Monday, January 26, 2009

Two new titles


Deej scored shiny new titles in the trial over the weekend. We actually managed to scrape out of open standard, barely squeaking out by the skin of our teeth. Not because of the A-frame which has been mentioned here with such obsessive frequency but because of the inescapable black hole of suckiness that is the table.

Due to some nefarious machinations behind the scenes (not really, probably neutral machinations) we had to down on the table every freaking day of the trial. Every day. Evil? Yes.

Table bugged us all weekend -- by Sunday, nope wasn't happening. But Sunday's run was also our debut in Excellent A and the course was nice and hard and twisty, and we totally rocked it – nailing not only the dog walk, the A-frame and the weaves but also got in 2 excellent front crosses.

DJ sat on the table, he stood on the table, he yawned on the table, he bowed on the table. He did not down. After begging and nearly prostrating myself on the dirt, we left the table and finished the course.

So that happened.

But I also learned two important lessons this weekend.

The first is that if my mind wanders during the middle of a course, DJ also checks out.

During our standard run on Friday, we got through everything except the weaves and by that point I was like we're going to Q, we can stay and make sure, blah blah blah, and he missed the weave pole entrance and couldn't get it in 3 tries so we went on.

Friday was an exceptionally long day.

Second lesson was that we are really slow! Not to get into too much detail since that is insanely boring to read but the jumpers course on Sunday started with a tunnel. It was our first day in Ex. B, so competing against seasoned dogs and in one case a former world team member.

I took DJ's leash off and he immediately sauntered into the tunnel. Slowly, yet so fast I couldn't get my bearings to figure out whether to call him back before he got past the start line.

He mosied out and then went wide on a front cross. My fault since I had been sort of caught flat footed waiting for him to get out of the tunnel. Weaves could have been faster too.

All in all our time was about 32.5 and the 4th place dog clocked in at 26.something.
I have no pictures or video from the trial so the one here is from Virginia Beach.

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