Tali and I drove to Perry, GA (5 hours away) on Thursday evening for 3 days of AKC agility indoors, on dirt with AC. Can't beat that in July down here that's for sure! I had been to a trial at Perry once before a long time ago with Mickie but this was Tali's first trip there and it was my first trip "alone". Last time Sally and I carpooled and shared a room. This time I drove up on my own and stayed on my own (Jack stayed home to do schoolwork). I'm such a big girl! ;o) LOL It's been a while since I've been away on my own like that... back it the day it was nothing at all to drive 8 hours to Columbia, SC and live by myself but I guess we get more cautious as we get older?!? Dunno... All went well though and I'd definitely do it again.
As for the actual agility part - well that went awesome. Going into the weekend I needed 3 legs in Open Standard and 3 in Open Jumpers with Weaves. I did not expect to come home with agility titles. I thought that if we got lucky we'd get 2 legs in each but that we'd see how it went.
Friday and Saturday we ran jumpers first and standard 2nd. I don't really even remember those runs at this point. Bev has them on video and I'll get them at some point. What I do know is that we Q'd them all though none of them were "clean" Q's. We had weave issues on every run. I believe Friday JWW was a 10th pole pop, Friday in Standard was a pop mid poles - she was stressed from coming from the teeter and I suspected we wouldn't have clean weaves with a teeter to weave sequence. Saturday in JWW we had sniffing at pole 3 and the weaves were the 2nd obstacle and in Standard we AGAIN had teeter to weaves and she was stressed and went and sniffed in a corner as opposed to weaving resulting in a refusal. I have GOT TO get an aluminum teeter! Mine just does not compare in speed or noise. Mine is slow and creaky as opposed to fast and "bangy". (Is bangy a word?!?) The jumpers runs minus the weave were awesome... she was really drivey and faster than normal. It was a lot of fun. One of the standard runs (don't remember which) was a train wreck in terms of how it felt but we Q'd anyway! The other went well enough if I recall. Her increased speed definitely threw off my handling some... or more accurately required me to be more timely which I wasn't a lot of the time but we still managed.
Sunday we ran standard first and then jumpers. Sunday standard was a blast... we had a bit of a mess in the opening but the rest ran so smooth including perfect weave poles! That was a run I won't soon forget. A clean Q and a 2nd place not to mention her OA title! Woo hoo! Our only NQ of the weekend came Sunday afternoon in JWW after waiting around ALL day to run. That kinda sucked. Had I known we were going to NQ I'd have gone home many hours before! :) Tali popped at the 10th pole and I attempted to fix it at that pole and she went in between 11 and 12. We fixed it again but that was already 2 refusals so I knew we were done in terms of a Q. We had a missed jump a bit later and just kept on going on but overall the course was really fun to run and again - even on the last run of a 3 day weekend Tali was drivey and fast so I was still quite pleased.
Take aways from the weekend... 1) obviously we need more work on our weaves - she's pretty good at entries but we have a popping problem while in the poles - very often at 10. 2) I need a louder and faster teeter at home so she can get used to it and be confident during our trial runs with that obstacle. 3) Apparently I have "running" contacts now! LOL Not once did she stop all weekend but she also didn't miss at all. She stops at home 100% of the time. If her not stopping in a trial means she only goes to 90% accuracy... well I'm OK with that. Problem is that I have no way to know if letting her run in a trial setting is going to cause issues down the line. Being that she is almost 7 years old I think I'm going to lean towards letting it go and see what happens. We don't have visions of a MACH or nationals in AKC simply because we don't trial enough to have those visions. Frisbee takes priority... 4) She was faster than normal this weekend... I hope that sticks though it may have been a function of running in the AC when it was near 100 outside! We shall see!
So all in all we ended up with her Open Standard title and 2 legs towards her Open Jumpers title. Considering Ruckus is still (and always will be in Open) and it took Mickie months to get out of Open, getting through Open standard in just 4 days of trialing is a pretty good improvement! LOL We'll be in Exc A forever though if I don't get those poles fixed. I busted out the treat and train this week... we'll see how that works and go from there! She likes it - that's for sure.
Here are some photos from the weekend. A HUGE thanks to Sarah for being willing to grab my camera and take these photos. Since I take photos at several of the trials we attend I don't get a chance to get any of Tali and the trials I've been to lately where there has been a photographer has resulted in just OK pics and certainly not worth the high prices they are selling them for.
Our running dogwalk ;)
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