No more trials for weeks

There were some high points of the trial this past weekend. But mostly just low points. Saturday's standard run was really nice with the exception of the weave poles which for some reason DJ felt through with after 10. Jumpers. Same thing.

Sunday we had a really nice FAST run except that we didn't do the send. It was in the middle of the ring and you were supposed to send out to a jump to the far side of a tunnel and then back to the jump. Deej did the jump, went in the wrong side of the tunnel and then back to the jump so I was pretty happy.

Contacts were lovely oh except for the teeter which he jumped off of because it was an unusually heavy teeter.

That came back to bite me in the butt during the standard run which was just ugly.

It still makes me feel sick to think about it! Not like a close family member died sick but still just vague disappointment. And then guilt for feeling bad since DJ didn't sign up to do the agility trial and its only 30 seconds of fun for lots of crate time for him. And still, the teeter issue just does make me feel bad and baffled.

I think I'm going to have to retrain his teeter he did have a 2o2o at one point and got bounced off the end of a teeter somehow and was really scared of it after that. He had been getting good and fast on the familiar teeter at the club but there's really no single behavior cemented in his head about it. Back to square one with that.

I have a teeter base, I have to get a piece of wood to use as the plank. I'm going to start with the board flat and train him to run to the end.

For the jumpers run on Sunday it was a very easy flowing, fast course and the Q rate must have been around 95 percent. DJ was at least among them. With a time of about 27.79 we were again at least about 4 seconds off of placing. By that point I just wanted him to stay in the weaves as all weekend, save for FAST, 10 was the most he felt like doing.

Other things such as the A-frame and table were pretty ok this weekend.

Handling was OK, nothing fancy, the horrible standard run on Sunday ended with a missed final jump due to an inept rear cross but by that point I was done.

There were like 3 world team members at the stupid trial. And their students all with insane fast shelties doing awesomely. Some people and dogs stand out because of their awesomeness and other people are just rumpled, anxious messes that just get in the way of the good people as they stride authoritatively around the walk-through.

Oh one other high point, DJ found a chicken bone in the field across the street from the arena which he dropped very politely.