Tish and I went to All Dawgs Academy for CPE agility today. She went 3 for 4 and it was HOT inside! We’re having teeter issues still, but she is running nice and fast, driving lines, developing some nice obstacle focus, and the few puppy brain moments we had were almost all her driving off to another piece of equipment, instead of going visiting. Very happy with her…just need to sort out that teeter! She finished her Level 2 Fun Games title (CL2-F) and is now in Level 4 Fullhouse!
Nina didn’t get to come and play agility, and I know she is feeling pregnant because she barely complained about it. I’ve had some lovely feedback from other Vallhund folks about what a nice choice of stud Tempest is. She was six weeks along as of yesterday, just three weeks to go! I’m getting the shopping underway for supplies (you can NEVER have too many towels!), Jim dragged the whelping box down from the attic, ready to be cleaned and freshened up, I went through my big box o’whelping supplies, threw out expired things and ordered replacements. I will move downstairs into the guest room (AKA the “whelping lounge” located off the family room) with Nina soon, so she is happy and comfortable in there well before the puppies arrive. She is quite round, but not enormous yet, the puppies do most of their growing in the last two weeks. I can feel them moving a bit now, just little fluttery movements, not the comparatively rowdy bumping around they’ll do in there in a week or two. She is having a bit of trouble navigating being a lap dog with her tummy, but she is still very much in the “content” stage of pregnancy, eating well (she loves getting lunch!), very cuddly and mellow, sleeping a lot but still has energy to play with the others (she and Tish had a good-natured jaw wrestling session on the couch when we got back from the agility trial this afternoon), being the queen about having the choice spots on laps and on the bed. We forgot her lunch one day last week and she SHOUTED at us until we realized and sheepishly served it up! She is HUNGRY. I am cautious about overfeeding her, since excess weight can make whelping more difficult (and can give you enormous puppies, too), but I won’t mind if she gets a little bit plush at this stage, since last time she ate very little in the last two weeks, except for bits of scrambled egg and Nutri-Cal that I begged her to eat.
Tish earned her first AKC Q today in Jumpers with a lovely run! The timer malfunctioned, so you hear the buzzer go off before we’re finished, so we were given the option to take standard course time or rerun. I reran…won’t do that again! Our rerun was a disaster, so since you can’t do WORSE on a rerun, we ended up with standard course time anyway!
Tish JWW (first AKC Q) – look at those weaves!:
Tish Standard (she knocked the first bar, and that threw her off from the start, I opted to just work on speed and end on a really up and happy note, so I didn’t fix anything after the second try at the weaves. REALLY happy with her table performance and the speed she was showing near the end! Need to reward the teeter a TON):
Tish and I attended Western Lakes AKC agility today, Nina was completely outraged to be left behind, poor baby!
This was Tish’s first “official” AKC trial (she ran one day at the National Specialty last year, but that was just for fun, she was nowhere near ready). I was THRILLED with how well she did today! The FAST send was really hard, the Open one was easier than the Novice. She did her teeter in FAST just fine, but I could tell she was worried about it in Standard. BUT!!!! She got her weaves in Standard on her first try! You can’t quite hear it on the video, but I was shrieking with delight at her! And look at that table! You don’t make the same mistakes twice, you just make new ones…
Tish Novice FAST (look at her go!):
Tish Novice Standard:
Very happy with this one, she came back and worked after going to the teeter and dogwalk (I think she was worried about the teeter).
Yesterday we started off with a bang – Nina earned her first Open Standard Q with a gorgeous run. We scored 95, would have been 100 but her ABS failed when she hit the table at full speed and she slid off it half on her side.
Here’s her Jumpers run, would have been a lovely Q except for the bar down (Lisa apologizes for the butt shot at the beginning, her leash got stuck! And that’s not me holding her up by her collar, she was standing on her back legs trying to get going!).
(thanks Lisa for recording for me on your iPad!). No Q’s today, but we had a crazed crack monkey run in Standard, but then she settled right back for another almost-Q in Jumpers (one bar again). Really fun weekend, lovely courses, great weather!
Open Jumpers With Weaves Q #2!!!! We’re 2/3 of the way to her title! It was a spectacular run and of course I didn’t ask anyone to record it for me. A clean run, smooth, just lovely. And this was immediately AFTER a dog broke out of its crate and went tearing around the ring, knocking down the ring gates with everyone yelling “LOOSE DOG!!”. She was perfect, perfect weaves from a tricky entry, NO BARS DOWN. I did two things differently, I played Susan Garrett’s “It’s Yer Choice” game with her beforehand, and I TOOK MY TIME (as Linda is always reminding me to do) – if I get too fast Nina races me, if I am steady and actually handle her, she is fine. What do you know, it works!
I did get our Open Standard run half recorded, it starts right after I rear-cross the weaves (which I do in class all the time, and which I did successfully Friday), it threw her off for some reason and she just wasn’t going to weave (we had already NQ’d by this point). BUT! She got ALL her contacts with NO faults, AND NO BARS DOWN which was huge!
Nina finished her first AKC Open title in FAST today – we’re moved up to Excellent for tomorrow! Exciting. (we won’t talk about our other runs today…yikes).
Demi did TWELVE WEAVE POLES for the first time today in her debut Open Jumpers run!
Austin came to visit with Lisa today, he’s such a sweetie.
Most exciting news of the day: my mum is just waiting for a rehab hospital bed to get the hell out of the hospital! She is doing great! What a relief. She has been in for over a month now.
Only slightly less exciting news: Demi earned her first AKC title today with a smoking fast Jumpers With Weaves run! She is now Alkemi Adrenaline Murtaya ST CGC NJP! YAY RON AND DEMI!
Nina qualified in FAST with a lovely run. Two bars down in Jumpers, but our first time in Open Standard was gorgeous – no Q because she bailed off the dogwalk, but the rest of the run was awesome, I rear crossed the weaves, just lovely. I was very, very pleased with her – I was worried we’d look like we didn’t belong in Open, but we were fine. More tomorrow!
Nina’s Jackpot run, lovely run but knocked a bar in the gamble so NQ:
Tish’s Jackpot run (a Q):
I dropped Tish back down to Level 1 in Standard, to see if I could get some more speed and drive out of her on simpler courses, I think it worked!
Standard Round 1:
FINALLY! Nina finished her AKC Novice Agility title today at the DOTCORNY AKC trial at Boom Towne. Her AKC name is now Vastgota Nina Ricci NA NAJ NF! We are completely in Open now! (AND Nina’s daughter Demi got a Novice double Q yesterday for her first AKC title legs, and earned her second Jumpers Q today! She is on her way! Yay for Demi and her dad Ron!).
Here is her Standard run (table fault because I was so worried about the off-course potential between the a-frame and the table so I didn’t slow up where I should have), nice run though! GOOD ENOUGH anyway! (and she had the fastest time of all dogs/all heights/all levels)
Jumpers, a bit of a disaster…bars down, didn’t finish the weaves, etc.
Great weekend at Boom Towne, I needed it to take my mind of other things going on just now. Nina was running beautifully, we were in sync with each other really well most of the time. Love my dog.
Standard, a bit of a disaster (although we did Q yesterday!) – the weaves were askew and just weren’t going to happen:
Colors, gorgeous run! If I’d ended up on the far side of the blue tunnel like I’d planned we would have had a faster time:
Jumpers, what a shame I didn’t support the fifth obstacle (a jump) – she does exactly what I am telling her to do, which sadly puts us off course, which is an automatic NQ in Level 5. I knew we’d NQ’d, so I went into training mod…I booked it at the end to get that front cross in just to see if I could (and I did!):
