We were only entered Saturday and Sunday this weekend (and Time 2 Beat on Friday). The weather has been horrible here, extremely cold, so the dogs have had far less exercise than usual, which meant that Nina basically had rabies in T2B. Nina went 2 for 2 in Jumpers, extending her Jumpers Q streak to 6 now. We were a spin away from a double Q today, but she came off the table behind me and didn’t know where to go so she spun in front of a jump and earned a refusal. Today Tish WEAVED for the first time in a VERY long time at a trial, I had to try something different and really babysit them, but it worked. Unfortunately that run wasn’t recorded. Yesterday I turned away from her on the table and she decided to go visit the judge (making the crowd say “Awwwwww”, judge Lisa Rieves told me later that she thought Tish was so cute she wanted to pick her up), she is running very fast for Tish, and very happy. Very proud of my girls!
What a GREAT weekend we had! I always love judge Mary Mullen’s courses and she is so lovely to show to, which is why I decided to have Zhora make her trial debut this weekend. Nina earned double Q #6 on Friday (technically a triple Q, since she also won Time 2 Beat) and qualified in Jumpers all three days (only the second time this has happened!), she also put up her best weekend to date, qualifying in 5 of 8 runs, that’s better than 50%!
Tish did very well in her first trial back after the time off I opted to give her. She is still not weaving in trials but ran faster than she ever has and was happy and responsive the whole time, she would have qualified in almost every run if she had just weaved!
And Zhora! She was SO much better than I had expected. She is not really trial ready, but you don’t really know what you have until you try at a trial. She was wonderful! No danger of a Q, of course, but I was VERY pleasantly surprised! She went off to visit the ring crew once each time (I love having a friendly dog!) but she came right back and worked with me, we got a very respectable second half of the standard course, and six weaves in jumpers. AND she had a reliable start line stay and stopped contacts! She also didn’t seem affected by trial pressure, she just stepped up and worked and had a great time doing it. She took her teeter a bit fast in standard and startled herself (my fault, I should have checked her speed sooner), but she recovered almost immediately (several people commented on how quickly she recovered), the next obstacle was the table and she was play-snapping at my fingers and back her to sassy self.
Nina’s Standard Q Friday (QQ#6) for 29 points:
Nina’s Jumpers Q Friday (QQ #6) for 16 points:
Tish’s Jumpers run Friday:
Tish’s Standard run Friday:
Nina’s Jumpers Q Saturday for 16 points:
Tish’s Standard run Saturday:
Zhora’s Standard run Saturday (first-ever run at a trial):
Zhora’s Jumpers run Saturday (weaves!):
Nina’s Jumpers Q Sunday for 16 points (yes, 16 points each time!):
Tish’s Jumpers run Sunday (sorry it is teeny, it was filmed sideways by mistake):
Nina got Double Q #2 on Friday (29 points in Standard, 17 points in Jumpers), plus another Time 2 Beat leg and 10 points, picked up another Jumpers leg today (17 points), and Tish got her final Open Standard leg today to earn her Open Agility (OA) title, and get completely into Excellent!
Nina QQ #2 Standard (29 points):
Nina QQ #2 Jumpers (17 points) – weird camera issue makes it look like Benny Hill:
Tish Open Agility (OA) title run (note the weaves dance to get her jazzed about weaving! I will be teaching classes in how to do this…NOT):
Nationals tally: 13/20 legs, 266/500 points (over halfway there!), 2/4 double Q’s (halfway there!). So 7 more legs to go, 234 points, and 2 double Q’s!
Pretty good day today. Tish earned her Novice Fast title, and WEAVED (a bit), Nina earned an MXJ leg (#4) for 16 more MACH points and was close in Standard, she did all the tricky stuff but I put her down wrong and she knocked the first bar (she knocked a bar later, too, but that was because I decided to book it and just run like hell!).
Nina Master Standard NQ:
Nina MXJ Leg #4:
Tish Excellent Jumpers (NQ but she did 10 weaves and ran well):
Nina finished her AX AND got her first MX leg (with 34 MACH points!). Tish weaved twice and would have qualified in JWW once if she hadn’t had to go say hi to the ring crew…good weekend overall at Countryside!
Nina qualified in Time 2 Beat on Friday (and comfortably set the time to beat for 10 points), and qualified in BOTH Jumpers and Standard today (not technically a double Q, since she is still in Excellent Standard, but MORALLY a double Q!). Tish didn’t Q but had some really great moments. She would have qualified in Excellent Jumpers today if I’d managed a turn a little better (she is still very green and didn’t have the experience to be confident about a tricky turn, but she weaved on her first try and that one refusal was her ONLY FAULT!). She had 2 refusals in Open Standard today because I didn’t end up where I’d planned for the table approach and she went right past it. I was very pleased with her overall, though, she showed some real flashes of brilliance and seemed to be really having fun.
Tish Excellent Jumpers yesterday (4/13) – included because even though she gets a major green dog brain attack and goes wandering off and then zooms, it’s one of the first times I’ve seen her show what kind of speed she is actually capable of (that’s why I asked for a few obstacles to see if I could get her to actually DO AGILITY at speed, and she DID!) – Tish is capable of running MUCH faster than Nina, but she doesn’t yet have the confidence to do it in agility, since she is a perfectionist and doesn’t want to make a mistake (UNLIKE Nina!). You can hear my friend Linda (who kindly records for me) say “holy cow!” when Tish really turns on the turbocharger:
Nina’s Master Jumpers With Weaves from today (a Q for a first place and 17 MACH points, and would have been even faster if she hadn’t almost taken that off course tunnel, she slammed on the brakes and hit the sandbag, but the judge told me we were still OK as I ran by – she didn’t cross the plane of the obstacle so it wasn’t an off course):
Nina’s Excellent Standard Q from today (leg #2!), a couple of close calls, but we did it:
Tish’s Open Standard run from today, an NQ because of two refusals, but a nice run for her!
Here is Nina’s JWW Q, that was it for the weekend, other than a FAST Q, also on Friday:
Tish WEAVED in Standard! And we would have qualified if I hadn’t rushed my rear cross at the end. On the plus side, she read my turn cue beautifully, I just did it too early and pulled her off the jump. It takes some getting used to, running a dog where I actually have time to think (and apparently I am not using that time to, you know, THINK) – and the bar down was because it wasn’t set (we were the first dog to go), we didn’t knock it down:
Day 1 of DOTCORNY at Boom Towne. Nina a double NQ, Tish a double Q in Open! Tish did her weaves on the first try BOTH times today!
Nina Master Jumpers (NQ):
Nina Excellent Standard (NQ):
Tish Open Standard (Q, with a wrong course and a refusal thanks to her being unable to resist going to say hi to the judge…I love having a friendly dog but…I knew it was coming when she was on the table and fluttering her ears at him):
Tish Open JWW (Q and her second leg in Open JWW – clean run!):
