July 10 AKC trial, JWW Q and a first, Yippie!

We trialed in Walnut, CA today. It was the first time i have been at this trial site and it was so pretty. There is a little stream right behind where we were set up, there were a lot of trees and this was a little one ring trial without a lot of entries, so it was QUIET. If the weather was not in the nineties it would have been perfect,....did I mention I am trialing next weekend and it is supposed to be TWENTY degrees hotter? Here in this part of the country Excellent ALWAYS runs first, excellent jumpers, excellent standard, open jumpers, open standard, novice...well, you get the picture. So in the summer Excellent gets to run in the cool morning, set your watch by it, when open gets to run the weather has just cranked up to boiling. How about once in awhile changing the order? The good part is that we don't have to be there until noon, maybe that would be nice in the winter months? By the time I ran my two runs I thought I was going to die! It is going to be hotter tomorrow, so we will see if I survive.

The bad news is that I was nervous and I could have paid the service there to tape my runs, but I felt like it would be bad luck, seriously....LOL. Next week I will be telling you I can only wear my holy under ware and dirty blue shirt so I can Q, LOL. So silly or not I set up my video camera on a tripod and then had to edit a lot of other peoples runs out, and if you want to see the runs you might have to squint really hard (just pretend it is all perfect while you are doing that). You can also make the video full screen on youtube if you really want to see better.

Aliens came and beamed me up and left weird, stiff, pod handler I think for our first run. I felt all shaky, and nervous and it took me a little bit to warm up. I ended up CALLING Breeze when she was heading for the tunnel I wanted....like what??? I NEVER call her when I am practicing, and I think I called her when I did the 180 into the weaves, I heard her foot tick the bar, but by the grace of the agility gods it stayed put. We missed the weave entrance, but all in all a nice run. In honor of those weirdo mistakes I picked music where Lady GaGa is reminding me DON'T CALL MY NAME! LOL, I hope you all see the humor in that. Anyway, a Q and a first, so I am not going to complain too much, but I really hate that I got so nervous.





An Open standard Q eluded us for another run....of course in the video I got all the bad stuff, which is good because I wanted to see what I did wrong....but did not catch any of the great stuff.

1. Breeze held her start line beautifully, GOOD GIRLIE!
2. We had a GORGEOUS four on the floor, but this was on the side she should have done a four on the floor, but hey I am happy about it.
3. Breeze did her Aframe contact really nice and really seemed happy about the Aframe today.
4. Breeze sat on the table and stayed which is not her favorite and it was a down all day until the open class....then it changed, yea thanks, but it still worked!
5. SECOND time Breeze did some great weaves, lets not talk about the first pass, we are staying positive remember.
6. Not caught on tape but right before the end there is a 180 and I did a landing side front cross that was GORGEOUS! Unfortunately like the fish that got away, no one else gets to see it!
7. OOOH yea, on the dog walk contact I was able to run past and Breeze held her down without being told stay, that is a first, ...getting better!


After watching the video I think first off...I was worried about the distance to the jump, triple, front cross, Aframe, so I should have STOPPED, WORK EACH OBSTACLE UNTIL IT CAN NO LONGER BE FAULTED...I should have pushed on the line from the dog walk to the tire then to the chute. Then I got all flustered and was late in my front cross and caused Breeze to drop her legs over the triple, causing a dropped bar, then....like that was not enough, did not follow the second basic agility commandment CONNECT WITH THE DOG OUT OF THE TUNNEL, if I had caught her eye and got her back to handler focus then I could have taken her past that Aframe. Well, next time. Poor Breeze, she does not like running with Pod handler.

If anyone wants a course posted I will do that, but I am tired and getting even more tired thinking of going again tomorrow, LOL, getting all stressed out takes it out of you. So I can post the courses later if anyone wants to see them, but they were all pretty nice, straightforward and not all that hard. Now the one interesting thing about the courses was that the open standard course had only ONE jump in the ending changed from the excellent course, that is right one jump--the angles were the same, nothing else was changed, and seriously the one extra jump did not add a lot of difficulty I thought.