Damn Teeter!

Gidget and I made the cold, windy drive down to Simon Arena today for some play in the dirt.  We were actually in the one little thing club today!  Well technically two little things in our standard run, but I blame the first thing for messing with my head and letting me cause/allow the second thing (bad brain!).

Excellent Standard was up first.  Gidget ran beautifully up until that damn teeter!  We had a couple nice rear crosses and even my hubby (after seeing the video) said that Gidget did the weaves nicer than he's seen her do in trials!  When we got to the teeter Gidget ran past it.  It seemed to me that she just had to get a view of it from the side, shake off her worries, say, "ok, I can do that," then come back and do the teeter just fine!  Silly dog!  I didn't mess up my front cross after the pin wheel, but then I forgot to call Gidget to turn towards the correct last obstacle...oops!  Loved the way she ran overall!  Turns out none of the excellent dogs qualified on this course.

Masters Jumpers was a very short wait later.  The course looked like fun, especially the tunnels part, though the end looked tricky.  I didn't mess up a single front cross on this course!  This has been an issue for us in the past so I was pretty proud of us both on that one.  Gidget ran beautifully again, except that one little thing.  Apparently there was something smelly (probably horse related) near the entrance of the second tunnel and Gidget had to pause to sniff.  Ugh!  We continued on and even managed the tricky ending without issue!  Again, loved the way she ran overall!

So our lack of Q's, specifically in standard, is certainly frustrating.  But with how smoothly our runs went today, I really think we will be getting there.  This will be our year!

I'd appreciate any thoughts on our teeter issues.  I went back and looked at our standard videos over the last year to see if I could find any patterns:

• Jan 2012 - took teeter (after other contacts)
• Feb 2012 - took teeter (was slow, later took tunnel instead of A-frame)
• Mar 2012 - took teeter (was slow, after other contacts)
• May 2012 - took teeter (took DW afterwards)
• Jun 2012 - took teeter (ran past DW afterwards)
• Jul 2012 - took teeter (ran past DW and A-frame afterwards)
• Aug 2012 - took teeter (was slow, ran past DW afterwards)
• Sept 2012 - took teeter (after other contacts, had issues taking teeter again in T2B)
• Oct 2012 - ran past teeter but came back and took it (took DW and A-frame afterwards)
• Nov 2012 - took teeter (after other obstacles)
• Jan 2013 - ran past teeter but came back and took it (after other contacts)

Hmmm... that's a lot of "took teeters."  It seems to me that she's willing to take the teeter once without reward, but is then very hesitant to try taking it, or anything like it, again.  So she does better when the teeter is near the end of the course.  I suspect the first running past teeter was my fault, but I have no idea why she ran past today. 

We've tried a teeter repair class that mostly involved a form of the "bang game."  In class I make sure Gidget gets a bit of hot dog almost every time she takes the teeter.  Could that be causing a problem?  Dawn suggested we try giving Gidget a hand target to follow up the teeter.  Allow her to focus on the touch game instead of the tip of the teeter.  A good idea for sure, perhaps a good teeter fix game for Gidget?  I think I'd have a hard time using it all the time.  Setting it up in the middle of a course could be difficult, she's often a little bit ahead of me and racing her so I can get into position rarely works out.

Alright, falling asleep at the desk here.  I'll have to continue to think about this another time.  Happy agility!

A Good Start to 2013!

Hmmm... haven't updated the blog for awhile.  Where have I been?  Oh just at a Suzanne Clothier seminar, getting good advice at a run and done, and celebrating the holidays of course!  Will have to write something on that later.  This post is on Gracie's first trial of the year!  We went to La Crosse for a CPE trial.  I was able to enter her in all 5 runs of the day, Saturday, and she did awesome!  She slowed down a bit by the end of the day, but her (our?) nerves didn't get the better of her and we had a blast!  Q's in 4 of the 5 runs!

First up was jumpers.  This had an interesting start.  I had been bar setting for the higher level dogs and went to use the bathroom when they were done.  Apparently they managed to set up the level 1/2 course and have the one other person running the course walk it while I was in the bathroom!  They let me walk... er, run it quick and then I ran a got Gracie.  We rushed to the start line and off we went.  The run was a lot of fun!  Gracie was amped and neither of us had a chance to get even the tiniest bit nervous (yay!).  Gracie was so excited she ran past a jump for a tunnel, but later in the course she saved me from a slightly off blind cross.  I'd say we're even!  We got a first place Q with just 5 faults.  No need to tell Gracie that she had no competition what-so-ever the entire day!

 

 

Next up was Jackpot.  I was grateful for an interesting change up on the gamble.  Instead of a distance challenge, we just had to take all four tunnels on the course once.  Unfortunately all levels were running this course and we had to wait in line, meaning both of us had a chance to get a little bit nervous.  Or maybe just over think the situation!  So we had a bit of a rough start.  Gracie took off right away to go visiting and exploring wasting time we could have been using to earn points.  We didn't have time to quite finish my plan and my head wasn't quite with it enough to realize we needed just a couple more points and we had time to do it.  I heard the first buzzer and went "Ah! Get that last tunnel and get to the table!"  We were only 2 points shy of a Q.  Oh well, we'll do better next time!



 

 

Wildcard was next in line.  I made sure I knew how many 1pt and 2pt obstacles we needed since I messed that up on our first attempt at wildcard.  This was most definitely our best run of the day.  We set ourselves up to sort of rush to the start line since that seemed to work out well earlier.  Gracie was fast and accurate and I didn't mess up, it was great!



 

 

Last up were 2 rounds of standard.  First run the course one way, then flip it around and run it the other way.  In round 1 Gracie got distracted in the weaves and I almost messed up the last jump.  I'm not quite sure what I did, might have said something or maybe brought my hand down too early.  We still got our 1st place Q!  Round 2 went perfectly, though Gracie was slowing down a bit after a long day.  Can't blame her for that, I was tired too!  Another 1st place Q in round 2 earned Gracie her CL2-R title!



 

 

We had a great day at the CPE trial.  I set bars for the higher levels in every single class and very much enjoyed the mix of handlers and dogs that were there.  There were lots of chocolate labs, keeshonds, and Aussies along with your usual mix of mixes, border collies, and shelties.  There is a lot of uniqueness at these CPE trials that either doesn't exist in AKC or there's too many dogs/people to notice at AKC trials.  One lady was so loud during her runs!  I would have found it obnoxious, except her dogs loved it!  You could see their joy with every shouted command!  She and her dogs ended up being very fun to watch.  Then the group of chocolate labs all looked alike to me, but had very individual personalities on the course, from one that wound herself up like a wind up toy to one that was just happy to follow his person around a shortened course.  Then my favorite older guy with three little slower dogs.  He puts every bit of energy he has into each and every run trying to get his dogs pumped up!  He practically runs circles around them!  They all love it and they're a joy to watch!  I definitely hope I can do more CPE trials in La Crosse this year.  Though I would still like to get into an AKC trial sometime soon!  Happy agility!