The Weekend Report - It's Me, Not You!

Back in the 90's when Seinfeld was the hottest show going, I watched every episode. On several occasions Jerry would break up with his current girlfriend with the comment, "Oh! No, No, It's Me! Not You!"  For this weekend report, I can definitely say, It's Me, Not Jimmy!

This weekend was the Mattaponi KC AKC agility trial in Fredericksburg, Va. Saturday started out great. Standard was our first run of the day. There was a dogwalk/tire discrimination early on, but fortunately the tunnel was the correct choice. Jimmy loves a tunnel so I wasn't worried. My other worry was of course the table! He gave a great performance there, too!  The rest was clean and we had a Q! Yippee! Of course this Q set me up for the Double-Q jitters. The Jumpers run had one spot of concern to just about everyone. A tunnel to a jump off to the right 90 degrees and then another 90 degrees to the weaves. Not that bad, but there was an off-course jump quite close to where you needed to shape your weave entry. If you pushed too hard, you could put your dog over that jump. Well, I was a bit over confident, and didn't work Jimmy's entry quite hard enough,. He ran in at the 2nd pole and we were cooked! I needed to take just one more step before turning him. Arrrrggghh! The first "It's Me" of the weekend. And the Double-Q down the drain.....

Today started again with Standard. It was tire, dogwalk, to a jump off to the left with a possible off course tunnel straight ahead but not too close. We made it past this just fine, made the teeter to a left into the weaves, then jump, and table. Crap! I could feel how bad my handling (I knocked the cone over!) was and Jimmy ran past the back edge of the table and yelled at me. If I had thought faster I might have been able to push him up on the side and save it, but alas I went brain-dead and we got a refusal. The second "It's Me" of the weekend. And the rest was fast and clean....No Soup for you! (another Seinfeld line :-) ) We didn't have long to wait for Jumpers. It's started out with a 4 jump serpentine, looped to the right and headed for a tunnel. The left end was off course but the jump pointed to the middle so it wasn't too bad, but it killed alot of Qs! I worked this just enough and we were past it OK. Clean-sailing through the weaves and into the home stretch, but one with funky lines. I thought we had it, but alas Jimmy dropped the 2nd to last bar :-(  However it wasn't til I saw the video (thanks Chris!), that I saw that I threw my arm up in a spazzy motion just as he was headed over the jump. There's no doubt that movement caused him to take the bar. So there it was, the third "It's Me" moment. Poor Jimmy, he SO deserves a better handler.

Here's the run: