Busy, Fun Weekend!

Three different trials for two dogs over a weekend, starting Fri. night and ending Sun. morning.  Plus a bonus non-trial event!

Fri. night was another TDAA serial trial night.  We played Black Hole where you have to keep your dog out of the tunnels.  Gidget almost went into the tunnel in her favorite spot, under the A-frame, but I called her off it for a successful Q.  Our Standard run was going perfectly until a fly made an appearance on the A-frame.  I lost Gidget's brain to the fly for a moment (she hates bugs!) but got her back and finished the course clean.  We're slowly trucking our way along towards her TACh.  Once we get that I think we'll stop doing teacup, she just doesn't like it as much as regular agility.  If she seemed to really hate it I'd stop sooner, but I don't think she minds playing with me too much.

Sat. was Gracie's turn.  There was a combined CDSP (obedience) and WCRL (rally) trial both Sat. and Sun.  Gracie took a turn at each and did really well!  Obedience was up first.  She was awesome!  I had her attention almost all the way through the heeling pattern.  She only lost 1.5 points on each of the on leash heeling and the off leash figure 8, a huge improvement for her!  She's still struggling with the stand for exam, lost 2 points there for moving her feet.  Then her recall over the jump and the stay were perfect!  So she got a 195 for third place, the best she's done so far!

Next was rally.  Her good attitude dropped a little bit, probably due to the longish wait between runs, but she was still a solid partner as usual.  She got 207 points out of 210 and first place.  I didn't see her score sheet to know exactly where she lost points but I have a good idea what happened.  First, at the send to the jump, I had to step in a bit to make sure she took the jump.  Then, I went to reward her after a stand and she sat down.  Oops!  Bad handler!  Last, she had a crooked front at the angled recall.  Nothing huge, and only 3 points, no biggy, just stuff to work on.  We don't practice a left 180 degree pivot very often and we struggled with it while warming up, but in her run she did it perfectly!  She's such a good girl!

With those runs Gracie earned both her CD-C and her RL2!

Gidget took her turn in the obedience ring on Sun.  I felt her attitude was just a little off, but who could blame her after the busy weekend we were having.  She too was solid anyways.  She lost half a point each for wide about turns and a half point for a bit of lagging on the figure 8, and that's it!  She got her highest score yet of 198.5 and second place!  I even have video of this one (thanks Laura!):

So the girls had an amazing weekend of trials.  They are just the best pups ever!

To end the weekend I took both girls and the guinea pig to an open audition for Animal Talent Pool.  They all had to stand and sit on a table while getting their pictures taken.  Gidget did not think this was very fun, but she did her best.  Hans actually did the best of all three, he happily sat there eating bits of carrot.  Gracie held her own, a little worried for sure, but she likes having her picture taken a lot more than Gidget does (probably thanks to her foster mom).  She got to show off some tricks too.  So now to wait for them to become famous!

That's all for now.  More agility next weekend, then the rest of Aug. will be quiet.  Happy training!

Almost 3 Years in the Making

Gidget played in her first 2 day AKC agility trial.  She's only done 2 days of a trial at one TDAA trial and one AKC obedience trial, otherwise we normally do just one day.  It was a very good weekend indeed.

Gidget earned her Open Standard (OA) title on September 10, 2011.  It took 7 tries to get the 3 Q's needed for the title.  On March 12, 2012, Gidget earned her first Excellent Standard Q.  Two years and four months later, Gidget earned the last two Q's she needed for her Excellent Standard (AX) title.  That's right, this weekend was so awesome that we earned a title we've been working towards for almost 3 years, and it only took us 23 tries!  Plus we Q'd in two other runs for a total of 4 Q's out of 5 runs!

I entered Gidget in T2B on Sat. for something fun and that allows for some weave practice if needed.  We hadn't entered a T2B since fall of 2012 when Gidget had teeter issues.  I'm glad we gave it another try!  Gidget started off a little pokey, but jumped into gear after the weaves and finished with 7 points.  A good way to start the weekend!

We had to wait quite a while for our next run.  The trial organization was a little messy so we didn't even know for sure which class we would run next.  It ended up being JWW.  Overall it was a nice run, but Gidget popped out of the weaves so NQ.

Last for the day was the dreaded excellent standard.  I'd been working on staying calm and focused, making sure I took the time to visualize the course.  I didn't want my brain to fall out again like a couple weeks ago.  I had a really good feeling about this run before we started, and my good feeling was right!  We made it through the course for a 1st place Q!  Thank you so much to Sarah for the video and to Mary for emailing it to me!

On to day 2!  No T2B today, we got to sleep in instead!  We actually could have slept later, we got to the trial around 10am and didn't run until after noon!  Considering the wait, Sunday went almost as well as Saturday.  I say almost only because our runs were just a little messy, but we made it through!

In JWW I kept getting in Gidget's way for front crosses.  I guess I really need to either figure out my timing with Gidget or where I should do front crosses and where I shouldn't.  Gidget stuck with me through my sloppiness for a Q and 9 MACH points!

We had maybe 20 minutes between our JWW and STD runs.  I didn't even get to walk the STD course again before running it.  Thankfully I'd been working on my visualizing skills all weekend.  This run was a little sloppy too.  Gidget's favorite thing is going into a tunnel under the A-frame like in the STD course on Sat.  She thought it had to be there again for sure.  Thankfully that didn't lead to any faults and she came back on course, though looked a little disappointed.  Later I tried to get a front cross in right after a rear cross which led to a super wide turn for Gidget.  Again no faults, and we made it to the end.  Who would think we could get 2 standard Q's in a row after such a dry spell and earn Gidget's title?!  It was so exciting!

So now both my little rockstars are fully in Masters and can start earning their QQ's.  Hopefully the MACH journey won't be too much longer than the AX journey!  After this weekend, I really feel good about getting there someday!

I did learn a couple good things this weekend.  One being that I need to remember to focus and visualize before Gidget's runs, just like I do for Gracie's runs.  The other being how I handle Gidget's weave poles.  I realized in Gidget's JWW run on Sat. that as I saw her slowing down in the poles I started thinking, "Oh no!  She's slowing down!  She's going to pop out!"  In her STD run later, my thoughts were more along the lines of, "I believe she can get all her weaves!"  I'm not sure if that was a conscious choice or not, but I think it made a difference.  I also made sure my shoulders were turned toward the poles.  On Sun. I really did make sure that my thoughts and my shoulders were completely supporting Gidget in getting all her weave poles, and she did!  Though she got really slow, she didn't pop out.  That is definitely something I'm going to remember for future trials.

That's all for now (I know, just one trial to update on this time!).  Rally and obedience trials at the end of the month and another agility trial the first weekend in Aug.  Happy agility!