The Weekend Report: Keeping Me Humble!

This past weekend was an agility trial held by the Carroll Kennel Club in our usual spot in Frederick, Md. What a really fun weekend it was. The courses were very challenging, the weather kept the building pleasantly cool indoors (on hot days the A/C can't always keep up), and the socializing was great! I even made new Cardi friends! On Saturday, we started with the Jumpers run. It had some tricky angles and required a good bit of running to get where you needed to be. Jimmy and I were on track to qualify until we hit the weave poles. The angle of the entry was just such that the dog needed to collect (slow down) before going into the first pole. For a long dog like Jimmy, this was even more important. One of my friends who had already had this same entry in the Time2Beat class even warned me it was harder than it looked. Unfortunately, I was a bit over-confident in Jimmy's skill (he does love the poles!) and trusted him to figure it out for himself. He came out of the tunnel fast, took the next jump and just didn't slow down a bit going into the weaves. He was moving way too fast to be able to bend around the first pole and stay in. So he opted to enter after the 2nd pole. Oops! Poor judgement on my part, for sure. I should have shaped it in such a manner to give him a straighter approach where his speed would not have been such an issue.

 Here's the run:



Saturday's Standard course was a lot of fun with plenty of good challenges. There were so many places it could go south, but Jimmy did a great job and earned us a blue ribbon and 27 more PACH points. I handed my video camera to a friend, but alas the battery died only a second or two into the run.

Here are the maps for Saturday:

Sunday got off to an much earlier start. The order of the classes was switched around, putting Jumpers very first and it started at 7:30. Jimmy was about 10 dogs in, so I had no time to watch other teams run this tricky course. There really wasn't any part of this one that was easy. So many challenges! We made it as far as the #7 tunnel, and I let myself get a little too far ahead of Jimmy. As he came out of the tunnel, he raced to catch up which threw off his stride. This caused a complete crash and burn at the triple jump. Our mojo lost it's sparkle at that point and things went downhill from there. I haven't had so many mistakes in a run in a long time. I came out of the ring laughing. It was just that bad.  Jimmy's been doing so well in the 8 inch class it was time for a wake up call. I guess the agility gods wanted to keep me humble. LOL!

Here's the run:




Quite a while later it was time for Standard. This one was another tricky course with all sorts of spots things could go wrong. Things got a little messy around jumps 15 and 16 but Jimmy saved the run. We made it off the course clean and again Jimmy earned first place and again he earned 27 points!

Here it is:



 Here are the maps for Sunday:

I tend to to do very little sitting at agility trials. Between walking the courses, walking the dogs, running Jimmy, being a leash runner on course, and just moving about the building, I get plenty of activity. Add to that getting up at the crack of dawn to be on the road and then settled in in enough time for a 7:30 ring time, a trial weekend can be very tiring. It's pretty funny to have a weekend hobby that leaves you looking forward to the start of the work week just so you can sleep in!

Tracking Jimmy's PACH progress:
Very 1st Double-Q: Saturday 06/21/2014
Masters JWW legs: 5
Masters STD legs: 8
Double Q's: 4
PACH Points: 306