So we are going to have our first STANDARD RUN tomorrow in a trial. Our first standard run ever, and we chose NADAC for the venue. We have done a lot of jumpers but because of the dog walk could not do standard runs and feel Breeze was not going to hurt herself. Unfortunately, I do not know anyone that will be there that can video so I will have to just rely on my myself to remember what happens and how it goes ;-) (think the big one that got away in fishing). I really wish I knew some people that were going to be trialing, after all this time out of trials I am back to feeling really nervous, and sitting all day by myself will probably not help that.
In preparation for our trial tomorrow, I went to the local agility class yesterday with Breeze, it was handling 2 so one of their upper level classes and it was WEAVE day. YIKES, weave day with my dog that is not figuring out how to switch from handler focus to obstacle focus and is having a hard time figuring out how to check her stride before she hits the weaves, add in tons of wild weave entrances, and boom instant confidence deflation for me right before a trial, LOL. We will limp through this weekend with those weaves, ughghghg, and work on them next week ;-). Now the good part is that I did all front crosses, more then anyone else, LOL, and I got to the right place for them all, which Breeze was moving wickedly fast, so I was pretty proud of that and the handling part of the course, besides the weaves was LOVELY. So that was a confidence booster.
We had two photographers from the local paper at class, and they set up right in front of the 180 on course, so the dog had to jump right into them, well, Breeze was first dog up, right after the photographers arrived and they did not phase her at all, I did not even see her slow up, so I think she is doing fantastic with distractions, now if only we could fix this weave problem!
For us running a standard run at the trial tomorrow is a big marker point in our training- after partially tearing her ACL on the dog walk and numerous other injuries on the dog walk, there was a serious question about if Breeze could really ever safely do a dog walk with her hip dysplasia and how she uses her back end sometimes, and especially in a trial when she gets excited. It looks like that was not the case, so I think Breezie and I are entering a really exciting, fun, phase now. We CAN FINALLY RUN STANDARD RUNS, YIPPIE !!!! Anyway, sappy as it sounds it was just a little sad and disappointing I could never show our instructor because she lost the field she was doing lessons in so she has pretty much said that we will no longer have lessons. It is sad it ended before she got a chance to see that we finally did it, and finally after a year and a half of rehab, training and retraining I feel safe running Breeze in standard now-so I am pretty excited.