This was our third time showing under judge Alex Davis. She is a lovely person, always wants people to do well. Her courses were tough! Zhora picked up QQ’s # 37 and 38, just two more to go to MACH 2! Nina had some lovely runs, picking up an awesome JWW Q and a Premier JWW Q. This was her last weekend to qualify for nationals, she just needed two QQ’s to go, but sadly it was not to be. I am adopting a new strategy to try and fix the bar knocking – after pretty thorough video review and discussion with friends who have watched her run for years, the problem seems to be that she sometimes just doesn’t bother to add a stride when she should (it’s faster to just take the long spot and knock the bar – this is NOT Early Takeoff Syndrome), and instead opts to just plow through. So I am taking a two-pronged approach, a Vallhund owning friend (Hattie, who owned the late and sadly-missed Vaasa, who was so much like Nina) said she started just pulling her dog with the same problem when she knocked bars, and it solved the problem. So I am doing this (unless, of course, I think the bar was my fault). I am also SAYING “jump” before every jump to remind her to jump – I have always been someone who prefers to run with as few verbal cues as possible, and I do generally believe that showing the dog which jump is next is my job, but actually JUMPING the jump is the dog’s. But at this point….after so many NQ’s for bars throughout her career, I am willing to try almost anything. It did seem to be helping, I did pull her several times this weekend, and she did seem to leave bars up when I told her to jump (it’s an adjustment for me and I do forget to actually say jump sometimes).<\/p>\n
Nina Friday Standard (NQ but SUCH a nice run, and I love the “AWWWWW” from the crowd when we NQ):
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