We had fun this weekend!

I had a blast this weekend. Went to the Hoosier Kennel Club AKC trial. It was a three day-er, so I had many nice opportunities to run. Love that!

Friday it was really hot and muggy for this time of year. We're just not quite used to that yet. We had both runs in the morning - Standard and JWW. Mum's not sure what was going on - the heat, first day jitters or what - but I was slower than usual. And it was unexpected by Mum. She was handling me like she usually does and I refused a jump, rest of the run went well. In JWW, someone warned us that there was a BIG smell behind the tunnel. So Mum was prepared. But what she wasn't prepared for was that I would go into the tunnel and come out the entrance to go around and sniff that BIG smell. She called me goofy for that one! Well, no Q for Friday.

But Saturday was a whole different story. What a difference a day makes! I was fast and ran very well. We got another Double Q, yeah! Both Standard and JWW had nice flowing courses, so I got to get my speed up, when I could. The Standard run had a difficult dogwalk/weave/jump discrimination off the table - but we made it right into the weaves with no problem. And we got big cheers on our JWW run, which was cool! I got big treats after those runs, I'll tell ya!

Sunday we arrived at the trial and looked at the courses. Wow the Standard was a toughie. Had three difficult discriminations - dogwalk/tunnel, frame/tunnel, tire/teeter. That course ate up many a dog, I'll tell ya. And it was very twisty turny. Mum has learned over some time, how to keep me motivated on such a course with 'out' jumps, and go, go, goes on the open parts. She was only really worried about the frame/tunnel discrimination and the rear-on-the-flat to the chute after the aframe, since we hadn't done a rear-on-the-flat for months. We made the dogwalk/tunnel discrimination, but didn't make the frame/tunnel. But we did a great rear-on-the-flat to the chute - I impressed Mum with that one. And I kept my speed up, despite all the turns. So Mum and I were pretty happy with our showing on that course!

On our next JWW run, I was sniffing at the start (at least we didn't loose time on that with electronic timers, ha!). Mum finally got me going and I bolted off the start - four jumps to the tunnel. Then it was two jumps to another tunnel and I stopped in there to sniff again. Mum got to the exit of the tunnel this time and called me through - took 4-5 secs, but I finally came out. Then Mum pushed me through the rest of the course as fast as she could. She said I was taking those jumps faster than she had seen in a long time. So we ended up Q'ing that run, even with a few secs to spare. Whew! So Mum ended up being happy with that run too - although we gotta work on the sniffing thing.

We also discovered a new thing on Friday and Saturday. I didn't want to come off the table. So on Sunday, Mum stayed with me at the table and told me what a good boy I am during the count. I bolted off that table on Sunday. Mum was glad we got that worked out.

Gracie was kind of jealous this weekend that I got to run and she didn't. So Mum took her around to meet some new people and dogs - she loved that! And Mum has been working with her as close to the rings as possible with sits, downs, looks, turns and such. On Sunday, people told them how focused Gracie was on Mum - oh if only they knew! Mum's hoping that Gracie can do a run or two at an upcoming trial. But they may do another Show N Go soon. And the local training center has open practice now, so they may go there occasionally.

Overall we were pretty pleased with a 50% Q rate for the weekend. And with the speed on Saturday and Sunday - as well as the fact that Friday's slowness only lasted one day. We're up to 4 DQ's and 125 MACH points - 6 Q's toward our MXJ and 5 Q's toward our MX. We are really happy with that!

We're off for two weekends. We'll have to miss practice this week because of Mum's work - drat it all! But she's got some plans for us to work on in the backyard over the next two weeks, since we haven't been doing much of that lately.

Dogagilityphotos.com took some photos this weekend. We may get one of them - what do you think, should we buy it? Here's the link!