Spring Cup
I really do hope the international cups catch on, just my kind of agility. Fun day, courses were great, people were great, good times. Thankfully I made it to the trial, as, once again, Rosie had to come jumpstart my car. You know, with the jumper cables she bought me years ago. Because she kept having to jumpstart my car. Not much has changed. Only now I have jumper cables. Very thankful for Rosie and Tammy taking a detour on their way this morning. I'd like to say it will be the last time ... but let's be realistic.
As for the agility, Bright and I are still not on the same page. Sometimes I think Bright and I aren't even reading the same book these days. Yet I'm always quite confident we can do the things, and continually surprised when it doesn't happen. The fact that I'm frustrated with Bright clearly indicates my lack of a plan of what to do about it all. If I had a response, a plan, an inkling of what I should do, I could get moving on it. Instead I just keep going, "Bright, seriously?" And we redo things, and it makes no difference whatsoever. We train things, yet we still don't seem to have the behaviors. I correct things, it makes no difference. I try splitting things down, starting from the basics, we just can't seem to get on the same page. We're still having fun, but I'll admit to feel like I'm spinning my wheels and just doing the same things over and over and expecting a different result. Still don't have a plan. And, of course, sometimes we CAN do the things, like we used to be able to do the things - this doesn't help. But there is always the Penny Plan: Do More of It. We like agility, we should do more of it, until we get back into sync. It could happen, you never know.
Navarre, on the other hand, remains an easy baby. Any issues were me. Well, except for the teeter on our mulligan run - what is with my dogs and just running the teeter? Bright was just blatent, as that's her new thing (she's been doing it consistently almost every competition run recently) - but Navarre too was like, "Stopping on the teeter? Don't be silly, that's so last week." I'm very consistent with the teeter stops (and marking self releases), it's not like I've been at all lax in criteria, so that's a bit of a puzzler. Poor Navarre, as I was having to SCREAM at Bright attempting to get her to come into me (still didn't work), I screwed up his standard run with ridiculous overhandling from 15-16 and called him off the teeter completely. In jumpers I screwed up NOT calling him after 11 as I was so amazed he easily did the threadle that Bright never even acknowledged, he went off course over the #10 jump. Running Bright first is NOT helpful, let's just say that.
Navarre was just being such a good thoughtful baby dog. I'm really happy with his skills and his focus in this arena is really good. It's at the big trials where there is a lot more going on that he gets into sightseeing and multitasking, I felt like I had his attention today. Not sure when his next trial will be, I'll have to take a look at what is coming up. Our CPE planned failed, and no multi-ring CPE trials in the near future, so I guess it's back to AKC. We're also done with our online Justine classes, so kind of at loose ends these days without any specific homework. Always something to work on in agility though!