The Weekend Report: MACH Try #3

This weekend was the Potomac Valley Golden Retriever Club agility trial. I only signed up for Saturday, reserving Sunday for the Easter festivities. As I've mentioned before, every trial from here on out is a try at earning our MACH (Master Agility CHampion) title. This weekend was our third attempt at getting double-Q #20. Alas, it was not meant to be quite yet. The day started with Standard. It was a tricky and tight course. I could feel I was a bit more nervous than usual as is common when you are sitting on the edge of your MACH. Maybe my edginess is what affected Jimmy. He made a very rare weave pole error, pulling out a pole too soon. I can't tell looking at the video if I started to pull away a step too soon or if Jimmy was just distracted. I made him do the weaves again to get it right and he almost pulled out a second time. He looked at something outside of the ring so maybe something was messing with his focus. He also missed the table, instead heading for the further away tunnel/dogwalk combo. I never said "table!", so that one is on me! There was a very tricky part from the dog walk on, and Jimmy aced that! Also, he kept all the bars up, even with the course ending on a triple to a double!

Here's our run....




Of course NQing on the first run of the day means no chance for a QQ this day. All my jitters eased away. The Jumpers run a couple of hours later wasn't too bad. It had one very tricky spot that messed up a lot of dogs. We made it through OK and qualified! Jimmy was quite speedy and came in in 6th place. That doesn't earn us a placement ribbon but it is VERY respectable on a Jumpers course! No video for this one. In hind sight, since Jimmy did such a nice job, I wish I had asked someone to run the camera.

I have another day of agility next Saturday and then nothing for a long time. If we aren't successful next weekend, I'll have lots of time to try and get the limp out of my stride!