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| A happy Vallhund having the time of her life at Buckner. |
So the last blog post I wrote I talked about our return to
the agility ring after a little hiatus. Then I took a hiatus from
blogging—sorry!
Our runs at Hamilton were great—Dally went 4-for-4 (two QQs
for #11 and #12) and 53 PACH points! She also finished her MXP2 (interestingly,
she finished her MXP at the Fall Hamilton trial in September—nice, huh?)! I was
happy with her runs and she thoroughly enjoyed her return to the ring, which is
exactly what I was hoping for.
LaMesa’s runs were great, considering it was her first full
weekend in Excellent A Standard and Jumpers. We had a couple of bobbles—mostly
missed weave pole entries. So needless to say, that’s something we worked on a
lot since then.
Then a couple of weeks later, we headed to Buckner, Ky., in
hopes of more QQs for Dally and a Q for LaMesa.
Dally’s funny because it’s like she knows just when I need
to be humbled. Every once in a while, when I know that Dally’s feeling good and
we’ve been successful lately, I only think about the points (one of the
disadvantages of focusing on qualifying for Nationals). We ended up going
2-for-4 on the weekend, with the two NQs being near-misses because of little
things. In Saturday’s Standard run, we were running so fast I didn’t support a
double leading up to the A-frame and she ran right by it (21 points missed out
there, but I was so happy she was happy to run). We qualified in Jumpers later
in the day with 9 points and second place. Then on Sunday, I made sure to support
everything in Standard and we qualified with another smoking run of 20 points!
Then just as I was thinking about getting QQ #13, in Jumpers, Dally skipped
past the 9th weave pole (the second-to-last obstacle in a trying
course). It could have been an 11 point run, but that’s OK. I was still smiling
as we crossed the last jump.
LaMesa was the rock star of the weekend! No, we didn’t get a
single Q, but she showed so much potential and so much happiness in our runs!
Each missed Q was just one little bobble—a pop out of the weaves due to being
distracted by duct tape, a knocked bar on an otherwise clean run, etc. The
funniest run was our last Jumpers run. It was a trying course with 180s, figure
8s, etc., but she stuck with me through the whole thing. However, in the 180,
she reminded me of her athleticism. After I sent her over the first jump, I
pushed her out to come back around for the second…as she was committed to that
jump, I started my front cross to move forward (as I’ve been trained). LaMesa
saw me moving on and, as she was lifting up for the jump, she moved her body to
miss the jump, but sail over the cone! I started laughing and we continued on
to finish the course clean.
I was proud of myself through the weekend because I kept the
runs fun for both girls. Because of my extreme competitiveness, I usually try
to train on the courses if we mess up and are already NQd. But I’ve learned
that this stresses the dogs and makes the events no fun—which can be
discouraging down the road. So even if we made an error (whether it was my
error or theirs), I moved on (save for one re-try on the weaves with LaMesa
after she first noticed the duct tape) and we ran and celebrated. And you know
what? It was a fun weekend!
This weekend we head to Queen City. I’m itching for the last
two QQs needed for Dally’s 2013 Nationals qualifications (though we’re stuck at
needing 242 points to hit 400) so maybe I can get that out of my mind. So far
we need eight more QQs and 306 points for our PACH (just eight more QQs for our
PAX). With LaMesa, I feel our time coming—we’re so close to a perfect 100 and
our first Excellent Q.
I’ll do better at updating later!
