This past weekend at the Greater Louisville Training Club's Kentuckiana Cluster, Dally and I celebrated our 6-year AKC trial anniversary. It's hard to imagine that 6 years ago we debuted and now we're getting ready to hit our third straight AKC National Agility Championships!!
The Cluster has always been hot and cold for me and Dally…we have yet to QQ there. It seems like after our debut, where we went 3-for-3 for our first ever Qs, we do well to Q once a day.
And that continued this year. It was a long day for us--it went tall to small, and even though it's a 3-ring trial, it still makes for long days. I was lucky to not have to be there early, unlike Merinda and my other friends, but we still arrived around 1:30 and still waited until 5:30 just to walk our first course, which happened to be Masters Jumpers. Then within an hour we were also walking the Masters Standard. It was wait…then hurry!! We were done by 7:30 and on the road. Still exhausting.
Saturday's courses were fun, though. We tackled Tim Pinneri's Jumpers course just fine. I like courses that start with tunnels because it's a good way to rev Dally up early. Serpentines are a strong thing for Dally because she and I are able to do the straight line, which saves yardage. We Qd and finished 5th in a tough 4 Inches class and 10 PACH points.
The Masters Standard course was manageable, but for some reason Dally skipped a pole in the middle of the weaves--that was a first. So we finished strong and fast, just to have fun.
(Yes, we were the last dog of the entire day…how much does that suck??)
Sunday was a little better--we arrived around 1 and were actually done by 5:30. A lot of people were leaving early because of bad winter weather coming, which helped with the timing. Again, we started with Jumpers, which saw Dally Q with 4 PACH points. She was a little slower, but she kept things going. In Standard I swore we had our first QQ, but the judge raised his hand on a jump and it was noted as a refusal on the scribe sheet. I'm still not sure what she did, because he didn't raise his hands like she knocked the bar, No one knows exactly what happened still…it's a little irritating.
Oh well, that's agility right? We came out of it with 14 total PACH points and a good warm-up for Nationals. We hadn't trialed since November, so I was nervous about how rusty we were. Maybe the slowness was some of Dally's rust…I don't know. But I think we'll be OK for Nationals.
Here's LaMesa's trial wrap-up, including a little surprise... ;-)
The trials and tribulations of training a Pembroke Welsh Corgi and Swedish Vallhund for agility.
I didn't see a thing either - looked like Q to me. His hand went up at a weird time - when Dally was running towards the teeter. Usually , judges wait until the dog has passed by so as not to spook them at a critical time. He also didn't hold his arm in position as long as they usually do. It's almost like he was waving good bye to someone at the end of a long day. :-) Darn!
ReplyDeleteHave fun at Nationals!