Summer Recap: LaMesa

Wow! I hate how much time I've let slip by since our last blog post! But things have been incredibly busy for me lately, with agility trials, work (3 jobs), and getting things ready for my upcoming wedding, the Stump Kids' blog was put to the side for a short bit.

This summer has been a long, hot one! My last post left off at the June Buckner AKC trial, and, ironically, our last trial was the September Buckner AKC trial. So let's do a brief recap of the summer, starting with LaMesa.

We're still in a Q drought with the Vallhund. This summer I was actually afraid that we were now going backwards and instead of progressing forward. Remember how excited I was after our near-miss Qs at Buckner in June? Well, things started unravelling at trials (or so it seemed to me) and we had some issues: missed weave entrances, weave pop-outs, jump run-bys, knocked bars, etc. I was constantly reminded by my friends that I just needed to keep the patience and remember that LaMesa was only 2 years old and we would soon get things together.

Our classes have been very helpful with the sessions working on letters and me working on my timing with her. The frustrating thing is to change my mindset from running Dally (who knows what I'm thinking..most of the time) to running LaMesa (who still gets overwhelmed at trials and just wants to run and please me). We've stopped doing start-line-stays, and I'm treating her a little like Dally, with a little push-off at the beginning. That's a little harder for me with her because I have to be moving a lot faster to get where I need to be with LaMesa than I usually do with Dally. But, she seems to be handling this new start-line approach easier, with less stress (and that's what we're going for, right??).

I'm looking forward to an upcoming seminar, which I'm hoping to get a working spot in, so LaMesa and I can work towards becoming more of a team with more insight from others.

I pulled LaMesa from one day of a Queen City trial at the end of August to help save some money and to help a friend out who was on the waiting list. A week later I ran her one day at the Buckner September trial and she was back to her old self! We had a solid standard run, marred by just two knocked bars, but she nailed her weaves and listened to me (I had a great call-off at the beginning). However, in Jumpers, she refused to do the 180 (a recurring theme) and we missed a couple of things because she was moving so fast and I wasn't keeping up. Some times I'm too fast with her and some times I'm too slow... I can't win right now.

Here's our stellar Excellent A Standard run. (She clocked in at 47 seconds, with standard course time being 67...the next fastest dog in Excellent A 12" clocked in at 63 seconds! If only I can harness that speed for good!)

This weekend we're heading to our last trial for a little while--back up to Queen City for two days. I'm hoping we can go into our trial-break on a high note.
Next post I'll update Dally's progress....