I did warn about the excruciating detail...
What follows will probably be unbearably boring, but I want to make sure I remember EVERYTHING about this amazing weekend. I regret not starting this journal until many months into Faith's flyball career because I don't remember a lot about our earlier tournaments, so it's more difficult to track our progress--this makes me determined to remember all of our agility and rally trials!
Saturday
I was alternating between nervousness and excitement on Saturday morning after I woke up at 6. Half of me thought that I was rushing Faith into a trial (and rushing definitely didn't help with flyball) and the other half figured that Faith would certainly not be the worst one there. Our day started off smoothly thanks to my diligent preparation late the previous night, when I packed up all of our stuff in my new dog gear backpack (very handy--I'm planning to just keep it packed all the time so that it's ready for classes, trials, and tournaments), went to Kroger to buy chicken, filled my car's tank, and packed everything but the chicken, leash, and dog in the car.
Local trials are the best! It only took 45 minutes to get to the trial site, which was on the Hollins University soccer field. The drive was really easy, as it was just a few miles from my agility class place. After I parked, I wandered around a bit looking at everything. I found Maureen, Jennie, Anne, Eric, and Karen, and shortly afterward the trial secretary and judge gave a short briefing about the trial. One thing about this trial that really stood out was how nice everyone was. People are nice in the other sports Faith and I compete in, flyball and rally, but it stood out more at this trial. I don't know if it's a NADAC thing or an agility thing!
Chances was the first class with about fifty entries, so Maureen and I had a while to wait. I found out that Anne, Eric, and Jennie were also competing in the Novice Jumpers class with Kesh and Zago, Matt, and Oliver. (In case anyone is interested and doesn't know, Anne, Eric, and Jennie (and Connie, who showed up on Sunday) all do flyball with Faith and me. We were all originally part of NRE. Anne and Connie have since split from NRE to join HoT.) Watching Chances, especially Elite, was pretty amazing. I'm not sure that Faith and I will ever be able to work at that big of a distance from each other. There was one part where the dog went through a tunnel that curved in a corner of the ring and then was supposed to come out and go into the weave poles that were along the edge of the ring, all with the handler standing practically all the way on the other half. A good number of dogs chose the enticing jumps leading to the handler instead of the weaves, but the ones who ran clean were amazing.
While Open and Novice Chances was going on, I set Faith's crate and my stuff up under Maureen's tent. We were in the "cool people" part of the site, with Karen, LeAnn (who has several dogs and trains with Karen), Nancy (with her ACD Roo), Jennie, Eric, Anne, and Maureen all in the same row. I finally took Faith out of the car and walked her around a bit in the quiet parking lot before taking her to her crate. She was excited and interested in everything going on, but she was great at paying attention to me. After I crated her, Maureen and I went to check out our Jumpers course, which was posted in front of the second ring. It was so much easier than what we've been practicing in class.
Here is a very crude Paint version of our course. The tunnel was bidirectional, so the dog could enter from either end. The red shows Faith's path and the blue is my path. There was a dummy jump in the middle, but it was not really an issue from Faith's point of view--the main danger was I was afraid I might run into it!
After seeing the course, I felt a bit better about this whole thing. Plus, as I watched the other dogs go in Chances and then in the upper levels of Jumpers, I saw that it's really pretty silly to get embarrassed if your dog messes up. Even the best dogs mess up, and neither the competitors nor the spectators care. There were a couple of dogs there that were clearly not ready to be trialing, so I felt even more sure that Faith wouldn't be the worst one! This is not to say that I still didn't have butterflies in my stomach, but they were controllable!
After the Elite and Open Jumpers went, it was time to walk the course. Nearly everyone I knew who was there was also competing in Novice Jumpers: Maureen, Nancy, LeAnn, Anne, Eric, Jennie, and Karen herself who was running an ILP'ed Aussie named Zest whom she only met on Friday. Karen and Eric told me to send Faith into the left side of the tunnel instead of the right the way I drew on my map. I initially wanted to send her into the right, and their reasoning made sense, but when it came time to run it I sent her into the right anyway--more because that was just where we were when the time came rather than by a conscious decision!
Saturday was running small to tall dogs, so Faith and I had a while to wait--we were the third-to-last to go and there were about thirty dogs. I had fun watching everyone I knew. Maureen and Sydney did great. Sydney decided to visit the people sitting in the corners (I'm not sure if their only job is to reset bars or what!) at first, so she skipped jumps 2, 3, and 4, but Maureen kept on going as per Karen's instructions and Sydney came back to her to do the rest of the course wonderfully. Roo unfortunately did not get to run because she started zooming when Nancy took her collar off. (Nancy entered her in some Regular classes that same day because they had room the day of, though, to work on Roo's stays, and they improved vastly!) Zest and Karen were awesome (you would never have known they met each other only the day before), but Zest knocked a bar. Finally I went and got Faith and my bag o' chicken and waited around. My mom, Grandma, and Jan were there to watch us which was handy for me because I could give my chicken to Mom. After a Flat-Coated Retriever went, it was our turn.
Faith was a little bit quivery from watching the Flat-Coat, but she was very intent when I set her up at the start line. I did a bit of a lead-out. She did not look around at the people or dogs but kept her eyes on me, and she didn't sniff the ground. I said, "Jump!" and off we went!
I really wish I had the video now so I could post it here! She was gorgeous, though. She followed everything I said without getting distracted. The only time we had any danger was after jump 5 when Faith thought she might go straight instead of curving around. I called her name and she looked at me and figured out where she was supposed to go. We did a good rear cross, and around that time I thought, wow, this is not so hard! Luckily I didn't dwell on that thought long enough to mess us up.
So we got our first Q and wonder of wonders, a first place! I am not sure how many dogs we were up against because I believe they place the Skilled and Proficient levels separately (we were running Proficient, which is the "normal" level--in Skilled your dog can jump lower than their normal height), but there were about ten dogs in the 20" height. I was flying high for the rest of the day! I stayed to watch some of the Regular, but then I left to go to lunch with various relatives. I spent a lot of the rest of the afternoon sleeping! Sydney had Touch N Go later that day, and (as Maureen put it) she goed but she didn't touch. She decided she didn't like the contact obstacles, but her tunnels were great, so it was good practice for Tunnelers on Sunday!
One bad thing about this weekend (or really about before this weekend) concerned Janet and her Golden Retriever, Emmy. She's been taking the prep classes with us, and Emmy is a gorgeous dog. At our last prep class, Emmy wasn't her usual self and she didn't want to jump. After our Jumpers class I realized I hadn't seen Emmy run, although I had seen Janet working. I found out later from Maureen that Emmy had apparently been badly attacked at Klub Kanine (a dog spa in Roanoke) and was full of puncture wounds. Janet didn't find out until she took Emmy to the vet after she was acting so strangely at class. Either the Klub Kanine people didn't know about the attack (which is still weird) or they just didn't tell Janet.
Sunday
Sunday started out just like Saturday except I was feeling a lot better about the whole agility trial thing. I had that little "Hooray!" moment where you wake up and you remember something awesome that happened recently. Off we went again to Hollins, although I slept in a little later now that I had a better idea about the pace of the trial.
Our Jumpers course today was a bit harder than Saturday's.
Faith's path (or at least, the path I WANTED her to take) is in pink and mine is in blue. There was another dummy jump after jump 4, but it was a little more inviting for a dog, especially a long-strided and fast dog like mine! I was very worried about getting from jump 4 to jump 5. I saw a lot of people doing a front cross there (the Elite and Open classes had a similar course), but there was no way I could beat Faith to that point. If I tried to race her to do a front cross, I'd end up pushing her to that dummy jump.
When we ran it, Faith was again completely awesome--no sniffing, no getting distracted, just very focused on me. It turned out that the place I was worried about was no problem. I called her name when she landed after jump 4 and she turned smoothly away from the dummy jump and took jump 5. Then I screwed us up! Karen told me during our walk-through to be sure to tell Faith to "go on" while she was in and exiting the tunnel, but I forgot. She went around jump 7. If I had done the rear cross, I would have kept going, but we were all muddled up. I called her back to take the jump, but she went over it backwards. That NQ'ed us, but no worries--the rest of the course was beautiful and Faith did everything I asked her to--I just asked for the wrong thing! The good news was that Maureen and Sydney were awesome and got 1st place in the 8" group! So we both qualified and won our Jumpers class once this weekend. Roo didn't Q, but she didn't zoom at all and was really great. She is so talented and very, very fast (which, as I know from my experience with Faith, is not the easiest kind of dog to start out with).
After Jumpers we had a good long wait until Tunnelers, which was the last class of the day. I passed the time watching the other competitors in Regular and Weavers, taking Faith out on her flexi to run around and play with her tug, talking to people, and eating junk food. My mom brought a coffee cake and bag of cookies from Panera which all the Cool People appreciated a lot. Connie was also there on Sunday with Player and Hannah.
Tunnelers is FUN. I mean, seriously fun. When I first looked at the course, I thought there was no way we could do it. Karen even said that it was one of the hardest Tunnelers courses she had seen. There were a few places that were perfectly set up for an off-course penalty. Unlike Jumpers, Tunnelers has the same course for all three levels (Elite, Open, and Novice). The only change is that the Elite level has the shortest Standard Course Time.
FYI, tunnels are way harder to draw in MS Paint than jumps. Some of my tunnels resemble chromosomes. Also, I tried putting Faith's path in there and it made the whole thing even more unreadable than it is. My path is in blue (with an S for the start and an F for the finish). Faith's path is next to me but inside the tunnels. Tunnel 5 was bidirectional. (For anyone who cares, I sent Faith into the right side of tunnel 5.) The other tunnels have their numbers at the entrance (but of course, many tunnels have more than one number because the dog went through them more than once).
Faith was again awesome in this course. (Have I mentioned how awesome Faith was this weekend?) She let me do a lead-out with a crooked tunnel, which we've never really done. I was afraid she would come straight to me instead of going into the tunnel when I cued her, but she did not hesitate. This course involved a lot of me running like hell. Everything was gorgeous until Faith came out of tunnel 9. The upper level people did a front cross on the out side of tunnel 11 while their dog was in tunnel 9 and then their dogs just magically found tunnel 10 (or so it seemed to my uneducated eye!). After Karen's recommendation, I wanted to do a front cross, too, but I would definitely have to cross while Faith was in tunnel 10. I just didn't go down far enough and Faith came to me between the tunnels instead of going into tunnel 10. So I went back down, put her in 10, and did a sloppy rear cross between 10 and 11. Then our other almost-mistake came after tunnel 13, when Faith tried to go into the left side of tunnel 5. I shouted her name and she screeched to a halt right outside the tunnel entrance. I showed her 14 and we were home and dry! I really love the Jumpers courses, but I'm not sure anything could be more fast and furious and fun than Tunnelers. And to make it even more wonderful, we Q'ed in this class, although our time wasn't spectacular because of the time we lost in finding the right tunnels! We got third place.
Tamber also Q'ed in this class and won first place in her 8" group! I think this was Tamber's first Q ever. She and Byron looked really great. Sydney went through tunnel 8 backwards, but she and Maureen did the 9-10-11 sequence way better than Faith and I did. Roo got a little carried away and missed some tunnels, but she had a great time doing it.
Anyway! So there is a really long account of our weekend. I am so amazingly proud of Faith. She behaved so well, and she really did have a great time running. (I think she might wish I wasn't quite so proud since I keep swooping down on her and hugging her when she is the middle of serious business, like playing with her ball or asking to go outside.) As we were leaving, one of the other competitors who I don't know said, "That's a nice working (or looking, maybe, I couldn't hear her very well) dog! Make sure you don't slow her down!"
And we now have a leg to two new titles--JNC (for Jumpers) and TN-N (for Tunnelers). I am not sure when we will trial next. Unfortunately the next NADAC trial in Virginia is this same one next year. There are a whole bunch in Maryland, and I will probably go to one this summer or sometime. I would like to go to one where other people I know are going, and I'm not sure which ones they'll be going to! Star City is having an AKC trial in June (I think), but I doubt Faith or Sydney will be trial-ready for weaves or the teeter by then.
I will probably not be able to post the video of our first run until this weekend, unfortunately. I really wish we had a video of our other two runs, especially Tunnelers because I bet it would be entertaining. The photographer who was there got some shots of Faith, though, and will be posting them on her website in the next couple of days--knowing me I will probably buy all of them (and post them here).
Saturday
I was alternating between nervousness and excitement on Saturday morning after I woke up at 6. Half of me thought that I was rushing Faith into a trial (and rushing definitely didn't help with flyball) and the other half figured that Faith would certainly not be the worst one there. Our day started off smoothly thanks to my diligent preparation late the previous night, when I packed up all of our stuff in my new dog gear backpack (very handy--I'm planning to just keep it packed all the time so that it's ready for classes, trials, and tournaments), went to Kroger to buy chicken, filled my car's tank, and packed everything but the chicken, leash, and dog in the car.
Local trials are the best! It only took 45 minutes to get to the trial site, which was on the Hollins University soccer field. The drive was really easy, as it was just a few miles from my agility class place. After I parked, I wandered around a bit looking at everything. I found Maureen, Jennie, Anne, Eric, and Karen, and shortly afterward the trial secretary and judge gave a short briefing about the trial. One thing about this trial that really stood out was how nice everyone was. People are nice in the other sports Faith and I compete in, flyball and rally, but it stood out more at this trial. I don't know if it's a NADAC thing or an agility thing!
Chances was the first class with about fifty entries, so Maureen and I had a while to wait. I found out that Anne, Eric, and Jennie were also competing in the Novice Jumpers class with Kesh and Zago, Matt, and Oliver. (In case anyone is interested and doesn't know, Anne, Eric, and Jennie (and Connie, who showed up on Sunday) all do flyball with Faith and me. We were all originally part of NRE. Anne and Connie have since split from NRE to join HoT.) Watching Chances, especially Elite, was pretty amazing. I'm not sure that Faith and I will ever be able to work at that big of a distance from each other. There was one part where the dog went through a tunnel that curved in a corner of the ring and then was supposed to come out and go into the weave poles that were along the edge of the ring, all with the handler standing practically all the way on the other half. A good number of dogs chose the enticing jumps leading to the handler instead of the weaves, but the ones who ran clean were amazing.
While Open and Novice Chances was going on, I set Faith's crate and my stuff up under Maureen's tent. We were in the "cool people" part of the site, with Karen, LeAnn (who has several dogs and trains with Karen), Nancy (with her ACD Roo), Jennie, Eric, Anne, and Maureen all in the same row. I finally took Faith out of the car and walked her around a bit in the quiet parking lot before taking her to her crate. She was excited and interested in everything going on, but she was great at paying attention to me. After I crated her, Maureen and I went to check out our Jumpers course, which was posted in front of the second ring. It was so much easier than what we've been practicing in class.
Here is a very crude Paint version of our course. The tunnel was bidirectional, so the dog could enter from either end. The red shows Faith's path and the blue is my path. There was a dummy jump in the middle, but it was not really an issue from Faith's point of view--the main danger was I was afraid I might run into it!
After seeing the course, I felt a bit better about this whole thing. Plus, as I watched the other dogs go in Chances and then in the upper levels of Jumpers, I saw that it's really pretty silly to get embarrassed if your dog messes up. Even the best dogs mess up, and neither the competitors nor the spectators care. There were a couple of dogs there that were clearly not ready to be trialing, so I felt even more sure that Faith wouldn't be the worst one! This is not to say that I still didn't have butterflies in my stomach, but they were controllable!
After the Elite and Open Jumpers went, it was time to walk the course. Nearly everyone I knew who was there was also competing in Novice Jumpers: Maureen, Nancy, LeAnn, Anne, Eric, Jennie, and Karen herself who was running an ILP'ed Aussie named Zest whom she only met on Friday. Karen and Eric told me to send Faith into the left side of the tunnel instead of the right the way I drew on my map. I initially wanted to send her into the right, and their reasoning made sense, but when it came time to run it I sent her into the right anyway--more because that was just where we were when the time came rather than by a conscious decision!
Saturday was running small to tall dogs, so Faith and I had a while to wait--we were the third-to-last to go and there were about thirty dogs. I had fun watching everyone I knew. Maureen and Sydney did great. Sydney decided to visit the people sitting in the corners (I'm not sure if their only job is to reset bars or what!) at first, so she skipped jumps 2, 3, and 4, but Maureen kept on going as per Karen's instructions and Sydney came back to her to do the rest of the course wonderfully. Roo unfortunately did not get to run because she started zooming when Nancy took her collar off. (Nancy entered her in some Regular classes that same day because they had room the day of, though, to work on Roo's stays, and they improved vastly!) Zest and Karen were awesome (you would never have known they met each other only the day before), but Zest knocked a bar. Finally I went and got Faith and my bag o' chicken and waited around. My mom, Grandma, and Jan were there to watch us which was handy for me because I could give my chicken to Mom. After a Flat-Coated Retriever went, it was our turn.
Faith was a little bit quivery from watching the Flat-Coat, but she was very intent when I set her up at the start line. I did a bit of a lead-out. She did not look around at the people or dogs but kept her eyes on me, and she didn't sniff the ground. I said, "Jump!" and off we went!
I really wish I had the video now so I could post it here! She was gorgeous, though. She followed everything I said without getting distracted. The only time we had any danger was after jump 5 when Faith thought she might go straight instead of curving around. I called her name and she looked at me and figured out where she was supposed to go. We did a good rear cross, and around that time I thought, wow, this is not so hard! Luckily I didn't dwell on that thought long enough to mess us up.
So we got our first Q and wonder of wonders, a first place! I am not sure how many dogs we were up against because I believe they place the Skilled and Proficient levels separately (we were running Proficient, which is the "normal" level--in Skilled your dog can jump lower than their normal height), but there were about ten dogs in the 20" height. I was flying high for the rest of the day! I stayed to watch some of the Regular, but then I left to go to lunch with various relatives. I spent a lot of the rest of the afternoon sleeping! Sydney had Touch N Go later that day, and (as Maureen put it) she goed but she didn't touch. She decided she didn't like the contact obstacles, but her tunnels were great, so it was good practice for Tunnelers on Sunday!
One bad thing about this weekend (or really about before this weekend) concerned Janet and her Golden Retriever, Emmy. She's been taking the prep classes with us, and Emmy is a gorgeous dog. At our last prep class, Emmy wasn't her usual self and she didn't want to jump. After our Jumpers class I realized I hadn't seen Emmy run, although I had seen Janet working. I found out later from Maureen that Emmy had apparently been badly attacked at Klub Kanine (a dog spa in Roanoke) and was full of puncture wounds. Janet didn't find out until she took Emmy to the vet after she was acting so strangely at class. Either the Klub Kanine people didn't know about the attack (which is still weird) or they just didn't tell Janet.
Sunday
Sunday started out just like Saturday except I was feeling a lot better about the whole agility trial thing. I had that little "Hooray!" moment where you wake up and you remember something awesome that happened recently. Off we went again to Hollins, although I slept in a little later now that I had a better idea about the pace of the trial.
Our Jumpers course today was a bit harder than Saturday's.
Faith's path (or at least, the path I WANTED her to take) is in pink and mine is in blue. There was another dummy jump after jump 4, but it was a little more inviting for a dog, especially a long-strided and fast dog like mine! I was very worried about getting from jump 4 to jump 5. I saw a lot of people doing a front cross there (the Elite and Open classes had a similar course), but there was no way I could beat Faith to that point. If I tried to race her to do a front cross, I'd end up pushing her to that dummy jump.
When we ran it, Faith was again completely awesome--no sniffing, no getting distracted, just very focused on me. It turned out that the place I was worried about was no problem. I called her name when she landed after jump 4 and she turned smoothly away from the dummy jump and took jump 5. Then I screwed us up! Karen told me during our walk-through to be sure to tell Faith to "go on" while she was in and exiting the tunnel, but I forgot. She went around jump 7. If I had done the rear cross, I would have kept going, but we were all muddled up. I called her back to take the jump, but she went over it backwards. That NQ'ed us, but no worries--the rest of the course was beautiful and Faith did everything I asked her to--I just asked for the wrong thing! The good news was that Maureen and Sydney were awesome and got 1st place in the 8" group! So we both qualified and won our Jumpers class once this weekend. Roo didn't Q, but she didn't zoom at all and was really great. She is so talented and very, very fast (which, as I know from my experience with Faith, is not the easiest kind of dog to start out with).
After Jumpers we had a good long wait until Tunnelers, which was the last class of the day. I passed the time watching the other competitors in Regular and Weavers, taking Faith out on her flexi to run around and play with her tug, talking to people, and eating junk food. My mom brought a coffee cake and bag of cookies from Panera which all the Cool People appreciated a lot. Connie was also there on Sunday with Player and Hannah.
Tunnelers is FUN. I mean, seriously fun. When I first looked at the course, I thought there was no way we could do it. Karen even said that it was one of the hardest Tunnelers courses she had seen. There were a few places that were perfectly set up for an off-course penalty. Unlike Jumpers, Tunnelers has the same course for all three levels (Elite, Open, and Novice). The only change is that the Elite level has the shortest Standard Course Time.
FYI, tunnels are way harder to draw in MS Paint than jumps. Some of my tunnels resemble chromosomes. Also, I tried putting Faith's path in there and it made the whole thing even more unreadable than it is. My path is in blue (with an S for the start and an F for the finish). Faith's path is next to me but inside the tunnels. Tunnel 5 was bidirectional. (For anyone who cares, I sent Faith into the right side of tunnel 5.) The other tunnels have their numbers at the entrance (but of course, many tunnels have more than one number because the dog went through them more than once).
Faith was again awesome in this course. (Have I mentioned how awesome Faith was this weekend?) She let me do a lead-out with a crooked tunnel, which we've never really done. I was afraid she would come straight to me instead of going into the tunnel when I cued her, but she did not hesitate. This course involved a lot of me running like hell. Everything was gorgeous until Faith came out of tunnel 9. The upper level people did a front cross on the out side of tunnel 11 while their dog was in tunnel 9 and then their dogs just magically found tunnel 10 (or so it seemed to my uneducated eye!). After Karen's recommendation, I wanted to do a front cross, too, but I would definitely have to cross while Faith was in tunnel 10. I just didn't go down far enough and Faith came to me between the tunnels instead of going into tunnel 10. So I went back down, put her in 10, and did a sloppy rear cross between 10 and 11. Then our other almost-mistake came after tunnel 13, when Faith tried to go into the left side of tunnel 5. I shouted her name and she screeched to a halt right outside the tunnel entrance. I showed her 14 and we were home and dry! I really love the Jumpers courses, but I'm not sure anything could be more fast and furious and fun than Tunnelers. And to make it even more wonderful, we Q'ed in this class, although our time wasn't spectacular because of the time we lost in finding the right tunnels! We got third place.
Tamber also Q'ed in this class and won first place in her 8" group! I think this was Tamber's first Q ever. She and Byron looked really great. Sydney went through tunnel 8 backwards, but she and Maureen did the 9-10-11 sequence way better than Faith and I did. Roo got a little carried away and missed some tunnels, but she had a great time doing it.
Anyway! So there is a really long account of our weekend. I am so amazingly proud of Faith. She behaved so well, and she really did have a great time running. (I think she might wish I wasn't quite so proud since I keep swooping down on her and hugging her when she is the middle of serious business, like playing with her ball or asking to go outside.) As we were leaving, one of the other competitors who I don't know said, "That's a nice working (or looking, maybe, I couldn't hear her very well) dog! Make sure you don't slow her down!"
And we now have a leg to two new titles--JNC (for Jumpers) and TN-N (for Tunnelers). I am not sure when we will trial next. Unfortunately the next NADAC trial in Virginia is this same one next year. There are a whole bunch in Maryland, and I will probably go to one this summer or sometime. I would like to go to one where other people I know are going, and I'm not sure which ones they'll be going to! Star City is having an AKC trial in June (I think), but I doubt Faith or Sydney will be trial-ready for weaves or the teeter by then.
I will probably not be able to post the video of our first run until this weekend, unfortunately. I really wish we had a video of our other two runs, especially Tunnelers because I bet it would be entertaining. The photographer who was there got some shots of Faith, though, and will be posting them on her website in the next couple of days--knowing me I will probably buy all of them (and post them here).