In two weeks Jam will be 4. A few days ago she debuted in agility! Nope - we don't work fast - well Jam's brain doesn't anyway!
I haven't been training Jam in agility for a while. She just never really seemed to enjoy it all that much and it was a battle getting her to focus. Over the past several months though Jam has been offering agility behaviors in lieu of doing disc. Like we'd be working on disc (we being her and Jack) and she'd go do a dogwalk and stop beautifully at the bottom and be all proud of herself. While up in Michigan at Pawsitive Vybe we'd have dismissed her to go do her own thing while we talked and after a few minutes of sniffing she'd go do the tunnel WAY out in the corner and then come to us all happy with herself. She did this with the teeter too. Very odd but cute - then again pretty much everything she does is cute! The trial this weekend was the last one being held at my friend Cindy's place and Cindy encouraged me to enter her since Jam was somewhat comfortable there because of herding. I warned Cindy she'd probably pee on course but she said it'd be fine.
So this past weekend I day of show entered Jam. Day 1 we ran colors. She stayed with me the whole time and didn't pee! She skipped some jumps and I didn't fix them so we didn't Q but she did GREAT! No peeing! On Sunday she was in Full House and Standard. In Full House she got to do contacts and loved it. She missed some jumps again and I only fixed two of them so we didn't Q since you need 3 jumps but again she had fun and stayed focused! I had zero hopes of her Q'ing in standard cause there were 18 obstacles and many of them were jumps. Since when does Level 2 standard in CPE have 18 obstacles?!? Obviously when I entered her I was expecting fewer but no big deal - this whole thing was an experiment just for fun anyway. Well rather than describe what happened I'm linking the video. The closing was 4 or 5 jump and had I not overly praised her for the next to last jump she would have ran that portion smoothly! Unbelievably she Q'd and even more unbelievably she placed 1st! Woo hoo! (and I like to clarify since it's CPE and Level 2 - there were actually other dogs running in her class in her height that Q'd! LOL)
Jam's First Agility Trial
She very obviously needs jump work. I knew this already but hadn't bothered since I always figured she'd NQ us by peeing on the course before we ever got to a jump. So I guess now we'll work on that a bit more (and did so last night in fact). She also is used to jumping 20-22" at home and I entered her at 16" thinking that'd be easier for her but I think it messed with her a little. I think I'm going to practice her at 16" at home some more and see how she does at the next CPE trial. Even if she measures over 18" for AKC I'll probably enter her in preferred should the day ever come that she does AKC agility. And same for USDAA... I'll just run her in performance I think. We'll see though - I may change my mind if she starts turning on for real!
As for Tali... she did very well this weekend. She's definitely not running 100%. I had to stretch her out a lot before her runs to get her to jump normal on the practice jump. She is going to the chiro today. Hopefully we'll get some sort of info about what might be going on. But none the less she ran well once stretched out and Q'd all but 1 of her runs and in that one she got the gamble but due to my bad planning we were 1.5 seconds over course time. :( A few more steps closer to her C-ATCH. Lots of standard legs to go but we are getting closer to finishing out some of the Level 5 games!
This weekend coming up is Canis Major #2. Jack is judging freestyle so can't compete in Freestyle but hopefully Tali and Ruckus will do well in D&A for him! I'll be throwing for Tali (provided she's feeling better) and most likely Java Bean! Should be fun as always!
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