AARF trial: Bronze, Bronze, and Bronze!

Our annual trip to AARF for their October trial. This year's trial was quite small, but friendly and fun as always. And I was excited to see they now have breakaway tires -- I think of the places we trial at, they're the first and only ones with breakaway tires.

For some reason there were hardly any regular dogs there. In fact, some of the classes had ONLY special/vet dogs. For all of our classes we were within ~5 of the first five dogs in the running order which was a reallllly nice change. Do the walkthrough, get the dog, and go. I liked it!

Friday was fantastic. We had great weather: cloudy and downright chilly. So chilly, in fact, that I was bundled up in my winter coat for much of the day. 7 degrees (45F) in the morning, up to a cool cloudy high of 12 (54F). A bit rainy too in the afternoon. But no complaints from me; Walter LOVES this weather and ran happy and peppy all day.

Friday Jumpers: An offcoursey course but we made it through clean for a Q.

Friday Standard #1: Our first Standard run since spring. A flowy course, Walter did all of his weaves (woo hoo!), and he got a Q. This one little Q gave him three shiny new titles: Expert Standard Bronze (10 Masters Standards), Versatility Bronze (3 expert bronze titles -- he already had Snooker and Jumpers), and Bronze Award of Merit (10 Masters Standards plus 25 Masters Games). AARF is one of the clubs that give out these crazy huge ribbons for the Awards of Merit so I'm glad Walter got his Bronze here. One of the competitors is also a photographer who kindly agreed to take Walter's ribbon photo which I'll add here later.

Friday Gamblers: Didn't try the minis as they weren't our cup of tea, and the main involved a send to a sharp offside weave entry which is certainly beyond our skill set. Walter gave it a good try though.

Friday Steeplechase: This one had two sets of weaves; he popped the first set at the end so I waved him through; second set was clean (woo hoo!). Got his second ever (!) Steeplechase Q.

Friday Standard #2: We had an offcourse jump, but a decent run overall. It was two sets of 6 weaves which Walter didn't have a problem with.

Friday evening we continued our Kingston trial tradition of getting takeout at Lotus Heart Blossoms Vegetarian Restaurant. Tried a new dish this time, Barbequed Tofu Rice Bowl. The tofu was bland (but certainly edible), but the rest of the dish was delicious, with lots of veggies and sauce. Definitely a keeper.



I wanted to file a complaint with Mother Nature on Saturday. The last forecast I had heard was for Saturday to be the same as Friday. Woo hoo! Well, it turned out to be a sunny and hot day reminiscent of friggin July or something! 15 degrees (59F) first thing in the morning, already warmer than Friday's high, going up to a sunny and felt-much-warmer-than 18 degrees (64F). Oh well, what can you do. Walter was in his slow and unsharp mode for all but his first run of the day.

Saturday Gamblers: Did a lateral teeter/chute mini twice, good boy! Then when the buzzer went he ended up going on the dogwalk heading directly AWAY from the gamble. Although he got the main gamble (a distance serpentine with a couple of extra jumps thrown in), we had eaten too much time with that dogwalk mishap so were 3 or 4 seconds over.

Saturday Snooker: We were going along fine until halfway through the closing when he ran past what I thought was an obvious jump. Too bad so sad!

Saturday Standard #1: An early teeter offcourse, followed by great weaves (woo hoo!), then he felt like doing a running dogwalk so we went into training mode.

Saturday Standard #2: A brutal start requiring a lead out to a tough-for-us weave entry. Needless to say I messed that up, then he got the wrong entry AND popped. Oh well. The rest of the run was nothing to write home about. Poor Walter was feeling the heat.

Saturday Jumpers: It was hot, hot, hot. How can 18 degrees feel so darn hot? Walter was slow but ran clean and under time for a Q.

So yeah, yesterday was FUN -- Walter was loving the fall weather and ran with pep and enthusiasm. Today, not so much, just too stinkin' hot so he was flat flat flat, just not fun for either of us when he's flat as a pancake. How dare it be hot on one of our rare cool-weather season trial weekends! Maybe I should consider starting up a new Snow Agility League or something... ;-)