Well there's one goal for 2009 accomplished: Walter got the third and final Standard leg needed for his MADC and therefore for his ATChC. Nice to have that one done!
We were there on Friday and Saturday, seven runs each day. No videos, wasn't in the mood to find and beg people to film our runs.
Masters Snooker #1, 2, and 3: What the bejeebers, Walter's best class and we didn't get a single Q. In the first one, he took back to back obstacles of choice (an offcourse possibility I hadn't considered), tweet. In the second, he took a 2 in the opening instead of the 6 that we needed so we were 3 points shy (again, not something I foresaw when walking the course). In the third, which was the last run of our second day, the weaves were 7 and since I didn't want to have to ask him to weave at all, our choices were three 6s and make it through to 6 in the closing, or two 5s (teeter) and two 6s (three-jump combo) and make it through to 5 in the closing. I opted for the latter. The reds were pretty spread apart (almost all four corners of the ring), as were the 5 and 6 from the 2 (to transition to the closing), so it was a LOT of mileage to try to squeeze in to 55 seconds, but we gave it a good run! So much fun. Ran out of time just as we got to the 5 in the closing. Had some of our turns been tighter (or, perhaps, less wide, since they weren't exactly tight to begin with), we probably would have had enough time.
Team #1 and 2: Dang dang dang. Both times my partner was clean but I had a 5-fault bobble and we weren't enough under time to be able to make up for it, though on one we would have had it had we been less than a second faster. Partner for first one was a sweet GSD or GSD mix; partner for second was an aussie with a fondness for blond dogs who managed to stay on track and not come to visit Walter. Goofup on the first course was Walter popping at his usual place toward the end of the weaves; goofup on the second was my handling error which caused a refusal at the weaves. Oh yeah and another thing, in his first team, which was his very first event of the trial, he had a bit of a scary teeter when he went running up it as if he thought it was the dogwalk. Fortunately he was just fine and didn't have any teeter or dogwalk issues for the rest of the trial.
Jumpers #1, 2, and 3: Good first two runs so two more Jumpers Qs, but on the third, I thought I could get in a front cross but ended up rushed and out of place. It was right after a chute. Being so rushed to get there I lost track of where exactly I was positioned and also lost sight of Walter, so for a moment I just stood still and held my arm up hoping he'd take the oncourse jump and not the dummy jump right next to it. A moment later, the "ohhhhhh" from the crowd told me he'd taken the dummy. I had been practically blocking the correct jump though, so he had been a good boy and we kept going, no point "fixing" that. Later in the course he ran past a jump, no idea why, but again the "fix it! fix it! fix it!" gremlins kept their distance so we were able to just keep going.
Standards #1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6: Walter needed one more Standard for his MADC and ATChC, so I had entered him in all six Standards, taking the approach that "you can't lose 'em all!" (saw that line in an agility blog or magazine article recently). Well, it worked! Not only did he not lose them all, but he actually Qd in 3 of them (the second, fourth, and sixth). The NQs were caused by (a) a dogwalk refusal (I had given him a bad approach) plus a runby on a jump (didn't fix it); (b) ran past weave entry plus popped at end; and (c) ran past a jump and popped out of the weaves right after entering. Interestingly, one of the judges designed two of this weekend's Standards (as well as one of the Teams) with two sets of 6-weaves instead of the far more common one set of 12-weaves. (However, those aren't the ones we Qd in.)
General notes: Walter ran well all day both days, just a few momentary lapses causing some jump runbys (none of which I "fixed", so take that, dagnabbed gremlins!). Even with seven runs each day his enthusiasm level was good, though now that he has his ATChC I can be more choosy in what to put him in so will cap it at six runs per day. Also, now that he has his ATChC, I'm going to go on a ribbon diet. For the last year or so I've been taking all Q ribbons and placement ribbons only if he Qd, but really, except for a few particularly meaningful ones, they all get shoved into a box, for that non-existant day in the future when I'll finally figure out what to do with them. I'll still take them at venues that do ribbon presentations, since I'd feel kind of rude to decline it. But at venues that have self-serve ribbons I'll pass unless it's a venue from which we don't already have a ribbon, or if it was a particularly memorable run.
Delicious veggie burger from Lotus Heart Blossoms Vegetarian Restaurant
Fortunately, so far Lucy and Walter haven't experienced these conditions, although my childhood dog Snoopy developed, around age 7 or 8, some kind of condition where both knees had to be operated on within a few years of each other. All I can remember is it was something about the ligaments giving out on her and being replaced with artificial ligaments. I assume this must have been CCLR?
