Fun trial weekend!

We're back, safe and sound, from the trial this past weekend. It was a long one, driving two hours each way, each day, three days in a row to Cincinnati. But it was worth it!

We saw some beautiful sunrises on the way over to Ohio. This pic, taken with our Palm Centro, sure doesn't do the sunrise justice!

By the time the sun was up and shining bright we made our way into Ohio.

Mum and I just love the drive over there. It's a lot of corn fields until you get into Ohio, and then you see a lot of hills and trees. Some of the trees are even starting to turn into their fall colors.

We got to the trial site in plenty of time each day. Gracie and I stayed in our crates while Mum walked my courses. The trial was indoors in a soccer facility, with super nice soft turf to run on.

Had a few nice runs. Only the nice runs were in Standard. My jumpers runs were all in a 60x130 ring with hardly any moving room for Mum. Didn't make jumpers all that much fun for us this weekend, even though it's my favorite event.

All the Standard courses were nice and flowing, kind of reminded me of USDAA courses; which are my fav. Every Standard course had some room to run and stretch out, get some good time, no discriminations, making the runs really fun and fast.

This was probably the course where I had my best run. Some of the big dogs had an off course to 13 from 3, and just a few had some trouble going to the off course jump after the teeter, but overall we didn't see too many baubles.


The JWW course that same day was a whole different story. Here's the course:

Lots of NQ's on this one, including mine! There just wasn't any room for me and Mum around some of these jumps, and Mum had to try and layer; which doesn't work with me, well. I nearly pulled off 10 'cause Mum wasn't there to support me, but Mum got me back on course. Then coming from 14 to 15, Mum just couldn't get there, again and I ended up taking the 10 for an off course.

You can see the other Standard vids here:


Overall, I kept up my speed pretty well throughout the whole weekend. Mum and I know I still have more speed, but she thinks I'm getting just a little speedier all the time. We got some nice compliments from some top folks about our runs this weekend. Very different from the last time we were at this trial and I was still recovering from my muscle pull.

This was the first time I had seen 24" spacing on weaves. Didn't seem to affect me, I got used to them instantly. Mum watched many of the dogs in the 24" spacing and she loved watching how much more easily the big dogs got through them, and she saw some of the smaller dogs be even faster than she's seen them before in the weaves. We are now fans of the 24" weaves. Big time!

I picked up some nice MACH points for the weekend. Even though we only Q'd in two of the Standards runs and none of the JWW runs, we got more than double the Q points we used to get, which shows that we're running faster. And on the Q's we got, I was within 4-6 secs of the top 16" dogs, a couple of which were national top level. Felt pretty good about that.

I have to say that Mum is going to have to step it up to continue to keep up with me, or we're going to have to get better at our distance work.

The great thing is I made my dog walk contacts all weekend. So that mouse pad work is really paying off. We are just going to keep it up, 'cause Mum wants total independent dog walks with me, like my weaves and my frames. And it's obvious in the vid that I still need teeter work, just way too cautious. And I can use down work on the table, not fast enough for Mum's taste.

Oh, forgot to tell ya. One of the reasons we didn't Q in one of our JWW runs, was that Mum trashed one of my jumps. Yep, you heard it. She ran right into it. Everything was so tight, she just didn't see it coming at all. And she completely trashed it, bars went rolling toward me, and I stopped in my tracks, looked up at her and gave her the "what the heck?" look. But we ran on, and finished the course like the pros that we are (that's a laugh!). Mum was embarrassed to say the least, a little bruised inside and out.

Gracie got to walk around some inside and do a few tricks for people, but mostly she and Mum stayed outside and walked around the grounds. It was a super nice weather weekend. And Gracie had some fun, but most importantly, she was the best support sis, ever!

Mum is definitely signing her up for one of the upcoming USDAA trials, so she's getting her chance to shine again soon. And I'm sure after running both of us at USDAA Mum is going to need to check into Barbados villa rentals for some nice R&R!

We're off to Terre Haute for an outdoor two day AKC trial this coming weekend. Just1.5 hour drive this time, then the rest fo the trials are within 30 minutes. We're excited to be running outdoors again. Miss it!