Woo, hoo! Fun day at USDAA!

Just got back from the Pawsitive Partners USDAA trial. Today was much better than yesterday! And we took Gracie with us - 'cause we both missed her yesterday. Just isn't the same without her and she had some fun meeting new folks and dogs.

All of our runs were scheduled for inside on astroturf today. When Mum found out her little heart sunk - 'cause I'm much better outside or on dirt, and that astroturf hurts! But we pressed on.

Mum got smart and put Traumeel on my paw pads before every run today. Made a huge difference - I didn't stress, or sniff (well much), my pads did hurt, and I ran!! Yeah!

Our first run was Advanced Gamblers - which we didn't need, so we thought we would use it some good practice. Mum went for three jumps way out to two dog walks, the tunnel, then the buzzer went off and we were one jump and an a frame away from the gamble. I got the gamble, but we didn't make it in time. But was great to see me do another gamble, yeah!

Next run was Masters Standard - this time, I was running even faster, which Mum was glad to see (the Traumeel was working!). I sniffed just a little on the dog walk and hesitated a bit coming off the table - but we Q'd nicely and got fourth place.

Then it was time for pairs. We found out that we were paired with Perri (and Mum, Sam). It was great to have our first Masters Pairs run with them. Mum and I met Perri's Mum at the Mutt Strutt - almost exactly two years ago. That was before I started agility training, and Mum told Sam that we were starting training in a week or so. She said that she did agility. Well it turned out that Sam and her rescued dogs have been doing agility for years, and are very well known here and in Colorado. They've gone to nationals and have an unbelievable number of USDAA titles.

So it was great when we both Q'd in our Masters Pairs run with a 1st place! Yeah, team Perri and Johann!

Next up was Snooker. We're not trying yet for SQ's and Mum wanted to keep me going, so she made a plan that fit my likes. It was a long snooker, with a three jump sequence as a 7. So we took that twice with a two (jump) on the way to the closing - made it with even a few sec to spare. So we got another Q, and 4th place! Cool!

Then time for Masters Jumpers - this is my absolute favorite event. I love it. Mum led out two jumps, and I took off, running well. Came up to the double and saw something I just had to have right before the jump - took about 10 seconds before Mum got me off of it and running again - so we bolted through the course to the finish. Mum does that when we get faulted early on in a run - she pushed both her and me to the limit. We finished with a refusal fault and one sec over time.

But the neat thing - is that Mum should realize by now that she can push me to my limits all the time right. Because when she does it after we get a fault, we end up running the best runs of all!

Overall is was an interesting weekend - sometimes slow, sometimes painful, sometimes fast and sometimes euphoric - ahhhh, the story of life!

We're off for four days and then it's a three day AKC next weekend - I'm shootin' for my MX MXJ!!!