First Agility Trial, Like, Ever!
Wow…I need to update this thing more often. A lot has happened since that last post, my life isn’t really like “my dad died, hey, let’s go to an agility trial!”, I’m not THAT ADD…LET’S RIDE BIKES!!
Anyway, Nina and I went to our first agility trial today, and Nina earned her first CPE agility title legs with a CLEAN RUN in Standard Level 1 (in a time of 29.05 seconds , allowed course time was 64), and a qualifying run in Full House Level 1 at All Dawgs Academy in North Tonawanda, NY!
We didn’t qualify at all on Saturday, but she had fun (All Dawgs is where we went to try flyball, which freaked Nina right the hell out, so I wanted her to relearn All Dawgs as a fun place). Saturday’s NQ’s (that’s Non-Qualifying runs) taught me that even though the courses were ridiculously easy compared to what we’re doing in classes, a couple of stupid mistakes at the wrong time can destroy a run. I didn’t handle her on the dogwalk the way I usually do in our Standard run Saturday, so she popped off and missed her contact, and that was 15 faults right there, game over in terms of qualifying. So I went into today determined to handle properly, and I did! I ran my butt off (or so it felt, sadly, it turns out it’s all still there), and we really worked as a team, and got what agility people call “flow” happening a bit, too! It was really awesome. You don’t really know what it feels like to have an actual sense of teamwork with a member of another species until you do something like this, it’s cool.
Next weekend it’s our first Teacup Dogs Agility Association trial at our home facility, Canine Sports Complex. TDAA is pretty challenging, so we’ll see how we do.