Trial recap!

Our first USDAA trial of the season for us is history.

We came away with four Q's and a nice little toy for our efforts.

Our goal for the trial was to work on getting my confidence back after my injury. That goal was somewhat accomplished. 2nd Goal was to get that last Standard Q for our MAD and we got it! Woo Hoo!

Next goal was to qualify in at least Steeplechase or Grand Prix so that we could have some fun and enter the Regionals that will be here in July. We got the Grand Prix Q, but just missed Steeplechase by 19 100ths of a second, oh so close! We have another opportunity to work for the Steeplechase next weekend.

Fourth goal was to try to get our first Super Q. We didn't get that, fur sure, although we picked up our 6th Q - nasty snooker courses this weekend.

Saturday was really, really wet, rained on and off all day, and the temp was cool. I love that kind of weather. But it made for some difficult chute maneuvers. Really messed up my Saturday Gamblers run, because I got caught in the wet chute. Thankfully they held it up for the rest of the runs on Saturday a few inches.

Sunday weather wasn't too bad, mostly cloudy and about 60 degrees. Just my kind of weather. We ran an incredibly speedy pairs run and got us a nice Q. And we picked up a Q in Snooker.

Overall it wasn't a bad trial for us. I had some really good moments, and some really bad moments. Mum was starting to get worried in some of my runs because I started sniffing in front of jumps again - that was the sign I was injured last time. She got me a chiro adjustment after the trial was over on site and wouldn't you know my pelvis was really out of whack. But it was better to get it after the trial so I could rest after the adjustment yesterday.

Here were our runs for the weekend:

Saturday - Gamblers (NQ), Standard (Q-3rd place), Steeplechase (NQ), Snooker (NQ), Jumpers (NQ).

Sunday - Pairs (Q-4th place), Standard (NQ), GrandPrix (Q), Snooker (Q), Jumpers (NQ)

I loved the standard courses for the weekend - no AKC-like discriminations, nice open spaces at times, good flow. Here's the one I qualified on for my MAD.


The snooker courses (you can click them to enlarge) were nasty, no real ways to get a flow going with high numbers; and unless you were a super sonic dog, you really had no way of even getting close to a Super Q.

Jumpers weren't too bad for me, but nasty for big dogs; jumpers were at the ends of the days after we had been there for about 8 hours - so I wasn't up to really running fast by that time.


Gamblers on Saturday (the only one) was potentially doable, but after the chute incident I kind of freaked out and lost my focus. Grand Prix course was pretty nice for us. Steeplechase had some really nasty tunnel entrance discriminations that kicked out a lot of dogs. I ran clean, but needed that 19 100ths of a second more.

Here's the one vid we got from the weekend of my Standard Q for my MAD. Not speedy, but good enough for the Q.
Our goals for next weekend are to continue to build my confidence and get my speed back to where it was before my injury. I showed some of that this weekend at times, so we're getting closer, it's just taking some time. We'd love next weekend to get a Steeplechase Q and maybe even another Grand Prix Q; we'll shoot again for another Super Q and hope for the best.

Here's our status on our road to ADCH...

5 Standard - got three (need 2)
5 Jumpers - got 6 (mission accomplished)
5 Gamblers - got 2 - (need 3)
5 Snooker - got 6 (need 3 SQ's)
5 Pairs - got 2 (need 3)
Grand Prix - 3 (mission accomplished)
Steeplechase - 2 (mission accomplished)
DAM Team - Got 0 (need 1 - entered in July)

Mum worked a lot with Gracie between my runs, (doing touch, look, sits and down and other trick near the ring while other dogs were running. Gracie did pretty well...she got worked up a few times, but the nice thing is she turned to Mum for help when she did that. That's kind of new for her and good! Mum would have loved to run Gracie, but they have to stick with their plan to really get Gracie to focus at her next competition. One run off in the ring would have set them back months.

If Gracie would take off the in the ring we'd probably have to contact a mover NYC to get her back, BOL!!!