TeamDailyCorgi AKC Nationals Round 1

The Stumps of Fury mobile arrived in Harrisburg, Pa., on Wednesday after about a 9-hour drive. The drive up was uneventful...and rather boring. Definitely not conducive for photo opportunities like last year's trip to Tulsa. Hence the lack of road trip photos...

Thursday's activities included a "warm-up run" in the Time 2 Beat class. This was my first time ever running Time 2 Beat, but it's like a hybrid of Standard and Jumpers. Dally did well and we ended up clean with 9th place. Porter took an extra jump, and our friend Maddie ended up winning the 4" division! Team Daily Corgi started rocking the joint early!!

Friday we competed in the official start of Nationals, with Jumpers. This was a twisty-turny course with lots of wraps and difficult weave entry. This time the 4" representatives of Team Daily Corgi went 3-for-3 clean! Maddie finished 5th, Porter 7th, and Dally 12th. Going clean is the name of the game right now--I'm good with being consistent and clean. I know we aren't the fastest, but if we can be clean, that's the best.

After cheering on some of the Small Dog Posse, we ventured north to Hershey for a few dog photo ops and a tour of the Hershey's Chocolate World! Finally, some fun times for the dogs!

Saturday we'll be competing in Round 2, Standard. Let's hope we can continue the clean streak!!

Trying to Find That Q Groove

This past weekend the girls and I loaded up with the Brews Brothers and headed to Sharonville, Ohio, for the Queen City AKC Agility Trial. Trials have been few and far between lately (cutting back due to expenses), so every trial we're excited to get into and go!

I just wanted to have some fun, clean runs with the girls. Saturday started a little rough in Jumpers--LaMesa was clean, except for knocking a few bars, and Dally took an off-course tunnel entrance, followed by me getting discombobulated and lost on the course, trying to throw in a blind cross one jump too soon....oops. Oh well. The Standard saw more knocked bars, on a hard 90* from triple to double, for LaMesa, but she nailed her weaves again!

In Jumpers on Saturday, LaMesa struggled with a 180 when I should have maybe held my position for a split second longer. I thought she was committed to the jump, so I made my front cross and moved and she pulled off the jump. However, she (we) redeemed herself (ourselves) in the Standard with an equally-hard 180 and serpentine that I was so proud of her for:

Jumpers:

Standard:

And, now for your comic review, me and Dally's Jumpers run for Saturday:


 I'll post the wrap-up of Sunday's runs a little later.

2013 AKC Nationals Part 3: Rounds 1 & 2

Quick update: Dally and I made it back to Lexington Monday evening. It was a long drive, but Merinda was a great driver. I'll be finishing up our wrap-up throughout the week, along with a write-up for The Daily Corgi.

Saturday dawned early and already warm--in the 60s! It was definitely different from how things were back in Lexington! We arrived at the Expo Center in time to grab our course maps and head over to the Mustang Arena, where both our runs for the day were going to be held. The day before we had watched our friend Camille run her Papillon, Gus, run in the same arena and the birds were swooping in and out of the rings, so I knew we had to be careful with those distractions. 

Jumpers was first. I thought I had Dally all riled up and ready to run in the course, but she started off a little slow. It was a winding course, but she stayed with me and only looked over at the birds once. She even handled a back jump like a pro (I'm so glad I had been working her on those in practice!). I had walked it with the hope of using some blind crosses, but I was worried that she might take that opportunity to chase the birds, so I stuck with all front crosses, and it still worked out pretty well:

First round--Clean!

Just a few hours later we were preparing for our Standard run. This was one course that I definitely needed her to listen to me. There were quite a few 180s and some off-course chances. Again she was a little slow, but for once I was alright with that because I wanted her to stick by me and listen. I wasn't planning anything fancy, I just wanted to try to give her the best shots for each obstacle as possible.

Second round--Clean!

We ended the day in 10th place overall. I was very happy with both of our runs. The rest of the Small Dog Posse had some little issues here and there, so we were leading the crew and doing our best to represent.

Our two clean round ribbons from Saturday.

The evening was spent relaxing and an early bedtime--we had a very early morning on Sunday for Hybrid!