Sunday, November 16, 2008

Morning Star trial - Day 2

[follow along in the highlights/lowlights video at the bottom of this post!]

Gamblers #2: Half a second away from a Q due to wasting six seconds in getting to the start of the gamble. (Sent him to the nearby tunnel just as the buzzer went off but wasn't about to call him off the tunnel since we have enough problems as it is with him being a Not Tunnel Suck!) combined with some hesitation in sending out to a tunnel (what else is new). Still, my Not Tunnel Suck did a pretty good job of re-sending out to the tunnel instead of going to the nearby tempting dogwalk.

Team #2: Complete repeat performance of yesterday. Good partner! Bad popped weaves Walter! This time we squeaked in with less than a second to spare when the 5 seconds were added on. Phew!

Standard #3: Decent run in a pokey sort of way, except for entering the weaves at the second pole on an easy straight-on approach. Possibly due to me not hanging back enough. Took him back and he did them fine. Oh and since we had already NQd, I really pushed his frame on the homestretch and he totally missed it, earning what I believe is his first ever missed contact in competition. The video playback showed he came in really deep to the frame, so his first stride hit higher than normal, then he sailed over the apex, landing lower than normal (but above the yellow) and decided a third hit would have been extraneous.

Standard #4: In which I attempt to set a new world record for loudest attempted call-off. Sigh. Any time that any kind of handling is required immediately following the weaves, I am in trouble because if the run is clean up to that point and he weaves clean, I lose it for a second and - poof! - we end up making a mistake. In this case I completely forgot to do the rear cross after the weaves, which means I needed to try a hard push out to the far side of a c-tunnel, and Walter SO does NOT push well, so into the wrong end of the tunnel he went despite my ear-piercing "WALTER COME!" My poor dog and everyone else within hearing range (likely the entire city of Kingston). Not exactly my proudest agility moment.

Snooker #2: A clean but not terribly thrilling run where we did the #7 frame three times and made it through to the end of the closing, including the #3 6-weaves.

So, overall not a bad trial for us. He's definitely a lot more comfy in this ring now, and he did several great sets of weaves on the first try. The courses were fun and presented a lot of interesting handling challenges.

Oh one last side note: The entrance to the facility was being redone so the pathway was makeshift on grass with boards on top, but the worn out grass combined with the rain and heavy foot/paw traffic made for the muddiest trial I've ever been to! Kind of weird since the actual trial was indoors. But, my pants were completely spattered with mud within hours of the start of each day. And let's not even mention the inside of the car...! Still, I'm definitely looking forward to their next trial, muddy paths or not :)

Here's the highlights/lowlights video.

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