Quite a roller coaster for our second trial day. It was a rainy morning, and then a sort of hot and muggy afternoon. It was still very quiet at the trial venue because it is Friday, and by the time I had to be there the excellent people who are most of the trial....;-) were leaving. I did not see a lot of familiar faces, so it was a good day to meet people. I brought Cricket and Breeze. Cricket did pretty good with her relaxation work and just hanging out. Breeze did not pee all day which was worrisome and right before she went in for the second run I was really imagining her peeing in the ring because she was doing a lot of sniffing, but she just would not go. I told her she better hold it for another minute if she was not willing to go the million times I took her out-scouting out the best looking pee spots, LOL. We had hours, and hours between our two runs which was rough....but what is new?
So since I really only knew a handful of people and most of the people I talked to were running in my run....no video ;-(.
First run-
A run to be remembered, no Q but a lot of laughs and I wish I could say a learning experience,....but not a lot of training going on in that run.
Actually really seemed like and walked like a very easy course. I had what I thought was a FANTASTIC plan, and I felt very good. I should have known that would spell trouble with a capital "T".
I lined Breeze up and stood on the take off side of the second jump, and the plan was to decelerate-make sure she was in handler focus mode-stand all the way to the side and make sure I was pointing way past the right side to go in the tunnel-we do lots harder discrimination. Well, ....I do not know if I did not decelerate and just thought I did (which is what I suspect), or if my feet were pointing the other way, or who knows because Breeze took off of the start line-BREAKING HER STAY (not by much, but she did!) and shot into the wrong side of the tunnel. It was really all over then, but Breeze and I bravely carried on. LOL.
The rest of the run is what comedy shows are made of. Maybe I thought I was doing a video on what not to do in an agility run. Ughghghghg. When Breeze came out of the tunnel I tried to put her in the right side, well, she turned and came back out...I put her back in,
This is the point that I should have just sat back and maybe even left the ring??? Or at least slowed down and taken a breath because at that point we were going down hill fast. So when Breeze came out correctly she did not drive to the jump at the top of the pin wheel. I went WAY out to support it, and I knew so much better but I was out so far that I did a front cross on the TAKE OFF side of the wing that was the third jump of the pin wheel. Not only did I make that tragic mistake, but I was way to the inside of a WING jump doing that silly maneuver. So with my fast long strided dog I found myself with no way to get around the wing on the jump and hopelessly behind and we were just at the start of the course. I raced around the wing and by that time Breeze is STANDING at the jump that goes around into the arc of jumps, we missed the weave entrance, everything that could go wrong did.
The only good thing about that run is :
A. It ended
B. No one was hurt-except a little embarrassed (me)
C. With how frustrating that must have been for Breeze to be trying to run fast and
to listen when there were NO directions that made sense coming from me MY BABY DOG
STILL RAN FAST AND KEPT WORKING. That takes a lot of drive and heart....Chloe my
first dog would have stopped and stood them until I got my crap together, and Lizzie would have left.
I am usually pretty good about going into another plan and can usually save a lot of runs, I think I am pretty good about substituting a front cross for a back, or decelerating at just the right minute but you would not have believed that if you saw us today.
NEEDLESS TO SAY NO Q AND MY FAST BORDER COLLIE....HAD 4 TIME FAULTS, LIKE 4 REFUSALS, 3 WRONG COURSES, WHO KNOWS WHAT ELSE?
After that run I would have liked to go home and take a bath, LOL. But noooo we still had a standard run.
I was pretty calm and the ring nerves had gone, like how could it go any worse then our first run...knowing that made it a little ....freeing...although it did keep crossing my mind...what if we do that all the time??? YIKES!
The standard run looked wonderful on paper, but when we walked it, it was brutal. The challenges on this course were the two first jumps were a real hard angle, and then there was very little place to turn your dog for the dog walk. If you had a huge lead out and Susan Garrett type arms where you could switch one hand then the other to signal different directions it would have been neat handled as a serpentine, but we don't have those skills and it is not something we would do. I had to settle for putting Breeze way over to the side of the jump and standing in just the right place so it was a straight line over the first two jumps, then run toward the dog walk and depend on her object recognition and rear cross the dog walk. I was not sure she would have enough momentum catching the dog walk to handle the rear cross and I did not want her to get hurt if she fell off or pulled off ;-(. Anyway, she did that marvelously. At the end of the dog walk she did not want to do her contact and I had to STOP, but it was after a few steps, I made her hold her down for a second, but I think that is where I got called for a refusal of the next jump.....what ever!
The last BIG hard part was that Aframe was all the way across the ring from the chute. Yikes, with a fast dog in high acceleration, I had to pull her over to the teeter, yell at her to stop on the end and do a rear cross while she held her teeter. People with small dogs that were slower were doing some pretty front crosses after the chute, but I just could not get there. After the teeter I slowed Breeze down on purpose and managed the weaves so she got the entry first time. I did not want to do that, she should be able to do it herself but she is not catching those first poles the first time when she gets all hyped up running a course. Another thing to work on.
ANYWAY, WE GOT A Q AND A FIRST, ONE REFUSAL, BUT IT WAS FAST AND IT WAS GORGEOUS.
After our disastrous first run, it was cool!
Weird as it might sound I am SOOOOOO glad to have such a disastrous run out of the way. It was sooooo UGLY, and I have never run a course even in class like that...not anytime that I remember...maybe when I first started??? It felt strangely like a relief though to have something handled that bad and to see no one even noticed, no one cared, and the few people that commented or were paying attention just shook their head and I knew in that moment they were letting me know they had been there before too!!! And I was so proud of my doggie to be out there trying so hard when she was getting nothing useful from me. So hope we don't have many more repeats of that run...but it did not kill me!
Oh soooo luckily there might be a video of that run out there, LOL. A friend thinks she got it on her Iphone, and I would like to see it so I can tell for sure what went so wrong, but not sure I will have the courage to post that little lovely thing. LOL.