Weekend trial recap!

We are back and rested up a little from the three day AKC trial this weekend. And we had fun!

But I have to tell ya, like Mum always says, I run lots better when my sis Gracie is there to cheer me on. Gracie didn't get to go to the trial this weekend. And I missed her!

Being indoors out of the weather was great, but it was still hot in the building, the floor was nice, soft and cushy. But as Mum will tell ya, there were little pieces of white tape all over the floor that held my attention pretty much throughout the weekend. I just wasn't myself most of my runs, even though I had a few great moments.

You can see my runs in the vid below. And you'll also see in one of them, Mum pulled me from my jumpers run for checking out those pieces of tape. But I was a little comic relief for some folks. They couldn't believe I could be right up to a jump and still not knock a bar, goofy me!

Mum had to work hard to keep my attention throughout almost all the courses. And my weaves weren't anywhere near where they usually are. Overall, we got three Q's, but our times stunk. We kept our spirits up, had as much fun as we usually do, and did the best we could with the situation.

The courses were nice, people nice, judges nice. We spent time with a couple of my best buds, Willow and Simba. And we got to see a couple of our friends get their MACHs on the very last day with a couple of DQ's which was great. We want to be sure and thank the folks that video taped us - thank you, thank you, thank you!

Here are a couple of courses from the weekend. The first one is JWW from Sunday.

We got to the site just as the really big dogs were running, and heard loads of cheering going on. We found out that everyone was cheering if the dogs made the #6 tunnel entrance and then again if they ran clean. There was a lot more cheering going on than I would have expected.

Once Mum got to walk the course she saw it was a difficult tunnel entrance, even for small dogs. Some small dogs did front crosses before 6 and ended up directing their dog into the 13. Mum decided to trust me, head her toes right for the tunnel and keep her arm low and bowl me in. It worked great! I sniffed at something coming out of 13, but Mum helped me keep my momentum going so we didn't NQ, and then I ran pretty much full out on 16-20, Mum was racing me to the end.

This course is Standard from Friday. Mum liked this course, even though this is the one I pulled out of the weaves. Mum decided to run with me pretty much from the start, since there were a lot of kids in the stands next to the dog walk and she didn't want me jumping off the middle. It worked pretty well - I was tentative but kept pretty focused. Then she treated 3-5 pretty much as a straight line as possible by staying on the inside and it worked really well. I've been leaving the table late when Mum has been running with me from the table lately, so she decided to lead out pretty far - it worked better. But we've got to work on that more. And my teeter wasn't my latest faster teeter. Gracie just wasn't there to scream me on! Dang it!


For those of you that saw the vid a few days ago of our practice, know that I just wasn't myself this weekend. We are really glad that our next trial is outdoors on grass and Gracie can go, even though it will be hot, I just run better in that situation, right now. Hope you enjoy the vids!