Breeze first trial was every bit as good as Lizzies first trial day was bad. She is just such a good doggie she handled the stress wonderfully and as the weekend went on with each run it seemed like she was getting the game more and more and looking for where to go, and understanding my body language a little better each time. I did not know what to expect from her, so I didnt know when to let her go and when to sit closer and babysit. Trusting my dog has never been my strong point, so I had a lot of trouble sitting and babysitting areas where I felt I had to stay to get one obstacle and then getting to the next area I needed to be. I have only done a handful of longer sequences with her and I do not have any feel for the timing with her yet, and that was HARD. She doesnt feel like anyone else I have run with and knowing when to stay and help her and when to just let her go is not something I have a feel for yet. I felt like such a rotten handler this weekend, but Breeze really did good even though I will have to say I did not give her the best chance by giving her good direction. It is weird to run with a dog as fast and happy as she is, I wasnt stressing walking up to the line which is always stressful for me and Chloe because I havent really come up with a good way to do that with Chloe so she doesnt start worrying and shutting down, but with Breeze we could just walk up there and not worry about it, that was fun. Then Breeze was just having such a good time and getting better with each run. We came out with a HUGE list of things to work on but a huge list of things that went right and the best part is that she held up beautifully physically. I did not opt to give any medication because I wanted to get a true test of how she was going to hold up and if she would get sore, and she didnt show any signs of hurting that I saw.
Our last run was on sunday in the dark, and a tunnelers run. There were two sets of tunnels that were parallel, and one was a set that were touching each other and Breeze being a baby agility dog does not always read my signals really well, the first tunnel was a dark blue one in the dark and the judge was sitting right next to the tunnel, so there were a lot of things in that run that made Breeze a little nervous at the start line and she broke, and I went with it because I had not thought it out ahead of time what I should do if that happened. Anyway, she Q'd and got fourth in a pretty big class of dogs. Her first Q. She read everything I did perfectly and I was proud of myself for not getting lost, although it was a really nice course.
Beeze is so much fun and so nice to run with, even knowing she has a lot of training that needs to be done and there is so much more she needs to know and I had no idea what we would get out of her, and she is so much different from anyone else I have run, and the list of dogs I have run is pretty small......I still did not get very nervous and I kept my stress pretty much under control. The last few trials I have been a real stress case, but I have to say I did sooo much better this trial. I worked hard on that and I think I did OK. Funny I started out doing well with stress my first couple of trials and then I started worrying a lot more and I just got so stressed I really had trouble thinking, remembering the courses and it was very uncomfortable.
So this trial this weekend was such a mixed bag of emotions and there were such extremes of how things went, I deceided to give everyone a little seperate entry and seperate the memories a little bit. It is going to be really rough to have so many dogs just starting out their agility career at once, the highs and lows come a lot faster that way for sure.
BREEZE....Breeze....boy, I sure wish she didnt have hip dysplasia, maybe she is going to do pretty well with that, but I will always have to be more careful to not tear her down, and I will always worry, it all comes down to that I will always worry about how she is doing physcially. I will always have to limit her number of runs, and I will just always be having to make sure she gets her accupuncture, her supplements, her exercises, great nutrition, I just will never just get to run her and not think about it because I love her to death and I do not want to tear her down to do something I want to do....maybe as time goes on and I get a feeling for how much she is able to do and handle I will relax...and not worry as much?
I really have GREAT things to say about Breezes first trial, it was a real terrific suprise. Breeze is such a fun dog, she is just easy as far as her training, her drive, her stress levels, she is just a fun, easy dog. Breeze is just the sweetest girl.