST TRIAL EVER!!!!

TALK about a RED LETTER way to start a year, you all get TWO blog posts in two days, just want everyone to take note of that feat!!! LOL. Sorry my computer ran out of memory and did not fully process the video so I thought it was ok and posted it, but then had to take that one down, throw away all I could on my computer and then redo the whole thing,so if you got some error messages when you tried to look..that is why.

I know I can be very wordy, so it might be hard to read my post so I am going to try to keep this short so that the star of the day can be spot lighted.

Only two people in the world knew what we were doing today, my friend Denise who is the best support team ever, and Rachel Sanders because she asked when we would do our first trial.

I put a lot of pressure on myself and the time leading up to the trial I would sort of shake, and my breath would come fast and shallow when I thought of entering the trial, I can be a big basket case so I did not want to talk about it a lot before the big day. I was worried about myself, it is so hard to run with my foot which is finally feeling better just the last few days, but I am so insanely out of shape that it is embarrassing. Of course in the last three weeks I tried to smash a full year of fitness to get into shape but it does not happen in three weeks. Not running around all fall because of my foot really has not helped me a lot.

So today I got up and knew this would be Crickets first day at a real trial. We have not done a full course since last spring when we did a fun match. Cricket has not been to a trial since last spring. Cricket was a freak when we got to the trial, walking to get her measured she was lunging and jumping on EVERYONE. She was so over the top I thought this might really end in a horrible train wreck. Unbelievably it was insanely hot for a January day, and our run was not until late in the day. There was a miscommunication and I have been working Cricket at 20 in and had to run her at 16 inches,(I don't know what I was thinking....), and I do not think that helped us but....

After we ran I was sooooo happy, I am not sure I know we did not qualify in JWW (dropped bar) and I am pretty sure we did not in Standard, but we had rock solid stays at the start line, whooo hooo. We had BEAUTIFUL weaves and I did not have to babysit the entries. The standard weave entry was after the long jump to a 180 turn to the weaves but she did it.

HER CONTACTS WERE AWESOME, how cool is that?

I messed up and gave too many forward cues at the start of standard and caused a wrong course and when Cricket came out of the tunnel I did not make contact with her and cue the teeter so she raced past it. Not perfect but boy I will take that as a first trial day any day, I am very happy and proud of my girl.





The only thing that cast a small dark cloud on the day was when I was getting ready to go and Breeze thought she was going. She has been the only trialing dog for a long time but now that she is pretty much retired, she had to stay home, the end of that era made me a little sad ;-(, but I had to take a deep breath and not take away from Crickets day.....