Last Sat. the girls and I competed in our last La Crosse AKC trial for the year. The courses were a lot of fun! The Exc STD course had such nice flow and could have been just plain fun! Except I had to go and screw Gidget up. First at the weave entry, I felt I needed to stop moving to keep Gidget from taking an off course jump but my positioning threw off her weave entry and she skipped the first couple of poles. The second spot was at a tunnel with a tricky entry. I had myself so convinced that I needed to stop to get Gidget to pay attention and go to the correct side of the tunnel. Turns out I didn't need to stop, she was heading for the correct end, but it was so stuck in my head that I needed to stop that I sent her to the teeter instead! Overall it was a nice run, Gidget was happy and speedy and I didn't screw up any front crosses. We even got a nice rear cross in there! We'll get those STD Q's eventually, just gotta keep working at it! Here's the video:
Gracie is also stuck in STD. This time Grracie got the zoomies which means her nerves were a little on edge. We still could have qualified with just the zoomies, but Gracie wasn't up for weaving either. She finished the course nicely but NQ for us. Video:
Then it was on to JWW. Again, nice fun courses. There was a nice big U shape of jumps in the middle of it, lots of fun! Gidget was a little slow in the weaves, but otherwise it was a fun run! Not much more to say about that for Gidget, better to watch:
Gracie was super nervous at the start line for her JWW course. She wouldn't even shake! I'd cut back on my keep Gracie from getting nervous measures. It was a good reminder that she still needs a fair amount of help. I had cut down to just the DAP spray and doing our mat work while waiting in line. I took Gracie outside by herself and I really need to take Gidget out with her, and she should probably still wear her thundershirt at least part of the time. Always lessons to be learned. The course went well, Gracie was just a little slower than she usually is and she almost popped out of the weaves, but we managed to save it. More video:
It was a good day in the end. Still plenty of stuff to work on though. I'm still working on my teamwork with each dog. It's like we need a warm up run before we can really work together on a course. I may need to do some 2 day trials. Either one dog each day, or both STD and JWW the first day and just STD the second day. Giving each dog their own day would allow me to focus on each dog's individual style. If we really do just need a warm up run, then doing STD the second day may help move us along in that class. The question then will be, can I survive 2 days of trialing? In Jan. each of the girls will have a trial to themselves (I'll have to bring Gidget to Gracie's CPE trial, but I won't run her). We'll see if that goes better. Thanks those who have already given me advice on how to get through our STD dry spell! Happy agility!
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