The Weekend Report: TWO Degrees in Winchester!

Last Thursday was another huge snowstorm followed by an arctic blast of cold air. Everything pretty much shut down around my area for the day. Fortunately Friday was a sunny, albeit cold, day. This helped melt the roads ahead of the weekend agility trial. Saturday was also sunny but dawned (because, yes, I had to be up before dawn to get to the trial!) at about 8 degrees at my house. BRRRR!!!! I needed to head west over the mountains to be in Winchester by 7ish. By the time I got there, the temperature had dropped to 2 degrees! Egads that is cold, especially for March! Not the weather for a leisurely dog walk before going indoors but Jimmy needed to poop. Heaven forbid he ever did it in the ring. That disqualifies you for sure! So we wandered around the snow covered area until finally he could find one tiny square of grass to set a foot on and pooped. Hallelujah!

We've had snow on the ground and walking trails for at least the past couple of weeks. It's made for treacherous dog walks or none at all depending on the day. Jimmy and I have also had agility practice cancelled thanks to the weather as well. All of this meant Jimmy was under-exercised and a tad wilder than usual going into the trial. It really showed up in our first run of the day, which was Jumpers. It was quite a tricky course and we couldn't make it through. It was one of those runs I would love to have a "do-over" for so I could try out a different plan. Oh, well, if it was always easy, and we always Q'd, where would be the challenge in that?

Here's the map. It was numbers 4/5/6 to the #7 tunnel that took us out!

A bit later on came our Standard run. It was really quite easy and Jimmy was also calmed down by then. He did a great job and earned us a nice blue ribbon for first place, and 29 points. Good boy!

The map:

So none of the coveted "double-Qs" that we need, but still a good start to the season. And I am back once again to my blogging break. I just didn't want to miss getting my agility write-up out here while it was fresh!

Tracking Jimmy's PACH progress:
Very 1st Double-Q: Saturday 06/21/2014
Masters JWW legs: 10...MJP Title 01/25/15
Masters STD legs: 14...MXP Title!10/24/14
Double Q's: 7
PACH Points: 564

AKC Nationals 2016:
Double-Q's: 0 (out of 5 needed)
Points: 46 (out of 600 needed)....
Masters Legs: 2 (out of 20 needed)