The Weekend Report: The Curse is Broken! Plus Lots of Bonus Video!

At long last, Jimmy and I have broken out of our funk, and gotten back on track! This weekend was one of our favorite trials, the Pembroke Welsh Corgi Club of the Potomac's annual event. I have been doing less agility, usually signing up for only one day, but for this trial, I made sure to sign up for Saturday and Sunday! I am SO glad I did. The courses were challenging and fun, and Jimmy and I seemed to have our timing back. We qualified in all four runs over the weekend, bringing in double-Q #16 and double-Q #17 toward our PACH2 championship title! Whew and yay! I have video of three out of four of the runs, plus stick around to watch something very fun and special at the end of this post.

Map #1 for our Saturday morning Standard run....(photos from my phone so not so great)

And the video.....





Followed by Jumpers....the map...

The video....



Both these runs were successful with a bit of good luck thrown in. I heard Jimmy tick a couple of the jump bars pretty hard, but luckily the bars didn't fall! This was double-Q #16 toward the 20 we need.

On to Sunday...

It started with Standard once again....the map...

The video.....




Of course the last run was another Jumpers run, but I only have the map. I didn't ask anyone to help with the video.

Qualifying in the Jumpers run gave us our second double-Q of the weekend and #17 toward our title. Plus another 97 points all combined for the weekend, but we have many more of those than we need already. We had good, healthy competition this trial so we didn't earn the blue ribbon quite so often, but that's OK! I was thrilled to just double qualify! Here is our pretty rainbow of colors.....

At most trials, I have the only Cardigan Corgi. There are usually several Pembrokes, and at this trial there are tons of Pemmies. But this time quite a few of my Cardigan friends showed up. All told, there were seven Cardis running. Saturday's Standard run had Cardigans winning three of the four placement ribbons! How cool is that?!

Now, at the beginning of this post I told you to stick around for something fun and special. At this trial our judges were Barbara Bounds and Oksana Syrkin. But really, in Oksana's place should have been judge Pam Johnson. Sadly, Pam is very ill and in the hospital, so Oksana was filling in for her. There has been a push to help raise funds for Pam. As we all know in this day and age, being sick is very expensive, especially when you are too sick to work. So the judges volunteered to run one of the agility courses themselves to help bring in donations.

Our dogs are much more proficient at running these course, but it sure is fun to watch people try!

Here is Oksana's run on the course from my first map above....





And then Barbara's turn....same course...




Over the course of the weekend, the judges and competitors managed to raise about $1000. Not too bad! Here's wishing Pam a speedy recovery. We all hope to see her back in the agility ring as soon as she feels better!

Tracking Jimmy's PACH 2 progress:
Very 1st Double-Q: Sunday 5/1/2016

QQ#20: 
Masters JWW legs: 61...MJP Title 01/25/15 MJPB 10/11/15 MJPS Title
Masters STD legs: 55...MXP Title!10/24/14 MXPB 04/30/17 MXPS Title
Double Q's: 17(out of 20 needed)
PACH Points: 1760 plus more! I have lost count!

The Weekend Report: Lions and Tigers and BEARS, Oh My!

This weekend, Jimmy and I were back at the farm out in Reva, Virginia. The weather forecast was for "occassional"  rain on Saturday, but mostly just overcast. Well, occasional turned into "steady" rain. There were lots of muddy dogs and cars by the end of the day!

At the start of each class, there is a judge's briefing. They go over the safety rules each time, ask if anyone sees any course design that might be too risky to the dogs, etc. This is also the time when the dog club that is hosting the trial has a chance to give announcements. This weekend they wanted us to know of a few "Don'ts".....Such as..."If the animal isn't yours, don't feed it!" There are horses and a couple of pet pigs close by, and it seems the pigs were sick from all the snacks they received at the last trial. Oops!

Here are those cute little piggies....pretty hard to resist.....When you stop by the stall to say Hi, they run over squealing and wagging their little piggy tails just like a dog. Freaking adorable! This variety only gets to about 50 pounds, so a really good pet size.

Lula and Dixie

My hand is added for scale.

The next Don't was "Don't walk your dogs along the treeline next to the barn, or on the hills behind the barn" and this was because a family of black bears had moved in....A momma and two cubs plus her yearling from the previous year. Unfortunately I didn't see this, but the yearling was spotted moseying through the field where we all park our cars (but not too close, at the back of the field) and then tried to cross one of the horse paddocks. He was quickly run out of town by the resident horses! LOL!

Fortunately, the rain (and the bears!) did not effect our success level! The judges designed some very fun and flowing courses that were really fairly easy.

Here are Saturday's maps:

Jimmy qualified in both runs, pulling off Double-Q #17 toward our PACH title.

This club gives very pretty ribbons!

Sunday was a much cooler and beautifully sunny day. You could see many of the dogs were feeling extra "up" for the event, loving cool temps as they do.

Jumpers was our first run of the day. It was a lot of fun and Jimmy did a great job, earning first place! For the Standard run, it was a dogwalk to the tunnel, which I knew from past experience would be our make or break moment. Unfortunately, it was a break, totally my fault due to a bad handling decision causing Jimmy to blow his dogwalk contact (the yellow zone at the bottom of the down plank).  The rest was fast and furious and, of course, clean! Oh, well, no double-q for Sunday. We need three more to get our title and are down to just two more trial days this year so the PACH will be waiting for the spring trials.

Sunday's maps:

Tracking Jimmy's PACH progress:
Very 1st Double-Q: Saturday 06/21/2014
Masters JWW legs: 29...MJP Title 01/25/15 MJPB 10/11/15
Masters STD legs: 28...MXP Title!10/24/14 MXPB 10/11/15
Double Q's: 17
PACH Points: 1299

AKC Nationals 2016:
Double-Q's: 10 (out of 5 needed)
Points: 781 (out of 600 needed)....We QUALIFIED!!! 10/11/15
Masters Legs: 35 (out of 20 needed)